This talk will explore U.S. relations with Japan since Commodore Perry first went there in 1853. It sketches the history of a policy that alternated between power and culture, revealing a need to compel Japanese compliance. Over the years Japan could only meet such a policy through submission or resistance, and this led to a dilemma in the decade before World War II.

George Wilson taught Japanese history at IU for thirty-five years. He was the university’s first Dean for International Programs, and he served as Director of the East Asian Studies Center before retiring in 2002. His specialty is the nineteenth-century transformation known as the Meiji Restoration, the subject of his 1992 book Patriots and Redeemers in Japan. He was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan in 2006, and this spring he is teaching at IU.