I feel the "Made is Japan" declaration has lost it's value.
Reason being that most of us associate this with the electronics which were very well made and were pioneers in their prospective niche.
Take any electronic product from 70s till mid 90s, if it was Made in Japan, it was having some characteristics like robustness, easy and practical layout, build to last, usage of high grade components. Now the main thing to note is the components could be Non-Japanese but they went thru one of the most stringent quality control process. Thus ensuring top quality products.
Made in Japan stuff cried aloud "Quality".
Also Japanese were pioneers in innovation in electronics specially A/V gadgets.
Almost the playback / recording formats of A/V had something to do with Japan be it Betamax, Spool reels, VHS, CD, DVD, SVCD you name it. They were heavily into R&D.
For example you look back and see the things they have launched in market specially by SONY since late 70s and whole of 80s.
That era is gone. Simply gone.
Now there's very little of those traits remain which gave "Made in Japan" the respect and oomph in that era, why, SONY has not been able to make money since last decade.
So now the kings are Koreans and handful of other co. which are from all around the world.
One may think that when Japanese started to act like rest of world to increase the market share they lost their most important trait, The Japanese Way.
Oh....the days that have gone......