Much of my research on other topics in foreign policy and international relations takes the security landscape of East Asia as its background. Although Asia is comparatively stable at the moment, the looming competition between China and the United States, the fraught relationship of North Korea to surrounding states, and the thorny problem of Taiwan all threaten the current peace.

My forthcoming book, Seeing Japan, departs from the proposition that national imagery plays an important role on the path between peace and conflict. The complexity of Japan’s relationship with South Korea, for example, has greatly impeded the formation of the trilateral alliance long sought by the United States. And Japan’s relationship with China is another important source of regional tension that periodically threatens to erupt in the form of hostile confrontations over island territories.