Word: japanizing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Those xenophobic outbursts were not made in 1989 but in 1920, during a time of "yellow peril" panic over Japanese immigration to the U.S. But they are not much different from the alarmed press comments that are now greeting Japan's continuing economic ventures. When the Sony Corp. announced in September that it would buy Columbia Pictures Entertainment, for example, Newsweek called the deal "the biggest advance so far in a Japanese invasion of Hollywood." An entertainment-industry executive quoted by the Washington Post thought the acquisition might be "bad for America," as did an economist who saw "a potential...
...less than subliminal message is that Japan Inc. is buying up America, a point underscored by the ubiquity of headlines portraying Japan -- as distinguished from Japanese individuals or companies -- snapping up American treasures. Similar coverage greeted OPEC in the 1970s, when Arab oil sheiks seemed ready to slap down their petrodollars and pick up America piece by piece. Yet even the most alarmist press scenarios of that era did not envision oil merchants daring to seize the home of the nation's Christmas tree...
Reporting on Japanese investment has been peculiar for several reasons. One is that Japanese corporations are less open to American governance than American companies are to Japanese control. Also, Japan has been less than effusive in welcoming U.S. goods. Then too, no U.S. bureaucracy compares with Japan's Ministry for International Trade and Industry, an entity whose principal mission, some commentators believe, is to plot Japan's economic domination of the world...
Perhaps most troubling is that Japanese direct investment in the U.S. is not only three times America's investment in Japan but is also growing at a remarkable pace. According to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, Japan's direct investment (ownership of at least 10% of any one firm) in the U.S. stood at $53 billion in 1988, a 52% increase since 1987. Even so, Japanese direct investment was only one- fourth that of all Europe, about half that of Great Britain and roughly equal to that of the Netherlands...
Dismaying though the financial trends concerning Japan may be, economics alone cannot explain the current media attitude any more than the immigration levels of the early 1900s could explain the Nippon hysteria of those years. But modern-day Japan is hardly a suitable candidate for press pity. American reporters have a duty to be tough minded in their exploration of Japanese business practices. Yet publications have all too frequently reached for easy headlines and analyses that evoke some of the worse aspects of the yellow- peril era. That is unfortunate. For, to the extent that coverage of Japanese business...