Cold War Democracy: The United States and Japan

Abstract

The special relationship between the US and Japan has proven remarkably resilient. American policymakers continue to see great strategic value in sustaining the Japanese alliance, while Japan’s conservative elites still view the US as the surest means to national security. The collapse of communism created some uncertainty as to the alliance’s purpose; however, North Korea’s nuclearization and China’s rapid rise to geopolitical prominence have removed any such doubts. Symbolic and ideational discursive constructs justifying the US–Japan alliance have undergone far more profound changes since the late 1940s. Jennifer Miller’s Cold War Democracy gives equal emphasis to institutional and ideological expressions of this special relationship from its inception in 1945 to the early 1960s. This well-researched monograph delineates ways in which American and Japanese elites wrestled with, and ultimately contained, popular democratic movements calling for Japan’s disarmament and neutrality. Rather than lending political support to anti-communist dictatorial strongmen, as was the...