Externally it has flourished under the American security guarantee and an international economic order shaped, however imperfectly, by the United States. Japan is currently in a process of transition whose outcome may determine whether, under the new conditions in the post-Cold War period, critical aspects of this nexus will change in any fundamental way. The only other source for profound change would be a major “shock” from the outside that would once against remind the Japanese of their country’s vulnerabilities and that would cause them to reorientate their society as they have done before in modern history.