ABSTRACT
The economic relationship between Japan and the United States has been the core relationship integrating the Pacific, insofar as it has been integrated. The Second World War accelerated the process of economic integration in the Pacific. The growing importance of the core relationship has persuaded many that the world is entering the Pacific Century, although the starting date is never exactly specified. For a generation now, they have been convinced that the Pacific Rim would become to the twenty-first century what the Atlantic Basin was to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the 1970s the continuing economic success of East Asia and the far west of North America have rejuvenated the idea of the Pacific Century. California, Southeast Asia, and many of the Pacific islands have rapidly become major tourist destinations. Despite the universal pop culture, fundamental dissimilarities between Pacific Rim countries remain.
