A midsummer miscellany 

To give their staff a mid-August break, most magazines have produced issues covering a two-week span. Three key words dominate their contents: senshu (athlete), sensei (meaning teacher, but also applied to the likes of authors and politicians as a term of respect) and senso (war).

It's a rare magazine that doesn't focus on Japan's Olympic prospects. Those with mostly male readerships, such as Shukan Post (Aug. 15-22), focus on 10 of the most attractive female athletes, including 184-cm-tall volleyball star Saori Kimura, broad jumper Kumiko Ikeda and beach-volleyball star Miwa Asao.

Women's magazine Shukan Josei (Aug. 19-26) gives its readers a glossy photo section devoted to male bodies titled "Red-hot Nudie Men," featuring swimming medalist Kosuke Kitajima, handball player Daisuke Miyazaki and track-and-field star Shingo Suetsugu.

The Beijing Olympics notwithstanding, whatever happens this year in China may pale in significance to what's coming in 2009. Sunday Mainichi (Aug. 24) points out that for the past six decades, years ending in "9" have been marked by earth-shaking events, often with worldwide consequences. The People's Republic was proclaimed in October 1949; in 1959, China sent troops into Tibet to crush the Lhasa Rebellion; in 1969, China fought skirmishes on its border with the Soviet Union; in Feb. 1979 it launched a punitive expedition into Vietnam; the Tiananmen Incident occurred in June 1989. And in 1999, China intensified its crackdown on the Falun Gong religious movement.

Ke Long, a senior researcher at the Fujitsu Research Institute, tells Sunday Mainichi that prior to the Olympics, China's leadership took the unusual step of increasing on-site inspections of local areas. Their activities may reflect serious concerns that economic growth will decelerate sharply after the Olympics. Capital markets are particularly at risk.

"A Chinese version of the U.S. subprime crisis may be waiting in the wings," Ke warns.

The sensei in question refers to beloved cartoonist Fujio Akatsuka, age 72, who passed away Aug. 2 after a long illness. Akatsuka's most popular creation was probably "Tensai Bakabon (Genius Bakabon)," a comic and animated-cartoon series launched in 1967 that has been favorably compared to the long-running U.S. TV series "The Simpsons." Writing in Shukan Bunshun (Aug. 14-21) journalist Kazuhiko Futada eulogizes him as an eccentric genius who reveled in absurdities. Futada cites an editor who recalls Akatsuka's love of gags about grotesque dishes such as chocolate stew and tomato spaghetti with earthworms.

As a runup to the ceremonies on August 15 that mark the 63rd anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, Flash (Aug. 19-26) features an eight-page special color section titled "The men who were called the gods of war," profiling top commanders in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.

Authoress Jun Henmi, whose book was the basis for the 2005 blockbuster film "Yamato: The Last Battle," tells Flash she was first inspired by stories related by an elderly woman whose son had died aboard the battleship Yamato, which sank off Kyushu in April 1945.

"Mixed in with run-of-the-mill officers were those who adopted clear strategies and tactics and made resolute decisions," Henmi tells Flash. "Among today's politicians or bureaucrats, how many have the same conviction and resolution?"