A scholar's perceptive rundown on the contentiousness that has
defined America's relations with Japan down through the years.
Drawing on archival and other sources, LaFeber (The American Age,
1988, etc.) offers an even-handed account of the deep-rooted
conflicts that have kept the two nations at odds right from the
start, i.e., the mid-1853 moment when Commodore Perry swept into
Yedo Bay with a letter from President Millard Fillmore inviting the
emperor of Japan to open his insular, feudal country (which then
traded only with the Chinese and Dutch) to the US. He goes on to
document the consistent way in which Washington has viewed Asia as
a frontier that must remain open to trade while Tokyo (with an eye
to retaining control over its foreign policy and, hence, domestic
order) was ever intent on barring offshore capital and goods from
home markets. At critical junctures, notes the author
(History/Cornell Univ.), the focus of the resulting commercial
conflicts has been mainland China; cases in point range from the
pre - WW I era (when the Meiji Restoration brought Japan into the
industrial age) through WW I and into the 1970s, when Japan emerged
as an economic force. LaFeber also records how cultural
divergences, in particular, vastly different approaches to
governance, competition, and capitalism, have created constant
friction over time. Closer to the present, he reviews how the Cold
War's abrupt end reduced Japan's value to the US as a strategic
partner in the struggle against communism, albeit without resolving
many of the seemingly intractable disputes that have long kept the
two rivals for Pacific Basin riches at loggerheads. A ready
one-volume reference to a protracted confrontation that has
consequential implications for the whole of the Global Village.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Winner of the Bancroft Prize.
When Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo harbor in July 1853, opening Japan to the West, a century and a half of economic, cultural, and occasionally violent clashes between Americans and Japanese began.
Walter LaFeber, one of America's leading historians, has written the first book to tell the entire story behind the disagreements, tensions, and skirmishes between Japan — a compact, homogenous, closely knit society terrified of disorder — and America — a sprawling, open-ended society that fears economic depression and continually seeks an international marketplace.
Using both American and Japanese sources, LaFeber provides the history behind the vicissitudes of rearming Japan, the present-day tensions in U.S.-Japan trade talks, Japan's continuing importance in financing America's huge deficit, and both nations' drive to develop China — a shadow that has darkened American-Japanese relations from the beginning.
"Broad and deeply researched. . . . The Clash is beautifully written, with clear arguments and no irrelevancies."—Gaddis Smith, Boston Globe
"[This] work will easily become the best history of U.S.-Japanese relations in any language."—Akira Iriye, professor of history, Harvard University
"[LaFeber] succeeds brilliantly. . . . [W]ell-researched, meticulously sourced and highly readable."—Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post Book World
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