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

ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO • 215
teaching of “morals” as a school subject and he promoted “An Outline
for National Moral Practice,” a postwar version of the Imperial
Rescript on Education. The Yomiuri Newspaper defined these proposals
as the “reverse course” and published a series of articles from
2 November to 2 December 1951, which made this term popular. See
also DEFENSE.
RICH NATION, STRONG ARMY (FUKOKU KYOHEI, in Japanese).
A slogan and policy adopted by the early Meiji government
meant to strengthen the economy and military forces for the purpose
of maintaining Japan’s independence.
ROBERTS, EDMUND (1784–1836). Edmund Roberts was the first
American sent by the United States government to attempt treaty negotiations
with Japan. Sent on two missions to Asia, in 1832 and
1835, Roberts successfully negotiated treaties with Muscat (Oman)
and Siam (Thailand). However, he died of cholera in Macao in 1836
and never reached Japan. Ten years later, Commodore James Biddle
made the next attempt to establish formal relations between the
United States and Japan. See also PERRY, MATTHEW C.
ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO (1882–1945). As president of
the United States from 1933 until 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt looms
large in the 20th-century history of Japanese–American relations.
Born into a patrician family in New York, he was educated at Groton,
Harvard, and Columbia Law School. He served as assistant secretary
of the navy in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, in
which capacity he established a “close and personal” friendship (his
words) with the naval attaché to the Japanese embassy in Washington,
Kichisaburo - Nomura. He was the Democratic nominee for vice
president in 1920. The following year, he was struck by polio
myelitis, which crippled him for the remainder of his life. He was
elected governor of New York in 1928; four years later, he defeated
incumbent Herbert Hoover in the presidential election. His inaugural
address, in which he addressed himself directly to the torpor of the
Great Depression, has been quoted so many times as to appear almost
redundant: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself.”