Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations

Abstract

Seventy years have passed since the United States and Japan fought a bitter war. Since then the two nations have established an important bilateral relationship, and they are two of the closest allies in the world. How did this volte-face take place? Michael R. Auslin, the director of Japan studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, provides answers to this question in Pacific Cosmopolitans. Exploring the history of U.S.-Japan cultural exchanges from the eighteenth century to the present, Pacific Cosmopolitans uncovers “the deep fascination in both countries with an exotic Other, a fascination that soon became a rigorous attempt to maintain permanent contact as well as to study and analyze the fundamental features of each country” (p. 2). A casual cultural exchange in the early 1800s evolved to a more formal exchange in the late nineteenth century. The exchange evolution did not occur linearly, however, because of rising nationalism in Japan and racist anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States during the early twentieth century.