Japan has been a marginal, but potentially formidable, presence in American aviation since the late 1960s.
Fuji Heavy Industries, which had previously manufactured both two- and four-seat versions of the Beech T-34 Mentor for domestic military forces, produced almost 300 of the FA200 Aero Subaru, which looked the way a 172 would if you replaced its high wing with the low one of a Beech Musketeer. Mitsubishi followed suit with the technically innovative-maybe too innovative-MU-2 turboprop and subsequently the Diamond business jet, the latter marketed in the United States by Beech as the Hawker 400 and adopted by the U.S. Air Force as a trainer.
