Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:02:12.834Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anatomy of a Scare: Yellow Peril Politics in America, 1980–1993

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

M. J. HEALE
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article maps the rise and dissemination of Yellow Peril fears in the United States between about 1980 and 1993 and seeks to explain them. Anti-communism had been an animating force in Ronald Reagan's career, but shortly after he left office an opinion poll revealed that Japan had replaced the Soviet Union as the greatest perceived threat to the US. While economic anxieties contributed to the resurgence of Yellow Peril sentiments, this article emphasizes the vital parts played by other phenomena, notably Reagan's economic policies, partisan politics, a media war, and the ending of the Cold War. The Yellow Peril scare was widely criticized, and by the early 1990s the controversy had invaded popular culture. Ronald Reagan is frequently applauded for restoring American self-confidence after the “malaise” of the Carter years, but the apprehensions discussed here suggest that he enjoyed only limited success in this respect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , April 2009 , pp. 19 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘Buying into a Good Thing,” National Review, 14 Oct. 1988; David B. Wilson, “Globe Columnists Pick the Highs and the Lows of the Decade,” Boston Globe, 28 Dec. 1989, 69; “Voters Dissatisfied with Both Parties,” Boston Globe, 19 Sept. 1990, 15; “Racial Violence against Asian Americans,” Harvard Law Review, 106 (June 1993), 1927–28.

2 For various discussions of the belief in US vulnerability see e.g. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York: Knopf, 1964); M. J. Heale, American Anticommunism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Thompson, John A., “The Exaggeration of American Vulnerability,” Diplomatic History, 16 (Winter 1992), 23–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Lyman, Stanford M., “The ‘Yellow Peril’ Mystique: Origins and Vicissitudes of a Racial Discourse,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 13, 4 (2000), 683–747CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horne, Gerald, “Race from Power: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of ‘White Supremacy’,” Diplomatic History, 23 (Summer 1999), 437–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 13, 310.

4 On race and foreign policy see e.g. Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); and Horne.

5 Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years (New York: Norton, 1991), 120, n.

6 Ezra F. Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); idem, Japan as Number One Revisited (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1986); idem, “Disappointed,” New York Review of Books, 3 April 1980.

7 Bruce Cumings, “The Conjurings of Japan,” The Nation, 13 Feb. 1982, 181; Martin Schram, “Big Fritz,” Washington Post, 7 Oct. 1982, A1.

8 Jay Mathews, “Economic Invasion by Japan Revives Worry about Racism,” Washington Post, 14 May 1982, A26; Tom Shales, “Shootout at Hi-Tech Corral,” Washington Post, 14 Aug. 1982, C1; Schram; Frank H. Wu, “The Fall-Out from Japan-Bashing,” Washington Post, 3 Feb. 1992, A11.

9 During Reagan's first term Japanese investors, public and private, purchased about 35 percent of the debt sold by the US Treasury: Michael Schaller, Altered States: The United States and Japan since the Occupation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 254–55. Good on the deficit is John Killick, “The External Trade of the USA,” in Europa Publications, The USA and Canada, 1990 (1989), 77–83.

10 Clyde V. Prestowitz, Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 16, 18; Chalmers Johnson, “Japanese ‘Capitalism’ Revisited,” JPRI Occasional Paper No. 22 (Aug. 2001), available at www.jpri.org/publications/occasionalpapers/op22.html; Alan Murray and Ellen Hume, “Reagan's Fiscal Policy May Blight the future Despite Current Gains,” Wall Street Journal, 17 Nov. 1987, 1, 32; Martin Tolchin and Susan Tolchin, Buying into America: How Foreign Money Is Changing the Face of Our Nation (New York: Times Books, 1988), 216; Norman Jonas, “Can America Compete?” International BusinessWeek, 27 April 1987, 42.

11 Richard Alm, “Trade War with Japan?”, U.S. News and World Report, 15 April 1985, 22; Gerald L. Curtis, “U.S. Policy toward Japan from Nixon to Clinton,” in idem, ed., New Perspectives on U.S.–Japan Relations (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2000), 23; George Russell, “Trade Face-off,” Time, 13 April 1987, 17; Prestowitz, 18.

12 Hobart Rowen, “A Protectionist Tide,” Washington Post, 29 March 1984, A21; Jack A. Seamonds, “A Resurgent Auto Industry – And More to Come,” US News & World Report, 2 April 1984. On the role of party politics in generating McCarthyism see e.g. Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate, 2nd edn (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987); and M. J. Heale, McCarthy's Americans: Red Scare Politics in State and Nation, 1935–1965 (London: Macmillan, 1998).

