When I was in college in the late 1980s, the US was obsessed with Japan. Earlier in the decade, national newscasts ran footage of people destroying Japanese cars with a sledgehammer to protest Honda’s and Toyota’s success at the expense of Detroit. The most indelible symbol of this concern was the Japanese purchase of Rockefeller Center in 1989, which seemed to cement Japanese superiority in our national consciousness. On a more personal level, the international studies section of the political science department taught a course in th
