Japanese stance on American Presidents

[Matthew Hurwitz]

I was also really interested to hear about the lack of Japanese pushback on Trump compared with many of our European allies, who make no effort to hide their displeasure with him. I hadn't really thought about the reasons why Japan would avoid that kind of conflict, and find it interesting to learn about the ways in which the U.S. and Japan tiptoe around each other because of the way each relies on each other, where both countries can be agressive or cavalier when it comes to our interaction with other countries. Our presenter mentioned that "Geography is fate" and I thought that that aptly summed up a lot of what we have learned the last couple of weeks about geopolitical rivalries, occupations, cultural imperialism, wars, and alliances between different countries, including the alliance between the U.S. and Japan. It also sounded like a great guiding question for a unit: "Is fate determined by Geography?" I can imagine my students having a lot of heated discussions about that, and am totally making that one of my essential questions next year.