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by: Walter Lafeber  List Price: $17.95 Amazon.com's Price: $13.46 You Save: $4.49 (25%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 327.7305209 EAN: 9780393318371 ISBN: 0393318370 Label: W. W. Norton & Company Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 544 Publication Date: 1998-09 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Studio: W. W. Norton & Company Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: When Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo harbor on July 1853, opening Japan to the West, a century and a half of economic, cultural, and occasionally violent clashes between Americans and Japanese began. Walter LaFeber, one of America's leading historians, has written the first book to tell the entire story behind the disagreements, tensions, and skirmishes between Japan -- a compact, homogenous, closely knit society terrified of disorder -- and America -- a sprawling, open-ended society that fears economic depression and continually seeks an international marketplace. Using both American and Japanese sources, LaFeber provides the history behind the vicissitudes of rearming Japan, the present-day tensions in U.S.-Japan trade talks, Japan's continuing importance in financing America's huge deficit, and both nations' drive to develop China -- a shadow that has darkened American-Japanese relations from the beginning. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Detailed but flawedLaFeber's three-part thesis: 1) that the Americans and Japanese have endured a series of clashes throughout their 150-year relationship, 2) that differing forms of capitalism have been at the root of these clashes, and 3) that the clashes have focused on China, almost works. However, in trying to fit the entire history of U.S. - Japanese relations into a single overarching framework, he underemphasizes the fundamental shift in the Japanese posture following the horrific conclusion to the war in ... Read More Rating: - For the Budding Expert in U.S.-Japanese AffairsAs one whose work requires knowledge of contemporary East Asian affairs, I can highly recommend "Clash" for the light that it sheds on past and present U.S. interests and actions in the region. Published in 1997, the book is a bit dated, but Clash does facilitate prediction of future diplomatic, military, and economic relations based upon past crises. LaFeber, who appears to have a slight bias in favor of the Japanese, especially during the American imperialistic era, structures his ... Read More Rating: - Economic history of U.S-Japanese relationsIn THE CLASH by Walter LaFeber, U.S. Japanese relations collide over different visions of Asia. For Americans, Japan represented an opportunity to enter China and satisfy a western global reach built on the extension of Manifest Destiny. Asia stood as a far western American frontier. American commerce and power promised an enlightened deliverance of manufactured goods and a benign pacific paternalism, grounded within the western concepts of unrestricted capitalism and individual rights. For the Japanese, ... Read More Rating: - well researched, but you better have some time on your handsLaFeber certainly makes logical conclusions from factual evidence which lends credibility to his work. His thesis, that you have to examine the deep historical roots of the US-Japanese relationship to understand the causes of their many clashes in the 150 year relationship, is proven time and time again in the book. Not good bedtime reading unless you need help sleeping. Rating:  - The rivalry between America and JapanIn this very readable book LaFeber recounts the relations between the United States and Japan since Commodore Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay . LaFeber shows that both Japan and America were very interested in the resources and the potential market of China. This rivalry was more serious for Japan, since Japan had almost no resources of her own. As America and Japan became stronger they jockeyed for access to the markets of China and the resources of Manchuria while Russia and China declined. This ... Read More 
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