In China's international relations, 2010 has been the Year of Zero Sum.

On a series of issues, the Western and Asian democracies have demanded that China accept policies that advance their agendas while sacrificing Chinese interests.

On one level this is the inevitable outcome of the Obama administration's repositioning of its foreign policy away from the amoral, Westphalian-style horse-trading of national interests of the Bush administration.

In 1973, Ogawara Shū (1911-2002) painted a group of Hokkaido dogs in A Herded Society (Gunka shakai). Barking, crawling over each other, and trying to jump out of the picture plane toward the viewer, these are not tame, docile pet dogs, but rather violent animals. The painting does not have a smooth finish or a focal point. The simultaneously expressive yet unsophisticated faces of the dogs add a childish quality to the work. The artist stated that this painting represented the group mentality that existed among Japanese people, not only during the war when they supported the military government without question, but also after the war when they began uncritically embracing U.S. policies. Yet, distancing oneself from the pack is not easy.

On September 7 Japanese patrol boats intercepted a Chinese fishing trawler near Kubashima, one of the Senkaku [Chinese: Diaoyu] Islands in the East China Sea. After it repeatedly rammed the patrol boats in attempting to escape, the fishing boat was detained and its captain arrested and charged with interference in the execution of official duties. The incident would come to have enormous repercussions, shaking up Sino-Japanese relations.

Miyazawa Kenji must certainly be the world's only author who described himself as a single illumination of light. The actual lines—the very first in his “Preface to Spring and Ashura—go this way.