- First came reports that Little Black Sambo dolls and black mannequins with grotesquely large lips were on display in Tokyo department stores. Then Michio Watanabe, a senior strategist in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, publicly suggested that U.S. blacks were irresponsible: in a speech he noted that Japanese would "escape into the night or commit family suicide" rather than fail to pay their debts. But in the U.S., Watanabe said, "where credit cards are much in use, a lot of blacks, and so on, think, 'We're bankrupt. We don't have to pay anything starting tomorrow.' "
Watanabe apologized, and the...