[toyg]

> Or is there an acceptable level in the US that's different to Japan, perhaps?

Or more simply, suing cross-countries in such a complicated field as copyright, is extremely hard. In many cases, tbf, this goes both ways - which is why the US is always very keen to "harmonize" copyright laws whenever they are discussing trade deals. But the imbalance in economic resources typically means richer players in the US have a degree of recourse that non-US players will almost never get.

[esperent]

> But the imbalance in economic resources typically means richer players in the US have a degree of recourse that non-US players will almost never get.

Imbalance between the US and Japan? Remember this happened in the year 2000. Look up which of the two countries had higher per capita GDP back then.

In any case, it doesn't seem like anyone is suggesting this was plagiarism at a level that could be sued over - it's not a case like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly which was a shot for shot copy. I was more thinking about ideas of honor in Japan vs the US and how that might affect the respective outlook of the two directors.

[toyg]

In creative industries the US always had the upper hand economically on pretty much any country you can mention, since WW2. The Japanese creative sector continues to struggle with profiting from exports to this very day, their income is overwhelmingly driven by domestic audiences (which themselves are a fraction of American ones). There is absolutely no chance that a Japanese film company or distributor could ever find the money to sue a major US player, whereas the opposite is very doable.

> I was more thinking about ideas of honor in Japan vs the US

I don't think there is any particular stigma with the concept of suing for plagiarism in Japan, or any higher tolerance for copying, at least since the '90s (in the '80s and earlier, their mindset was definitely different - more similar to modern Chinese attitudes for which ripping off is just a fact of life; but newer generations are less hungry and hence less unscrupolous).