Dr. Strangelove (1964)- made in the UK by American director Stanley Kubrick. It has this quote (Peter Seller’s character talking about his time during WWII being imprisoned by the Japanese Imperial Army):
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: “… Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras.”
(Talking about the current time period of the movie.)
In Back to the Future (3?) Doc Brown (from 1955) says “No wonder it broke; it says Made in Japan”; to which Marty (from 1985) says “All the best stuff comes from Japan”.
Worth mentioning as it specifically references the change in perception and places it between 1955 and 1985.
I drove a 1976 Toyota Corolla and had very, very few problems with it (a loose alternator once, and the A/C compressor didn’t always come on the first time you tried, but by the time I was driving this car it was already 1988, so the car was already 12 years old. I drove it for a couple of years, then it was sold to someone else who drove it for many more years and even towed another car from Minnesota to Arizona with it, or so they claimed. So I’d say that was a good Japanese car, date 1976.
The rough order was:
Cameras – 1960s
Consumer electronics – early 1970s
Cars – late 1970s
Of course, it’s still not universal. Japanese home appliances still aren’t making much headway against brands like Whirlpool, and I don’t see a lot of people clamoring for Japanese-made clothing.
late 70s to mid-80s.
I not sure you are making a relevant point. The manufacturing of some products has jumped Japan. Brands such as Samsung and LG (South Korea) found markets and were able to produce quality products at prices that were better than what the Japanese could do. For instance, Mitsubishi and Fujitsu were producing superior consumer electronics products but the Koreans were killing them on price. They pulled out of that market.
As for textiles, that is fundamentally a low tech business. With textiles it is all about producing them at the lowest possible cost. The USA, Japan and any developed country can’t compete with places like China or Vietnam. With globalization the textile market will inevitably move to Africa. That’s the next frontier for low tech manufacturing. Just like Japan is struggling to hang on to their high tech manufacturing, China and Vietnam will in the future struggle to keep their low tech manufacturing from moving to Africa.
Actually, there is a pretty strong niche of people willing to spend a lot of money for Japanese made denim, fabrics, and clothing styles. Oddly, the trend in the past few years has been for Americana and retro American style of clothing, so you now have people willing to spend upwards of $400 for a pair of jeans made in Japan using Japanese denim, modeled to look as closely as possible as a pair of 1930s Levis. For the vast majority of consumers, Japanese clothing isn’t something they’d necessarily seek out, but I bet most people would just assume it’s higher quality by association.
Uniqlo opening 5th Ave. flagship store in big U.S. push
Of course, these clothes are made in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc. but that’s a good example of a Japanese clothing retailer making inroads in the U.S.
Japanese appliance makers were never much successful outside of Japan not so much because of quality issues, but because of differing lifestyles. The standard pattern for Japanese companies involves getting a solid foothold on the local market before going abroad. Uniqlo is an excellent example of this. For cameras, televisions, sedans and jeans that works out okay. For appliances, though, the demands are so different that you essentially have to develop completely different product lines.
That’s very true. A double oven would be almost unheard of in japan.
A typical kitchen might have a very small one.
At my mother in laws I couldn’t believe she could actually make anything in her kitchen. It’s basically a sink, a small fridge, 2 small burners, a rice cooker, a tiny oven they never use and a microwave - crammed into the space about the size of a small office cubicle.
At my house, in my kitchen, she constantly commented about how we had so much “stuff” we didn’t need. She was facinated by the breadmaked and blender. Her attitiude was “What the hell would you ever use that for?!”
Depends on what you’re used to I guess.
In my memory, transistor radios and some cameras were becoming noticed in the 60s. I had a Japanese radio and a small Mamiya “spy camera” then. I didn’t see where anybody mentioned the Honda 90 motorbike that hit the US like a bombshell in the 60s. Simply built and popularized by the Beach Boys hit, it was an omen of what was to come.
I have two kitchens just like you describe in my house in China. Except, I don’t have a rice cooker, and I do have one tiny oven in one of the kitchens. The kitchens are adjacent to each other and separated by a doorway. Individually, each of the kitchens is virtually useless – the potential countertop space is occupied by redundant sinks and stovetops. If only they had used the space to make one good kitchen, then I’d have a workable kitchen.
On the other hand, the Chinese only need a single wok, a good knife, and some chopsticks to cook nearly anything, so their needs are different.
When my stuff arrived from the States, I had to buy a gigantic bedroom wardrobe to put in the dining room just to hold all of the different stuff that we use to cook. And I actually do use all of it. Except, you know, the stuff that doesn’t fit into my miniature Chinese oven. :rolleyes:
I actually had this in a class. Though I don’t remember the details, it had to do with a shift of thinking that low quality is more costly then high quality. There was some economics guy that came out with this theory that took hold in Japan.
I was in the market for my first brand new car in 84. I looked at the low end cars made by all the automakers. They were all crap compared to Toyota’s Tercel. I was seriously shocked. I stuck with Toyota for a while.
this is approx correct.
But there’s another issue that helps explain the timeline: it’s not just a question of when Americans realized that Japanese products were good, it’s a question of when Americans realized that US-made products were lousy.
And for that, I’d set the precise date as October, 1973. When gas prices jumped dramatically. (from essentally free, up to the totally shocking price of over a dollar per gallon).And there was rationing, in the from of a limits to how much you could buy–sometimes as little as 10 gallons at a time.
Suddenly, overnight, Americans realized that they needed small cars. And the only option was to buy Japanese. So they started looking seriously at Japanese products. Till then,a few people had known that some Japanese products were nice, but for the general public, cameras aren’t a major item. But everybody needed a good, fuel-efficient car.And everybody realized that their Fords and Chevy’s just weren’t good enough.
Suddenly, the old jokes about “cheap Jap stuff” dissappeared, and it took a few years more to develop a genuine appreciation for Japanese quality.
Aside: Isn’t that recycled from The Producers?
Gedde Watanabe was hilarious though.