Word: americanizing
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...upon it. Japan may have "embraced defeat," to adapt the title of John Dower's book on the postwar period, but let nobody suppose that this had nothing to do with a naked assessment by Japanese leaders of their interests, rather than in a sudden passion for all things American...
...trade more than 150 years ago. Yes, Japan plays baseball. But Japan is a nation with very deep cultural roots and habits - in everything from food, art, style, religion, the expected role of women and children, and so on - few of which have any point of contact with modern American mores...
...universities has declined in the last decade; there are now fewer Japanese students in the U.S. than Chinese or Indian ones. How Japanese is Japan? Well, consider this datum: Junichiro Koizumi, who led Japan from 2001 to 2006, and who in terms of economic-policy terms was the most "American" Prime Minister Japan has ever had, routinely paid his respects at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which memorializes those who died in war - including, inconveniently, a number of convicted war criminals from World War II. (Don't get me started on the revisionist history of the run-up to World...
...comparison with China is inevitable. Many U.S. businesses have seen Japan's companies as rivals in international and American markets. But in the case of China, the business relationship is quite different. China does not yet have many obvious competitors to U.S firms, though one day it will. At present, not only is China itself a huge and growing market for American firms, but those businesses increasingly source their goods in China - in a way that few have in Japan. That has created a "thickness" to the economic relationship with China of a sort that has not been so marked...
...American system, there's nothing obviously wrong in making such ambassadorial choices; Roos may turn out to be an excellent envoy. But at this particular juncture in Asian politics, it was inevitable that the appointment looked like an opportunity missed. The U.S.-Japan alliance really has been important to stability in Asia, but its foundations, in my view, have never been quite as secure as its boosters have liked to assert. The Japanese election - it becomes clearer every day - represents a real sea-change in politics there. If the alliance is not now to drift into irrelevance, or worse, some...