Michael Armacost, the United States ambassador to Japan until 1993, offers an insider's view of relations between the two most powerful economic forces in the economic war zone of contemporary U.S.-Japan relations.

Friends Or Rivals? offers a comprehensive analysis of Japan policy under the Bush and Clinton administrations. Here too are Armacost's predictions and suggestions for the future.

Armacost examines the promise and frustrations of interdependencies at a time when the world is changing. He chronicles American efforts to reduce a massive trade imbalance, arrange a more equitable sharing of mutual defense costs, elicit a substantial Japanese contribution to the multilateral alliance during the Gulf war, and design a global diplomatic parternship with Tokyo.

An authoritative account of U.S.-Japanese relations, Friends or Rivals? is also a provocative ambassadorial memoir. Michael Armacost reveals candidly his own perception of the power brokers he has worked with that define and continue to define the terms of U.S.-Japan relations.