Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan Relations

The Japanese started arriving in America as castaway sailors in the 1840s. By 1853 President Millard Fillmore responded with a commodore, escorted by the biggest battleships in the world, to negotiate trade relationships in Japan. Thus began the complex relationship that developed between the US and Japan, partially based upon "gentlemen's agreements" that excluded the Japanese from the US, and partly based on the threat or reality of war. Working from an initial chronology, these entries describe the people and events that eventually became one of the world's more amicable relationships. Here Junichiro Koizumi expresses his opinion of the US with a denunciation of terrorism at 9/11 followed by a visit to North Korea; here liberal Mike Mansfield impresses conservative Ronald Reagan so much the new president asks Mansfield to retain his post as ambassador to Japan; here we find why Japan's military is even now limited to defense. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

John E. Van Sant is associate professor of history at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

Peter Mauch is a lecturer of international history at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan.

Yoneyuki Sugita is associate professor of American history at Osaka University of Foreign Studies and author of Pitfall or Panacea: The Irony of US Power in Occupied Japan.