The last half century has been as tumultuous to relationships between Japan and the United States as were the two previous decades that encompassed World War II, or the Great Pacific War as the Japanese refer to it.

Why have relationships not improved between the two countries that have been allies for more than 50 years? Two issues, when fully explained, tell why – culture and economy.

Japan is an egocentric nation populated by a "pum race." The United Stated is the "Melting Pot of the World." Both countries want to be the world’s No.1 economy. On these two issues there is much dialog, but little compromise.

The author, who has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times, has spent nearly half a century studying the differences and similarities between the cultures and economies of Japan and the United States.

Beginning with a tour with military intelligence in Japan in the 1950s, through an International Press Institute fellowship to study and tour in Japan in 1981, and following a tour of Japanese industry as leader of a Rotary International group in 1993, Dave Whitney traces the evolution of modern relationships between two of the world's leading economies and most diverse cultures.

In a summary of the trip he prepared for Rotary International Wilson wrote:

"Japan and the United States are at war. A cold war, perhaps, but, where business is concerned, a war nonetheless.

"Americans tend to think of our first significant contact with Japan as coming 50 years ago at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese, however, see the war as beginning 140 years ago when American ships cruised into their harbors and demanded that the Japanese open their markets. They apparently acquiesced, but I don’t see that the relationship has changed dramatically since then. They still see us as belligerent, and we still want them to open their markets.

"As early as that first contact, Japanese political philosophers observed that direct military confrontation with the United States would likely end in Japan’s defeat, but that Japan would surely be victorious in a stealthily fought economic war. All of which is to say that the Japanese view the state of their entire economy as a matter of national security. They would no more allow American business people to see the inner workings of their economy than an American arms contractor would have shown his Soviet counterpart how we made arms during the height of the Cold War."

Hai, so desu!