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This volume chronicles the facts concerning the relations between the Netherlands in Asia and Japan during the last two years before the outbreak of war in the Pacific and concentrates on political and economic affairs. 1. Background 2. Relations Before 1940 3. The Opening Moves 4. The Kobayashi Mission 5. The Yoshizawa Mission 6. The Last Months of Crumbling Peace 7. Retrospect

This book provides a cross-regional investigation of the role of citizenship and ethnicity in migration, political incorporation, and political transnationalism in the age of globalization, exploring the political realities of Dutch Antilleans in the Netherlands and Latin American Nikkeijin in Japan.

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This study focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa Japan over diplomacy, violence, and sovereignty. In each encounter the Dutch were forced to retreat, compelled to abandon their claims to sovereign powers, and to refashion themselves again and again -- from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial sovereignty to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. Within the confines of these conflicts, the terms of the relationship between the company and the shogun first took shape and were subsequently set into what would become their permanent form. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company in Japan as something more than just a commercial organization,The Company and the Shogunpresents new perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting relationships to develop between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise.

Plastics have conveyed great benefits to humanity and made possible some of the most significant advances of modern civilization in fields as diverse as medicine, electronics, aerospace, construction, food packaging, and sports. It is now clear, however, that plastics are also responsible for significant harms to human health, the economy, and the earth's environment. These harms occur at every stage of the plastic life cycle, from extraction of the coal, oil, and gas that are its main feedstocks through to ultimate disposal into the environment. The extent of these harms not been systematically assessed, their magnitude not fully quantified, and their economic costs not comprehensively counted. The goals of this Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health are to comprehensively examine plastics' impacts across their life cycle on: (1) human health and well-being; (2) the global environment, especially the ocean; (3) the economy; and (4) vulnerable populations-the poor, minorities, and the world's children. On the basis of this examination, the Commission offers science-based recommendations designed to support development of a Global Plastics Treaty, protect human health, and save lives. This Commission report contains seven Sections. Following an Introduction, Section 2 presents a narrative review of the processes involved in plastic production, use, and disposal and notes the hazards to human health and the environment associated with each of these stages. Section 3 describes plastics' impacts on the ocean and notes the potential for plastic in the ocean to enter the marine food web and result in human exposure. Section 4 details plastics' impacts on human health. Section 5 presents a first-order estimate of plastics' health-related economic costs. Section 6 examines the intersection between plastic, social inequity, and environmental injustice. Section 7 presents the Commission's findings and recommendations. Plastics are complex, highly heterogeneous, synthetic chemical materials. Over 98% of plastics are produced from fossil carbon- coal, oil and gas. Plastics are comprised of a carbon-based polymer backbone and thousands of additional chemicals that are incorporated into polymers to convey specific properties such as color, flexibility, stability, water repellence, flame retardation, and ultraviolet resistance. Many of these added chemicals are highly toxic. They include carcinogens, neurotoxicants and endocrine disruptors such as phthalates, bisphenols, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), brominated flame retardants, and organophosphate flame retardants. They are integral components of plastic and are responsible for many of plastics' harms to human health and the environment.Global plastic production has increased almost exponentially since World War II, and in this time more than 8,300 megatons (Mt) of plastic have been manufactured. Annual production volume has grown from under 2 Mt in 1950 to 460 Mt in 2019, a 230-fold increase, and is on track to triple by 2060. More than half of all plastic ever made has been produced since 2002. Single-use plastics account for 35-40% of current plastic production and represent the most rapidly growing segment of plastic manufacture.Explosive recent growth in plastics production reflects a deliberate pivot by the integrated multinational fossil-carbon corporations that produce coal, oil and gas and that also manufacture plastics. These corporations are reducing their production of fossil fuels and increasing plastics manufacture. The two principal factors responsible for this pivot are decreasing global demand for carbon-based fuels due to increases in 'green' energy, and massive expansion of oil and gas production due to fracking.Plastic manufacture is energy-intensive and contributes significantly to climate change. At present, plastic production is responsible for an estimated 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the contribution of Brazil. This fraction is projected to increase to 4.5% by 2060 if current trends continue unchecked. The plastic life cycle has three phases: production, use, and disposal. In production, carbon feedstocks-coal, gas, and oil-are transformed through energy-intensive, catalytic processes into a vast array of products. Plastic use occurs in every aspect of modern life and results in widespread human exposure to the chemicals contained in plastic. Single-use plastics constitute the largest portion of current use, followed by synthetic fibers and construction.Plastic disposal is highly inefficient, with recovery and recycling rates below 