Who's afraid of the Japanese dinosaurs?
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
Paul Clarke reviews Rising Sun by Michael Crichton, Arrow Books, £4.99
MICHAEL Crichton is the author of Jurassic Park, and true to form his latest book is now also a movie with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. It's a detective story. It's also an outburst of rampant anti-Japanese hysteria, apparently toned down in the movie.
Central police characters John Connor and Peter Smith (Connery and Snipes in the movie) investigate a murder on the 45th floor on the Nakamoto building in LA.
But an unending campaign of obstruction and non-cooperation from the Japanese corporate types frustrates them.
It's not just that the Japanese have something to hide. They are protected by US politicians, judges and other officials who are in their pockets. That's how powerful Japanese business has become. They're buying 'our' industry, 'our' real estate, even 'our' movie industry.
Heavy-handed
Top politicians who aren't directly in Japan's pay are blind. So wake up America! And if the heavy-handed message isn't quite clear, Crichton adds his own Afterword calling for a national crusade against the yellow peril.
There's a deeper argument. If America is being bought-up by Japan, it's because 'we' have become weak, flabby and lazy. The Japanese are succeeding because they are industrious, clever and determined.
Deficit
And they have a right to buy our industries - weren't they the ones who financed the budget deficit in the Reagan years?
American anti-Japanese outrage isn't new. What gives Chrichton's version its clout is that he puts his finger on real aspects of Japanese business culture - ruthlessness, chronic obedience and respect for authority, fierce company loyalty, overweening sexism and rigid hierarchies. Things you couldn't say about Microsoft or Exxon, right?
Crichton's book is part and parcel of the campaign for trade war and import controls against Japan. This ideology is a danger to American workers who can be made to think that the solution to their problems is to attack the Japanese.
Despite its own protestations that it is not racist, deep down the book really is. They're industrious and clever these Japs, but don't you just hate their cunning and secrecy? And you know why they're like that?
Well they went straight from the farms to high-tech without paying their dues: it's really feudalism they've got out there!
Japan is in the worst recession since world war 2. Clinton's government has already declared economic war. Unemployment is rising and living standards are under attack. The last thing Japanese or American workers need to fight their respective bosses is an upsurge of national chauvinism and racism.