Creating a New Japan: A Brief History of U.S.-Japan Relations
Text: W. Ralph Bol Ed.: Changfeng
On December 7, 1964, to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Council on Foreign Relations held a private meeting in New York on U.S.-Japan relations.
Emerson, a senior Japan expert at the State Department, believes that the important question recently is whether Japan has questioned whether it belongs to the Far East or the Far West.
They claim to be the bridge between Communist China and the West. According to Molly, a prominent analyst of East Asian affairs at Columbia University, the Japanese see themselves as not on either side, but oscillate between two cultures.
Barnett, a senior Asian affairs expert at the U.S. State Department, said he hoped both views were correct, but I was afraid they were wrong. All the Japanese he met talked about China with two emotions: admiration for China's long historical tradition, and the belief that a Japanese person could outperform a Chinese in any way.
Significantly, this discussion comes at a time when Japan's economic miracle is beginning – a rapid rise to challenge the industrial hegemony of the United States, which dominated international markets since the end of World War II.
The discussion also came at a time when U.S. concerns about Communist China were at their peak, which detonated its first atomic bomb in 1964. The U.S. government has also criticized China, if not a manipulator, for fanning the flames in Vietnam's thorny war.
▲The black ship is sailing
▌An overview of Japan-U.S. relations over the past 100 years
These words, left on December 7, 1964, reveal three themes in the U.S.-Japan relationship.
First, although the United States and Japan viewed each other as partners in most East Asian affairs (with the exception of 1931-1945), they did find themselves in a series of dangerous conflicts in the 150-year history of U.S.-Japan relations.
The conflict arose from the start: in the interests of the United States, U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry forcibly opened Japan's closed doors with a strong gun. The conflict continued into the '90s: polls show that with the end of the Cold War, the United States and Japan saw each other, not the Soviet Union, as their greatest threat.
The second theme is that these historical problems are rooted in the conflict between two different forms of capitalism, which will continue in the future. In the 90s of the 20th century, an official with real power in Japan's Ministry of Finance explained this difference, saying that the United States pursued a capitalist market policy, while Japan pursued a non-capitalist market policy.
This is an exaggeration, but it does get to the point: For more than 400 years, Japan has developed a compact, homogeneous and close-knit society because of the fear of chaos. It seeks to avoid chaos by creating a strong central government that will channel sophisticated unofficial networks that drive the economy.
On the other hand, for nearly 200 years, the United States has developed a pluralistic and open society that has every reason to fear recession and tries to avoid it by creating open international markets.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, "international" referred to the frontiers—the western part of the North American continent, as well as Europe and Latin America. After the 40s of the 19th century, "international" also included what Emerson and other American elites called the "Far West" - Asia.
This brings us to the third theme: the focus of the conflict between these two types of capitalism in China. Perry forced Japan to open the country because Washington wanted to use Japan as a strategic transit point for the wealthy Chinese market.
In the second half of the 19th century, Japan and the United States cooperated in their policy toward China, largely motivated by fears of the expansion of the Russian Empire in northern China.
After Japan's defeat of Russia in 1904-1905 – a great victory over the White race that shook Americans and Europeans, they set about building their empires on the Asian continent. By 1915-1920, Washington's dissatisfaction with Tokyo had reached its zenites as a result of Japanese pressure on China and its involvement in Siberia (the Russian Far East).
The Washington Conference of 1921-1922, one of the most significant and neglected diplomatic conferences in U.S. history, resolved these conflicts between Japan and the United States, but only temporarily. A deal was reached: Japan gained de facto maritime supremacy in the western Pacific in exchange for agreeing to work with bankers in New York to develop parts of China.
But even in the 2020s, the deal brought neither order to Japan nor to China, which was increasingly on the brink of revolution. After 1929, the dollar on which the agreement was based began to plummet, and the agreement itself disappeared.
▲ Pearl Harbor incident
▌ The goal of the United States: an open global system
Unlike the Japanese, Asia is seen by Americans as part of a great opportunity. While Japan historically attached great importance to the importance of East and Southeast Asia to its own survival, the United States developed a global perspective that saw Asia as part of a larger system.
The conflict between the Americans and the Japanese is not only because of China, but also because Japan sees the Asian continent as its primary interest, while the United States sees an open world system as its primary interest, which will be destroyed if East and Southeast Asia are not integrated into this system.
Eventually, the United States entered the war in 1941 because it could not resolve its differences with Japan over China, especially how China would be integrated into world markets.
The collapse of the dollar in the 2030s and the horrors of World War II convinced Americans that their global vision must be realized after 1945. Their domestic order and prosperity depend on it.
By the mid-40s, it looked like they finally had the ability to realize that vision. A fundamental step towards this end was the occupation and reconstruction of destroyed Japan.
However, as one of many interesting ironies in Japan-U.S. relations, Washington officials have concluded that only if Japan develops a strong export trade can it survive and avoid falling into communist hands.
