America x Japan is a popular slash pairing involving the characters America and Japan. It is commonly known as デコボコンビ (Dekobokonnbi), Crooked Combo, in the Japanese fandom. The term Ameripan (from AMERIca and JaPAN) is also popular among fans. A less popular term for this ship is Amepan. It must be noted that fans do not use the first three letters of Japan's name in the ship, as that term has been used as a slur for Japanese people.
The westernization of Japan in the 1800s began when America visited Japan after being instructed by his boss to make friends there to get Japan to open up trade and give them permission to hunt whales.
Japan was initially extremely reluctant to even go outside to meet America, having been holed up in his house for at least 200 years, but was eventually compelled to interact with him when his claim that his people can only speak Dutch was foiled by America saying that he brought a Dutch translator with him. Even then, Japan remained wary and distrustful of America, telling him bluntly to go home after America says that he came to make friends with whales, and repeatedly wishing that he would leave him and his people alone. He seemed to warm up a bit to America's insistence that he should get to know the rest of the world more when America explained to him that there were many new and exciting places and things out there to explore daily, thinking that he might not be such a bad person after all, until America read off a huge list of demands and implicitly forced Japan to accept them.
This time period is also covered in a chapter of Volume 2 of the published manga, which is more focused on Japan's attempts to emulate parts of Western culture after deciding to open himself up to other countries' influences. America is shown introducing Japan to table turning, an alleged method of communicating with spirits to get answers to questions. While performing the table turning, Japan confided to America that ever since he opened up,
