April`s Site of the Month is "www.JapanFocus.org."

It describes itself as a "resource on Japan and the Asia-Pacific for teachers, students, journalists and readers", and it lives up to that billing, by providing a steady stream of highly readable articles.

April`s Site of the Month is www.JapanFocus.org
www.JapanFocus.org

Recent topics have included discussions of the Minamata poisoning cases from Kagoshima, American bases on Okinawa and plenty of analysis of what might happen in North Korea.

There are three really appealing things about the site.

One is the quality of the writers, who include John Dower (the most famous scholar of World War Two Japan), Herbert Bix, (who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Emperor Hirohito) and several key Japanese authors in translation.

Secondly, the site is simple, easy to navigate and free of scholarly jargon.

Finally, they offer a newsletter that delivers a single, weekly e-mail into my Inbox.

I`ve never received anything else from them and it is organized so that as soon as I open it, I can immediately see details of all the new articles.®