Now That Japanese Businessmen Are Replacing Soviets and Nazis as Villains of American Fiction, Some Observers Are Predicting . . . : Rough Seas Ahead

When Godzilla stomped a platoon of U.S. soldiers in his most recent movie, the Japanese science-fiction monster triggered a transpacific debate: Was he signaling a new round of America bashing, a symbolic lashing out at the United States over rising economic tensions?

Some American pundits thought so, but there are signs that Tokyo is still second best when it comes to cultural warfare. As a tidal wave of anti-Japanese sentiment gathers in this country, the engines of American fiction--which once turned Nazi spies and Soviet agents into archetypal enemies--are now casting Japanese businessmen in the same sinister role.

The timing couldn’t be more appropriate. Just as high-ranking Japanese officials have begun trashing the morale, energy and intelligence of American workers, U.S. novelists are flinging poison pens back at Japan, reflecting a growing mood of anger and resentment here.

Like the first hesitant firecrackers on the Fourth of July, a handful of new Japan-focused novels are popping out of cartons in U.S. bookstores--and more are on the way. The initial products won’t do much to ease East-West friction and could even fuel paranoia on both sides of the Pacific Rim.

“I’d expect to see an increasing number of novels centered around the hostilities between the Japanese and our industrial concerns,” says John Baker, editor of Publishers Weekly. “They’re filling a void, because the villains we’ve seen over the past 30 years simply won’t do anymore. Smart novelists simply have to look for new settings and new potential villains.”

Experts are sharply divided over what the appearance of these books means. Some say that any focus on Japan by American fiction is positive because U.S. readers are generally ignorant about their economic rival. Yet others fear that the hostile tone of some novels could spread misconceptions--and outright racism.

This spring, books such as “Rising Sun” by Michael Crichton (Knopf), “Gate of the Tigers” by Henry Meigs (Viking) and “The War in 2020” by Ralph Peters (Pocketbooks) cast the United States and Japan as enemies, locked in a battle for supremacy. Although the books differ greatly, their common message is that the two countries have more than an ocean dividing them.

In one sense, it’s nothing new. American readers have a history of devouring commercial fiction that casts Japanese or other Asians as evil, inscrutable characters. The Fu Manchu novels, the Mr. Moto mysteries and other pulp fiction before World War II reflected an underlying fear among white Americans of Asians with mysterious powers, all seeking control over this country.

But the fiction battlefield changed as world events unfolded, according to John Dower, a historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has written extensively about cultural tensions between Japan and America. What’s happening now, he says, is not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of four or five centuries of Western hegemony.

“We’ve always feared the ‘yellow peril’ because those ‘mysterious’ Asians had vast numbers of people and ‘secrets’ which we didn’t know about,” says Dower. “But we’ve always had superior science and technology. Now, to our shock, they’ve got that too, and they’re whipping us in critical sectors.”

The result, Dower says, is an outpouring of books that reflect these concerns. In recent years, an increasing number of nonfiction works have focused on the rivalry. Books such as “Trading Places” by Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., “Agents of Influence” by Pat Choate and “More Like Us” by James Fallows have taken a critical look at Japan’s aggressive economic policies and America’s laggard response.

Now it’s the novelists’ turn.

In “The War in 2020,” Peters, a former U.S. Army foreign area officer, describes an apocalyptic, high-tech battle between the Pacific Rim rivals over the Central Asian remnants of the former Soviet Union. At the outset, an economically crippled United States cannot combat a fearsome new arsenal of sophisticated Japanese weaponry and faces destruction.

“Militarily,” Peters writes, “no one (in Tokyo) believed that the United States could compete with Japanese technology. No, the United States had been taught a good lesson.” In the coming war for control of Central Asia, “Tokyo was obsessed with control . . . the need to be the master.”

In an afterword, the author voices the hope that his book is not just another exercise in trendy Japan bashing. But he concedes that “this is a shamelessly American book” and that its anti-Japanese passages are “takeoffs on a current American nightmare.”

Author Meigs adopts a more diplomatic tone in “Gate of the Tigers,” focusing on an espionage war over trade secrets between the United States and Japan. Although the novel features loathsome Japanese characters--and an American spy master who is harshly anti-Japanese--the writer’s goal is to show the complexities of the Japanese mind and to promote better understanding.

At one point, the American speculates on the reasons for Japan’s success:

“The seed was planted at birth and flowered with adulthood. The sickness was called giri ninjo , a web of obligation which every responsible Japanese assumed as duty--but only to one of his own race. It explained why Japanese had so little violent crime in their own cities yet during war could massacre thousands of Chinese civilians; why they never crossed streets against the light and rarely broke the most common local laws, yet used every trick to invade overseas markets.”

