I am responding Professor Hiwatari's remark on the recent US- Japanese aviation negotiations. In the most recent issue of _International Organization_ (Vol. 49, No. 1), Baldev Raj Nayar advances the thesis that international politics in the field of aviation is better explained by realism than liberal institutionalism.
I think that his argument applies well to the history of US-Japanese aviation negotiations for the past few decades. In this particular field, unlike many other fields, US dominance, which was established in the 1950, has hardly changed vis-a-vis Japan. Whenever I check the section of Nichibei kankei
[US-Japan relations] in indexes of Nikkei's shukusatsuban during the 1980s (it is a very convenient and efficient way to check the flow of events in Nichibei kankei), I quite often find breakdowns (ketsuretsu) in the negotiations.

The field of aviation reminds us of other fields in contemporary US-Japanese relations where the United States maintains structural dominance over Japan. For example, witness the persistent role of the dollar as the dominant currency in the bilateral relationship, and Japan's dependence on Middle Eastern oil (which in turn is denominated in the dollar). I am not a Marxist, but I think that Japanese Marxists have a point when they persistently talk about this "structural dependence" of Japan on the United States. (Their underlying motivation is nationalism, just like Latin American proponents of dependency theories.)

This structuralist perspective has been underappreciated in the mainstream writings of US-Japanese economic relations. If we think about it, the implicit theoretical contexts in which empirical studies have been conducted on US-Japanese economic issues do not address the question of these structural factors systematically. (Currently two dominant theoretical approaches are [1] liberal analyses focusing on transnational relations and bilateral negotiation tactics/norms--in the tradition of _The Textile Wrangle_ and _Coping with US-Japanese Economic Conflicts_--and [2] more recent realist analyses emphasizing the power struggle between Washington and Tokyo--since the emergence of "revisionists" in the United States.)

Without carrying ideological baggage, one may analyze the structural dimensions of US-Japanese economic relations in a fruitful way, injecting a new perspective to the study of the bilateral economic relations that seems to be experiencing some kind of intellectual saturation.

Tsuyoshi Kawasaki
Assistant Professor
Political Science Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6 Canada
E-mail: kawasaki[atx]sfu.ca