Asia in brief

Japanese police have arrested

a former computer programmer for allegedly publishing a fabricated news article on a fake Yahoo! Japan news website saying China had invaded the Japanese island of Okinawa. Takahiro Yamamoto, 30, allegedly accredited the fake article to Kyodo News Agency and published it on an Internet site that he had designed to look like Yahoo! Japan Corp.’s news site. The story was written in Japanese with the dateline “America, Oct. 18 Kyodo” followed by a headline saying “Chinese Military Invades Okinawa.” The website was accessed 66,000 times until it was taken down on Oct. 19. 1 JAPAN’S NATIONALIST COMICS

In one book, crazed Chinese

communist guerrillas spray

benevolent Japanese troops with cyanide. In another, savage Korean immigrants massacre innocent Tokyo residents in the wake of the Second World War. If this sounds like a reversal of Japan’s history of aggression in Asia, that is just what the authors intend. The scenes appear in two bestselling examples of a growing literary genre in Japan: nationalist comics. The trend, typified by the runaway hits Hate Korea: A Comicand Introduction to China, has struck a chord among young readers who resent Japan’s being cast as the bully in 20th century history. The interpretation in the recent books is nothing short of provocative — at a time of rising tensions between Tokyo and its neighbours, and as Japan takes a decided tilt toward an unapologetic view of previous military action. The formula apparently sells: The Korea book has gone through five reprints and sold more than 320,000 copies since its release in September. The China book has sold 180,000 copies since its appearance in August. 2 3 TEXTBOOK LAWSUIT REJECTED

And in other Japanese publishing news, the Supreme Court

in Tokyo has rejected a lawsuit by an author claiming that government screening of public school textbooks is unconstitutional and subjected him to mental anguish. Nobuyoshi Takashima, now a professor at University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, filed his lawsuit in 1993 seeking one million yen ($9,600) in compensation from the government over the editing of passages dealing with Japan-Asia relations. In its screening of his book, the ministry struck out a passage on protests by Southeast Asian countries over Japan’s decision to send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf after the 1991 Gulf War. Regulators also demanded the removal of a passage that they said mischaracterized a 19th-century Japanese thinker’s position on Japan’s relations with other Asian countries. AUSTRALIA-EAST TIMOR DEAL

Following up on a number of

items that have appeared on

this page in recent months, Australia and East Timor have agreed on how to carve up billions of dollars in revenue from disputed oil and gas reserves beneath the sea that divides them. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said negotiators had reached an agreement on how to share Timor Sea seabed resources in their eighth round of talks in the northern Australian city Darwin on Wednesday evening. East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri and Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta have agreed a formal signing ceremony will take place by midJanuary. Details of the agreement will not be released until then. 4

SHAM NEWSWRITER ARRESTED

Sun news services