Japanese—American relations are often described through starkest conflict or cooperation. Prior to and during the Second World War, hostility prevailed. Yet, after the defeat of Japan, the relationship was envisioned by the US in terms of the cooperation needed to ensure Japan as a bulwark against Communist expansion in East Asia.

Nonetheless, once the Japanese economy recovered from the war, a growing sense of competition returned, with many Americans feeling threatened by Japanese economic ascendancy even while believing that emulation of Japanese business methods and strategies was crucial. The 1990s recession, devastating economies like that of Japan and the Asian “tigers,” reduced many tensions between the US and Japan, although struggles over market access and control continue. However, Japanese—American relations have been more complex than these depictions suggest.

In the years leading up to 1941, Americans did not necessarily believe that the modernizing Japanese threatened their interests. Theodore Roosevelt even promoted Japanese interests in the region in 1907, supporting them in negotiations against Russia, and secretly agreeing to allow Japan control of Korea in exchange for limiting Japanese immigration to the US. Woodrow Wilson gave Japan the Chinese territory of Shantung (formerly controlled by Germany) in 1919, but refused to insert Japanese language supporting racial equality into his League of Nations Covenant. In addition, the two nations’ economies were intertwined, with Japan relying on exports to the United States (where the “Made in Japan” label was becoming common. The Depression in America, thus helped eradicate Japan’s export market, hastening the collapse of its liberal government, and the turn to military expansionism). And, in the war, Americans vilified and punished both Japanese and Japanese Americans.

Following the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the American agreement to allow the Emperor Hirohito to remain in place (though with altered powers), American regional interests, confronted by growing nationalist and communist insurgencies, seemed to warrant the rebuilding of Japan under US occupation (1945–52). The US retained military bases like Okinawa as staging posts for operations in Korea and as escapes for Vietnam “R&R” (“Rest and Recreation”). With America’s strict limiting of Japan’s military the Japanese were able to develop their export economy gaining ascendancy in global auto production and electronics, while seemingly limiting American imports to baseball. Harmony between the two nations was sometimes strained as American military expansion became increasingly reliant on a nuclear arsenal. Since the Japanese had experienced the real effects of “mutually assured destruction,” they often have been outspoken in opposition to the use of nuclear arms (potentially stimulating American guilt about using these weapons).

With the slowdown of the American economy in the 1970s, the collapse of the American auto industry in the face of more fuel-efficient cars from Japan (2 million cars were imported in 1981) and the related growth of the US trade deficit with Japan ($16 billion in 1981), antagonism grew between the two governments. The Reagan administration pushed the Japanese to pay a larger share of its defense costs, trim car exports to the US and reduce barriers to the importation of American agricultural commodities. But the impact of these initiatives, continued during the Clinton presidency (though with less urgency), was limited owing to the generally recognized superiority of Japanese manufactured goods throughout the 1980s.

Some racism inflects US responses to the Japanese; Japan sometimes virtually becomes “The Yellow Peril,” though with some modification over older images. The fear that the Japanese were buying up many American companies, for example, was exaggerated (especially given larger purchases made by the English). Americans quickly provided cultural reasons to explain Japanese economic supremacy: lack of corruption or Japanese educational methods. Such talk disappeared during the 1990s, however.

Competition with the European Community increased, thereby diminishing concern about Japan. When the Pacific Rim nation hit a severe economic crisis, this exposed high levels of corruption and inability to respond to new loci of competition like China. But, if trade disputes are lessening, other disputes grow. Japan shows signs of wanting greater military independence, including growing hostility to the presence of US naval bases, exacerbated by the rape of a Japanese woman by an American sailor in Okinawa.

Images of the Japanese in American media reflect this history and complexity While Frank Capra’s Battle of China (1945) used racist stereotypes, postwar films like Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) and Sayonara (1957) promoted intercultural understanding. Japanese business in the US has received comic sympathy in Gung Ho (1986), although racist/Orientalist overtones haunted the American-made Black Rain (1989; to be distinguished from the 1990 Japanese film on Hiroshima) and Rising Sun (1993). These attitudes also subtly shape many news reports on Japan.