Americans have long had a fascination with Japan in the movies — and Hollywood has long been happy to give us the Japan it thinks we want.

Back in the 1950’s, with memories of the Occupation still fresh, Hollywood's Japan had a passing resemblance to the real contemporary thing. Audiences could nod knowingly at the bumbling attempts of Army bureaucrats to democratize a Japanese village in Teahouse of the August Moon because many had been there themselves. Not many seemed to care that Marlon Brando's "Japanese" interpreter, with his taped-up eyes and sing-song accent, was about as authentic as a white singer in blackface crooning "Mammy".

In the 1970’s Hollywood's image of Japan became more PC (politically correct), if not always accurate. When the TV mini-series Shogun was broadcast in 1980, viewers became enthralled with its detailed, mostly sympathetic depiction of feudal Japan -- and the romance between a shipwrecked English captain, played by Richard Chamberlain, and a Japanese woman of the samurai class, played by Yoko Shimada. The Japanese audience found this relationship hard to swallow, however — a samurai lady, they knew, would almost never consort with a foreigner — and certainly never jump into the bath with him, as Shimada did with Chamberlain in one memorable scene. Released in Japan as a theatrical film, "Shogun" was a box office flop.

In the 1980’s, when the United States and Japan were battling over trade — and the US seemed to be losing — Hollywood saw Japan and the Japanese in a darker light. Ridley Scott's 1989 Black Rain portrayed Osaka as a steamy, exotic urban hell, while Michael Douglas' cop hero snarled abuse at his Japanese partners. He found his match, however, in Yusaku Matsuda's icy cool gangster, who looked terrific in shades and leathers, but dealt death with a frightening originality. In his hands even a plastic bag looked menacing.

In the 1992 Tom Selleck comedy Mr. Baseball, the mood was lighter — though the two cultures once again clashed, with Ken Takakura, playing a Japanese manager putting up with another rude, crude American, in the form of Selleck's aging major league character. And once again, the American hero jumped in the tub with his Japanese love interest, this time a thoroughly modern woman played by Aya Takanashi.