ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 presented a vignette of the CIA tapping the phone of MITI Minister Hashimoto Ryūtarō in the lead-up to the September 1995 bilateral automobile negotiations with the US. It was introduced as an illustration of how the relationship between Japan and the US has been transformed in the more than fifty years since Joseph Dodge made his visit to Tokyo in 1949 in order to kick-start the economy. As was noted in Chapter 3, the change in the bilateral relationship has been particularly marked in the economic dimension, with Japan’s rise to economic superpower status enabling it to challenge the US in the automobile and a number of other key sectors of the economy. The degree of change in Japan’s political and security relations with the US, however, remains more complex.
