One of the perquisites of age is reminiscence. It is the function of the historian to recount the past. As one of the elders of our fellowship and as a historian it would seem to be both my privilege and my duty on this occasion to trace the course of Far Eastern studies in the United States since I first became familiar with them. We are told on the authority of an ancient book which has come to us from the Orient that “your old men shall dream dreams.” It may not be amiss, therefore, not only to survey the past, but also to attempt, in the light of that past to look into the future and to formulate such dreams for it as that past and the prospect for the future inspire.

Out of that anthropology which rested on studies of isolated primitive or tribal peoples arose the concept, “a culture.” The Andamanese had a culture, the Trobrianders, the Aranda of Australia, and the Zuni. Each culture came to be conceived as an independent and self-sufficient system. Recently words have been found to make clear this conception of an “autonomous cultural system.” It is “one which is self-sustaining—that is, it does not need to be maintained by a complementary, reciprocal, subordinate, or other indispensable connection with a second system.” Such units—such cultures as those of the Zuni or the Andamanese—are systems because they have their own mutually adjusted and interdependent parts, and they are autonomous because they do not require another system for their continued functioning. The anthropologist may see in such a system evidences of past communications of elements of culture to that band or tribe from others, but, as it now is, he understands that it keeps going by itself; and in describing its parts and their workings he need not go outside the little group itself. The exceptions, where the band or tribe relies on some other band or tribe for a commodity or service, are small and do not seriously modify the fact that that culture is maintained by the communication of a heritage through the generations of just those people who make up the local community.

During a visit with my wife to India in 1954–1955 I had an opportunity to do a methodological field study in South India. The purpose of this study was to chart an intellectual map of some of the researchable territory that lies between the culture of a village or small community and the culture of a total civilization. This study is not easy to classify in terms of prevailing conceptions about “research,” since it is something that falls between the intensive anthropological field study and the purely conceptual types of methodological analysis. But despite its unorthodox character, it seemed an appropriate type of study to undertake in a new and not well known field. Although the study was primarily designed to serve the methodological purpose of giving an empirical content to some very general ideas and to suggest concrete hypotheses for further research, it also turned up some substantive findings which have importance on their own account. In this report I shall mention some of these in passing but will in the main confine myself to the problems of method posed by the study. A more detailed and documented account of the entire study is in preparation.

Japan's role in Far Eastern history has been unique in many respects. Traditionally an integral part of the Chinese zone of civilization, Japan has nonetheless demonstrated a marked ability to remain independent of continental influence. In recent years Japan's remarkable record of adjustment to the conditions imposed upon her by the spread of Western civilization to the Orient has raised the provocative question of why Japan, of all Far Eastern societies, should be the first to climb into the ranks of the modern industrial powers. Is it possible, as one scholar has suggested, that Japan “has been the country which has diverged the most consistently and markedly from Far Eastern norms, and these points of difference have been by and large, points of basic resemblance to the West”?

In any highly industrialized country, especially one which relies mainly upon private enterprise for its economic development, the managerial system assumes a position of critical importance. It has been widely recognized in this connection that practices and policies developed by management are principal determinants of employer-employee relations and, in turn, affect significantly the outcome of many economic, social, and political problems that emerge in the process of industrialization. Close examination of management in varying cultural and national settings helps to understand the nature of conflicts existing in modern industrial societies and may furnish clues to their solution. A recent study comparing present-day business management in Western Europe and the United States represents a first step in this direction. This article deals with Japan—still another nation in which modern industrialization operates largely under a system of private enterprise the characteristics of which contrast sharply with America.

The Struggle to consolidate the gains of Indonesian independence has been dramatically reflected in the fiscal field. In the six years since the transfer of sovereignty from the colonial masters to the new Indonesian Republic, the central government has striven for an unprecedented degree of centralization of fiscal functions. What has emerged appears to be the broadening of central responsibility for expenditures, particularly on Java, without corresponding increases in revenues to meet these new responsibilities. The problems of sharing with localities these responsibilities and the resources to finance them have received much thought but little action. Virtually no attention has been given to the ways in which local governments might contribute to Indonesian economic development by utilizing the resources available to them. The case for greater decentralization of Indonesia's fiscal system is based on the argument that the rate of economic growth could be accelerated by the extension of greater fiscal autonomy to local levels of government and by more effective coordination between central and local development plans, particularly on the matter of financing.

This paper aims to present an informal overview of materials available on United States relations with the Far East as found in the records of the Department of State. At the outset it might be pointed out that the policy of the Department, both with respect to access to its records and in the reasonably expeditious publication of its foreign relations documents, is perhaps the most liberal of any major foreign office. This policy conforms with a fundamental maxim in the Department of State that the Congress, the world of scholarship, and the public at large be kept as fully informed about our foreign affairs as is consistent with sound diplomacy and national security. The opportunities, therefore, of research among primary sources on United States foreign relations are probably richer than those on the foreign affairs of any other country.