ABSTRACT
Japanese-US relations are based on the prior existence of Japan and the United States as independent entities and will reflect changing orientations within the two societies. National societies are both independent and interdependent, so that Japanese-US relations must be viewed in terms of the changes taking place at the domestic and the external levels. The United States, the victor and the definer of post-war Japanese order, detemined that the world was to reject the regionalism and protectionism of the 1930s and return to the pre-1929 system of economic interdependence, equal opportunity, and liberal political development. The new political order in Japan would be oriented toward economic modernization and political liberalism. Naturally, such a system would give power and influence to modernizers and liberals—those who rejected the path of militaristic enterprises at home and abroad and whose interests lay in the US-defined postwar world order.
