The long memory behind Japanese fear of America

How much did Stalin create American-Japanese hostility by planting information?

He could intensify it, but the underlying fear was much older and traced back to the coerced opening of Japan by Perry's squadron.

The coercive opening of Japan by Commodore Perry predates Stalin's rule and supplies the historical starting point for this interpretation of Japanese distrust. Soviet intelligence could exploit an existing grievance without creating it. Claims to have engineered a later conflict also require care, because an outcome resembling someone's plan does not establish that the planner caused it. A further distinction concerns memory: an account celebrating the opening of ports as benevolent can overlook how coercion appeared to the people subjected to it.