• axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Yeah there was a time in the 1970s if you had a Japanese car in a major urban area you could expect it to get vandalized. There was also that Micheal Crichton novel Rising Sun, and a bunch of Tom Clancy novels are about how a conspiracy of evil Japanese businessmen are gonna take over the world.

    It was a weird moment where Japan was the designated enemy for a while. It really goes to show how easily propagandized the average American is, deciding who their enemies are based on whichever economic desire our capitalists have. Japan eventually lost this fight though, the Plaza accords and the Liberal Party trying to cut taxes ended up in the 1990s recession, which they never quite recovered from. Now Japan has a much less hostile and dominant role in their trade with the west

    • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      That was also when "J-slur Crap" started being used by car people, wasn't it? My boomer parents always assumed stuff that was made in Japan was of poor quality - they are the same about China now, obviously.

    • machiabelly [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Well, afaik the US just bullied them with debt and currency. There was an article posted here ages ago about it