As someone who comes from a different time, my perspective of Japan has always been that of a wealthy nation and certainly not one unable to feed its children.
First, I just want to draw your attention to an older answer of mine
Weird Al's song is from 1984, while many of the pieces I cited are from a few years later, but I think that that was already the emerging image of Japan: the place of the future, a technological rival of the U.S. There was a real sense in some corners that Japan would replace "us".
This is ever so slightly later, but I love this line from the Simpsons' episode "Last Exit to Springfield". The episode is actually about Mr. Burns (the evil boss character) taking on the union at his nuclear power plant, but there's one joke which I think shows how the Japanese (and unions) were seen economically circa 1993. The scene is set in Mr Burns's memory of 1909, when Mr. Burns's grandfather ran an "atom-smashing plant"
Burns' Grandfather: Come on, men! Smash those atoms! You there, turn out your pockets.
[Two goons seize a waifish worker and turn out his pockets]
Burns' Grandfather: Aha - atoms! One, two, three, four... SIX of them! Take him away!
Waif: You can't treat the working man this way! One of these days we'll form a union, and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we'll go too far, and become corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive!
Burns' Grandfather: The Japanese? Those sandal-wearing goldfish tenders? Ha ha! Bosh! Flimshaw!
You can watch the whole scene here.While this fear about Japan replacing the U.S. as the world's dominant economic power in the late 80's was somewhat overstated and only a real cause of anxiety in some more alarmist corners, it certainly shows that at least within a few years of "Eat It" the image of Japan was as a prosperous one, not a starving one.
Before this, the dominant image of Japan was something a little different, but certainly not starving. For many of the post-War years, Japan was seen as a sort of "factory of the world", a little like China is today. In fact, many low priced products that are today "Made in China" were in earlier decades "Made in Japan". I've mentioned this before but I think it's an illustrative example, the equivalent of "dollar stores" in Turkey are called "Japon pazarı", i.e. Japanese markets. Slowly, especially during the 1970's and 80's, the perception of Japan in American and the West shifted from the marker of low quality consumer goods to the makers of high quality consumer goods, especially electronics and cars. Especially in the automotive industry, there was a real fear in the 80's that, as the Simpsons says, "the Japanese would eat us alive." In some cases, this turned to virulent anti-Japanese sentiment, most notoriously the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin (who wasn't even Japanese, he was Chinese-American, though I doubt very many of you will be surprised that violent racists weren't aware of such "subtleties"). While the 80’s were a transitional period from Japan as a producer of cheap products to Japan that might “eat us alive”, neither vision of Japan is associated with things like poverty, famine, or mass hunger.
I tried to quickly look and see if there's some older, perhaps pre-War perception of Japan as starving, but I don't think so. At one point, anthropology did a lot of national culture studies, things like The Arab Mind and so forth. One of the earliest and most influential was Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. I believe it was commissioned and written during World War II in order to "help the war effort", but was published in 1946 and the book didn't have a ton of mainstream crossover in America, but apparently became a genuine hit in Post-War Japan. That book only has brief, not particularly relevant references to things like hunger, famine, and starvation. The examples are almost all about individual responses, rather than collective behaviors (with one exception about how poverty and hunger in the countryside can lead women into prostitution). It's not a major or even minor theme of the book. Likewise, Post-War studies of Japan that I'm familiar with as a sociologist tend to be in what's called "the modernization paradigm" where Japan is seen as the premier example of modernization in the non-West. This was in place at least by the 1950's, with articles like "Religious Aspects of Modernization in Turkey and Japan" by Robert Bellah, but as far as I can tell, this was building on a pre-World War II tradition of seeing Japan as a "modernizer", going back at least to the Russo-Japanese War. If there was a period where it's possible that there was a "starving kids in Japan meme", it's the immediate Post-War period, but I don't have any evidence that there actually was such a meme.
In my Google Search for the phrase "starving kids in Japan", there were just nine results, only one of which really seems to be about the "meme" of starving kids in Japan independent of the weird all song (a reference in a 2006 novel). "Starving kids in Africa" gets 63,000 results, "starving kids in China" gets 135,000 results. "Starving kids in Armenia" gets 7 results, but they are all about the meme of “eat your vegetables, there are starving kids in Armenia”, which seems to have originated in the 1910's and 1920's when Armenia/Eastern Anatolia really was experiencing a massive, devastating famine (which I discuss it a little more in this answer here) and American aid was particularly important in combating that famine. Hungry kids in Armenia was a real public issue, one thing that I think is a good illustrative example I think is this map which appeared in the New York Times in 1918.
As far as I can have been able to tell, the snowclone "Eat your vegetables, there are starving children/people in X" that Weird Al is referencing originated with Armenians in the 1910's, then at some point--possibly only once domestic concerns were less pronounced in the Post-War "affluent society"--the meme shifted to China (this is the reference that my baby-boomer parents apparently grew up) and then, possibly as early as the Biafra War in the 1970's but certainly by the time of the mid-80's Ethiopian famine that Live Aid/"Do They Know It's Christmas" raised money for, it was updated to be come "starving children in Africa". Those are the three major cases of the meme I'm aware of, at least in America (where Weird Al is from).
Why did he say Japan when China makes much more sense? /u/rocketsocks argues "it was a joke" because of course Japan wasn’t poor, which is possible, but I don't think it was. I think it was broadly referencing the snowclone but, honestly, "Japan" just probably fit the rhyme scheme more easily than "China" or "Africa":
How come you're always such a fussy young man
Don't want no Cap'n Crunch, don't want not Raising Bran
Well don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan
So eat it, just eat it.