Meigs’ thriller begins with the murder of a Southern California blonde in Tokyo and focuses on her role in an economic plot by the United States against Japan. The author, who uses a pseudonym and who has lived in the Far East for 35 years, says in an interview: “I’ve tried to show both sides of the Japanese mask . . . those forces pushing for a more nationalistic world view and those in favor of freer trade and more openness with the United States.”

A much tougher view of Japan surfaces in Crichton’s “Rising Sun,” which publishing industry observers expect to be a huge success. The best-selling author of “Jurassic Park” and “The Andromeda Strain” is bound to stir controversy with his mainstream thriller about Japanese efforts to infiltrate the U.S. economy and cripple American industry.

Coincidentally, “Rising Sun” also pivots on the murder of a Southern California blonde. But this time the setting is Los Angeles, and Crichton describes a beleaguered America losing control of its economy.

In this fictional account, the murder takes place in the city’s tallest high-rise (owned by the Japanese), whose construction was expedited by contributions to City Council members (allegedly bought off by the Japanese), who are, in turn, manipulated by the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets (allegedly infiltrated by the Japanese).

Midway through the book, security officer John Connor interviews a U.S. senator to discover what he knows about the crime. The two reflect on the increasingly high-stakes economic warfare between America and Japan:

“You know, we have to be careful. We are at war with Japan.” He (the senator) smiled wryly. “Loose lips sink ships.”

“Yes, Connor said. “And remember Pearl Harbor.”

“Christ, that too.” He shook his head. He dropped his voice, becoming one of the boys. “You know, I have colleagues who say sooner or later we’re going to have to drop another bomb. They think it’ll come to that.” He smiled. “But I don’t feel that way. Usually.”

In an afterword, Crichton says America should put its own house in order and not blame Japan. But he also notes that the Japanese built their economy by inviting thousands of Western experts to visit--then sent them home.

“We would do well to take the same approach,” he writes. “The Japanese are not our saviors. They are our competitors. We should not forget it.”

What kind of impact will these novels have?

To Fallows, the Washington editor of the Atlantic magazine and an expert on U.S.-Japanese relations, the emergence of such fiction is inevitable and healthy--as long as the portrayals of Japan do not become caricatured or racist. Americans need to know more about Japan, and it’s natural that economic tensions would be reflected in commercial fiction, he says.

A book such as Crichton’s may be perceived as hostile to Japan, Fallows notes, but that’s because it faces up to unpleasant economic truths and takes the stance that the American economy is worth defending against a foreign threat.

“We (America and Japan) have serious conflicts, and we need to resolve them,” Fallows says. “To the extent that fiction reveals them, it’s having a useful effect. That’s the social function of fiction, in the best sense.”

But others take a dim view, suggesting that America is gearing up for another round of mass-market Japan bashing--one that could rival the ugly tensions that swept the country before and during World War II.

Norma Field, a Japanese-American author who wrote “In the Realm of a Dying Emperor” (Pantheon) about Japan, says: “It’s inescapable that there’s a racist element to this. America’s economic problems are abstract and hard for all of us to understand, and that’s where the need for a scapegoat comes in.”

The U.S. economy has also been challenged by Western Europe, yet the media rarely criticize those nations as it does Japan, she says.

“Although (white) Americans are not necessarily racist, anybody needing to blame difficulties on someone else will invariably choose people who look different,” adds Field, who teaches East Asian languages and literature at the University of Chicago.

Other critics believe the anti-Japanese tone of recent books may reflect a deeper unease about Asians living in America. David Mura, a Japanese-American poet and author, says Anglos are angered by the success of Asian-Americans at U.S. universities and feel threatened.

“When Asians succeed, there’s resentment,” he says. “What’s behind this racism is not a perception of what people are like, but an unwillingness to share power. . . . It appeals to the worst elements of the American psyche.”

Whatever the cause, there are more Japan-focused books on the way. The spring preview issue of Publishers Weekly was filled with such titles, ranging from tomes on traditional poetry and gardening to those bristling with anger over the U.S.-Japanese economic relationship.

It’s only the beginning of a publishing tsunami , predicts Robert Kearns, who recently wrote “Zaibatsu America: How Japanese Firms are Colonizing Vital U.S. Industries.” Soon, he says, Japan-oriented fiction may dominate the field.

“It’s all about power and money, and you can throw some sex in too,” Kearns contends. “There may be some irrational overtones to this interest, some prejudice, and that’s wrong. But it will definitely sell books.”