Yet while an urge to emulate Japan seized executive suites, despair reigned on the shop floor. You could hear it in the music. The bubbly tunes of Buddy Holly had given way to gloomier fare. “Born down in a dead man’s town” was how Bruce Springsteen, the bard of deindustrialization, began his grim assessment of the national prospects in the song “Born in the U.S.A.” Five years later, Sony bought Columbia Records, Springsteen’s label. “Born in the U.S.A.” was now the property of Japan.
