Two postscripts to the McCarran hearings

Abstract

For nearly three decades following World War II Japan was officially considered to be America's newly befriended and unthreatening client in East Asia. Today that is no longer entirely true. A major change is underway in the justifying ideology and the imagery surrounding the US relationship with Japan. Bureaucrats, businessmen, journalists, and academics now portray Japan provocatively to the American public as a direct threat to the viability of America's key economic institutions. To understand why this shift in the official perception and evaluation of Japan is occurring, and what a change in the dominant ideological teaching about postwar Japan portends, I will focus first on two successive periods—the 1970s and the early 1980s—during which the US-Japan bilateral relationship reflected important changes in the world economy and the US position within it. Then, after having described the environment within which US-Japan frictions have been working themselves out, I shall argue that influential ruling elites in the United States are now coming around to the view that the new challenge confronting US global hegemony is the narrowing technological gap between the US and its main industrial competitors. This will lead me to say a few words about the different forces acting to shape science and technology in the United States and Japan. Finally, I shall conclude by recommending what may be a more rational approach for Japan to take in the international arena if it still wishes to preserve its “peace constitution” into the next century.