The Clash

When Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo harbor in July 1853, opening Japan to the West, Americans and Japanese immediately began to clash with each other. For the past century, this clash has focused especially on which nation would take the lead in developing China's economic potential. The relationship between the United States and Japan and the competition over China remain immensely important, highly explosive, and little understood on either side of the Pacific. Walter LaFeber, one of America's leading historians, has written the first book to tell the entire story. Using a full…