Decades Before Americans cheered on Ichiro Suzuki, Japanese baseball fans drowned over Roth's door. A century before the anime and manga, American art collectors collected Japanese woodblock prints.

Some relationships can match the depth or importance of cultural relations between America and Japan over the past 200 years. In the world of cosmopolitans in the Pacific, Michael O'Sullen tells this fully absorbed history for the first time.

From the moment the adventurers reached the shores of each other in the early 19th century, the cultural encounter formed the cornerstone of Japan-US relations. These cross-cultural links were transformed into formal cultural exchanges within the emerging world community in the late nineteenth century. When both countries became a powerful force, new cultural institutions complemented political ties and helped promote economic trade, shaping the Pacific after it became involved in the controversy.

These activities across the Pacific faced criticism in both countries and were steeped in growing nationalism and the geopolitical crisis of the early 20th century. But in the decades following World War II, US cultural exchange between Japan was once again seen as a crucial vehicle for strengthening ties between the two countries.

By combining benefactors such as the Rockefeller family and artists like Akira Kurosawa, along with innumerable Americans and ordinary Japanese, exchange followers still believe that intercultural understanding will foster a more peaceful future, even in the face of competing national interests. ..