The eighties was when Japan had really transitioned from producing cheap consumer goods for the US market to producing a lot of high-tech electronics and cars, with the low-tech consumer goods instead being manufactured further down the supply chain. There was a lot of fear-mongering over the threat that Japan's tech industry posed to American tech dominance. I don't know that the CIA was behind that, though, since at least the State Department policy since the 1950s had been to build up Japan as a more privileged client state that would serve as a hub for what was basically a recreation of the old Imperial Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere as an arm of American hegemony and imperial wealth extraction in the Pacific and Asia; Japan's rising prominence and utility to the US market was a problem for some individual capitalists and some sectors of American labor aristocracy, but was actively part of American geopolitical strategy and overall very beneficial to American capitalism (and the same can be said of China opening as a market which broke the stagnation and decay that otherwise could have been the ruin of American capitalism, despite the damage it did to some American capitalists and some sectors of American labor aristocracy).
Oh God you reminded me there was an actual panic in the US over headlight shapes going from round to angular because of the influence of Japanese auto manufacturing
Basically there was a ton of fear mongering between the 70s-90s that Japan would overtake the US technologically, as heavy industry in the USA was suffering and Japan was making major inroads into the US economy through car companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi, as well as in electronics with Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba. A lot of Orientalism and "super-humanising" was going on at the time. Practically every second movie basically had American characters working hesitantly under Japanese superiors. I mean Blade Runner is the most obvious example of this on the movie side, it's pretty much Los Angeles under complete Japanese control.
The whole thing peaked in the late 80s when it was revealed that Toshiba sold industrial milling equipment to the Soviet Union, which was a violation of some bs sanction. With the fall of the USSR in the 90s and the rise of the early internet it died down as the media stopped pushing the narratives and the US could present itself as a tech leader with the birth of the internet.
The US absolutely dominates the software sector and the internet being a US invention is one of they key reasons for that.
The PR switched because the Japanese economy crashed (I suspect the US forced it through threat of hard power) and Japan has had demographic problems preventing it from growing in the traditional line chart way again. The CPC is acutely aware they have the same demographic crisis coming soon and is doing everything they can to avoid it with little success especially since the one child policy has left a huge generational gap and a cultural expectation of single child households in the current child rearing generation. If China can overcome this crisis, they become the mono power of the world, but if they can’t they become one of the major powers in a multipolar world.
Stuck in that 1980s CIA propaganda loop
Wait, that was still a thing in the eighties?
The eighties was when Japan had really transitioned from producing cheap consumer goods for the US market to producing a lot of high-tech electronics and cars, with the low-tech consumer goods instead being manufactured further down the supply chain. There was a lot of fear-mongering over the threat that Japan's tech industry posed to American tech dominance. I don't know that the CIA was behind that, though, since at least the State Department policy since the 1950s had been to build up Japan as a more privileged client state that would serve as a hub for what was basically a recreation of the old Imperial Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere as an arm of American hegemony and imperial wealth extraction in the Pacific and Asia; Japan's rising prominence and utility to the US market was a problem for some individual capitalists and some sectors of American labor aristocracy, but was actively part of American geopolitical strategy and overall very beneficial to American capitalism (and the same can be said of China opening as a market which broke the stagnation and decay that otherwise could have been the ruin of American capitalism, despite the damage it did to some American capitalists and some sectors of American labor aristocracy).
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Oh God you reminded me there was an actual panic in the US over headlight shapes going from round to angular because of the influence of Japanese auto manufacturing
This is a good write up, makes my comment look really basic lol
Might not have been official US policy, but didn't stop racists from murdering Vincent Chin because they thought he was Japanese.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Vincent_Chin
Basically there was a ton of fear mongering between the 70s-90s that Japan would overtake the US technologically, as heavy industry in the USA was suffering and Japan was making major inroads into the US economy through car companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi, as well as in electronics with Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba. A lot of Orientalism and "super-humanising" was going on at the time. Practically every second movie basically had American characters working hesitantly under Japanese superiors. I mean Blade Runner is the most obvious example of this on the movie side, it's pretty much Los Angeles under complete Japanese control.
Oh yeah, of course. Slipped my mind.
The whole thing peaked in the late 80s when it was revealed that Toshiba sold industrial milling equipment to the Soviet Union, which was a violation of some bs sanction. With the fall of the USSR in the 90s and the rise of the early internet it died down as the media stopped pushing the narratives and the US could present itself as a tech leader with the birth of the internet.
The US absolutely dominates the software sector and the internet being a US invention is one of they key reasons for that. The PR switched because the Japanese economy crashed (I suspect the US forced it through threat of hard power) and Japan has had demographic problems preventing it from growing in the traditional line chart way again. The CPC is acutely aware they have the same demographic crisis coming soon and is doing everything they can to avoid it with little success especially since the one child policy has left a huge generational gap and a cultural expectation of single child households in the current child rearing generation. If China can overcome this crisis, they become the mono power of the world, but if they can’t they become one of the major powers in a multipolar world.
I remember even in the 90s' my parents complaining about the Japanese taking over.
Japan was going through an economic and technology boom during the 80s' and 90s'
It seems like whenever any nonwhite country starts doing better then America, people see it as a threat.
Why do you think Blade Runner has that weird USA-Japan culture mashup?
A couple other movies that take place in the future also have this as well though the names slip my mind.
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