http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_(novel)
Sorry if this is worded confusingly. From this novel, it basically seems like Japan was 'taking over' the U.S. (at least the West coast) through their corporations' policies. If people were worried over this 20 years ago, has it happened already? And was the mainstream U.S. worried about this?
I think there are interesting parallels with the 'yellow peril' scare that people are having over China's increased strength nowadays. I'm under 30 so I wasn't alive during this period.
Yes, fears of Japan economically "taking over" the U.S. At the time Crichton wrote Rising Sun were pretty common, and had a strong racist component. Anti-Japanese sentiment was overall moe common back then, with anyone Japanese being at risk of getting offensive things said to them on December 7th annually. There are some echoes of this in the way China is regarded today, but much worse anti-Japanese feeling. Rent the movie Who Killed Vincent Chin? Chin was a Chinese-American guy in the Detroit area who was killed by 2 out-of-work auto workers who blamed Japan for making them unemployed. (They thought Chin was Japanese). The punishment they received for beating him to death outside a bar, was laughable. At that time, it was popular to have charitable events in which people donate money and in return get to whack a Japanese car with a baseball bat, until the car was destroyed. There was much handwringing about Sony buying a U.S. Movie studio, and Japanese companies buying famous American landmarks like Rockefeller Center. Crichton's book was seeped in those attitudes about the Japanese being too powerful, about them stealing white women, and about cheap knockoff Japanese culture.
No, the "economic yellow peril" did not come about, for two (probably interrelated?) reasons:
The Japanese economy had a huge downturn in the 1990s, called the "Lost Decade" that prevented further investment in the US, and,
Simultaneously, the US economy sprang back from recession during the Clinton Administration. The fact that the tech boom and rise of Silicon Valley came out of that economic upswing was probably the last nail in the coffin, since one of the major narratives of the "economic yellow peril" was that Japan was so much more technologically advanced than the US. The onset of the SUV trend in the US auto industry probably didn't hurt, either.
It's interesting to note that racist fears like the whole "Turning Japanese" phenomenon get really keyed up when the American economy isn't doing well.
It also probably should be noted that Michael Chrichton has a lot of known right-wing biases as a writer, so, yeah, I'd read something like "Rising Sun" with a gigantic bushel of salt even absent knowledge of the racial climate it was written in.
(Edited to fix a typo.)
Yes, that was a popular sentiment in the 80's. As has been mentioned, Japanese products were dominating electronics, and their corporations were making significant investment in US corporations. There were some who even put forward a case for a war with Japan. The Coming War With Japan is an example. I'm citing this book as an example of the times, nothing else.
It's probably good to keep in mind that the USSR was falling apart, and those who need to see an enemy had a very convenient one in Japan at the time. In many ways the attitude was an extension of Cold War thinking. And yeah, it was pretty racist.
Edit: speling
Japan was a focus of protectionist sentiment for much of that time, and Asian countries have been blamed for American job losses on and off since at least the 1880's.
One good measure of that is the campaign promises of whatever Democratic presidential candidate was running at the time; Carter focused on Singapore, but I believe Mondale went for Japan (edit: he did indeed), and Clinton did in the early 90's. The usual formula was a campaign promise to get tough on trade, focusing on automobiles or other manufacturing industries where Democrats had a large base of support, followed occasionally by "anti-dumping" duties if they got elected.