Suntory Holdings Ltd., the first commercial producer of whiskey in Japan is buying Beam Inc., makers of Jim Beam and Maker's Mark Bourbons for $16 billion (including debt). Suntory gets to add some genuine Bourbons to its own line-up of whiskeys (it makes Yamazaki, among others) and to a portfolio that includes spirits like the melon atrocity known as Midori. To lose two recognizable Bourbons to a Japanese company is a bit of an iconic moment, but don't raise a glass to your new Japanese overlords just yet.

We have been here before.

In the 1980s, Japan emerged as the first economic threat of the nascent era of globalization. Japanese manufacturers exported cheap consumer goods that American consumers bought, increasingly financing their own purchases with debt. A growing trade imbalance, along with the costs of Cold War military spending fueled America's debt bubble. Flush with cash from all of those exports, Japan's international companies and wealthy investors started buying assets in the U.S.

For a while, Japanese investors owned The Empire State Building and Sony bought up music producers and movie studios to become a dominant player in American entertainment.

In 1986, Paramount Pictures released Gung Ho, a Ron Howard movie about a group of American autoworkers struggling to stay in business after their company is bought by a competitor from Japan. Starring Michael Keaton as a haggard labor liaison, the broad stroke comedy hits the pitch of American anxiety at the time – fat, coddled and stupid local labor would struggle to compete with the cold logic of Japanese efficiency.

By then, the phrase "Made In Japan" was already synonymous with the hollowing of the American middle class. Rabbit Angstrom, hero of John Updike's Rabbit novels also has to contend with the destruction of the American auto sector. He goes from selling big American cars to small Japanese vehicles. The car, moreso than even bourbon, was quintessential Americana.

But the big fight in the '80s and '90s was for control of the high tech sector. The U.S. government, Tea Partiers might like to know about their free-market friend Ronald Reagan, stepped in to help Texas Instruments and Intel, among others, hold their own against the fiber optic insurgency mounted by Japan's high tech elite. Michael Crichton's murder mystery Rising Sun, a bestseller publish in 1992 posits that U.S. reliance on technology produced by Japanese companies was both an economic and security threat. The theme that ran through the '80s and '90s was that a sclerotic America would be displaced by dynamic Japan.

Japan was also characterized as ruthless. Its companies were more closely supported by its government than were American competitors and accusations of corporate espionage and other dirty dealings were frequent. In the end, though, the U.S. and Japan remain the closest trading partners. They represent one-third of the world's total economic output. Japanese investors have more than $300 billion at work in the U.S., making Japan the second largest foreign direct investor behind the United Kingdom.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is collaborating with the Bank of Japan to try to break a long cycle of deflation by keeping money flowing freely and interest rates low. That means that Japan's investors have to look outside of the country to find returns. American bourbon makers and, yes, American real estate, make prime targets.

Japanese acquisitions of American assets should be a frequent occurrence. Thirty years ago, they were cause for anxiety. Now, they should just be a reminder that China probably won't take over the U.S. either, no matter what their billionaires manage to buy.

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