Yep! Some good points there, Ron. However, I think a few are overstated, and in a few others you leave out some data to make your point.
There really isn't a "Japanese riding position", because as I recall, the (ahem) "I'm going to sit on my tailbone and put my feet way up there but 'look really cool' while I'm ridin' around on my motorcycle" Riding Position, was pretty much started in the late 1960s by the Harley Chopper Crowd, and was soon adopted by H-D in some of their factory-built machines, and this continues to this very day. And at the same time in the late 1960s, the Japanese were pretty much patterning their motorcycles after the british motorcycle and the "standard" ridin' position of those machines.
And it wasn't until everybody in The States went (ahem) "V-Twin Criuser Crazy" around the mid-to-late 1980s that the Japanese decided to jump on the ol' bandwagon too and design some of their motorcycles after the Harley look, seeing as how by that time the british look, and indeed, even the vertical-twin design itself had been surpassed in the minds of the public by the V-Twin based machines, often times 'sporting' the FEET-FORWARD riding position of these V-Twin machines.
And THAT brings me to your OTHER assertion that, "Our bikes have absolutely nothing to share with the old Bonneville except a chain and a badge."
If you're talkin' here that one can not interchange the cranks, the cylinder barrels, the heads, etc, etc, etc, between a, say, a 1969 T-120 with a modern Hinckley-designed Bonneville...then I invite you to attempt to do the same between say a 1969 FLH Harley-Davidson and say a, 2005 Twin-Cam Fat Boy!!!!
My POINT here being that, the HEART of ANY motorcycle is its ENGINE, and the LAYOUT of said engine. And, I DON'T see too many OTHER motorcycle manufacturers today pumpin' out...VERTICAL-TWINS, with 'SPADED' exhaust headers, and with right-side "timing-end" HEART-SHAPED bottom end cases, be they EITHER pushrod or DOHC designs, and/or 360 or 270 crankpin placement...through the doors of THEIR factories.
(so, yeah...there IS a lot more "heritage" goin' on here than I think you give these motorcycles of ours credit for than "just a chain and a badge")
