Some years ago our current Ambassador to Japan, Edwin Reischauer, described the relationship of the United States to the country to which he is now accredited. He wrote: "The Japanese-American relationship is indeed a unique one in history. Never before have two countries established such extensive, cordial, close and mutually profitable relations across such broad barriers of space, language, and differences in cultural background." While it is true that specialists on any phase of human activity tend to believe that the things they specialize in are both distinctive and important, a good case can be made for the assertion that Japanese-American relations are indeed unique. Our two countries share the only actual experience with atomic weapons fired in anger, and moreover Japan is the only great power with which we maintain diplomatic relations whose constitution we so profoundly influenced, including the famous Article IX renouncing war "as a sovereign right of the nation" and promising never to maintain "land, sea and air forces."

Relationships between nations are very much like relationships between members of your own family they are at once simple and complex, stylized and informal, made up of absolutes and compromises. We live in an age where easy answers to complex problems are supplied at every hand. All family problems are solved in columns in newspapers, and second guessing American foreign policy has assumed the proportions of a national academic sport. Relations between nations however, constantly vary reflecting changing facts of life.

The concerns of any people shift from place to place around the world in response to events which most directly affect them. The war in Korea, fighting in Vietnam, and the fabrication of an atomic bomb by Communist China have served to swing the focus of American attention to the Far East. As a consequence, awareness of the importance of good Japanese-American relationships grows.

Some years ago Mr. C. P. Snow startled and, in some cases, angered the intellectual world by suggesting that a man who did not understand the second law of thermodynamics was as illiterate as someone who had never read Shakespeare. The idea that science is as important as literature shocked a lot of literary people who neither knew nor cared about science, but who acted in a superior way toward men whom they regarded as illiterate scientists. Much the same attitude prevails in some circles regarding our relationship with Japan. Many people who assert that they are knowledgeable about world affairs mean by that boast that they have a working knowledge of the Common Market in Europe, a somewhat less well defined idea about the Alliance for Progress, but when pressed, admit to little or no knowledge about Japanese-American relations. The inference is that they are not really very important. Some do not even regard this as an area of ignorance, any more than some professors of literature were ready to admit that failure to understand science is a fault.

The importance of Japanese-American relations, however, did not escape President Eisenhower's Commission on National Goals, which, as you will recall, was a privately sponsored group administered by the American Assembly. Its function was to define America's goals in the world. The Commission said: "From the American standpoint Japan is as important for the defense of the free world in Asia as Germany in Europe. Japan is the key bulwark against Communist domination of all Asia. It is therefore a prime interest of the United States to contribute in every way possible to the maintenance of close military, economic and cultural ties."

The Commission went on to say "Since the prosperity of Japan hinges on its foreign trade, the United States should help to facilitate Japanese trade relations not only with the free nations of Asia, but also with European and American countries. This somewhat classic definition of the goals for American foreign policy is not too greatly at variance with the Japanese version of their goals, although the Japanese would perhaps not stress their key role as a bulwark against Communism in Asia; they would put a heavy priority on their independent position as a growing world power, without forgetting the importance of their economic relationship with the United States. Prime Minister Sato, on the occasion of his visit to the White House last January, expressed it succinctly: "For Japan... both in our total exports and imports, the United States is the most important single country, and our trade with you accounts for 30% of these totals. This figure attests, as nothing else can, to the enduring relationship of mutual interdependence that exist between the United States and Japan."

Against this broad background even experts in Japanese-American relationships tend to stress facets of Japanese history which separate it from ours; and overlook some similar elements. Our two countries share some common paths. They have been trod for different reasons, but they are nonetheless common. First, Japanese foreign policy for many years was as determinedly isolationist as was that of the United States. In the middle of the 17th century, Japan practiced isolationism in such an extreme form that even its traders withdrew from the world, not only the government but a whole people retired behind ocean barriers for almost two centuries. The isolationism of the United States took a different form, but basically we, like the Japanese, wanted to develop our nation without outside interference. Fortunately the United States was saved from the stultifying effects of total isolation by Yankee traders who roamed the seas and kept us in touch with the world and its technology.

In the end, it was trade that played the key role in breaking down barriers thrown up at the end of what was called the Christian century. American motives for sending Commodore Perry in 1858 were complex, but it is clear that opening Japan to trade was paramount. Ours was not the first attempt, for the Dutch and the Russians had been trying for years. The visit of Perry's four ships to Edo Bay helped to set in train a series of events that led to the disappearance of the Tokugawa shoguns and the emergence of modern Japan in its Meiji era. The importance of trade to Japanese-America relations, therefore is far greater than any figures which might be entered on a balance of payments sheet. It was and remains central to our two countries relationships. The trade routes that were opened by force are now maintained by necessity. More than a century ago, the English historian, Macaulay, remarked that "Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular." The history of American-Japanese trade has provided no exception to Macaulay's dictum.

