Okay so the US doesn't like something about how Japan's economy was doing in the 90s, what was the beef? I know Japan was manufacturing a ton of stuff, but I thought the US wanted consumer products manufactured overseas.
So they're not happy with this, so they do a run on Japan's currency. What does this mean? Like how do they do it?
The run on the currency causes the value of the Yen to go up. This is bad for some reason, even though your currency is worth more? Like can't you get more for a Yen? But clearly it's bad because it destroyed their economy, I'd like to understand why or how.
Because right now the best I was able to explain it to someone was "America did some money magic bullshit and destroyed Japan's economy", but I would like to be able to answer some follow up questions.
The other poster answered the first part so we're good on that. Now, on to your second question.
You're right in that inflation is when the purchasing power of money is lessened. Japan's yen appreciation didn't directly cause inflation or the asset bubble; what happened is the yen being worth more meant exports from Japan starting falling because Japanese goods were now more expensive for the rest of the world to buy. This meant factories started to have to lay off workers, business slowed down, and Japan's economy began tipping into a recession. As a result the Japanese government turned on the spigot for mass amounts of stimulus and easy money to try and stop Japan from falling into recession. This worked, but the stimulus started overheating the economy to the point where the stock market and real estate market were vastly overvalued, everybody was way overconfident, and things ran too hot until they all burst about 6 years later in 1991. Incidentally this is like exactly what happened after covid in the United States; the Fed keeps easy money going, everybody gets overconfident, asset prices of everything swell to insane figures, then it all explodes.