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150 Fifty Years of Japan-U.S.
Relations
Having made numerous research visits to Mizusawa m
Northeastern Japan over several decades, 1 am most
grateful to those many people in the past 150
years who have created the friendly relationship
Japan and the United States enjoy today. Because
of them, it is possible for me to go back and
forth freely between the United States and Japan
for study and work
Mizusawa itself provides excellent examples of
people who have contributed to the development of
close relations between Japan and the United
States. Even before the arrival of Admiral Perry,
Takano Choei, born in Mizusawa in 1804 and trained
in medicine and science in Nagasaki with the
distinguished scholar von Seibold, worked
tirelessly to open Japan to free scholarly and
scientific exchange with the West. That effort by
Takano ultimately cost him his life.
Four years after the 1853 arrival of Admiral
Perry, Goto Shimpei was born in Mizusawa into a
family related to Takano Choei. In a Japan already
opened by predecessors such as Takano Coei and
Admiral Perry, Goto Shimpei was able to go to
Germany for advanced medical training. He used his
experiences in Germany to establish the Boy Scouts
of Japan, become governor of Tokyo, contribute
significantly to the reconstruction following the
1923 Kanto earthquake, and serve as head of the
very efficient national railway system,
Saito Makoto, born one year after his boyfood
friend Goto Shimpei, likewise pursued
international study by going abroad to America in
1884. Like his Mizusawa predecessors, Saito as
prime minister and later as a cabinet member
worked to create a friendlier world, using his
American experiences as a base.
The tradition of international exchange initiated
by these three great men continues as students and
others cross the Pacific Ocean in both directions.
The important JET program exposes the students of
Japan to Americans and their culture while at the
same time enabling Americans to experience for
themselves life and work in Japan. From this
intimate involvement in local communities such as
Mizusawa, the young participants return to the
United States as cultural ambassadors. Hopefully,
they and their students will be stimulated to
follow in the footsteps of Takano Choei, Goto
Shimpei, Saito Makoto and Admiral Perry who
encouraged cultural exchanges and created the
close relationship the two countries now enjoy,
for which 1 am personally grateful.
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These are my immediate desires,
hopes, and wishes for the future between our countries:
more and closer interaction, consistent cultural
exchange, Japanese artists throughout the USA
and Americans traveling around the Japanese countryside.
Japan has provided me with endearing friendships,
critical aesthetic insights, compelling human
storytelling, and amazing sensitivities to design,
shape, color, and texture. The richness of tradition
and the innovations of new ideas in Japan informs
American culture to challenge itself, which is
a gift. The next 150 years I hope will be an abundance
of cultural partnerships that will embrace our
differences and enhance our similarities.
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When Commodore Perry and his crew
first went ashore in Japan, they must have been
astounded. All the people were black-haired and
black-eyed, the women wore long silken kimono,
the samurai walked around with swords tucked into
their belts, Mt. Fuji was coyly hiding behind
slowly-moving white clouds, and seemed to be standing
all alone, with the foothills barely visible.
How exotic it must have seemed!
When the Japanese first visited the U.S., how
amazed they must have been. The people had blond,
red and brown hair, some of the hair was curly,
some of the eyes were blue. The country was vast.
There seemed no end to the miles and miles of
land with long rivers and high mountains.
It was the Japanese who learned more about the
U.S. than the Americans did about Japan. The Japanese
were overwhelmed by Western culture, dress and
mores, and soon began to import Western music,
literature, fashion and art. It was not until
after World War II that Americans started to learn
about Japan, Buddhism, woodblock printing, Japanese
architecture and flower arrangement. Americans
were fascinated with the aesthetics of this faraway
country.
Now, there is little difference between Tokyo
and New York City. The dynamism of these two cities
is almost equal, and so are the clothing, transportation,
and restaurants. There are so many similarities,
and fewer and fewer differences.
In the next l50 years, I see the two countries
learning more and more from each other. Japan
, having suffered a bad defeat and having reconstructed
itself to become a highly succesful and economically
powerful state, can teach the U.S. about peace,
being one of the few major countries in the world
whose citizens have not killed or been killed
by citizens of other countries in wars during
a period of almost 60 years. What an achievement!
