"In the end, things seemed to work themselves out." That was in the late 1970s when the cases examined in this interesting book were crucial. But steel, automobiles, agriculture, high technology, and macroeconomic policy are again troubling Japanese-American relations in the 1980s. The authors, who prepared these studies originally for the "wise man's group" appointed by the two governments, hope that their careful efforts to draw political, economic and procedural conclusions from the past will help make things a little bit easier. We shall see.