I am embarking on the creation of a Handbook on US-Japan Relations with Japan Documents publishing and Amsterdam University Press and would like to invite chapter proposals.

The theme of the volume will be past, present, and future. By which I mean that the chapters will make connections between the past and the present to highlight how the past impacts the present and potentially the future. We will look at what is fundamentally at the core of US-Japan relations as we peruse issues across security, economics, people-to-people exchange, the environment and sustainability, and science and technology. Historical legacies will be a thread throughout. The volume will cover US-Japan collaboration and partnership, as well as challenges or areas of conflict, from the past, through the present, and into the future. It will be a multidisciplinary survey of US-Japan relations.

I am particularly interested in chapter proposals on the following issue areas:

• the development of a post-WWII US-Japan friendship
• historical legacies of the Cold War for US-Japan relations
• the roles of race in WWII propaganda and in the 1980s trade conflicts
• the forging of personal relationships between US presidents and Japanese prime ministers, in terms of strategy and personality
• US-Japan collaborative efforts towards a bilateral trade agreement and/or codification of rules in new areas of trade
• Japanese MNCs in the US and/or US MNCs in Japan, including their impact on local communities
• Asian Development Bank
• Human security and human rights
• US-Japan joint commitments to environmental security
• US-Japan energy partnerships
• US-Japan collaborations in the area of AI
• Manga, anime, and soft power

If interested in producing a chapter on one of these topics or suggesting a different topic on US-Japan relations not represented on this list, please send an approximately 300-word proposal and a brief bio to mary.mccarthy@drake.edu by April 30.

Priority will be given to junior scholars and those who have not published extensively in English, as well as those introducing new perspectives on these areas. If your proposal is accepted, chapters will be expected by fall 2024 and will then go through editorial review. If the editorial review is positive, revised chapters will be expected in early 2025. The entire book will then go through an external peer review.

Please send any questions to mary.mccarthy@drake.edu.

Mary M. McCarthy, Professor of Politics and International Relations, Drake University