Japan and the United States are an odd couple. The two societies have had an enduring mutual fascination and have suffered powerful antagonisms that led to war and to major trade conflicts. Michael Auslin's book about cultural exchanges between Japan and the United States focuses mainly on the fascination, and the cultural history mentioned in the subtitle relates mainly to the history of formal organizations of cultural exchange that Auslin describes in the latter two-thirds of the book.
The first chapter explains the history of Japan's restricted contact with the outside world during the early modern period and America's expansion across the Pacific, and the second chapter describes the cultural interactions of Americans and Japanese from the initiation of diplomatic relations between the two countries in the mid-1850s until the end of the nineteenth century. Chapter 3 explains how the earliest cultural exchange organizations in Japan evolved out of groups...
