Two photographs, separated in time and context by 64 years, may symbolize, as well as anything can, the nature of the postwar Japanese-American alliance. Both in their time gave rise to uproar.
The second of these was the photograph, taken on the occasion of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Japan in November 2009, of the president bowing low to the Emperor. Despite the fact that such bowing in Japan is a gesture of respect and propriety, the American media went semi-postal, and Obama was virulently denounced as everything from an "idiot" to a "waterboy" — the latter a blatantly racist remark. Speaking on CNN, commentator Bill Bennett proudly claimed, "We (Americans) don't defer to emperors."
Such sentiments, quite widely held in the United States, are symbolic of something that runs very deep in the American consciousness: an inability to understand elements, however clear and simple, of another culture on any other terms than American ones.