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reasons for friendship. Conversely, Americans, instead of considering Japan's growth as a challenge to their Far Eastern policies, now regard Japan's well-being as desirable for the maintenance of a free and independent Asia, viewed as an essential link in a system of mutual security and international democracy rather than simply as an open preserve for international trade.
A considerable discrepancy can, of course, exist between realities and national attitudes. This, however, does not appear to be the case in Japanese-American relations today. Americans look only with approval upon Japan's attempts to improve her economic and military position. The Japanese, for their part, find comfort rather than danger in American prosperity and strength. And both peoples tend to look toward the Soviet Union with fear and distrust. For the Americans, this attitude is as new as it is violent. For the Japanese, fear and dislike of Russia are traditional and perhaps for that reason less intense than in the United States. But the important point is that in both countries the chief foreign object of fear and resentment is the same, while each expects from the other to a greater or lesser degree friendly support and cooperation. Of course, Japanese-American friendship has no long historical background or deep emotional support such as reinforce Canadian-American friendship or the amity between the United States and the United Kingdom or France, but it is likely to last at least as long as the world situation remains roughly what it is today.
This does not mean that Japanese and American interests are entirely identical or that the relations between the two nations will necessarily remain uniformly smooth. Even within the framework of basically compatible interests and objectives, there remains all too much room for discord. In fact, as in the case of most other international friends and allies, the sources of minor disagreement are so numerous that unless they are carefully handled they could nullify all cooperation and could even convince the peoples concerned that they are enemies rather than friends.
In the case of Japanese-American relations, as also in the relations between the United States and some of its chief European allies, disagreement stems not from conflicting interests but rather from a difference in approach to their common objectives. This difference in emphasis stems at least in part from the fact that the United States, already the most prosperous nation in the world, emerged from the last war as the least damaged of the major victor nations, while Japan was perhaps the most seriously hurt of the losers. The Americans, even richer than before the war and enjoying more national power than most of them are prepared or even wish to exercise, have what might be called a static view of the world. Their chief aim is to preserve existing gains from possible future loss. The Japanese, even poorer than before the war and nationally in a far more dangerous and less satisfactory position, have less to preserve and consequently are more interested in future gains than in the status quo.
This difference in attitude makes the Japanese and American approach to such problems as the Communist menace quite different. Although the United States is less directly threatened by Communism than are most other parts of the world, Americans, regardless of their domestic political sympathies, are united in
