Land of the Rising Sun holding American (4)
I believe the answer is:
laos
'land' is the definition.
(Laos is a country)
'the rising sun holding american' is the wordplay.
'the rising' shows that the letters should be reversed in order (going up in a down clue).
'sun' becomes 'sol' (Latin for 'sun').
'holding' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'american' becomes 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names).
'sol' enclosing 'a' is 'soal'.
'soal' backwards is 'LAOS'.
'of' is the link.
(Other definitions for laos that I've seen before include "Landlocked south-east Asian country" , "part of Asia" , "South-east Asian republic, capital Vientiane" , "Country of Indo-China, capital Vientiane" , "Indo-Chinese country" .)