You don't have to be the wonky sort to want to keep tabs on what is going on in Northeast Asia. Yes, diplomacy can be tedious -- although North Korean rhetoric does liven things up a good bit -- but most Japan Times readers live in Japan and that puts them within range of those missiles ostensibly threatening the country. Those storms in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea blow uncomfortably close to home. Wanting to be informed doesn't seem like morbid curiosity to me; I'd call it healthy.

One of the best resources for Northeast Asian developments is the Nautilus Institute, a Berkeley, Calif., think tank that was started by Peter Hayes, an Australian who has devoted himself to regional issues such as security and sustainable development. The institute has given special attention to North Korea.

The institute's Web site has news, research projects and discussion forums. Some of those projects are making news themselves. Hans Kristiansen, a Danish nuclear researcher, has uncovered some of the history of U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan and it is a grim story. His work shows that the declared policy notwithstanding, Japanese policy has been the nuclear equivalent of "don't ask, don't tell." A succession of governments in Tokyo have decided that it is easier to not know about U.S. nuclear weapons than it is to put nonnuclear principles into practice.