SOURCE: Dowell, Pat. “Black Rain: Hollywood Goes Japan Bashing.” Cineaste 17, no. 3 (1990): 8-10.

In the following review, Dowell contends that Black Rain is an expression of American economic insecurity in the face of a perceived Japanese economic superiority.

One of the many television news stories after the California earthquake in October 1989 examined Japan's quake readiness. There, if a temblor strikes, children know what to do “by rote,” according to the network reporter, who would have undoubtedly said “by heart” if these had been spunky American kids or Frenchmen or Laplanders or anybody but the next generation of profit-hungry automatons eager to increase the U.S. trade deficit.

The reporter also noted that Japanese sympathy for San Francisco quickly turned to boasting about their own (higher) construction standards for bridges and buildings and their widely espoused system of readiness that extends to anchoring office desks and home bookcases. Individuals, the...