One of the symptoms of globalization is an increased tension between friendship and enmity in international and transnational relationships. This dialectic is enacted through a democratic aesthetic of “telescopic mourning/warring.” US media representations of US–Japan relations from World War II through the funeral of Emperor Hirohito are examined to identify conventional persuasive devices for enacting telescopic mourning/warring and to consider the implications of this aesthetic for the production of a national imaginary. The essay concludes by arguing that a democratic aesthetic functions best as a rhetoric of ambivalence operating within the tension between “carnival” and “hegemony.”