This is all just Japan from the 80s all over again. There are a bunch of movies from the period with Japan as the bogeyman. The peak probably being the backstory of Die Hard.
The key difference this time is the USA was paying for Japan’s defense, had a massive military base, etc. China doesn’t have that problem, so they can counter American demands with their own demands.
Interestingly, look at interviews with Trump from the 80s, he’ll talk about Japan almost with the same language that he uses for China now. The most famous was probably an appearance of Trump on Oprah.
It’s always amazing to see the media of the 80s just shitting on Japan. “Cheap mass market products that never work.” “They’re going to take all the American jobs.”
In Back to the Future 2, McFly is seen as weak for having a job with a Japanese boss and getting fired for it.
Cyberpunk has Japanese decorations and cosmetics because it was invented when Japan was the yellow peril.
At the same time, Japanese-Americans were asking for reparations from the internment camps, charged with the crime of being Japanese and having all their assets sold off without any consent.
Japan was able to help get a start on the next generation of writers with the mass production of anime into Western audiences. Now if someone doesn’t watch anime it’s seen as weird.
Right now China is that “other” nation. I wonder if in 30 more years we’ll look back at it and go “What the fuck were we smoking in hating people we never even had contact with? No Chinese person ever deported me. No Chinese person ever called me slurs.”
That name of the building is the backstory I was referring to. That was a headnod to what was actually happening with Japanese investors moving in and buying up a lot of American real estate. I think that’s when a Japanese group bought the Plaza hotel in NYC for example and when Sony bought a movie studio (renamed it Sony pictures, but I think it was CBS movie division).
Gung Ho, staring Michael Keaton, is another movie example.
For what its worth, CyberPunk 2077 is … an alt history that diverges from our own … at some point in the 1960s I think?
Like… the Soviet Union still exists. In 2077.
Point being: The ‘Japanese megacorps taking over much of the American economy’ fear of our own 1980s is very, very much a big part of the lore/universe.
Pondsmith published the first version of the lore in 1988 as the TTRPG ‘Cyberpunk’, originally set in 2013, and this kept getting added to and expanded with subsequent editions.
Arasaka is… well hopefully without spoiling too much, Arasaka corp is basically run by a Japanese fighter pilot ace who pretty much swore eternal vengeance on America after Japan got nuked and lost the war, and his idea of how to do this includes figuring out how to become immortal, so that he can continue to run a megacorp that ultimately usurps American sovereignty and turns the country into his neo-corpo-feudal subjects.
You can get almost all of that by playing through the Corpo intro character path and actually watching the informative slideshow thing in the elevator and on walls/screens in the … megalobby, so hopefully thats not too spoilery.
Also in Die Hard it is Nakatomi Plaza iirc, Nakatomi being the name of the fictional Japanese corp.
I remember in the 80s several National Lampoon covers that featured this concept. One had a tagline with something like “Welcome to America, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Honda Motor Company” or something like that. And then there is the slightly racist one in this image:
This is all just Japan from the 80s all over again. There are a bunch of movies from the period with Japan as the bogeyman. The peak probably being the backstory of Die Hard.
The key difference this time is the USA was paying for Japan’s defense, had a massive military base, etc. China doesn’t have that problem, so they can counter American demands with their own demands.
Interestingly, look at interviews with Trump from the 80s, he’ll talk about Japan almost with the same language that he uses for China now. The most famous was probably an appearance of Trump on Oprah.
It’s always amazing to see the media of the 80s just shitting on Japan. “Cheap mass market products that never work.” “They’re going to take all the American jobs.”
In Back to the Future 2, McFly is seen as weak for having a job with a Japanese boss and getting fired for it.
Cyberpunk has Japanese decorations and cosmetics because it was invented when Japan was the yellow peril.
At the same time, Japanese-Americans were asking for reparations from the internment camps, charged with the crime of being Japanese and having all their assets sold off without any consent.
Japan was able to help get a start on the next generation of writers with the mass production of anime into Western audiences. Now if someone doesn’t watch anime it’s seen as weird.
Right now China is that “other” nation. I wonder if in 30 more years we’ll look back at it and go “What the fuck were we smoking in hating people we never even had contact with? No Chinese person ever deported me. No Chinese person ever called me slurs.”
Can you elaborate on the Die Hard part? I recall the terrorist being German. The only reference to Japan, that I recall, was the name of the building.
That name of the building is the backstory I was referring to. That was a headnod to what was actually happening with Japanese investors moving in and buying up a lot of American real estate. I think that’s when a Japanese group bought the Plaza hotel in NYC for example and when Sony bought a movie studio (renamed it Sony pictures, but I think it was CBS movie division).
Gung Ho, staring Michael Keaton, is another movie example.
For what its worth, CyberPunk 2077 is … an alt history that diverges from our own … at some point in the 1960s I think?
Like… the Soviet Union still exists. In 2077.
Point being: The ‘Japanese megacorps taking over much of the American economy’ fear of our own 1980s is very, very much a big part of the lore/universe.
Pondsmith published the first version of the lore in 1988 as the TTRPG ‘Cyberpunk’, originally set in 2013, and this kept getting added to and expanded with subsequent editions.
Arasaka is… well hopefully without spoiling too much, Arasaka corp is basically run by a Japanese fighter pilot ace who pretty much swore eternal vengeance on America after Japan got nuked and lost the war, and his idea of how to do this includes figuring out how to become immortal, so that he can continue to run a megacorp that ultimately usurps American sovereignty and turns the country into his neo-corpo-feudal subjects.
You can get almost all of that by playing through the Corpo intro character path and actually watching the informative slideshow thing in the elevator and on walls/screens in the … megalobby, so hopefully thats not too spoilery.
Also in Die Hard it is Nakatomi Plaza iirc, Nakatomi being the name of the fictional Japanese corp.
Anyway woo random trivia.
Thanks for explaining, TIL!
I remember in the 80s several National Lampoon covers that featured this concept. One had a tagline with something like “Welcome to America, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Honda Motor Company” or something like that. And then there is the slightly racist one in this image: