Seems everything I buy these days
Has got a foreign name
From the kind of car I drive
To my video game
Has got a foreign name
From the kind of car I drive
To my video game
—"American Made", Oak Ridge Boys
The Cold War is over, and Japan won.
— Paul Tsongas, during his 1992 Presidential campaign
"It is always about the Japs! In ten years time they're going to have us by...whatever part of our anatomy they pick. There's going to be no electronics industry anywhere in the world but theirs."
— Peter Brock , The Stone Tape (1972)
Remember the scene in the movie where the Ghostbusters used the NES Advantage to control the Statue of Liberty?... One of the most famous icons of the United States being controlled by a Nintendo controller. Nintendo ruled the fucking world.
Both Britain and Japan colonized me. Britain did it both genetically, as a white American dude, and through Doctor Who...Japan, on the other hand, comes through Nintendo. To identify as being part of the Nintendo Generation is to admit to colonization.
To the question "What will the United States do without The Enemy?" — a pretty daring question from those whose livelihood depends on the demonising of Russia and China — I said that, thanks to television, a new demon can be quickly installed… the Arabs are too numerous (and have too much oil), while the Japanese will simply order us to stop it; should we disobey them, they will buy the networks and show us many hours of the soothing tea ceremony.
—Gore Vidal, "Cue the Green God, Ted"
Japan has run its economy pretty much the same way we do, except with one crucial difference: Instead of using the military system, the way they've worked their public subsidies in Japan is that they have a government ministry, M.I.T.I., which sits down with the big corporations and conglomerates and banking firms, and plans their economic system for the next couple years… Well, that's more efficient. And since Japan is a very disciplined and obedient society culturally, the population there just does what they tell them, and nobody ever asks any question about it… What we do is pour our money into the Pentagon, which then tries to work out a way to use a laser to shoot down a missile ten thousand miles away – and if they can work that out, then they hope there'll be some commercial spin-offs that come out of it all.
—Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power
"Face it. The Japanese will own most of this country by the end of the 90's."
—Harold Carnes, American Psycho
"The Imperial war machine has been unleashed. Do not struggle against what is inevitable. All who stand in the way of our divine destiny will be swept away by the march of history. You will bow before us, or you will cease to exist."
