Mutual misunderstanding made diplomacy more dangerous

The operational counterfactual also raises a methodological caution about American-Japanese misunderstanding. Their relationship worsened over decades because repeated contacts often reinforced cross-purposes rather than resolving them. Personal experience of working closely with Japanese and other Asian colleagues is offered here as an example of subtleties that extensive reading alone had not captured. The takeaway is methodological as well as historical: strategy and diplomacy require humility about the cultural assumptions that formal documents may not reveal.