13 James Sterngold, “A Nation Hooked on Foreign Funds,” New York Times, 18 Nov. 1984, F1; Allan Dodds Frank, “We Better Keep Them Happy,” Forbes, 30 Nov. 1987, 37; Bruce Nussbaum, “And Now the Bill Comes Due,” International BusinessWeek, 16 Nov. 1987, 45; Donna K. H. Walters and William C. Rempel, “Trade War Victim,” Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec. 1987, 1-1.

14 Congressional Quarterly (hereafter CQ) Weekly Report, 14 Sept. 1985, 1793, 17 May 1986, 1125, 5 July 1986, 1543, 18 Oct. 1986, 2603, 14 May 1988, 1274; Michael Kinsley, “Fear of Foreign Money,” Washington Post, 25 Feb. 1988, A25.

15 Gregory Witcher, “Tattered Dreams,” Boston Globe, 31 March 1986, 1; Hobart Rowen, “Protectionist Baloney,” Washington Post, 21 Oct. 1982, A19.

16 Stephen M. Gillon, The Democrats' Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 311, 319, 345; Curtis, 20; W. Dale Nelson, “Support for Domestic Content Bill Dogs Cranston in Iowa,” Associated Press, 27 Jan. 1984, a.m. cycle; Robert Pear, “Democratic Candidates Sharply Split on Bill to Help Auto Makers Compete,” New York Times, 4 Feb. 1984, 1–8; Rowen, “A Protectionist Tide”; Robert Mackay, “Kennedy, Ferraro Rip Reagan,” United Press International, 25 Oct. 1984, p.m. cycle.

17 Schaller, 255; David Gergen, “Japan: The New OPEC?”, US News and World Report, 1 April 1985, 78; Theodore H. White, “The Danger from Japan,” New York Times Magazine, 28 July 1985, 18–59; Curtis, 23–24.

18 CQ Weekly Report, 2 March 1985, 421; Gerald L. Curtis, “Enough U.S.–Japan Poison,” New York Times, 17 June 1987, A41; Tolchin and Tolchin, 13; Morse, Ronald A., “Japan's Drive to Pre-eminence,” Foreign Policy, 69 (Winter 1987–88), 5Google Scholar; Hobart Rowen, “Japan Needs Its Friends,” Washington Post, 26 July 1987, H1; Walters and Rempel,; Bill Javetski et al., “The Showdown with Japan,” International BusinessWeek, 13 April 1987, 22–23; Russell, 12–18.

19 “Trade War with Japan,” Los Angeles Times, 19 April 1985, 2–4; Ayako Doi, “Is Hatred of the Japanese Making a Comeback?”, Washington Post, 7 July 1985, B1; Witcher, 1; Lisa Levitt Ryckman, “Wave of Violence against Asians Plagues the Nation,” Los Angeles Times, 1 Feb. 1987, 1–3.

20 CQ Weekly Report, 18 Oct. 1986, 2603, 2 May 1987, 811–15, 11 July 1987, 1511–13; CQ Almanac, XLII, 1986, 339; Richard Reeves, President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 360; “An Obsession with Japan,” Washington Post, 19 Feb. 1987, A26; Curtis, “Enough U.S.–Japan Poison”; Michael Brody, “Yellow Peril Politics,” Barron's, 6 July 1987, 9; William McGurn, “Tricky Dick … Gephardt,” National Review, 16 April 1990; Wilbur G. Landrey, “Nakasone on Mound, Congress at Bat,” St. Petersburg Times (Florida), 30 April 1987, 1A.

21 Jerry Roberts, “Gephardt Hoping for Miracle in Michigan,” San Francisco Chronicle, 25 March 1988, A6; Joyce Howe, “The Ugly ‘Yellow Peril’ Stigma Lives on,” New York Times, 11 April 1988, A19; Robert Barnes, “Senate Candidates Spar over Dukakis,” Washington Post, 20 Oct. 1988, D4; Charles Krauthammer, “No New Enemies for the U.S.,” Time, 23 March 1992, 70; Jeffrey E. Garten, “How Bonn, Tokyo Slyly Help Bush,” New York Times, 21 July 1988.

22 Bob Secter and James Risen, “Postwar Admiration of U.S. Fading in Japan,” Los Angeles Times, 26 April 1987, 1-1; “The Gephardt Message,” Boston Globe, 29 March 1988, 14; CQ Weekly Report, 11 April 1987, 678.

