Dear Readers,

Please excuse us for not issuing a Watch this week and next. It has been an exhausting yet exciting month for the Japan Information Access Project. Hopefully, late next week will do a roundup of all the exciting reports and events that occurred the past 2 weeks: Japan's EPA cooking the books, MoF backtracking on tax status of nonprofits, the "divine nation" of Mori, the US Defense Dept.'s new report on Asia, and the myriad other interesting things we track down for you.

In the interim, see our paper -"Japanese Nuclear Energy Policy and Public Opinion" included in a major report released on the 18th by the James A. Baker III Institute on "Japanese Energy Security and Changing Global Energy Markets: An Analysis of Northeast Asian Energy Cooperation and Japan's Evolving Leadership Role in the Region." Our paper and the 20 other papers are all available on the Baker Inst. Website at http://riceinfo.rice.edu/projects/baker (Go to publications, then to studies, and the first study on Japanese energy security is the one). We recommend all our members look over the paper in this study. All are excellent and present an interesting picture into the security, political, and economic dynamics surrounding Japan's perception of its energy security.

The papers and view graphs from the May 24 Pentagon Study Group on Japan and Northeast Asia: "Perspectives On Northeast Asian Science & Technology: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea" will by available on our website within 10 days. We also will have up the Beeman paper on Japan's Fair Trade Commission, the Grier paper on Administrative Reform, the Kuehl paper on cyberwar in Asia, and most important the Vogel paper on NTT and the US-Japan telecom dispute.