This paper is an attempt to expand the knowledge of Japanese language education in Thailand before the end of World War II. Up to the present, there are few works on this topic, and existing ones mainly focused on the Japanese language education in Bangkok Japanese Language School, which was opened on the 21st December 1938 by the subsidies of Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are still many documents related to Japanese language education in Thailand, however, most of them are not investigated yet.

Relying on such new documents, the following subjects are treated in this paper, (1) the establishment of Japanese Language course in Bophitphimuk Middle School in B.E. 2477 (1934/5) and its first Japanese teacher (Uematsu Hideo), (2) Japanese language textbooks and dictionaries written and published by Thai authors and Miki Sakae (Wathana Triphrukphan) from 1937 to 1943 in Bangkok, (3) Japanese language teaching project (1934–1938) conducted by Japanese teachers (Goto Zengo and others) of Japanese Primary School managed by the Association for Japanese Community in Siam.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic implication of the ‘New Southern Policy’ advocated by the Moon Jae-in administration of the Republic of Korea, in the context of emerging debate on the Indo-Pacific. The Moon Administration, since its inauguration in May 2017, has presented the vision of ‘Northeast Asia Plus Community of Responsibility,” which consisted of three pillars such as the Northeast Peace and Cooperation Platform, New Northern Policy, and New Southern Policy. While much attention is given to the Northern aspect of the proposal, in relation to the issue of North Korea, the under-studied New Southern Policy deserves in-depth analysis as an attempt for a middle-power regionalist diplomacy.

With the framework of its New Southern Policy, ROK government strives to find a middle way between the US-led ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) Strategy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What is new and significant in Moon’s regionalist diplomacy is the attempt to align with other regional middle-powers such as Indonesia and India, which share concern over emerging geopolitical rivalries and economic tensions in the Indo-Pacific region.

This article discusses human security as Japan’s unique diplomatic asset. Human security focuses on protection of individuals from a wide range of threats. In author’s observation, Japan’s human security policy has two dimensions. First, it is a global notion accomplished in the UN by Japan’s sponsorship and intellectual leadership. In order to universalize the concept of human security, Japan supported the positions of developing countries by respecting their policies of non-intervention or sovereignty, while mitigating western countries’ criticisms at their non-democratic systems or human rights records. However, when Japan practiced human security as a guiding principle of its ODA or development cooperation, it is more sharply conscious of the aims to promote liberal values such as democracy or human rights based on its national interests. Especially the current Abe administration has demonstrated such a consistent tendency in light of China’s growing influence on regional order or even alternative ideology to western-led “global governance.” This article argues such Japan’s human security policy’s double nature rather might be useful to compromise with China because it could offer flexible options between accommodation by elusive theory and competition by sharp practice.

Kimura Keiichi was a director-announcer of Moscow Radio Khabarovsk Station Japanese Section (VRK Khabarovsk Group) immediately after World War II. He worked as journalist of Karafuto Shinbun (Karafuto Newspaper) in the city of Toyohara (Yuzhno Sakhalinsk after war) in Karafuto (Sakhalin) during WWII. After war Karafuto Shinbun has changed name to Shin Seimei Shinbun (New Life Newspaper) in the Soviet Regime. In the same time with him worked Ishizaka Sachiko, Azuma Kazuo, Ishii Jiro, Sannomiya Teiichi in the broadcasting station. Especially Ishizaka Sachiko was the first female announcer of VRK, worked and lived with him to return back to Japan.

Kimura Keiichi has been stayed in Soviet Union until 1948. But nothing was known about him excluding the fact that he was working in Japanese section of Radio Moscow (Radiobroadcasting programms in Japanese in Khabarovsk). The individual file of Kimura Keiichi was discovered in NARA (National Archives Reserch Administration) recently. This paper intends to reproduce person’s real image (activity) of Kimura based on these historical materials and presents future tasks.

This paper condists of three sections: first, sammery of his life; second, commentary of his documents (his life in before entry to USSR, activity in Khabarovsk and Moscow, etc.); third, his document, forth: generalization of his documents and future tasks.

In order to promote health activities at schools in a rural community, the reporter established “Regional School Health Committee” in Glazoué, the Republic of Benin. The committee consisted of several different institutions concerning school health, i.e., the school district office of Glazoué, the Glazoué health centre, the regional parent association, and 14 volunteer schools. As a result of its activities, the sanitary environment of these committee member schools dramatically improved, and increased focus has been placed on health education. However, in terms of dissemination of school health activities from the committee member schools to non-member schools, the effect of establishing the committee was limited. This case suggests that in the communities where school autonomy is high, publicly granting authority to the principals of the committee member schools and wide recognition of the committee itself are requisite for these principals to guide other schools as school health leaders. It may be also necessary to secure a minimum amount of funding for activities, such as transportation expenses for the volunteer school principals to visit non-member schools.

With the rapid increase of waste generation in many developing countries, international donors and researchers have indicated the necessity of incorporating existing informal recycling systems into the operations of formal municipal solid waste management. This paper presents data related to 1) the average household income obtained from waste picking, 2) income sources other than waste picking, 3) repayment of debt to the boss in Bantar Gebang, West Java, Republic of Indonesia. Data were obtained from qualitative and quantitative field surveys conducted for a total of 808 days from February 2010 to January 2018. The average household income of a waste picker was USD 211.3. At least, six kinds of work associated with waste picking exist in the site. The total amount of debt repayments was within 20% of the total income. The average amount of saving was about 10% of the total income.

In order to understand the history of ASEAN, basic economic statistics like GDP and trade are analyzed. The main sources are Ajia Doko Nenpo (Yearbook of Asian Affairs) published by Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and Direction of Trade Statistics, Yearbook by International Monetary Fund (IMF).