There was no warning. The shaking that soon rocked mainland Japan on March 11, 2011 would tear down buildings and…
Restoring Trust and Preserving the U.S.-Japan Alliance: The 1995 Okinawa Rape Incident
It’s hard to imagine U.S. foreign policy in East Asia without its closest partner and ally in the region: Japan.…
Daily Life in Japanese Custody: Japan Takes Over U.S. Consulate in Vietnam During WWII
About one month before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States officially entered World War II, tensions were already…
An Exchange Program Between Japan and Michigan
Following the Allied victory in World War II and a period of U.S. occupation, the United States and Japan put…
A Diplomat’s Wife in Showa Japan
1930s Japan—a time of emperors, tension in the Pacific, and mysterious unspoken social rules of the Showa Era. When Dorothy…
The World’s Longest Running Pandemic—Quarantine in Japan
With most of us confined to our homes, jaw-dropping unemployment figures, and over 60,000 deaths worldwide as of April 2020,…
A “Very Japanese” Arrangement to Dismantle a Soviet MIG-25
On September 6, 1976 a MIG-25 (foxbat), the most advanced Soviet fighter jet at the time, landed at Hokadote Airport…
Sound, Fury, Brilliance & Booze: Faulkner in Post-War Japan
William Faulkner, among the most decorated writers in American literature with the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize…
Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship: The 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan
The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed by 48 nations on September 8, 1951, officially ended Japan’s position as an imperial power,…
Observing the Fiftieth Anniversary of VJ-Day in Japan
How to commemorate an important anniversary of the country in which you’re posted when it marks a low point in…