Word: japanned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...website of The New York Times and International Herald Tribune - does not read like some little op-ed casually dashed off by a summer intern. It is a thoughtful, sophisticated, and quite radical analysis of how globalization and the financial crisis have changed the landscape in which Japan and the U.S. find themselves...
Hatoyama said that Japan had been "buffeted by the winds of market fundamentalism in a U.S.-led movement that is usually called globalization." He said that "unrestrained market fundamentalism and financial capitalism" are "devoid of morals or moderation," and criticized a "way of thinking based on the idea that American-style free-market economics represents a universal and ideal economic order." "The influence of the U.S. is declining," Hatoyama wrote, in a "new era of multipolarity." While saying that the "Japan-US security pact will continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy" (of course!) he insisted that...
This is heady stuff. (Imagine a putative British prime minister talking openly about American decline and looking forward to Russia's membership in the EU.) It is all enough to make one wonder how well-founded the U.S.-Japan relationship really is, and how resilient to a changing global environment it is likely...
Start with the basics: The U.S.-Japan alliance did not come into being because the two countries decided they loved each other. It did so because one defeated the other in war; occupied it; then wrote and imposed a new constitutional settlement 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...
...truth, it is hard to think of any industrial society that in its essentials is less like the U.S. than Japan. Yes, Commodore Matthew Perry's black ships opened up Japan to 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...