Peter Duus and Kenji Hasegawa have presented a well-crafted book whose major strength lies in its wide range of translated selections of Japanese observations on America. Covering over a century (from 1878 to 1989), the selections have been written mostly by academics or journalists, many of whom are well known for their “representativeness” with regard to a particular viewpoint. For Duus and Hasegawa, “the only consistent criterion for inclusion – occasionally violated – was that the authors should have lived in or at least visited the United States” (13). The work follows a chronological approach by beginning with Japanese women, men, and children who traveled abroad after the Meiji Restoration, and the authors pair various themes in each chapter. Accordingly, America was first introduced as a mentor nation useful for disseminating “new knowledge” for business, cultural, educational, political and religious perspectives, practices and priorities which would become instrumental in modernizing Japan as a nation. Most thought-provoking for the Japanese was the fact that American politics centered on the civil value of open discussion and religiosity, with a particular emphasis upon Christianity.

A positive image of America by no means dominates these essays. More particularly, some of these articles contain binary comparisons related to the fact that Japan grew to become a colonial power in the Pacific. Of course positive images were widely supplanted at the onset of World War II. Observers made self-referential comparisons with America to define Japan as “purer” than the enemy. In this regard, America was too materialistic as a nation which assumed a prominence based on money and hedonistic pursuits. In stark contrast, Japan's advantage and prevailing strength was its spiritual culture. At the end of the war, however, and with the American occupation continuing into the 1960s, pervasive and persuasive influences of American material and popular culture swayed and transformed the Japanese outlook into one of admiration. More especially, many Japanese embraced the image of an American housewife in a home with electrical appliances, washing machine, large refrigerator, and black-and-white television on which programs glorified the American life. But such thoughts, though dominant, were not totally embraced among writers. One such illustrative essay is “The Old Face of America” (1964), in which Eto Jun notes,

The last chapter of the book takes the reader into the 1990s. Observations were of America in decline – especially essential qualities of American character such as the pioneer spirit of hard work and performance-based business practices. For example, in her essay “Glorious America Where Are You?” (1980), Shimomura Mitsuko – who was the first woman to become editor-in-chief of the Asahi Journal, a major weekly magazine, and in 1987–88 a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University – stated that she no longer looked on the United States with the awe that she once did:

More revealingly still, misgivings of American business practice – as expressed in the essay by Sony founder Akio Morita – concludes Duus and Hasegawa's selections. As Morita prophetically suggests,

In the final analysis, Duus and Hasegawa have provided a valuable collection of translated, firsthand observations of America as voiced by perceptive Japanese writers. By offering a range of images layered through time and cycles, both exceptional and typical as well as individualized and global, the authors have created a welcome addition to the literature of how America is viewed from without.