The late Michael Crichton was a bestselling author who was famous for taking pop science or social issues and extrapolating entire potboiler novels out of them. His work was not necessarily sophisticated, but it worked with what Hollywood likes to call ‘high concept’ ideas: simple pitches with which a mass audience could easily engage. It is what made him such a popular writer to adapt into film, a process kickstarted in 1993 with the release of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Between 1993 and 2003 there were nine films spun out of Crichton’s writing, including Disclosure (1994), Congo (1995), Sphere (1997), and Timeline (2003).

Rising Sun, a 20th Century Fox production directed by Philip Kaufman, was released in July 1993. Its commercial performance in cinemas was likely aided by opening hot on the heels of Jurassic Park. It certainly was not aided by the film itself, which presents itself as a fairly hollow and uninvolving murder mystery liberally decorated with a representation of Japanese culture that is best described as ‘vile’.

When a sex worker is found murdered on the boardroom table of a Japanese corporation’s Los Angeles office, police detective Web Smith (Wesley Snipes) is tasked with investigating the crime. Assigned to assist him is John Connor (Sean Connery), a former police captain turned professional weeb, whose specialist knowledge of Japanese culture and customs will prove critical.

Michael Crichton’s skills in writing readable, well-paced commercial fiction have never been in doubt. What is perhaps less openly discussed is the mean conservative streak that sometimes runs through his work. His 2004 novel State of Fear is likely the most egregious example, not only denying climate science but doubling down by portraying environmental activists as loathsome eco-terrorists. Then there is Disclosure (1994), which reverses the typical gender roles of sexual harassment to present a troublesome ‘men can be victims too’ narrative. In writing Rising Sun Crichton was inspired by the growing fear in America that the Japanese were taking over business and industry. A key part of his novel – and the ensuing film adaptation – is a hugely distorted and negative portrayal of Japanese people. The overall depiction of the Japanese as mysterious alien invaders is ultimately rampant Orientalism and racism of a kind that can be tracked back for centuries. Kaufman’s film actually tracks back a little from the novel’s worst excesses, but what remains is still tokenistic, uninformed, and – if you possess any superficial understanding of Japan – unintentionally hilarious.

In Rising Sun, Japanese men are depicted either as robotic, emotionless automatons or as sex-obsessed perverts. Japanese women are literally represented by one character: an Afro-Japanese computer expert ostracised because the Japanese hate black people – but played by a Hawaiian woman of Filipino descent (Tia Carrere) because Hollywood seemingly does not care about racial minorities either. Literally all other women on-screen are sex workers: the white woman are all call girls, the Japanese women are perplexingly all Los Angeles-based geisha.

Japanese characters play golf incessantly, and sing karaoke in bars. They open their offices with taiko performances to literally ward off evil spirits. The yakuza show up. One guy eats sashimi off of a sex worker’s naked body, because Crichton clearly read about the practice one time. Everyone spends a lot of time – Connery’s character in particular – going on about face: saving it, preserving it, losing it. One wonders how much Connery lost having the film on his resume.

John Connor is an embarrassing character at the epicentre of this fiasco. He is portrayed as an expert in Japanese culture, yet rampages through the film like an ignorant boor. He speaks of maintaining face, but does not actually do it himself. He is supposedly fluent in Japanese yet speaks it horrendously. He uses Japanese terminology incorrectly. Worst of all, the film depicts Connor as the ultimate authority on the Japanese characters – ultimately more Japanese than they are, and thus positioned as a superior white Westerner presiding over Oriental savages. He even has a young Japanese lover: every male Japan-obsessive’s wet dream. Venture any further into his paper-walled shoji-styled apartment and I swear you will find his sexy catgirl figurine collection and a Rei Ayanami body pillow.

It is important to note that Rising Sun does not exist in isolation. Expressions of America’s fear of Japan are littered through the pop culture of the time. Everything on the street in Blade Runner (1982) is seemingly turning Japanese. In the future scenes of Back to the Future Part II (1989) protagonist Marty McFly works for a Japanese company. Ridley Scott’s Black Rain (1989) is an unbridled exercise in unhinged Nipponophobia. There is a common cultural process in American – and American-influenced – society. Foreigners are marginalised, then demonised, then fetishised, and ultimately have their own cultural expressions appropriated. Rising Sun appears to exist at the very epicentre of that process.

More than that, it is just not a very good film.