Reviews

Abstract

To the Editors: I came across Yukiko Koshiro's review of my Culture Shock and Japanese-American Relations: Historical Essays (AHR, June 2008, 798–799). A reviewer is expected to present and evaluate the book under review as a whole. Instead, Koshiro devotes more than two-thirds of her review to discussing the kind of book she would have (but has not) written. As the subtitle of my book suggests, it is a not a comprehensive survey of Japanese-American relations until the end of the twentieth century but essentially a collection of monographic essays on various subjects dealing with the period 1890–1945. What the “reviewer” presents is Koshiro's own summary and views of Japanese-American relations from 1945 to the 1970s, which have nothing to do with the body of my book. Koshiro repeatedly tells the reader that “The Cold War period is absent from his scholarly focus. This is unfortunate.” She also chides me for not presenting my views on the Vietnam War as well as “postwar Japanese culture.” But these are far beyond the scope of the work, and it would have taken at least a few volumes to cover these subjects. She is asking for the moon and in the process distorts my whole book.