Michael Auslin, "Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations" (Harvard UP, 2011)

New Books in Japanese Studies · May 5, 2011 · 54m

How have the United States and Japan managed to remain such strong allies, despite having fought one another in a savage war less than 70 years ago?

In Michael Auslin's Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations (Harvard University Press, 2011), the author, an Asia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, explores the history of cultural exchange between the United States and Japan, and how important that exchange has been, and continues to be, from a political perspective.

Auslin, who is also a columnist for WSJ.com, analyses the "enduring cultural exchange"…