10% globally. The result is that an estimated 22 Mt of plastic waste enters the environment each year, much of it single-use plastic and are added to the more than 6 gigatons of plastic waste that have accumulated since 1950. Strategies for disposal of plastic waste include controlled and uncontrolled landfilling, open burning, thermal conversion, and export. Vast quantities of plastic waste are exported each year from high-income to low-income countries, where it accumulates in landfills, pollutes air and water, degrades vital ecosystems, befouls beaches and estuaries, and harms human health-environmental injustice on a global scale. Plastic-laden e-waste is particularly problematic. Plastics and plastic-associated chemicals are responsible for widespread pollution. They contaminate aquatic (marine and freshwater), terrestrial, and atmospheric environments globally. The ocean is the ultimate destination for much plastic, and plastics are found throughout the ocean, including coastal regions, the sea surface, the deep sea, and polar sea ice. Many plastics appear to resist breakdown in the ocean and could persist in the global environment for decades. Macro- and micro-plastic particles have been identified in hundreds of marine species in all major taxa, including species consumed by humans. Trophic transfer of microplastic particles and the chemicals within them has been demonstrated. Although microplastic particles themselves (>10 µm) appear not to undergo biomagnification, hydrophobic plastic-associated chemicals bioaccumulate in marine animals and biomagnify in marine food webs. The amounts and fates of smaller microplastic and nanoplastic particles (MNPs <10 µm) in aquatic environments are poorly understood, but the potential for harm is worrying given their mobility in biological systems. Adverse environmental impacts of plastic pollution occur at multiple levels from molecular and biochemical to population and ecosystem. MNP contamination of seafood results in direct, though not well quantified, human exposure to plastics and plastic-associated chemicals. Marine plastic pollution endangers the ocean ecosystems upon which all humanity depends for food, oxygen, livelihood, and well-being. Coal miners, oil workers and gas field workers who extract fossil carbon feedstocks for plastic production suffer increased mortality from traumatic injury, coal workers' pneumoconiosis, silicosis, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer. Plastic production workers are at increased risk of leukemia, lymphoma, hepatic angiosarcoma, brain cancer, breast cancer, mesothelioma, neurotoxic injury, and decreased fertility. Workers producing plastic textiles die of bladder cancer, lung cancer, mesothelioma, and interstitial lung disease at increased rates. Plastic recycling workers have increased rates of cardiovascular disease, toxic metal poisoning, neuropathy, and lung cancer. Residents of \"fenceline\" communities adjacent to plastic production and waste disposal sites experience increased risks of premature birth, low birth weight, asthma, childhood leukemia, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer.During use and also in disposal, plastics release toxic chemicals including additives and residual monomers into the environment and into people. National biomonitoring surveys in the USA document population-wide exposures to these chemicals. Plastic additives disrupt endocrine function and increase risk for premature births, neurodevelopmental disorders, male reproductive birth defects, infertility, obesity, cardiovascular disease, renal disease, and cancers. Chemical-laden MNPs formed through the environmental degradation of plastic waste can enter living organisms, including humans. Emerging, albeit still incomplete evidence indicates that MNPs may cause toxicity due to their physical and toxicological effects as well as by acting as vectors that transport toxic chemicals and bacterial pathogens into tissues and cells.Infants in the womb and young children are two populations at particularly high risk of plastic-related health effects. Because of the exquisite sensitivity of early development to hazardous chemicals and children's unique patterns of exposure, plastic-associated exposures are linked to increased risks of prematurity, stillbirth, low birth weight, birth defects of the reproductive organs, neurodevelopmental impairment, impaired lung growth, and childhood cancer. Early-life exposures to plastic-associated chemicals also increase the risk of multiple non-communicable diseases later in life. Plastic's harms to human health result in significant economic costs. We estimate that in 2015 the health-related costs of plastic production exceeded $250 billion (2015 Int$) globally, and that in the USA alone the health costs of disease and disability caused by the plastic-associated chemicals PBDE, BPA and DEHP exceeded $920 billion (2015 Int$). Plastic production results in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions equivalent to 1.96 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO e) annually. Using the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) social cost of carbon metric, we estimate the annual costs of these GHG emissions to be $341 billion (2015 Int$).These costs, large as they are, almost certainly underestimate the full economic

Using Indonesia as a case study, this article aims to contribute to the existing literature on why weaker states engage in hedging by examining how Indonesia's domestic factors influence its foreign policy decisions regarding the United States and China. The article argues that domestic and foreign policies are interconnected as domestic agendas, including the interests and aspirations of Indonesian politicians as well as public opinion, have led to variations in the country's hedging behaviours towards the two great powers. On one hand, domestic political and economic considerations drive Indonesia to engage with the United States and China. On the other hand, the same factors can also act as hindrances that limit Indonesia's engagement with these powers. Consequently, despite having strong defence ties with the United States, Indonesia now sees China as a major and essential economic partner that helps the country and its leaders achieve their development goals.

