I'll Take Manhattan - and Waikiki

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While many of the splashiest transactions have involved the purchase of big-city landmarks, Japanese investors havealso bought industrial parks, shopping centers, condos and hotels in several states. Nine of the 14 hotels along Waikiki Beach in Hawaii are owned by Japanese landlords. Within a month, Kokusai Jidosha, a real estate company, will close a deal to buy the Hyatt Regency on Maui from Chicago-based VMS Realty for an estimated $319 million.

The Japanese sun is also rising over the U.S. construction industry. Kumagai Gumi, a major Japanese construction firm, started $700 million in Hawaiian projects last year, an enormous sum in a state where all nongovernment construction for 1985 totaled $862 million. Nikko Hotels International is building a 425-room luxury hotel in Chicago's Riverfront Park Development and a 525-room hotel near Union Square in San Francisco. Aoki America Construction is building about 1,000 homes in Raleigh, N.C., in a joint venture with a local investor group.

Some American business managers are pleased with the investment boom. Mike McCormack, a leading commercial-property broker in Honolulu, credits Japanese investments with pulling Hawaii out of a long real estate slump. Since Japanese real estate investors tend to buy for the long haul, many industry experts believe they will make excellent landlords, committed to maintaining the value of their properties. Other U.S. business executives simply view the real estate boomlet as a harmless way to handle America's lopsided balance of payments with Japan by in effect trading high-rises and land for VCRs and cars. After all, the literal translation of fudosan, the Japanese word for real estate, is "nonmoving assets." That seems like a fair description of Manhattan skyscrapers.