ABSTRACT
In both the United States and Japan, fissures have been opened over the extent and nature of Japan's military responsibilities. Throughout the twentieth century, Japan has had a series of alliances with major Western powers, each fashioned to advance central Japanese goals of the era. Carter and Ohira, like their predecessors, describe US-Japanese ties as "the cornerstone" of the foreign policies of each nation, especially in the Pacific-Asian region. Cultural exchange continues across many fields and takes a great diversity of forms but there are some lacunae. The Japanese have seen little need to send undergraduate students to US colleges and universities, and indeed the flow of graduate students has been limited due to the tightly woven Japanese educational system, with the sciences providing a partial exception. The romanticism that sometimes surrounds interpretations of China has almost never dominated thinking about Japan or American-Japanese relations.