The U.S. can teach Japan about freedom and democratic
process. Thus, an exchange will make it possible
to influence other countries to do the same, finally
leading up to a world which will be safe from
terrorism, greed, fundamentalism, and war.
Mrs. Gordon is the author
of "l945 nen no Kurisumasu", and its
English version "The Only Woman in the Room--A
Memoir".
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Relations Between Japan and the
United States: Looking to the Future
It is an honor to be given this opportunity to
share a few thoughts on the future of relations
between our two countries. I was asked to look
150 years into the future, an assignment that
has been both fun and challenging! When we look
at the period from 1863 when Commodore Matthew
Perry came to Japan, to the present, could anyone
have possibly predicated either the extraordinary
technological advances or the excruciating turbulence
of those years? I dare say, it is highly unlikely.
Undoubtedly, the future also holds many secrets
and things unimaginable to us as we move into
the early years of the 21st Century.
Since my professional career has largely been
in the field of international education, let me
confine my musings to communication. What form
will our communication take 50, 100, 150 years
from now? Instantaneously exchanging visual, voice
and print images are already a reality. As we
move toward the 22nd Century, access will become
more and more universal, and technology more refined
so that the exchange of all images will be commonplace
and ubiquitous.
The IT revolution is already affecting educational
exchange between the United States and Japan.
All of us can access multiple levels of information
instantaneously about our two cultures without
leaving our homes. From my home in Tokyo, I can
watch Hideo Matsui play Major League Baseball
live, listen to radio stations in New York (via
the Internet), download visual images from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and see cattle being
rounded up in Texas. In the coming years, one
can conceive of doing these same things, but with
advance virtual reality technology bringing three-dimensional
images to my living room. Won't it be fun to see
"live" Kabuki and sumo, any time, right
in front of you?
One of the intriguing questions about the world
150 years from now is, what language will we be
using? Will the Japanese and English languages
still be around as we know them today? Or, will
they metamorphose into something unrecognizable?
It is entirely possible that translation technology
will become so sophisticated that whether we can
speak another language will be moot; we will be
able to understand any of several hundred languages
via a translation/processing chip implanted in
our head someplace.
So as the transmission of information becomes
faster and faster, and easy access becomes more
universal, will people to people exchanges between
our two countries become less important? I predict
that they will not, or at least should not. In
the year 2153, living in one another's cultures
will still have great value. Such experiences
will continue to inform our sense of appreciation
and respect for ways of thinking and behaving
that are different from our own. The Fulbright
Program and other exchange programs will continue
to play an important role in building our leadership
infrastructure.
Somehow, I think that, regardless of the many
changes that will inevitably come, we will still
have to work hard at mutual understanding. We
will still need to spend time with one another,
learning and being challenged by the differences
in our respective ways of viewing the world. At
the same time, it seems highly likely that we
will have more and more in common. Who knows,
maybe the importance of the Japan-U.S. relationship
will take on an "other-world" dimension,
literally, as we encounter and learn to deal with
intelligence from another universe, a "Perry"
from another world!
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The 150th anniversary of the beginning
of the relationship between the United States
and Japan is an occasion truly worth celebrating.
The relationship has played a key role in the
United States and Japan achieving the lofty heights
they hold as world leaders and is not limited
to economic endeavors. The close to one million
people of Japanese descent living in the United
States have had a lasting impact on American culture
in areas such as architecture, technological innovation,
business management and entertainment. New York
City, where I work and live, probably exhibits
the impact of this cultural diversity more than
any other place and the city is better because
of it.
As the President of the Twin Towers Fund, the
charity begun by former Mayor Giuliani to help
the families of the rescue workers killed in the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, I have experienced
the depth of the friendship between the Japanese
and American people. Within days of that attack,
Japan's Consul General delivered five million
dollars to the Twin Towers Fund and another five
million dollars to the Red Cross. In addition,
Japanese citizens, corporations and organizations
continued providing extremely generous support
for the American families and institutions devastated
by the attack.
I believe that it was the mutual devotion of our
two nations to the principles of democracy, personal
freedom, peace and a free economy that fueled
the Japanese outpouring of support for America.
Indeed, it was hatred of these very principles
that inspired the attack.
In the decades to come, our nations and our people
must continue to cherish our shared ideals while
celebrating our diversity. By respecting each
other's personal and national individuality while
enhancing our economic and cultural interaction,
our people shall become even better friends and
allies. Together, our countries can, and will
lead the world to peace and prosperity.
