STARS, STRIPES, AND RISING SUN

Author: By Gaddis Smith

Date: SUNDAY, October 26, 1997

Page: N2

Section: Books

Walter LaFeber has now helped rectify the imbalance with this broad and deeply researched treatment of the relationship, from the time of Commodore Matthew Perry and Townsend Harris in the 1850s to the present. LaFeber does not read Japanese, but he has turned to colleagues knowledgeable about historical writing in that language and has succeeded in conveying the subtle and shifting interactions of Japanese politics, culture, and foreign policy. Japanese military officers, politicians, diplomats, and intellectuals are described as interesting people with distinct backgrounds, personalities, and ties with one another.

LaFeber then brings to bear his comprehensive view of international history, refined during more than a third of a century of scholarship. Thus, he deals simultaneously with the special qualities of both countries, but does not treat them as if they were like billiard balls colliding in isolation. Instead he shows how many balls there were and are on the table: China above all, Russia, Britain (significantly, up to 1941), Korea, the countries of Southeast Asia. LaFeber shows how the Japanese-American ``clash'' at all times has been shaped by how each interacted with other countries and regions. When Russia -- especially in the form of the Soviet Union -- was a common threat, Japan and the United States cooperated. When there was no common threat, cooperation frayed and permanent differences dominated, even to the point of devastating war.

LaFeber's career-long scholarly hallmark is a strong emphasis on the economic ideas and interests behind the urge of nations to expand their influence beyond their borders. His earlier work has focused heavily on the American side. Now he extends the analysis and adds considerable subtlety. Japan and the United States over the last century have been expanding and competing in the same China-centured sphere. Both were and are capitalist, but very different capitalists, as LaFeber emphasizes: Americans wedded to the idea of the open door, ``fair field and no favor,'' with slight and uncoordinated government control of private economic activity; the Japanese using a powerful bureaucracy to coordinate all economic activity in the national interest. LaFeber shows how two kinds of capitalism reflect and reinforce cultural differences and at times assume the characteristics of racism on both sides.

LaFeber does not shy from controversy. For example, he presents the American war in Vietnam as a direct consequence of US objectives for Japan. On the one hand, the United States wanted to limit and, if possible, entirely prevent Japan's trade with communist China. On the other hand, the United States wanted a strong Japanese economy, a powerful ``free world'' partner in the Cold War. But no national economy was more dependent on trade than Japan's. Japan's participation in the American consumer market was as yet in its infancy. The question, then, was where should Japan find a market? The answer was Southeast Asia, targeted by Japan in its imperial quest before and during World War II. But as the French empire in Indochina collapsed, the region appeared threatened by communist domination.

It is undeniable that American position papers on the need to prevail against communism in Southeast Asia, and especially Vietnam, often mentioned Japan's need for a secure market. But the United States had far more powerful, often irrational reasons for going into Vietnam. One cannot ``prove'' counterfactual history, the way you can test a scientific hypothesis by altering the elements of an experiment, but it seems likely that the US government would have behaved as it did in Vietnam even had there been no Japan.

``The Clash'' is beautifully written, with clear arguments and no irrelevancies. Thus, it is a bit uncharitable to suggest additions. Nevertheless, three arguments might have been added or given greater attention.

The role of language is crucial in every aspect of the relationship. Most Japanese schoolchildren study English, and the thousands of Japanese whose careers bring them to the United States read and speak English. In addition to the relative openness of the American economy, their language ability helps them establish Japanese operations in the United States. But the difficulty of the Japanese language for Americans, along with the fact that so many Japanese speak English, means that a Japanese-speaking American is rare indeed. This asymmetry in linguistic skills contributes significantly to the asymmetries in access to each other's culture and economy.

LaFeber rightly stresses the long historical competition between the United States and Japan in China and their disagreements over what is fair in the bilateral trade relationship. He could have paid more attention to the competition between the United States and Japan in all regions. In Latin America, for example, where have all the Ford and Chevy dealerships gone? Gone to be replaced by Honda, Toyota, Nissan and the rest. The bilateral trade imbalance of recent decades has attracted the headlines, but the global competition is more than rivalry over access to China.

The book notes modern Japan's life-and-death dependence on external sources of energy -- both fuel and food. But the discussion could have been extended to include clashes over fishery practices, including whaling. The conflict between China and international environmentalists is less acute now than a decade ago, but it could reappear.

What does the future hold? LaFeber is neither a Pollyanna nor a Japan basher. He makes a convincing argument that the United States will not abandon the quest for open access to Japan and China, and that Japan will not abandon its barriers against such access, or its close coordination between government interests and private enterprise. ``History,'' LaFeber writes of relations between present and past, ``promises continued clashes. But learning from that past can offer better understandings between these two peoples, and -- if they are lucky -- can lead to the understanding that the clashes must be accepted, managed, and limited.''