Japan between East and West

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes George Packard, Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan (Kodansha, 2009), p. 178. Reischauer, Autobiography (Bungeishunju, 1987), p. 9. The view of China as the sole ancient empire to have survived to the present (in contrast to the Roman Empire and others) probably accounts for the mixture of awe and respect for Chinese civilization that is common among Western writers. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations is a further example. Kanichi Asakawa, Japan's Moment of Truth. A professor at Yale, Asakawa lived for many years in the USA. In a warning to the Japanese government and people after the Russo-Japanese War, he described his profound fears that US public opinion regarding Japan was deteriorating and that US sympathies were swinging towards China. For a description of how conflict between the state of California and the US federal government over anti-Japanese draft legislation and the partisan politics of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party made it extremely difficult to regulate the Japan-US relationship, see Makoto Iokibe, A History of Japan-US Relations, (Yuhikaku, 2009), pp. 59–61. A particularly tragic failure on the part of Japan was the Twenty-One Demands to China, ibid pp. 65–67. David Habersham, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, is required reading. The book paints a convincing picture of the conflict between GHQ in Tokyo (under MacArthur) and Washington, the smear campaigns in Washington involving the Democratic and Republican Parties over US policy towards China, and in particular how MacArthur's hunting of communists stripped US policy towards East Asia of all prudent judgment and how the USA sacrificed needlessly in the Korean War. See various articles included in The San Francisco Peace Accord, edited by Seigen Miyazaki and Akio Watanabe (University of Tokyo Press, 1986). Regarding Okinawa, see Akio Watanabe Politics and Foreign Policy in Post-War Japan: the Political Process regarding Okinawa, Fukumura Publishing, 1970; regarding Reischauer's view of Japan, see George Packard, op. cit. p. 294. Excerpt from Akio Watanabe, “The Pacific Ocean and US-Japan Relations,” San Diego International Law Journal, Vol. 6 No.1, Fall 2004, p. 24. Akio Watanabe, op. cit. Regarding Japanese Asia-Pacific policy, see the 16 articles in “The Asia-Pacific Region and the Development of a New Regionalism,” edited by Akio Watanabe (Chikura Shobo, 2010). Shinichi Kitaoka, “Nobusuke Kishi—Ambition and Frustration,” in “Japan's Post-War Prime Ministers,” edited by Akio Watanabe (Chuokoron Shinsha, 1995), p. 124. Akio Watanabe, Nobusuke Kishi—the Showa Era Ghost Who Staked His Political Career on Revision of the Japan-US Security Treaty, True-to-Life Biographies of Prime Ministers—the Aspirations and Failures of the Men Who Led the Nation, Gakken Bunko (Gakushu Kenkyusha, 2006), pp. 224–239. Ryohei Murata, Japanese ambassador to the USA from 1989 to 1990, recalls that at that time “Japan-US relations were at their lowest ebb since the war” and that “the fundamental alliance relationship itself had been rocked by the Gulf War, and there was an undercurrent of American wariness and mistrust of Japan, engendered by Japan's ascent to economic and technological superpower status.” Ryohei Murata, Ryohei Murata—Memoirs, Volume 2, (Minerva Publishing, 2008), pp. 91–92.