Leonard Schrader and Weisman's experience with Brazil led them to develop "Kiss of the Spider Woman" together. Schrader's screenplay adaptation, based on the avant-garde novel by Argentinian Manuel Puig, earned him an Academy Award nomination in 1986. (It also earned William Hurt an Academy Award for Best Actor.) Schrader met renowned Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima while living in Japan. For a decade after the author's ritual suicide in 1970, Schrader pursued the rights to Mishima's life, and working with his wife Chieko and brother Paul, he co-wrote the Japanese-language bio-pic "" executive-produced in 1984 by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and
Japanese nationalism itself contained a mix of political Western practices and traditional Japanese political ideas, government philosophy increasingly centered on promoting social harmony and a sense of the uniqueness of the Japanese people "(kokutai)". The extreme disparity in economic and military power between Japan and the Western colonial powers was a great cause for concern for the early Meiji leadership. The motto "Fukoku kyōhei" (enrich the country and strengthen the military) symbolized Meiji period nationalistic policies to provide government support to strengthen strategic industries. Only with a strong economic base could Japan afford to build a strong, modern military along Western lines,