US-Japan relations

Thesis Statement

The United States and Japan as the Occupation is a brilliant diplomatic history that gives an apparent, concise account of the powerful control American policy exerted over postwar Japan.

Introduction

At the beginning of the 1990s, the affiliation between Japan and the United States appeared suspended to cultivate increasingly challenging as the decade progressed. Friction over trade, economics, high technology, and every nation's international role crammed the pages of the trendy presses in both countries on what seemed similar to a daily basis. (Yujiro, pp45-51) A particular feature in the Japanese magazine President, published in August 1991, captured the reciprocated media perceptions of a hazardous animosity between the Pacific rivals, one that had been edifice since at least the middle of the 1980s. Over a period photograph of Pearl Harbor taken from a Japanese warplane, a concise introductory passage noted that, subsequent to the arrival of Perry's black ships in 1853, dealings between Japan and the United States had followed a "series of tension, hatred, and war" leading to 1941. Was that cycle intended to reoccur as the fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor approached? U.S. president George Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi answered that question by a booming "No" in speeches commemorating the incident. But though the old wounds of the Pacific War may have faded, polls conducted by ABC News in the United States and NHK in Japan exposed that economic rivalry was inflicting new wounds. The crumple of the Soviet Union within weeks of December 7, 1991, brought the Cold War to a conclusion, leading pundits on either side of the Pacific Ocean to concern that that dusk straggle had given way to a Cold Peace between the United States as well as Japan. At the very least, other commentators noted, the affiliation between Japan and the United States had to be redefined to get into explanation Japan's rising economic control and America's relation decline, the lessons of the Gulf War although. (Reisman, pp88-96)

American perceptions of Japan as the major opponent of the United States reached new heights in 1992. A learning published in Time revealed that many Japanese, particularly the generation born in the postwar era, had an enduring faith in their nation's aptitude to contend economically in the prospect. Americans did not split that confidence. Rather, uneasiness over the economic prospect of the United States, coupled with Japan's threat to that future, became a most important question in the American presidential operation in 1992. An article in the Time series noted that the national discussion over financial relations with Japan was the "first operation issue of post-Cold War politics." It was also a foremost change from the 1988 presidential race in which neither Bush nor Dukakis had even stated Japan throughout their debates. The reputation of books that warned Americans of an ultimate Japanese economic assault of the United States and the consequential loss of America's competitiveness, manufacturing base, and, certainly, way of life, indicated that Japan would continue a subject of notice and ...