Accordingly, this decision led to the reconstruction of Japan's industrial-financial complex with the support of the United States to produce competitive export goods. This has also led to the rebuilding of strong government institutions to channel these consortia and drive the overall economy to adapt to the needs of export trade.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, the Japanese used the U.S. occupation for their own use. Yoshida said: "Many historical cases prove that victory can still be achieved through diplomacy after losing the war. ”
▲After the surrender of Japan, MacArthur took a photo with Emperor Hirohito
▌Japan's Goal: Closed East Asian "Co-Prosperity Sphere"
Key elements of Japan's recovery policy were the control of capital and the exclusion of American investment at the practical level. The lesson Americans learned from the 30s of the 20th century is that closed economic blocs (such as Japan and Germany) will bring war, and appeasement (such as the deal with Hitler in Munich in 1938) will only encourage the aggressor.
However, the Japanese learned two very different lessons from the 2030s: they can no longer rely on obtaining capital from outside; It also means finding means beyond militarism that can open up economic opportunities in East Asia. The irony is not over, Japanese exporters need both raw materials and markets.
By the end of the 2040s, U.S. officials believed Southeast Asia would best serve both of Japan's needs. These officials joined the war against Japan in 1941, in part because Tokyo insisted on a closed "co-prosperity sphere" in Southeast Asia, but that doesn't matter anymore.
John Forster Dulles and other top officials warned that if Japan did not acquire an open Southeast Asia, it would either be forced to dump goods on the United States or do business with Communist China, which was undoubtedly worse. It was this policy that led the United States to join Vietnam, and it was this policy that led to sharp conflicts between the United States and Japan over Vietnam and China policy in the 60s of the 20th century and beyond.
While the United States was caught in the swamp of Southeast Asia, Japan opened trade channels with the communist regime in North Vietnam, gained money by supplying military supplies for the Vietnam War, and began to return to the Chinese market. Richard Nixon's historic trip to Beijing in 1972 was like the starting gun, kicking off the competition between Japan and the United States for the Chinese market.
After economic reforms began in 1978, China is expected to become the world's largest economy in the first half of the 21st century. The fierce competition for this market was overshadowed by the strong U.S. protest over Japan's large trade surplus and the common benefits of the U.S.-Japan security partnership, which allowed Japan to maintain small, low-cost military installations.
▲US-Japan military alliance
▌US-Japan relations after the Cold War: love and kill each other
A series of events in 1989-1991 changed this relationship again.
First, in the late '80s, changes in China led to an important disagreement between the United States and Japan over whether China should have other rights and interests that took precedence over trade interests.
Second, the 1990-1991 Gulf Crisis devastated U.S.-Japan relations because Japan refused to overturn its postwar antiwar policies and came to the aid of the United States, even if it ended up providing a considerable amount of economic aid. This is not surprising given the widening divergence between U.S. and Japanese interests in the Middle East.
Third, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, which has been in power for a long time since 1955, has collapsed, and it has become a victim of corruption and incompetence.
Fourth, the economic miracle since the 60s of the 20th century has come to an end due to excessive speculation and over-regulation by the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Fifth, the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, eliminated common adversaries that helped the United States and Japan bridge their differences. Trade and China became the most important issue, so important that Bill Clinton used it as a weapon to attack George W. Bush in the 1992 election and later shaped Clinton's foreign policy.
In the midst of all this chaos, the shift in economic policy in Japan has been minimal. It remains careful to safeguard its sources of capital and regulated society.
U.S. Ambassador Mike Amarcoster commented that while Japan has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. assets and government bonds, all of Japan's foreign investment accounts for only 0.3% of its GDP, and this figure is declining.
Despite the large number of factories built by Japanese automakers in the United States, less than half of the world's top 500 companies have an economic presence in Japan, and most only have minority stakes in joint holdings.
The Japanese have planned access to American technology, but at the same time ensure that foreigners do not have access to their own technology. Key parts of their technology are designed for dual-use. By 1983, Tokyo had even used the law as an excuse to prevent the export of its defense technology to its protector, the United States.
The post-Cold War two-state policy is bound to be mixed, with the new part being a redefinition of security treaties to counter the centrifugal forces that threaten the relationship.
For the United States, the defense pact gives it the most effective lever to influence Asia's development. For Japan, this has made it dependent on the United States for protection, allowing it to invest heavily in lucrative civilian goods rather than its defense budget. For China and Southeast Asia, the treaty also provided security guarantees — which prevented Japan from remilitarizing.
As a result, the United States has deployed nearly 50,000 U.S. troops and overwhelming air and naval forces in and around Japan to protect its biggest economic rival, which can easily access East and Southeast Asia, which has been dispelled. Such policies (and irony) are deeply rooted in 150 years of U.S.-Japan relations, and can only be understood in a historical context.