23 Hobart Rowen, “Buying into America,” Washington Post, 20 March 1988, H1; “For Sale: America,” Time, 14 Sept. 1987, 30–37; Prestowitz, Trading Places, 310; Jonathan P. Hicks, “Bridgestone's New U.S. Challenge,” New York Times, 22 Feb. 1988, D4; John Burgess, “One Town's Foreign Policy,” Washington Post, 11 June 1989, H1; Secter and Risen; “Ohio Communities Enjoy Boom,” Los Angeles Times, 28 June 1988, 4–8; James Risen, “Japanese Investment in Indiana Big Issue in Gubernatorial Race,” Los Angeles Times, 5 Nov. 1988, 4-1; Peter Osterlund, “US–Japan Trade Tangle,” Christian Science Monitor, 12 Jan. 1988, 1. On the strategies employed by Japanese auto companies to win the confidence of American communities and workers see David Gelsanliter, Jump Start: Japan Comes to the Heartland (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1990).

24 Andrew J. Dabilis, “West Meets East,” Boston Globe, 26 Jan. 1986, Magazine, 18; Secter and Risen; Gelsanliter, 234.

25 CQ Weekly Report, 2 May 1987, 812.

26 Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946); Fred R. Dickinson, “Japan – Who Listens?, Orbis, 41 (Summer 1997), 489–98; Stuart Auerbach, “New Ammunition for Critics of Japan,” Washington Post, 1 Oct. 1989, H1; Andreas Hippin, “Japan as Number 30,” H-Net Reviews, August 2002, available at www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=327221035618530; Art Pine and Tom Redburn, “Shift of Priorities,” Los Angeles Times, 6 Aug. 1989, 1-1; Mansfield, Mike, “The U.S. and Japan: Sharing Our Destinies,' Foreign Affairs, 68 (Spring 1989), 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Johnson, Chalmers, “How to Think about Economic Competition from Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies, 13 (Summer 1987), 426CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982); “An Interview with Chalmers Johnson,” Multinational Monitor, 11 (Nov. 1989), available at multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1989/11/mon8911.html. MITI was the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

28 Prestowitz, 305; Dabilis; Tolchin and Tolchin, Buying Into America, 3, 7; Burstein, Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 13–20, 72–76.

29 Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, Selling Out (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989); Pat Choate, Agents of Influence (New York: Knopf, 1990), 15, 208–49; George Friedman and Meredith Lebard, The Coming War with Japan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991). Other titles included John E. Fitzgibbon, Deceitful Practices: Nomura Securities and the Japanese Invasion of Wall Street (New York: Carol Publishing, 1991), and Robert L. Kearns, Zaibatsu America: How Japanese Firms Are Colonizing Vital U.S. Industries (New York: Free Press, 1992). For studies playing down the threat from Japan see e.g. Bill Emmott, The Sun Also Sets: The Limits to Japan's Economic Power (New York: Times Books, 1989); and Christopher Wood, The Bubble Economy (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1992).

30 James Fallows, “Containing Japan,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1989; Fallows pursued his ideas in More Like Us: Making America Great Again (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989); Karel van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power (London: Macmillan, 1989), 5; idem, “The Japan Problem Revisited,” Foreign Affairs, 69 (Fall 1990), 42–55. The concern of authors like Chalmers, Prestowitz and Fallows was not to berate Japan but to persuade Americans to restructure their own economy.

31 Auerbach; Colin Nickerson, “Japan's Quest,” Boston Globe, 27 Feb. 1990, 2; George R. Packard, “The Japan-Bashers are Poisoning Foreign Policy,” Washington Post, 8 Oct. 1989, C4; van Wolferen, Enigma, 12–13.

32 Prestowitz, 81–94; van Wolferen, Enigma, 5.

33 Robert Kuttner, “U.S. Must Change '50s Thinking on Japan,” Los Angeles Times, 8 May 1988, 5-5; David Boaz, “Yellow Peril Reinfects America,” Wall Street Journal, 7 April 1989; Art Pine, “Nippophobia Affects Making of Trade,” Los Angeles Times, 24 April 1989, 4-1; Pine and Redburn; Richard Katz, “Japan: The System that Soured,” BusinessWeek Online, available at www.businessweek.com/chapter/katz.

34 Richard Lynn, “Why Johnny Can't Read, but Yoshio Can,” National Review, 28 Oct. 1988; International BusinessWeek, 27 April 1987, 55, 65; Boaz; Ezra Bowen, “Nakasone's World-Class Blunder,” Time, 6 Oct. 1986, 28–29.

35 Benjamin M. Friedman, Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy (New York: Random House, 1988); Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990); Dickinson, 497.

