How long have you been familiar with Japanese pop culture? How long have you been familiar with Korean pop culture? When you listen to the pioneers of manga publishing like Jacques Glénat in France or Patrick Macias in the US, buying the rights to a manga in the 80s was like trying to pull out a samurai's nose hairs without hurting him.
Protectionnism
Publishers did not want to sell because they did not understand the foreign craze for manga, and the Japanese government did not want what was considered a subculture in Japan to represent and convey the image of Japan abroad. The first Tatsunoko cartoons date from the 60s.
But it took South Korea's success with K-Pop, supported by its judicious soft power, for Japan to launch its "Cool Japan" ? What happened to the Japan that invented the Walkman ? Where is the Japan that single-handedly revived the video games market, when Atari and its 5-minute programmed crap caused the second crash of the market in 1983 ?
Cool In Japan
"Cool Japan" is a soft power operation devised by the Japanese government to promote its culture around the world. It follows on from Douglas McGray's 2002 article "Japan's Gross National Cool". This highly flattering article caused quite a stir at the time because it highlighted the growing influence and success of Japanese culture in the rest of the world. Ironically enough, this success was initially ignored by the Japanese authorities. In the article, McGray shows how Japan has become a cultural superpower since the 1980s. He cites a number of examples, including the animated film Chihiro's Journey, the first animated film to win an Oscar, Hello Kitty, which generates sales of over a billion a year, and Pokémon, which is distributed in 65 countries and translated into over 30 languages. All this against a backdrop of economic crisis in Japan, with annual GDP growth of less than 1%.
The government, backed by private sector players, adopted the Cool Japan concept in 2010 and in November 2013 created Cool Japan Fund Inc, the support fund for the international promotion of Japan. The budget allocated to this project is colossal - 50 to 60 billion yen over 20 years, or around €400 million.
Through this pop culture diplomacy, as the process is known in Japan, we take a look at different examples of Japanese soft power.
Cool Japan will be really cool when it gets closer to all these enthusiasts, otaku and fans of Japanese pop culture.
People all over the world love Japanese pop culture so much that they promote it themselves. Even if opportunistic publishers who measure a manga's potential by its popularity on pirate scan sites buy up the rights to the manga, they are not the ones promoting it, even if they pay advertising budgets.
If your country has a coastline, One Piece will speak to you and take you back to your ports and their history.
Feel free to order your Cool Japan guide if you are planning a trip to Japan in the near future :
