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The unofficial revival of relations between Japan and Taiwan and the factors that have led to this relationship are discussed.

This article examines the international and cultural consequences of globalization and the expansion of communications. The author uses Robert Axelrod's adaptive cultural model to analyze the effects of communications on cultural change, finding that communication's expansion increases the rate of cultural change and homogeneity in the system, whereas limited expansion results in cultural diaspora; the extent to which common cultural attributes predominate after interaction are also effected by the expansion of communications.

Several weeks after the academic conference where the five following presentations were first made, the Canadian edition of Time magazine (10 July 2000) carried a cover story with the provocative [...]

Editor's Note: This essay is Professor Stuart's summation of the opening roundtable he moderated at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations meeting in Toronto, Ryerson University, June 2000. [...]

The images of Japan formed by Americans are considered. Media coverage, exports of popular culture, and education are examined to reveal how they have influenced Americans' conceptions of Japan and Japanese culture.

Historians should seek to understand Americanization without resort to perjoratives about cultural or economic imperialism. A better approach is to try to understand what it is about modernization that foreign cultures accept, and why.

Late 20th century intellectuals fretted about American cultural imperialism. However, the greater threat to local cultural integrity is probably world culture.

US economic power and cultural attraction had as much to do with winning the support of the European youth during the cold war as did political and military power. Media images propagated from Hollywood made an argument for an American way of life. Many Europeans wished to emulate the American ways. However, there was a dark side to the cultural imperialism. Many of those who best expressed the freedom of American culture, such as African American musicians, did not possess complete freedom or happiness in the US.

American culture in the 20th century has been exported around the globe. Iconic images of such Americana as McDonald's golden arches, Levi's jeans, Hollywood movie stars, and Marlboro cigarettes have been subsumed by the national consciousness of other nations. However, use of America's cultural images may take on a meaning outside the US different from the meaning inside the US.

Japanese cultural influence is becoming prevalent throughout Asia, but Japan's pervasive cultural presence on Taiwan has drawn little attention from local intellectuals. Two exceptions are Chuang Shu-yu, in an essay entitled 'Speed, Infiltration and Occupation: The Japanese Invade Taiwanese Economy' and Tsan Hung-chih, in the book 'City Watching: New Language, New Contact, and New Culture.' Both analyses regard the meaning of Japanese commodities as predetermined, focus on production and fail to consider the variety of possible responses by consumers. The idea of cultural imperialism targets single nations instead of looking at the global system as a whole.

The real impact of US popular culture upon European societies remains shallow. Europeans have always adapted US products, culture and technology to fit their own circumstances. European popular and intellectual culture is currently experiencing a resurgence, even in the field of American studies, where European scholars increasingly apply the comparative method within the discipline. European young people are acquiring a double cultural identity, continental as well as national. All Europeans and Americans may soon need to similarly develop dual cultural loyalties to thrive in a still pluralistic world.