The Depression of 1929 hit Japan with crippling force -- and at her most vulnerable point, the farmers who comprised half the total population. Japan's exports of raw silk which amounted to two-fifths of her exports, and going principally to the United States, dropped alarmingly and prices plummeted 50%. The rural depression ignited discontent with Japan's leadership, which had not been unfriendly to the West. There was a sharp reaction against the cosmopolitanism that characterized urban life at the time. As unrest spread, the military were emboldened to launch a series of military adventures culminating in Pearl Harbor, a desperate war and humiliating defeat. It was from this beginning that our remarkable postwar ties had to be developed.

Along the East Coast of the United States, the history, roots an educational background tend to begin and end in Europe. This attitude is the natural result of our history as we all tend to be interested in the things we know and read about rather than those of which we are ignorant. John lay once said that "Territorial propinquity creates certain inalienable rights." He might have added that it is the culmination of a need to understand. It was not until 1848 when California was annexed that the United States became a Pacific power in any sense of the word, but that expansion of our country profoundly influenced our attitude toward all of Asia. The next step was our involvement in Hawaii that leapfrogged our interests another 200 miles closer to Japan, and finally our stewardship of the Philippine Islands at the end of the Spanish-American War put us squarely in the western Pacific. As our frontier moved west, our interest n Japan quickened.

At the time of Perry's voyage, most Americans had never seen a Japanese, nor had the Japanese seen us. There was little reciprocal knowledge of our two cultures, but interest was not lacking. In the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1878 the Japanese Pavilion which had been shipped all the way from Japan drew more visitors than any other national exhibit. Many American architects visited this pavilion and the one erected for the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and Frank Lloyd Wright later built a Japanese house in the United States.

Japanese art seeped into the United States through Europe where a few collectors in France and England first saw the beauty of the work. The exchange of ideas accelerated rapidly. It is of interest to note that Perry's ships carried a cargo of American products. The thing that made the deepest impression on the Japanese was a quarter-sized railroad train, engine, car and a half mile of track. These contacts at all levels have literally grown from absolutely nothing, until today American baseball is played in the shadow of the Imperial Palace, and everything from Zen to Karate has taken its place in American life. This interchange has grown so steadily and silently that its significance can be missed.

This people to people movement is not new as in the 1870's David Murray of Rutgers University was instrumental in setting up the modern school system in Japan, while Horace Capron of the University of Massachusetts introduced the first modern agricultural techniques in Japan. On the financial side, the Japanese Ministry of Finance used the United States banking system as a model in the formation of the first modern Japanese banks in the 1870's. Upon reflection it is clear that up until very recently, and then only to a limited group, it was not fashionable to think of Japan as affording other countries any significant lessons. It is true of course that Japan has one of the fastest growing Gross National Products in the world and that Japanese industry has discovered quality control, but all this is sometimes regarded as some kind of lucky accident. Our attention was centered on other areas -- other economic miracles. Now the realization grows that this remarkable record may have some lessons for the rest of the world.

It is not my function today to list all points of friction between our two countries or to delineate the meaning to us of Japan's special relationship to Korea, Okinawa or to the Chinese mainland. Instead, the objective is to suggest some broad areas to explore.

The problem of discrimination is almost as old as American-Japanese relations. The intensity of this discrimination has varied with the times. Its most severe form was Japanese discrimination against any foreigner before Perry's voyage, and in this country reached its height during the war. War always creates acute distortions. We even renamed German measles Victory measles during World War I.

It is a fact that in the United States we are all immigrants. It is only a question of the number of years back the boat disembarked our ancestors. Because we are such a nation, our discriminatory immigration policy toward Japanese cut all the more deeply. From 1907 to 1924 Japanese immigration was controlled by the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement, but in the latter year Congress passed a new Immigration Act which unilaterally abrogated the Gentlemen's Agreement and forbade any future Japanese immigration. This legislation lit the fuse that burned brightly in anti-American demonstrations throughout Japan. The ruling of the Supreme Court in 1925 that the legislation granting citizenship to aliens who served in World War I did not apply to Japanese compounded the frustration.

