Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation (Hardcover)

by Michael Schaller (Author)
Key Phrases: automatic ratification, upward valuation, treaty opponents, United States, Southeast Asia, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews
A scholar's worldly-wise appraisal of the mutually expedient ties that have bound the US and Japan since the end of WW II. Drawing largely on archival sources to provide a perceptive overview of the crucial period from the Occupation through the mid- 1970s, Schaller (Douglas MacArthur: Far Eastern General 1989, etc.) makes a persuasive case for the arresting proposition that latter- day Japan is to a great extent what American foreign-policy made it. To begin with, he recounts how Washington (concerned that Tokyo might try to improve relations with the Red regimes in Beijing and Moscow) decided to promote the defeated country's economic development and open domestic markets to its merchandise. In the name of continuity and stability, then, its puissant industrial combines were left largely unscathed; in like vein, many politicians penciled in as candidates for rough military justice found themselves summarily rehabilitated. When the Cold War turned hot, first in Korea and later in Vietnam, the author (History/Univ. of Arizona) documents, money poured into Japan from the US, accelerating the island nation's recovery. In addition, Schaller points out, presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson all provided the Liberal Democratic Party with sizable amounts of secret financial aid, largely to ensure that its conservative, anti-Communist leaders would remain in power. By the 1960s, he observes, America's Asian ward had become a formidable economic force and appreciably less deferential to its longtime protector. The author provides details on the increasingly difficult relations between Japan and the US through the so-called Nixon shocks (imposing restrictions on imports, pulling troops out of the Far East, and reaching a rapprochement with China). In conclusion, he fast-forwards through the past two decades, an equally convulsive era during which the USSR's implosion depreciated Japan's value as a strategic partner. An informative briefing on a decidedly odd geopolitical couple's increasingly ambivalent alliance. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
... a stone-honest accounting of all our grimy shenanigans on Japanese soil in the name of national security.... good reading for anyone interested in either Japan or the United States as it has conducted itself abroad. -- The Nation, Patrick Smith

Michael Schaller, a professor of history at the University of Arizona, deals with the period after 1945 in Altered States.... The high point of American power over Japan came right after 1945, when America's occupation force thought it could remake Japan in its own image. As a biographer of Douglas MacArthur, the general who reigned over occupied Japan, Schaller is especially expert on this folly. -- The New York Times Book Review, Sebastian Mallaby

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 25, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195069161
• ISBN-13: 978-0195069167
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,363,104 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)