Japan SPOTLIGHT November/December 2008 issue

COVER STORY:Plus-sum game in innovative Asia This issue features various regional alliance efforts designed to achieve a win-win relationship in the Asia-Pacific region. Some regional opinion leaders provide their insights into the theme. Now, Japan SPOTLIGHT offers an Asian-wide discussion tool on the important policy issue.

In one of two special articles, Dr. Robert Madsen, a senior fellow at MIT, presents steps to fend off a "once-in-a-century" financial crisis.In the other, Nobutake Odano, Japanese ambassador to the EU and former envoy in charge of TICAD 4, sums up the significance of the conference.

The latest issue also profiles farmer philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka, who passed away this August after making a lifelong effort for greening the desert by clay-ball seeding in Asia and Africa. He won the Ramon Magsaysay Award and was awarded the highest honorary degree of India's Visva-Bharati University by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as well as the Earth Council Award. In his second installment in a new series, Kazumi Murose, an urushi lacquer art producer appointed a living national treasure in July, describes urushi in Japanese culture.