• Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    It’s always amazing to see the media of the 80s just shitting on Japan. “Cheap mass market products that never work.” “They’re going to take all the American jobs.”

    In Back to the Future 2, McFly is seen as weak for having a job with a Japanese boss and getting fired for it.

    Cyberpunk has Japanese decorations and cosmetics because it was invented when Japan was the yellow peril.

    At the same time, Japanese-Americans were asking for reparations from the internment camps, charged with the crime of being Japanese and having all their assets sold off without any consent.

    Japan was able to help get a start on the next generation of writers with the mass production of anime into Western audiences. Now if someone doesn’t watch anime it’s seen as weird.

    Right now China is that “other” nation. I wonder if in 30 more years we’ll look back at it and go “What the fuck were we smoking in hating people we never even had contact with? No Chinese person ever deported me. No Chinese person ever called me slurs.”