During the second world war, the Japanese were horrible enemies to be greatly feared. Frankly, the fact that such a small country stood a chance against the USA was amazing, in and of itself. <\/p>\n
Concerned that Germany was working on the bomb, we had driven full-tilt towards the nuclear age, and by the time we had bent those U235 atoms to our will, we had more or less defeated Hitler. <\/p>\n
Japan, on the other hand, was another thing altogether. The Japanese still believed in the near-divinity of their emperor, and were willing, for the most part, to fight until the bitter end. Thousands and thousands of US soldiers would die, and thousands more in POW camps would suffer needlessly. <\/p>\n
So we dropped the bomb. In three days we caused devastation of a type never seen before on earth, and the people of Japan surrendered, uttlerly broken.<\/p>\n
Then, we sent them the Marshall plan and W. Edwards Deming, and made them a world manufacturing power for nearly 50 years. <\/p>\n
In the meantime, there was some animosity, and deservedly so. A lot of Americans are alive today who marched across Bataan. A lot of Japanese remember the radiation sickness of Hiroshima. <\/p>\n
Those things are still there, and there are other cultural issues that form a perhaps unbridgeable gulf. For the most part, though. Japan and America are, if not friendly, at least cordial.<\/p>\n
Eventually, though, we learned a lot about the Japanese. Yeah, some parts of their culture are really alien to us, but some parts are not.
\nThe strongest evidence of this is the film industry- lots of Japanese films have been remade into excellent American films, even a spaghetti western or two. <\/p>\n