This of course uses the same rhyme (-an) as the second verse of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", the song that Weird Al is parodying:
You better run you, you better do what you can,
Don't want to see no blood, don't be a macho man,
You want to be tough, better do what you can,
So beat it, but you want to want to be bad
Just beat it, (beat it), beat it (beat it) [...]
I haven’t done an extensive study on it, but Weird Al’s parody writing process seems to heavily rely on starting with the original rhyme and rhyming off that (i.e. beat it becomes eat it). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first verse of Weird Al’s song rhymes the same sound as Jackson’s second verse. For instance, the first verse of Weird Al’s parody “Like a Surgeon” rhymes on the same sound as the first verse of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” (through/two vs. through/you). The second verse of Weird Al’s “I Love Rocky Road”, his single before “Eat It”, even rhymes the exact same words as the second verse of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” (name/same vs. same/name). The single before “I Love Rocky Road” was “Rickey”, which used the same rhyme sound in the first verse (right/night) as the first verse of Toni Basil’s “Mickey” (night/right/goodnight). I don’t even think it’s a coincidence that these version happen early in Weird Al’s songs, like the first or second verse. If I can speculate a little bit, I think using a similar rhyme early in the parody is one way that Weird Al reminds listeners of the original before deviating more from the original’s formula in later verses.
Upon first glance, I found this a bit ridiculous as you mentioned. Perhaps Weird Al was confusing Japan, for other Asian nations. Upon closer inspection however, the war-time conditions during the latter part of the Pacific War (a war of attrition), and the immediate post-war state of Japan was post-apocalyptic. Cyberpunk may draw its dystopic vision largely from this setting and the fact that it is the only country to be nuked. Japan, with an educated and tenacious middle class, recovered quickly, but the immediate post-war conditions were brutal ... and not discussed until more recent decades.
Japan had been perceived as a first-rank country after colonizing Korea and emerging as the victor in the Russo-Japanese War. They had also managed, earlier, to evade colonization through adapting modern, yet quintessentially Japanese forms of government, mass education, technology, military, international diplomacy, etc. The nation had all of the qualities of a first-tier country heading into the Pacific War, including an educated middle-class. Japan was fighting since the 30s (they fought a long war!)
This war of attrition (and no mercy) combined with the devastation of western Tokyo (via incendiary bombing, let alone the infamous two nukes in Nagasaki/Hiroshima) had quite an impact on the population: According to John Dower, "Close to 9 million people were homeless when the emperor told them they had fought and sacrificed in vain. "In every major city," as one American described the scene, "families were crowded into dugouts and flimsy shacks or, in some cases, were trying to sleep in hallways, on subway platforms, or on sidewalks. Employees slept in their offices; teachers, in their schoolrooms"—if, of course, they were fortunate enough to still have offices or schoolrooms to sleep in."
Also according to John Dower, "Japan's postsurrender governments tended to be evasive on such painful matters. All told, probably at least 2.7 million servicemen and civilians died as a result of the war, roughly 3 to 4 percent of the country's 1941 population of around 74 million. Millions more were injured, sick, or seriously malnourished. Approximately 4.5 million servicemen demobilized in 1945 were identified as being wounded or ill, and eventually some three hundred thousand were given disability pensions. The streets of every major city quickly became peopled with demoralized ex-soldiers, war widows, orphans, the homeless and unemployed—most of them preoccupied with simply staving off hunger. "
"Grave of the Fireflies" is an excellent film capturing the conditions.
A family friend, now in her 80s, who was principal at an academy in Tokyo, described this period. She and her sister went with an Aunt into the hills of Nagano. They predominantly ate yams and their skin became slightly tinted. Rice and certain vegetables were not an option as farms had gone into disarray with increasingly younger men enlisting and a general lack of resources-- most going to war efforts.
So, yes, Japan certainly recovered, but this brief history is often overshadowed in attempt to save face.
That being said, Wierd Al may have been, more so, high-lighting fears about Japanese takeover of major industries in the 80s (as someone below mentioned). Or he needed an "exotic" place that rhymed with Raisin Bran, that Americans were familiar with. Or, his image of Japan was about 40 years outdated. Although this era fueled some high profile hate-crimes directed toward Asian-Americans ... Japan was also becoming am increasingly popular place to visit and do business. The West Coast was showing a lot of love for Japan in the 80s ... Portland and Seattle started integrating Japanese language courses into several of the middle schools and high schools. Many Japanese students were studying in the US and overseas (substantially more so than now). Japanese elites were offering major financial gifts as witnessed by the names of new buildings, track and athletic fields, and libraries on private school campuses and on university campuses. Like western notions of China today, Japan incited awe and unease. This sentiment is epitomized in "Blade Runner"-- set in a dystopic future blending humans and possibly lethal androids with backdrops of neon kanji compounds and -kana.
For further info, check out "Embracing Defeat," ~John Dower
If you're a first time visitor, welcome! This thread is trending high right now and getting a lot of attention, but it is important to remember those upvotes represent interest in the question itself, and it can often take time for a good answer to be written. The mission of /r/AskHistorians is to provide users with in-depth and comprehensive responses, and our rules are intended to facilitate that purpose. We remove comments which don't follow them for reasons including unfounded speculation, shallowness, and of course, inaccuracy. Making comments asking about the removed comments simply compounds this issue. So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the rules, as we don't want to have to warn you further.
It is very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come check back on this thread in a few hours. If you think you might forget, send a Private Message to the Remind-Me bot, and it will ensure you don't!
Finally, while we always appreciate feedback, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with META conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!
