Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

ORDERLY MARKETING AGREEMENT • 199
fought for a single world order in which goods and trade would flow
freely between nations. Such was necessary, in the minds of American
policymakers, in order to ensure against a revisit of the economic
disasters of the late 1920s and early 1930s. On the other hand, the
Japanese government was fighting for the creation of an autarchic
economic sphere that covered the greater part of East Asia.
Neither side got what it wanted. When, in August 1945, Japan surrendered
unconditionally to the United States and its allies, its dreams
of economic autarchy lay in ruins. The American vision of the Open
Door fared little better. Not only did the Soviet Union show scant regard
for its wartime ally’s policy prescriptions, but China—the very nation
upon which the Open Door policy had been founded—plunged headlong
into a civil war that, by late 1949, saw it shift into the Soviet orbit.
OPIUM WAR (1839–1841). The war fought between Britain and
China over the issue of trade in opium. The Chinese imperial authorities
tried to halt British trade in opium in China, but Britain argued
this was a restriction of trade. British gunboats and troops defeated
the outdated Chinese military forces, and the Treaty of Nanjing
(1842) was negotiated in Britain’s favor. A second opium war, sometimes
called the Arrow War, was fought in 1857–1858. As a result of
the Opium War between Britain and China, foresighted observers in
Japan, such as Shozan Sakuma, began pushing the Tokugawa
shogunate to utilize Western science and technology to build up its
military forces, or Japan would wind up losing a war and losing its
independence to the West. See also EASTERN ETHICS, WESTERN
SCIENCE.
ORDERLY MARKETING AGREEMENT. The Orderly Marketing
Agreement was concluded between the Japanese and U.S. governments
in May 1977 for the purpose of regulating trade between the two
countries. In the 1970s, a Japanese export thrust precipitated trade friction
in various parts of the world. This, in turn, caused an appreciation
of the yen. In particular, there occurred severe friction in the automobile
and electronics industries because of the competitiveness of Japanese
exports. This friction led to a series of negotiations between the
United States and Japan and finally the Orderly Marketing Agreement
was concluded. This agreement strictly stipulated the market share that