36 Auerbach, “New Ammunition'; Pine and Redburn, “Shift of Priorities.'

37 Ellis Case, “Yellow-Peril Journalism,” Time, 27 Nov. 1989, 54; Judy Temes, “Rocky Repercussions,” Crain's New York Business, 6 Nov. 1989, 1; Choate, 169. The Rockefeller Center investment, like some others, proved to be a poor one; in 1995 Mitsubishi sold its stake back to Americans at a loss: Schaller, Altered States, 257.

38 Hobart Rowen, “Japan: Rival or Partner?”, Washington Post, 28 May 1991, A23.

39 Terry McCarthy, “Diet Split over Apology for Japan's War,” Independent (London), 7 Dec. 1991, 17; Sonni Efron, “Japanese-Americans Fear Backlash over Pearl Harbor,” Los Angeles Times, 2 Nov. 1991, A1; Steve Marantz, “Asians Fear Pearl Harbor Hostility,” Boston Globe, 7 Dec. 1991, 29; Sonni Efron, “Official Draws Fire for Attack on Japanese,” Los Angeles Times, 6 Dec. 1991, A3.

40 Kathryn Tolbert, “Pacific Grim,” Boston Globe, 29 March 1992, Magazine, 14; Kenneth J. Cooper et al., “Jackson, in New Hampshire, Denounces ‘Message Gap’,” Washington Post, 14 Jan. 1992, A6; Charles Krauthammer, “No New Enemies for the U.S.,” 70; Walter Russell Mead, “U.S.–Japanese Relations,” Los Angeles Times, 16 Feb. 1992, M1.

41 Kenneth T. Walsh, “Isolationism – Dangers, Myths of ‘America First’ Policy,” San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Feb. 1992, A13; Jerry Roberts, “Underdog Democrat Tsongas Is No Santa,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7 Feb. 1992, A2; “Crucial Vote for Kerrey, Harkin,” San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Feb. 1992; Tolbert; Krauthammer; James Flanigan, “Perot Tells How He'd Fix Economy,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5 June 1992, A9; Paul Blustein and Shigehiko Togo, “Around the World, Ross Perot Evokes Jitters and ‘Who's He?,’” Washington Post, 11 July 1992, A16.

42 Catherine A. Luther, Press Images, National Identity, and Foreign Policy: A Case Study of U.S.–Japanese Relations from 1955–1995 (New York: Routledge, 2001),151–58, 182, n. 106; Josh Getlin, “Now that Japanese Businessmen Are Replacing Soviets and Nazis as Villains of American Fiction, Some Observers Are Predicting … Rough Seas Ahead,” Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 1992, E1; Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan that Can Say No (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); Karl Schoenberger, “Issue of Japanese Racism Grows with Immigration,” Los Angeles Times, 1 Jan. 1990, A1.

43 Richard Morin, “U.S. Gets Negative about Japan,” Washington Post, 14 Feb. 1992, B1; Philip Bennett, “Americans, Japanese See Relationship Grow Rocky,” Boston Globe, 4 Feb. 1992, 1.

44 Amy Harmon, “A Sales Pitch Made in U.S.A.,” Los Angeles Times, 24 Jan. 1992, A1; Jay Mathews, “Storm of Protest Derails California Agency's Plan to Buy Japanese Rail Cars,” Washington Post, 23 Jan. 1992, A13; John Balzar, “Mariners Needed a Save, so Seattle Drafted Nintendo,” Los Angeles Times, 25 Jan. 1992, A1; Lance Morrow, “Japan in the Mind of America,” Time, 10 Feb. 1992, 10; George F. Will, “Patriots on Wheels,” Washington Post, 9 Feb. 1992, B7.

45 Rick Kogan, “Fore!”, Chicago Tribune, 21 May 1990, C7; Cynthia Rose, “Hey, We're Awesome, Bros!”, Independent (London), 12 Aug. 1990, Review, 8; Henry Meigs, Gate of the Tigers (New York: Viking, 1992); Ralph Peters, The War in 2020 (New York: Pocket Books, 1991); Getlin.

46 Dick Roraback, “The Conquest of America,” Los Angeles Times, 1 March 1992; Michael Crichton, Rising Sun (London: Arrow Books, 1992), 269, 404–7; Getlin; Elaine Dutka, “Hollywood Scared of the Japanese?”, Los Angeles Times, 8 March 1992, Calendar, 24; Elaine Dutka, “Asian Americans: Rising Furor over ‘Rising Sun,’” Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1993, F1.

47 Ellis Case, “Yellow-Peril Journalism,” 54; Judy Temes, “Rocky Repercussions,” Crain's New York Business, 6 Nov. 1989, 1.