That name of the building is the backstory I was referring to. That was a headnod to what was actually happening with Japanese investors moving in and buying up a lot of American real estate. I think that’s when a Japanese group bought the Plaza hotel in NYC for example and when Sony bought a movie studio (renamed it Sony pictures, but I think it was CBS movie division).
Gung Ho, staring Michael Keaton, is another movie example.
This is all just Japan from the 80s all over again. There are a bunch of movies from the period with Japan as the bogeyman. The peak probably being the backstory of Die Hard.
The key difference this time is the USA was paying for Japan’s defense, had a massive military base, etc. China doesn’t have that problem, so they can counter American demands with their own demands.
Interestingly, look at interviews with Trump from the 80s, he’ll talk about Japan almost with the same language that he uses for China now. The most famous was probably an appearance of Trump on Oprah.
This is a big reason why I continue to cringe whenever I hear one of the endless news stories or podcasts about how AI is going to revolutionize our society any day now. It’s clear they are being better with image generation but text ‘thinking’ is way too unreliable to use like human replacement knowledge workers or therapists, etc.