Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, arrived in Washington for a meeting on Friday with George W. Bush, just days after new data showed Toyota had supplanted General Motors as the world’s largest automaker. Toyota sold 2.35m vehicles in the first quarter this year, against 2.26m for troubled GM. There was a time when GM’s humiliation would have sparked populist demands for a “level playing field” in trade with Japan and turned Mr Abe’s visit into a diplomatic gauntlet. In the 1980s and early 1990s, US bestsellers warned that Japanese companies were violating the spirit of free trade (particularly in the semiconductor industry) and raiding US assets (particularly prestige properties such as Rockefeller Centre and Universal Pictures). Yet today, Japan is in vogue in the US, in ways that go beyond sushi, manga, Hello Kitty and the increasingly Japanese pitching staff of the Boston Red Sox.

Mr Abe is not as easy for Americans to read as was his predecessor, the long-haired and affable Junichiro Koizumi, who entertained the US press with an air-guitar performance when Mr Bush brought him to Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland. But Mr Abe arrives in Washington able to ask favours rather than offer excuses. As this paper reported this week, Japan is interested in purchasing the most advanced US Stealth fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor, now that China has such advanced fighters as the Russian-built Su-30. Defence experts say that such a request would not be received as outlandish.