For nearly three decades, Ping Chong and his company have written and staged some of the most innovative and arresting examinations of \"the Other\" on stages in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. His work more than any other artist has explored the ways Asian cultures have intersected with contemporary American society and throughout history. This volume collects four of his masterworks created over the past decade, including: Deshima(1990), a documentary collage of the history of the West and Japan; Chinoiserie(1995), spans centuries, continents and cultures, where the mysterious East meets the mysterious West; After Sorrow(1997), explores the legacy of war in Vietnam; Pojagi(1999), a poetic documentary on Korea from the sixteenth century to today. The Washington Posthas said these works are \"like poems in their simplicity and power to evoke . . . -carefully wrought and beautifully designed. Artfully and elegantly conceived, rich in metaphor, political yet deeply personal, the four works inThe East-West Quartettell us much about the pitfalls and ironies of history, the various contradictions, collisions and collusions within the East and the West, and the search for national and personal identity. A true citizen of the world, Ping Chong refuses to be pigeonholed and goes his own way, as much at home on the streets of Beijing and Paris as he is on the Canal Street in New York. He continues to make work that bristles with intelligence, that is filled with empathy for the human condition, that is angry yet beautiful - work that matters. It is all here in this book.\" - Jessica Hagedorn, from her preface \"As an artist , I'm an outsider in American society. As an experimental artist, I'm an outsider in the art world. As a person of color, I'm an outsider; as an immigrant, I'm an outsider; as a gay man, I'm an outsider. It's the position that fate has allotted me, but it's a valuable postion to be in, because I think every society should have a mirror held to it by the outsider.\"-Ping Chong, 1999 Ping Chongwas born in 1946 and raised in the Chinatown section of New York City. He began his theatrical career with Meredith Monk and later founded his own company in 1975, which later became Ping Chong and Company. It was created to explore the meaning of contemporary theatre and art on a national and international level. He has created over fifty major works for the stage, includingHumboldt's Current, Nosferatu, Kind Ness, andUndesirable Elements. His works have received numerous Obie and Bessie Awards and are performed throughout the world.

This paper provides new evidence on inequalities in resources for children age 3–4 by parental education using harmonized data from six advanced industrialized countries—United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Japan—that represent different social welfare regime types. We analyze inequalities in two types of resources for young children—family income, and center-based child care—applying two alternative measures of parental education—highest parental education, and maternal education. We hypothesize that inequalities in resources by parental education will be less pronounced in countries where social policies are designed to be more equalizing. The results provide partial support for this hypothesis: the influence of parental education on resources for children does vary by the social policy context, although not in all cases. We also find that the measurement of parental education matters: income disparities are smaller under a maternal-only definition whereas child care disparities are larger. Moreover, the degree of divergence between the two sets of estimates differs across countries. We provide some of the first systematic evidence about how resources for young children vary depending on parents’ education and the extent to which such inequalities are buffered by social policies. We find that while early inequalities are a fact of life in all six countries, the extent of those inequalities varies considerably. Moreover, the results suggest that social policy plays a role in moderating the influence of parental education on resources for children.

This study explores whether and how regional parliaments facilitate collective state recognition, a question that has been overlooked within a literature that focuses more on recognition by individual states or international organizations more generally. We do that through a scoping exercise of how regional parliaments of four major international organizations (AU, CoE, EU, OSCE) have responded to past and present contested statehood efforts that are associated with conflicts, such as in Palestine, Western Sahara, Kosovo, or the post-Soviet space. Based on this, we conceptualize three different stances: recognition, non-recognition, and titular recognition (of a right to, as opposed to the presence of, statehood) and we propose that these stances become apparent declaratively, through resolutions or other formal texts of regional parliaments, or institutionally (e.g., through membership). We also find that regional parliaments display a certain agency through using specific parliamentary instruments to respond to statehood claimants, promoting debates on those claims, and expressing recognition stances different from the executive bodies of the organization. Further, we illustrate these arguments through a more in-depth analysis of the European Parliament's approach toward Kosovo's statehood. In this regard, the paper offers a missing but important account of how regional parliaments facilitate collective recognition and contribute to defining what is a state, one of the most fundamental questions of international relations, which sits at the heart of long and complex conflicts. The proposed conceptual and theoretical arguments can facilitate further studies on state recognition, particularly collective recognition and the role of international organizations.

Research focusing on stress change comparing before and after being affected by the first COVID-19 outbreak is still limited. This study examined the model between the stress changes during the first COVID-19 outbreak and social attributes (age, sex, occupation, etc.) among residents of four cities around the globe. We obtained 741 valid responses from the residents of London (11.5%), New York (13.8%), Amsterdam (11.7%), and Tokyo (53.4%), through a web-based questionnaire survey conducted in collaboration with a private research firm. We identified 16 statistically significant variables out of 36 explanatory variables, which explained a significant stress change compared to the pre-outbreak period. This result showed that whether living alone or not and the number of times going out for walk or jogging during the first COVID-19 outbreak were the explanatory variables with higher significance for the reduced stress. In addition, those who lived in a place different from their hometowns, who were dissatisfied with their work or their family relationships were more stressed, with statistically significant differences.