In today’s NY Times Op-Ed: James Bradley traces roots of Japan’s attack on Peal Harbor to Theodore Roosevelt’s 1900s Russo-Japanese diplomacy and not F.D. Roosevelt’s 1930s Asia policy.
(T.) Roosevelt knew that Japan coveted the Korean Peninsula as a springboard to its Asian expansion. Back in 1900, when he was still vice president, Roosevelt had written, “I should like to see Japan have Korea.” When, in February 1904, Japan broke off relations with Russia, President Roosevelt said publicly that he would “maintain the strictest neutrality,” but privately he wrote, “The sympathies of the United States are entirely on Japan’s side.”
This story never gets old.
Boy meets Girl.
Boy takes Girl’s style and one-ups it.
Girl finds it funny.
Five years later Girl finds it charming.
Boy moves on.
Exhibit 1:
In The NY Times today
“The Japanese get the whole perfect American thing better than Americans. They understand that it’s an identifiable style around the world, this American look. We think we appreciate it, but we really don’t, not like they do.”
Exhibit 2:
Women’s Wear Daily featured video on “Japanese Goths” vis-à-vis “American Goths”
Last night while a bunch of us in this office were working on layout, the publisher exclaimed out loud, “Oh my god. Haruki Murakami’s new novel is about to hit a million copies sold in Japan.”
If post-Crash American publishing has been waiting for the other shoe to drop, you can double that expectation in Japan, where “bestsellers” measure on a wholly different scale. A million copies right now would be huge. Especially since it’s fiction, and not Harry Potter.