Wasn’t the Japan stuff in 80s scifi primarily fear that their economy would overtake the US and Europe? It was the postwar economic miracle period for Japan.
I’d argue that the fear and orientalism are still here, just pointed at China instead of Japan.
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
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.
Now people buy the absolute cheapest stuff the can find on wish and call it chineseium when their $0.40 wrench lasts exactly as long as you’d think a $0.40 wrench would
People here are probably too young to remember, but by the late 1980s Nikkei 225 index had risen by more than 900% over 15 years, outperforming Nasdaq and S&P and every other market by miles.
Japan’s invasion of Hollywood, with Sony acquiring Columbia Pictures. Mitsubishi bought the Rockefeller Center. Japanese investors were buying up US properties left and right. For your ordinary Americans, it had looked like Japan would own America by the end of the century.
Japan already overtook US in worldwide semiconductor sales in the mid-1980s, with rumors of Fairchild, IBM and even Intel itself being acquired by Japanese firms. An internal Intel memo predicting that “Silicon Valley might become a wasteland” as it laid off 30% of its workers.
Then… it all came crashing down by Christmas day of 1989. The extraordinary growth of Japanese economy had been fueled by cheap credit, leading to asset price bubble that eventually bursted. Japan never recovered from that.
The US would also go on the experience a similar fate: with the financial deregulation of the Clinton era (started during Reagan) pumping out cheap credit that fueled the 1990s growth, everyone thought they would get richer simply by endlessly borrowing from the banks and going all in into real estate. This ultimately precipitated in the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, and the global financial crisis of 2009. In many ways the US still hasn’t recovered from that crash.
Cheap credit was certainly a factor but I don’t think you can ignore the effect of the Plaza Accords, the forced appreciation of the Yen, and the forced transfer of semi-conductor technology from Toshiba to Intel and other US compamies.
Japan is not a fully independent state and was/is under effective US military occupation. That’s why they had to knuckle under and give the Americans what they wanted but when America tried the same against China, China told them to go eat shit.
Fun side story: at the height of the bubble, one property valuer estimated the land that the Imperial Palace in Tokyo sat on was worth more than all the real estate in California.
Definitely, my point is that it could never have lasted in any case. Junk mortgages are junk mortgages, just like the US subprime housing bubble - you cannot fuel the bubble indefinitely, it has to come crashing down at some point.
As I understand it part of the whole basis for Japan’s astronomical growth in the post war period was the deliberate setting of the value if the yen below its actual value.
Nah, that’s what the Yankoids what you to think because nobody could possibly beat America unless they were cheating. The Americans have been accusing China of the same thing as well.
In reality, nobody is going to buy a Japanese product if its not a good product. Japan had a strong centralized industrial policy where the state directed and financed the creation of key industrial sectors like automobiles and electronics. This goes against American free market ideology, which is why America is so committed to the myth of Japanese currency manipulation.
Well that, and a big does of “those yellows can only be beating us if they’re cheating” racism.
No as i understand it the setting of the yen at a favorable interest rate was part of the process if recapitalizing the Japanese economy after the war. It was a deliberate move to undercut the Japanese communist party.
Wasn’t the Japan stuff in 80s scifi primarily fear that their economy would overtake the US and Europe? It was the postwar economic miracle period for Japan.
I’d argue that the fear and orientalism are still here, just pointed at China instead of Japan.
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
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.
Now people buy the absolute cheapest stuff the can find on wish and call it chineseium when their $0.40 wrench lasts exactly as long as you’d think a $0.40 wrench would
My $0.40 wrench broke! They’re trying to destroy the west
Well, afaik the US just bullied them with debt and currency. There was an article posted here ages ago about it
People here are probably too young to remember, but by the late 1980s Nikkei 225 index had risen by more than 900% over 15 years, outperforming Nasdaq and S&P and every other market by miles.
Japan’s invasion of Hollywood, with Sony acquiring Columbia Pictures. Mitsubishi bought the Rockefeller Center. Japanese investors were buying up US properties left and right. For your ordinary Americans, it had looked like Japan would own America by the end of the century.
Japan already overtook US in worldwide semiconductor sales in the mid-1980s, with rumors of Fairchild, IBM and even Intel itself being acquired by Japanese firms. An internal Intel memo predicting that “Silicon Valley might become a wasteland” as it laid off 30% of its workers.
Then… it all came crashing down by Christmas day of 1989. The extraordinary growth of Japanese economy had been fueled by cheap credit, leading to asset price bubble that eventually bursted. Japan never recovered from that.
The US would also go on the experience a similar fate: with the financial deregulation of the Clinton era (started during Reagan) pumping out cheap credit that fueled the 1990s growth, everyone thought they would get richer simply by endlessly borrowing from the banks and going all in into real estate. This ultimately precipitated in the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, and the global financial crisis of 2009. In many ways the US still hasn’t recovered from that crash.
Cheap credit was certainly a factor but I don’t think you can ignore the effect of the Plaza Accords, the forced appreciation of the Yen, and the forced transfer of semi-conductor technology from Toshiba to Intel and other US compamies.
Japan is not a fully independent state and was/is under effective US military occupation. That’s why they had to knuckle under and give the Americans what they wanted but when America tried the same against China, China told them to go eat shit.
Fun side story: at the height of the bubble, one property valuer estimated the land that the Imperial Palace in Tokyo sat on was worth more than all the real estate in California.
Definitely, my point is that it could never have lasted in any case. Junk mortgages are junk mortgages, just like the US subprime housing bubble - you cannot fuel the bubble indefinitely, it has to come crashing down at some point.
As I understand it part of the whole basis for Japan’s astronomical growth in the post war period was the deliberate setting of the value if the yen below its actual value.
Nah, that’s what the Yankoids what you to think because nobody could possibly beat America unless they were cheating. The Americans have been accusing China of the same thing as well.
In reality, nobody is going to buy a Japanese product if its not a good product. Japan had a strong centralized industrial policy where the state directed and financed the creation of key industrial sectors like automobiles and electronics. This goes against American free market ideology, which is why America is so committed to the myth of Japanese currency manipulation.
Well that, and a big does of “those yellows can only be beating us if they’re cheating” racism.
No as i understand it the setting of the yen at a favorable interest rate was part of the process if recapitalizing the Japanese economy after the war. It was a deliberate move to undercut the Japanese communist party.
Rent for offices in Ginza hit 200k USD per square meter at points lol
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Dragon Ball has like half of that lol
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