By David Warsh — Since the end of World War II, America's view of Japan has been made in Cambridge, Mass. First there was Henry Rosovsky, with his early reports on the Japanese industrial renaissance. Then Edwin Reischauer educated a generation of scholars and diplomats, then served for many years as ambassador. Ezra Vogel was the first to sight Japan as "Number One," and Roy Hofheinz wrote a less-noted book called "The East Asia Edge." It argued that Asian producers naturally would take over the world's high- tech markets, leaving America to serve as bread-basket and lumber-yard to the world. Harvard's Tom McCraw, George Lodge and Robert Reich have called attention to the rivalry. Lester Thurow, the MIT Sloan School dean has taken the quest for metaphor a st ep further when he asks whether the next step in American-Japanese relations is guerilla war -- or big bang?
