A small publisher is struggling to expand the circulation of its biannual English-language magazine, which features hard-hitting stories on controversial issues, such as the overseas deployment of the Self-Defense Forces and gender equality.

''We aim to deliver high-quality, critical stories about the political, economic and social states in Japan to the world in English,'' said Hikaru Kasahara, an editor of ''Japonesia Review.''

The number of subscribers currently stands at 60, including 10 overseas researchers and civil activists. Kasahara said, ''We are trying to carry enduring, analytical stories,'' suggesting that the magazine can exist side-by-side with English-language newspapers that report on a daily basis.

''We expect more people to know about our magazine and subscribe to it,'' she said.

Japonesia Review is published by a Tokyo-based private research institution, People's Plan Study Group, which also hosts symposiums on social issues and seminars by professors from major universities.

Its first issue was published in 2006, and in its third edition, issued last September, the magazine carried 12 articles focusing mainly on Japanese politics.

One of the 12 stories is ''Japan's 'Comfort Women''' by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, professor at Australian National University. She commented on the controversial remarks by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that there was no evidence that the recruitment of comfort women was forced ''in the narrow sense of the word.''

''Reading these remarks, I found myself imagining the international reaction to the German government if it proposed that it was not historically responsible for the Nazi forced labor camps, on the grounds that it was not 'forcible in the narrow sense of the word,''' she said in her article.

Referring to a former Australian comfort woman, Jan Ruff O'Herne, who gave testimony to the U.S. Congress about her wartime experience of rape and abuse, Morris-Suzuki noted, ''The fate of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea has aroused intense feelings in Japan in recent years, and Abe himself has been among those publicly moved to tears by their plight.''

''One wonders, then, why Abe and his fellow ministers find it so hard to imagine that the stories of people like Jan Ruff O'Herne might stir similar emotions in Australia and other parts of our region.''

''The morally bankrupt, hair-splitting rhetoric of politicians'' damages not only the surviving comfort women but also the Japanese people themselves, ''whose relationship with neighboring countries is being damaged by the short-sighted and inept behavior of their political leaders,'' she concluded.

Meanwhile, Satoshi Kamata, a well-known freelance journalist, wrote about the growing financial disparity among the Japanese public in the latest edition of the magazine.

On part-time and other casual workers who represent one third of the Japanese workforce, he said, ''Big business, not satisfied with this figure, is pressing harder to expand the casual labor force.''

''While the legal maximum term of a dispatch contract is currently three years (beyond which the hiring company must employ the dispatch worker as a regular worker), business organizations are now demanding that this restriction be abolished so the dispatch worker can be kept indefinitely,'' he noted.

''Japanese global corporations have succeeded in maintaining their competitiveness by paying them (dispatched workers) extremely low wages and saving on social security costs that they would otherwise have to meet,'' he argued.

The stories in Japonesia Review include new ones, reprints from other publications and translations of articles in Japanese. The previous two editions featured stories about North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens, the controversy over history textbooks and the emperor system in Japan.

''We are supported by volunteer translators and proof readers, but we need more in order to enrich the magazine,'' Kasahara said.

One of the subscribers, Toshio Nagasawa, said, ''The magazine provides us with unique viewpoints on social issues in Japan from the perspectives of women or minorities that can rarely be seen in mainstream media.''

''Reading the articles in English inevitably makes me focus on them carefully, and I believe the magazine could be used as a textbook at a college level,'' the 50-year-old social science teacher at a high school in Chiba Prefecture said.

The fourth edition is scheduled to be published in February, focusing on such issues as how Japanese politics will move following the major defeat of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Councillors election last year and how the people in Hokkaido are facing the upcoming Group of Eight summit meeting in July.

''We will also carry some articles about capital punishment,'' Kasahara said. The publisher is planning to expand the market of the magazine, for example, to college stores and libraries, she added.

Each edition is priced at 1,800 yen plus tax. For further information, call People's Plan Study Group at 03-6424-5748.

==Kyodo

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