Judis aside, don't expect any trouble from Japanese capital. The are two reasons, one objective, one subjective (naturally :-). Both reasons are essentially political.
The objective reason lies in the structure of imperialism. Unlike in the two previous transitions between "economic hegemons" (a la Arrighi et al) in the history of capitalism - that of Dutch to British, late 18th century, and Britain to US, early 20th century - there no longer exists a multipolar system of _independent_ colonial or imperialist powers, wherein there always awaited in the wings the replacement for the failing hegemon. But nothing exists on even the distant horizon that could replace the US in todays' monopoly imperialism. The _only_ possibility would be the rise of a new region of "shared hegemony" against the rest of the world, with an internal regulatory regional balance of power, etc., similiar to that of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. But it is highly unlikely that the trick can be turned a second time, especially to the detriment of the original perpetrator - Europe, in the present form of the EC - or in the face of a monopoly imperial power like the US - a special condition (special due to the history and nature of capitalism) that the European original didn't have to face in its own springtime.
In practice, this means that the bourgeoises of both the EC and Japan are acutely aware of their own critical dependence on the maintenance of internal political stability in the US, and have and will continue to go to almost any length to prevent its disruption. They know that even a partial political revolution in the US (i.e., one that stopped well short of abolishing capitalism) would shake the world order to its foundations, and they know they couldn't fill the gap. And they know that the US, with its archaic constitution and political system, is extraordinarily vulnerable to just such an event. So, they do nothing that will rock the boat. So the Japanese capitalists swallowed enormous losses in their US investments, including Treasury bonds, in the 1988-93 period in silence, swallowing their momentarily swaggering "Can Say No" pride in the process; so the Europeans permit the disruption of their trade with the Middle East, the devastation of social infrastructure in Eastern Europe, and the bombing of their own continent, by the US. They know (as Lenin realized in his own way) that after the US, there will be no more.
The second reason is that there is no capitalist class more subjectively unfit for the formidable task of "hegemon displacement" than the Japanese bourgeoisie. Judis actually understands this in his own limited way, when he refers to the difference in "business cultures", noting in particular the dependency on the state in the Japanese case - this is not a capitalist ruling class accustomed to making up its own mind. Indeed this is a capitalist class almost entirely fabricated by the state in the Meiji period, whose brief, feeble attempt at independent existence only came by default of a physically incapacitated Emperor in the Taisho- period, soon snuffed out, and who was presently reinstalled in power by a foreign occupying power under a constitution not even written in its own language. And this pattern of craven obsequity has only worsened in the last 10 years as Tokyo jumps to every bark and sneeze out of Washington on military, political and economic matters. It is reflected in what Judis observed as the "backwardness" of the "internal" Japanese economy (and society, I'll add) - this is a bourgeoisie too feeble to exert a historically rationalizing social influence even over its "own" nation. It show again in the ongoing idiotic row over Japanese history textbooks - it's a problem, easily resolvable by any rational measure, that shouldn't even exist - but Tokyo continues to drag it out, continues to irritate its Asian neighbors. And none of its neighbors - notably China - can fill the "hegemony displacing" shoes, not without Japans' financial clout and not while Tokyo is opposed to the rest of East Asia as Washingtons' willing vassal.
Compare this record to that of the rising British and American bourgeoises in their own bloody springtimes, who, launched by explosive social and political revolutions, then independently went from strength to strength on their way to the top. At no time in their history have the Japanese bourgeoise led any sort of revolution. Their political course has, with few exceptions, been an almost continuous descent into ignominy, interspersed with a few money-making lulls.
If any conceivable Japanese state - with the same relation and weight in the world economy as today's Japan - is to be able to provoke a "hegemony crisis" with the US, it would have to be with a radically different ruling class or alliance of strata and new ruling class. But precisely this would take Japan and, to the extent that it actually undermined US hegemony, the world, _beyond_ the bounds of "hegemony displacement" and _capitalist_ history altogether.
Short of that happy eventuality, then, the chances are exactly...zip.
>Hmm, Judis is right about the potential for Japanese capital to make life
>hellish for the US, but he's utterly wrong about a bunch of other things.
>The main howlers: most East Asian countries are not "pegged to the
>dollar" as he claims, only Hong Kong. Rubin didn't save SE Asia in 1997,
>East Asia saved itself (Japan's $30 billion bailout fund for its
>neighbors, South Korea's huge bailout of the chaebol, and China's massive
>Keynesian investment program in Hong Kong). Finally, Japan is still very
>much stagnant, but it's not collapsing. Japan's quarterly GDP figures are
>notoriously fickle, i.e. you'll see huge swings and corrections one way
>and then another; most of their big firms, though, are experiencing a
>profits recovery. If I were really ghoulish, I'd argue the real question
>is, who are the Japanese and EU officials who are going to bail out
>a post-Bubble US?