The concept of exclusion of specific peoples and ideas is old and dies hard. It has been practiced by the U.S. in its immigration policy and by Japan for centuries in her period of isolation. The new immigration legislation which was passed by Congress and signed this month by the President on Liberty Island should ease this case of friction by sharply modifying the system of national quotas. While the United States has virtually eliminated this source of irritation, Japan is practicing a different kind of discrimination which also strikes at the roots of American-Japanese relationships. Whatever else we can argue about, few will dispute the fact that the economic miracle of Japan and the expansion of international trade, upon which it is based, has much to do with good U.S.-Japanese relationships. Today part of the strength built on free trade and the free movement of men and money is being put in jeopardy by the actions of the Japanese authorities. While Japan is short of capital and understandably unhappy about our Interest Equalization Tax at the same time, for all practical purposes, she rejects foreign capital except on special terms. Japan has effectively forbidden some foreign firms to increase their equity in their affiliated companies to the detriment of its own economy. Capital always goes where it is wanted but it must be attracted, it can never be pushed. By denying equity control of Japanese subsidiaries by foreign parents through one device or another, Japan is setting in train a dangerous practice which has the potential result of drying up the foreign capital which Japan so desperately needs. This is folly, for the whole strength of the free world economies rests on free movement of men and money. Sitting in my office I can look across Park Avenue at Lever House and speculate that most of the people passing on the street do not realize that this handsome building housing a thriving business is foreign owned. Looking out the other window I see Seagram Distillers, another foreign firm. You can make the list as long as you like and include everyone from Honda to Takashima.

In trying to check the extent of Japanese investment in the United States, we failed to find any definitive list at all. Those of you who read Sherlock Holmes may remember that he solved the case of "Silver Blaze" by attaching significance to the fact that when a robber entered a watchdog did not bark when be might have been expected to. In this case, the fact that we do not have a good record of the total of Japanese investment in the United States is of more importance than the exact amount of such investment. The absence of this record speaks most eloquently of the United States commitment to the free movement of international capital. The point is that each restriction on the movement of men and money will diminish the chances of the world to feed itself and to provide a stable platform upon which economic progress can be built.

The luxury of economic nationalism is one neither Japan nor the United States can afford. An indispensable ingredient to the postwar success of Japan has been the tremendous expansion of world trade. The monetary framework provided by the International Monetary Fund and policies of the World Bank and U.S. Aid have been prime factors in helping Japan to find her new and growing role in the world. By lowering our own trade barriers and urging others to do the same, the United States has helped Japan to sell her goods abroad and thus enabled her to purchase raw materials to supply her industries. Japan has now become a member of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and thus committed to conduct her affairs in broad cooperation with the leading Atlantic countries. False fears of foreign equity could erode the very economic platform from which Japan has launched her new role in the world. Controls beget controls, and if enough controls are imposed, economies inevitably slide into chaos.

While some have made the observation that democracy is not indigenous, but has been transplanted to Japan, this is also true of many other countries. The soil in which democracy grew in Japan was enriched by a deep belief in the value of mass education which also has bad a profound bearing on Japanese-American relations. Although other developments have gotten the headlines it is true that Japan is second -- only to the United States in the rate of school attendance at the high school and college level much higher than, for example, in the United Kingdom, France or West Germany. In the current idiom of the "Economist" this is an investment in human capital. Calculations have been made by Japanese scholars that as much as 25% of increased production since the late 19th century is attributable to this investment in human capital. Quite apart from economic terms, this explosion of educational opportunity has had a profound effect on Japan's communications with the rest of the world.

At this point in time, Japans communications are better with the United States than with most other Western countries. Part of the effort to improve communications began with the formation of Japan Societies in the United States, the first having begun in San Francisco in 1905. The membership consisted mostly of businessmen interested in promoting trade with Japan. These Societies have multiplied in the years that have followed, and in 1907 the New York chapter was formed. These Societies are just another link in our improving communications.

In assessing Japanese-American relationships today, I believe the most important single fact is that a new generation is now coming to power in both countries. Young Americans and Japanese could have been born as late as 1944 and still be old enough to vote in our respective elections. The significance of this simple statistic is that for this generation World War II is only a page in the history books and is no longer the central experience of their lives, as it was for a generation only slightly older. Yesterday's history is a frame of reference for tomorrow's action, but a new generation has always to solve its own problems in its own way. Perhaps this is fundamental was summed up the best by the Danish philosopher, Kierkegaard, when he wrote that "Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forward

The life which must be lived forward and constitutes the new element in Japanese-American relationships is that Japan must now re-evaluate its position in the world as a great independent power and move out from under the shadow of the objectives of the United States in Asia. This shift is inevitable and desirable, but brings with it what may well be the central issue between our two countries in the years ahead. The response of the United States to this changing relationship will require all our wisdom and skill. Given good will many things are possible. Today the existence of mutual good will and respect constitutes the strongest hope for working out our new relationship.

Mr. Kishi, writing in the current issue of "Foreign Affairs," predicts that "The political situation in Japan will probably develop in the direction of making Japan a bridge between Asia and Europe and the United States." To a certain extent Japan is already a bridge, but it will be up to the generation growing up today to sustain the close ties between our two countries. At the same time we must orient ourselves to a basically changed structure more in keeping with the importance of Japan as a great industrial power, and the responsibilities such a position entails.