Abstract
‘Cool Japan’ has been a cross-departmental policy agenda for Japanese government that has gained prominence over the last 10 years or so. Although the government has been reticent about cultural policy in general and particularly to East and Southeast Asia in post-war decades, attention has recently been given to the international popularity of Japanese popular culture such as manga and anime with policies aiming to cash in on what is named ‘Cool Japan’ phenomenon. Policy has been, however, patchy and disjointed. This paper will examine the background and emergence of this policy with industrial and economic aims, its recent transformation and impact on cultural flows in Asia. It will argue that whilst the government’s policy for popular culture industries may not have led to significant results, it has done what it could legitimately do without riding on the bandwagon of the creative industries discourse that has swept across the rest of the world. The chapter will also stress the importance of the industries to broaden their regional perspectives.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout the paper USD equivalents given are simplified, with the exchange rate 100 yen for one US Dollar (it in fact is about 113 yen for a dollar at the time of writing), for indicative purposes as the rate fluctuates.
- 2.
The comparable figures of France and South Korea are about 1% for 2016 (ACA 2016).<?spieprPar11?>
- 3.
The comparable figures for other countries are as follows: 2.3 billion USD (UK ), 238 million USD (France), and 309 million USD (South Korea ). For the US, it is more than 18 billion USD for both television programmes and feature films . By including values of other rights related to programme selling such as online distribution and merchandising, the total export value of Japan was recorded as 14.1 billion yen in 2013 (MIC 2015, 56).
- 4.
Otaku refers to those people, usually young males, who are obsessed with subculture and enthusiastically follow their chosen hobbies or franchises. In Japan it is believed that they are typically introverted and lack social skills.
- 5.
The figures are collected by AJA’s questionnaire to its members (anime production studios). Export values include the sale of DVDs and licensing royalties.
- 6.
One tends to find ‘production committee’ in the English translation of the Japanese in relation to film production more often than ‘production consortium’, but the latter better expresses this type of partnership and is used in the remainder of this paper text.
- 7.
Bestor (2000) gives an interesting report of the global tuna trade, describing how tuna, the mainstay of sushi, is caught off the coast in New England of North America, shipped whole to Tsukiji, Tokyo , the global capital of fish trade, and then exported to sushi restaurants in New York or Los Angeles.
- 8.
The following discussion in this section is informed by discussions I had with METI and IPHQ officials (December 2016 and February 2017), my observations at research committee meetings held by METI (from September 2015 to March 2016), of which I was a member, and other occasional contact with them.
- 9.
E.g., J-LOP+, which was mentioned earlier, measures to combat piracy abroad, support organizing fairs and markets for international buyers of Japanese content, and investing in future media producers who can work globally as well as introducing the most advanced digital technologies to the media industries
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Kawashima, N. (2018). ‘Cool Japan’ and Creative Industries: An Evaluation of Economic Policies for Popular Culture Industries in Japan. In: Kawashima, N., Lee, HK. (eds) Asian Cultural Flows. Creative Economy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0147-5_2
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