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Anniversaries of the 1854 founding of U.S.- Japan relations often occur
during periods of great change in Asia. The 40th
anniversary, in 1894, saw Japan replace China as the
leading Asian power. By the 50th anniversary, in 1904,
Tokyo was an acknowledged member of the "Great Powers,"
challenging Russia's regional supremacy. In 1954, the
100th anniversary, Japan was newly sovereign after seven
years of U.S. Occupation, and faced the task of rebuilding
its economy and international relationships.
This anniversary, the 150th, is no different. Japan today
is grappling with a decade-long economic slump and the
reshaping of its political system. Equally important are
the challenges posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons
claims, the growth of Chinese economic and military power,
the war on terrorism, and the maturing of Japan's
post-Cold War connection to the United States.
And yet, despite all these uncertainties, the U.S.- Japan
relationship continues to play a key role in global
security and economics, and contacts between the two
nations maintain their vibrancy, despite lingering
cultural and economic tensions.
One secret to the durability of the U.S.-Japan
relationship, perhaps, comes from the fact that both
nations began their "international modernization" at the
same time, and in part due to their relations. By the time
of Commodore Perry's first arrival in 1853, the U.S. had
spread across the American continent and was reaching
across the Pacific to find new markets for its goods, new
sources of raw materials, and new bases for its rapidly
growing whaling fleet. Trading relations with China had
commenced six decades previously, in the mid-1780s, and
Americans were slowly becoming conscious of the key role
the Pacific would play in the life of the country.
Japan, similarly, was awakening to new international
realities. The Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled since
1600, strictly controlled Japan's international contacts,
desiring to prevent the spread of Christianity inside the
country, halt the drain of precious metals beyond its
shores, and maintain its status-system of samurai,
farmers, artisans, and merchants. Therefore, the arrival
of Commodore Perry was seen as "opening" up Japan, despite
that fact that the Western powers, from Russia to Britain,
had steadily been approaching the country for decades.
Equally important, the opening of relations between Japan
and America provided each nation with radically new
visions of society and culture. Americans valued Japanese
cultural products, while Japanese marveled at American
economic power. From 1854 on, then, the two nations were
tied together by bonds more enduring than mere trade
agreements.
Perry's arrival, of course, spelled the beginning of the
end for the Tokugawa shogunate. Internal weakness and
external pressure led to the rise of a new government
centered on the young Emperor Meiji. The following years
saw steadily more radical reforms, which concentrated
political power in Japan, eradicated status rankings, and
modernized the country's economic, political and
educational systems. The U.S., along with European
countries, served as a model for Japan throughout the
1870s and 1880s, particularly in the area of agriculture.
Yet, unlike the European treaty powers, the U.S. seemed
constantly more sympathetic to Tokyo's desires to revise
the "unequal treaties" first signed with U.S. envoy
Townsend Harris back in 1858. This stance undoubtedly
helped cement the generally friendly feelings Japanese had
towards Americans.
As the 19th century wound to a close, both the U.S. and
Japan emerged as East Asian imperial powers. This next
phase in their dual international modernization set the
stage for future conflict between the two, as their almost
simultaneous imperial paths clashed over visions of a new
order in East Asia.
Meiji leaders were constantly concerned that either China
or Russia would gain a preponderant influence in Korea,
and thus become a major threat to Japanese security. The
Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 not only made Japan the
reigning Asian power, but also gave Tokyo control over
Taiwan (Formosa), although the Triple Intervention of
Russia, France and Germany forced it to renounce strategic
gains in northern China. Three years later, the U.S.
defeated Spain in a global war that gave America control
over the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii, thereby becoming a
Pacific power. For the first time, Japan and the U.S.
viewed each other as potential adversaries in the western
Pacific. U.S. fears were only exacerbated in 1904-05 when
Japan defeated Tsarist Russia and became a full-fledged
member of the Great Powers.
Despite President Theodore Roosevelt's favoritism toward
Japan, American military leaders and sectors of the public
began to fear the "yellow peril" of Japanese power.
Anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S. grew rapidly in the
first quarter-century of the 1900s. In California,
Japanese, who were not eligible to become citizens, were
legally prevented from holding land. Acceding to pressure,
Tokyo accepted a gentlemen's agreement to limit Japanese
emigration to the U.S. in order to forestall future
anti-Japanese legislation. Nonetheless, the U.S. Congress
in 1924 passed an exclusion act that froze Japanese
immigration. Combined with the 1922 Washington Conference
agreement to limit Japanese naval forces to a level below
that of the Western powers, the immigration act fanned the
flames of growing anti-Americanism in Japan, strengthening
its conviction to act in its own best interests in East
Asia.
These well-known events, however, are but part of the
story, for in the same decades, numerous bilateral
friendship societies and cultural exchange organizations
blossomed. The American Friends' Association was founded
in 1898 by Kaneko Kentaro, and was followed a year later
by the American Asiatic Association of Japan. In the first
decade of the 20th century, Japan Societies were formed in
Boston, San Francisco and New York. Japanese participation
in the 1893 Chicago and 1904 St. Louis World's Fairs gave
tens of thousands of ordinary Americans the chance to see
Japanese handicrafts, architecture and lifestyle, while
popular magazines and guide books reached a wider American
audience. By 1917, Kaneko had formed the America-Japan
Society of Tokyo, the industrialist Shibusawa Eiichi had
organized the Japanese-American Relations Committee, and
Japan-America Societies had spread throughout the U.S.
These seeds of international understanding, however,
failed to stop the coming politico-military clash. Japan's
interests in Manchuria were solidified by the takeover of
that region by the Kwantung Army in 1931. By 1937,
full-scale fighting spread between Japanese and
Nationalist Chinese forces. America's interests in China
and Asia were threatened, and the irreconcilable nature of
Japanese and American claims led to war in 1941.
The four-year carnage that followed led observers to fear
decades of U.S.-Japan antipathy. Yet, from the beginning
of the Occupation in September 1945, relations were
surprisingly peaceful. The initial Occupation reforms
under Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur were as
far-reaching as anything attempted by the Meiji leaders -
land holdings were redistributed, women given the vote, a
Constitution written, and school curricula revamped. This
was a crash course in American culture and society, as
well as a second period of domestic modernization.
The overriding goal for American and Japanese leaders
alike was stability. The shattered Japanese economy had to
be rebuilt, and exports to America were encouraged. The
threat of worker uprisings led MacArthur to curb the
Communist Party, and many prewar bureaucrats were allowed
to participate in government. The tie between the two
countries was strengthened by the Communist victory in
China in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.
Tokyo and Washington became global Cold War allies, with
Japan serving as the linchpin of U.S. strategy in East
Asia, and Washington, through the Security Treaty,
pledging to defend Japan. Economically, Japan became a key
supplier to the U.S. military in both Korea and Vietnam,
and soon entered the U.S. domestic market, where Sony and
Toyota became household names.
Yet the ties went deeper than mere politics and economics.
Cultural contact revived after the Pacific War. Both the
America-Japan Society and the Japan Society of New York
restarted activities in 1952. Thousands of Japanese
students attended U.S. universities under the GARIOA and
Fulbright Programs, while U.S. students soon availed
themselves of the same opportunities. Japanese studies
programs flourished in U.S. universities, while American
movies and music played widely in Japan, helping to shape
postwar youth culture. Overshadowing all was the
phenomenal growth of the Japanese economy.
The political alliance held firm throughout the Cold War,
but economic tensions erupted in the 1980s, as U.S.
businessmen demanded greater access to Japanese markets.
Trade liberalization became the key roadblock to better
relations, often leading to ugly stereotypes on both
sides. By the 1990s, however, the Japanese economy
dramatically slowed, and the dot-com boom in America took
off, thus easing trade disputes. The recent threat of
terrorism and a nuclear-armed North Korea has only
underscored the importance of alliance, but a growing lack
of interest in the other on both sides is troubling to
many observers.
Nonetheless, after 150 years, the U.S.-Japan relationship
remains unique. The two nations' modern history has been
tightly intertwined, and the fascination in each with the
culture and history of the other remains high. Thousands
of students on both sides study each other's language, and
both governments remain committed to stability and the
strengthening of liberal political and economic systems in
Asia. In the next 150 years, we must build on the legacy
of the past to strengthen our relations and increase our
bilateral understanding.
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