Modified from an earlier answer of mine

The 1994 novel Debt of Honor was on the tail-end of particularly acute era of Japan-bashing in American public life. The bubble-years of Japan's economic growth coupled with the decline in American manufacturing was a combustible combination in which a number of American commentators claimed that Japan was taking advantage of American security to push its own economic advantage. There were particularly strong notions on American op-ed pages that Japan's tariffs were unfair and designed to exclude American-made products from reaching Japan. Some of this was hyperbole, but Washington did try to enact various limitations on Japanese-produced goods between the 1980s and mid-1990s. For example, President Clinton threatened a 100% tariff on imported Japanese luxury vehicles in May 1995, a threat that proved ephemeral as the Japanese economic bubble burst and the imbalance of Japanese trade seemed less threatening. But Debt of Honor was somewhat topical given the zeitgeist of the times.

One of the ways to gauge the fraught nature of US-Japanese relations is to examine the American reactions to the 1989 book The Japan That Can Say No. This bestseller in Japan is in a way two books, with one half written by Sony founder Morita Akio and the other by a rather controversial Japanese politician and nationalist Ishihara Shintaro. The book itself is the product of its time, before the Japanese bubble collapsed and at the end phases of the Cold War. Morita's contribution to the book is somewhat boilerplate for a prominent businessman turned writer in that it asserted that Japan's national business model is superior to US manufacturing and that Japanese wealth should be used responsibly to foster development in the Third World. Ishihara's segments were far more inflammatory and argued that Japan's future was no longer as America's "Yes Man," but she should instead parlay her economic dominance to make Japan a new superpower. Ishihara further asserted such hegemony would be beneficial to the world, given that former Japanese colonies like Korea were much better off than Western ones like the Philippines or Indonesia and that American racism was endemic and the atomic bombs were used on Japan because it was an Asian nation.

Given Japan's economic success in the late 1980s and the fact that the book was a bestseller in Japan, these sentiments were bound to be noticed by American politicians and public intellectuals. Not surprisingly, the main focus of ire about the book tended to focus upon the parts authored by Ishihara, not Morita. Representative Mel Levine of California had 74 pages of the book translated and distributed in August 1989. Associated Press reports from the time noted that various translations of the book were making their way into various defense and state department circles. One aspect of the book that received attention at the time was Ishihara's assertion that Japan should act as a neutral partner in global affairs and should make deals with the Soviets if it were in Japan's national interests. This was troubling to a number of American policymakers in light of the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal of 1987 when the Japanese firm Toshiba had exported advanced machine tooling equipment to the USSR which could be used to make submarine propellers much quieter. Michael Lewis's negative review of the officially sanctioned translation of The Japan That Can Say No in the Los Angeles Times noted that events like the Toshiba affair opened up Ishihara to charges of rank hypocrisy:

Ishihara restates his sensational claims that since Japanese semiconductors make for more accurate nuclear missiles, Japan can undermine American security by redirecting the semiconductors to the Soviet Union. He makes this point at least four times in 148 pages, with a Tom Clancy-like relish for the details of weapons technology. Yet in the same breath he complains that America doesn't place sufficient trust in its Japanese ally. For example, he asserts, the U.S. Navy would rather Britain than Japan help it track Soviet submarines. I wonder why. Ishihara wants to mock the lingering American suspicion of a nation with a history of surprise attacks at the same time he helps to nurture it.

For his part, Morita seemed rather embarrassed by the whole affair and his involvement in authorship of the book. In an 2 October 1989 press conference in Tokyo, Morita claimed:

I now regret my association with this project because it has caused so much confusion. I don't feel U.S. readers understand that my opinions are separate from Ishihara's. My essays express my opinions and his essays express his opinions.

Morita would subsequently refuse to have his sections of the book translated in the official US translation and he would continually distance himself from Ishihara. The US press tended to treat Morita's involvement in the book as a black mark on his reputation as a businessman. The syndicated business columnist James Flanigan would contend that there was a "poignant irony" that a man whose business was a symbol of international trade was now connected to such a virulently nationalist screed:

The truth, it seems clear, is that the Sony chairman let crankiness displace judgment - and his company failed to stop him.

If a major U.S. executive, such as John Akers of IBM or Roger Smith of General Motors, were to co-author a book with a race-baiting, nationalist politician like Ishihara, it's a good bet their companies would soon be announcing their early retirement and denying any connection with the book. But Morita and his family own 8 percent of Sony - a stake worth $1.6 billion - so he continues as its chairman.

The financial columnist Hobart Rowan was more kind to Morita in a 9 November 1989 Washington Post editorial. Rowan noted that by connecting himself to a right-wing crank, Morita had ensured that his solid advice for US manufacturing would be ignored while encouraging counter-productive Japan-bashing. Rowan observed:

For the most part, Morita restates in the book his well-known view that America is forgetting how to produce quality merchandise. Instead, it spends time "shuffling paper" through mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and on other financial distractions.

He adds: "There are few things in the United States that Japanese want to buy, but there are a lot of things in Japan that Americans want to buy. This is at the root of the trade imbalance. The problem arises in that American politicians fail to understand this simple fact."

That's plain talk that goes down hard for some Americans. One could argue that Japanese consumers would buy more American products if Japan took down its barriers to imports. But would American manufacturers be prepared?

Rowan's guarded praise for Morita's ideas mirrored the other American commentators who found merit in the book; if they were to praise the book, they praised Morita's emphasis upon reform of manufacturing and trade. Lewis lamented the fact the the official US edition lacked Morita's contribution, leaving Ishihara to fill it with more chaff. The columnist William Pfaff argued in syndicated column, "Our Japanese Critics Are Right About Us," that Morita's warnings about complacent US manufacturing and industry were worth heeding:

Morita and Ishihara have merely said this to their fellow Japanese because this decline of American authority and seriousness makes a fundamental change in Japan's situation. There is nothing wrong in Japanese saying this to their countrymen. It is their duty to do so, if they believe what they say to be true, and if they try to be responsible in what they say.

Equally, it is the duty of Americans to face facts. We may be beginning to do so. But we have altered our political system during the last 40 years in ways that make it extremely difficult to carry out fundamental change and reform. The seeming paralysis of the American system, private as well as public, confronted with today's deficits, poverty, public dilapidation, deindustrialization and our manifest need for new investment in infrastructure, education and industrial research, is very sinister. The system is not working. If we have to be told the truth by the Japanese, so be it.

Pfaff's emphasis upon American decline reflects the larger cultural impact of The Japan That Can Say No inside the US. Although neither Ishihara nor Morita created the archetype of a ruthless and perfidious economic competitor taking advantage of American laziness, the book did give this trope more focus. Levine's distribution of the pirated book took place during tense negotiations for the FSX program in which Japan would gain access to sensitive defense information to manufacture its own version of the F-16, the F-2.