“America at 250: A View from Japan,” March 13 America at 250 Lecture with Rice University’s Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu

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Rice University Dunlevie Family Chair in History Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu will continue our Spring 2026 America at 250 Lecture Series, looking at the nation’s story through the prism of its evolving connection with modernizing East Asia (see description below). The event will be held on Friday, March 13 in the ballroom at the Tiger Hotel, with the talk starting at 5pm and a reception to follow. Anyone interested in attending can RSVP (recommended, but not required) using the link above.

“Can America Still Deliver the ‘Transpacific Field of Dreams’ to Japan?”

The United States played a major role in the modernization and Westernization of East Asia and as such, it has represented a beacon of hope and progress, “a city upon a hill” across the Pacific, as it were. That collective faith and sense of affinity towards the United States is being badly shaken in the current political climate in the US and the resulting uncertainties introduced into US-East Asian relations at American at 250. Starting with Shohei Ohtani and Major League Baseball, this talk will track the interconnected ways the United States and modernizing Asia/Japan evolved over time and how that connection is being reassessed at the 250th anniversary of American independence.

A historian of US Foreign Relations and the author of Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War (UNC Press, 2012), Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu is a Professor and Dunlevie Family Chair in the Rice University Department of History.

The Spring 2026 America at 250: Global Perspectives Lecture Series is brought to you in partnership with the State Historical Society of Missouri