Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan

(Columbia University Press) Named U.S. Ambassador to Japan by President Kennedy in 1961, Edwin O. Reischauer urged his fellow citizens to abandon stereotypes and see Japan as a peace-loving democracy. George R. Packard, who worked as his special assistant in Tokyo, has written the first biography of Reischauer — a man who helped to reset the balance between two powerful nations. During World War II, Reischauer analyzed and trained American code breakers in Japanese, helped steer Japan towards democracy, and wrote a definitive English-language history of the country. Before his death in 1990, he warned the United States against adopting a narrow and self-centered attitude toward Asia. Packard is president of the United States-Japan Foundation and former dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he founded the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China. He has been a military intelligence officer, Foreign Service officer, and journalist.