Running head: A LOOK INTO JAPANESE POP-CULTURE DIPLOMACY
Is Cool Japan really Running Out of Steam: A Look Into Japanese Pop-culture Diplomacy
Nguyen L. N. Huong, Tran K. Linh
Tokyo International University
The Soft Power of Cool Japan
December 13, 2018
Is Cool Japan really Running Out of Steam: A Look Into Japanese Pop-culture Diplomacy
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During the 1990s and 2000s, Westerns filmmakers have often credited their Japanese
counterparts as an inspirational resource to be praised and learned. The director Quentin Tarantino
selected the katana, traditional Japanese samurai sword as the main protagonist's weapon, which
highlights the Japanese elements in Kill Bill Vol.1 (Low, 2011). Not only Kill Bill series alone
but hundreds of other foreign movies have embraced Japanese pop-culture themes. The reason
behind this global imitation of Japanese films is understandable considering Japan’s success in
using pop-culture diplomacy to internationally branding its image. Until recent years, the
adaptation of Japanese films within Western areas have become stronger with most of best
profits-earning movies in 2017 come from Japan: Detective Conan: Crimson Love Letter,
Doraemon the Movie 2017: Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi, Pokémon the Movie: I
Choose You (IMDb, 2017). However, pop-culture diplomacy, on the other hand, seems to go no
further beyond a one way-projection. From the fact that during the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. cinema
continued to attract metropolitan consumers but struggled within Japan’s market (Hiroshi. K &
Keiko. S, 2017) to what Mark Schilling (2014) mentioned in a special paper to The Japan Times,
“The Japanese film industry is not Hollywood; the big media companies that dominate its focus
almost exclusively on the domestic market, with the foreign audience an afterthought.”. It is
explicable why Western filmmakers find it hard to export their products to Japan’s market or in
other words, Japanese pop-culture diplomacy has failed to meet the international cultural
exchange, as what Iwabuchi has stated in his paper “pop-culture diplomacy goes no further than a
one-way projection and does not seriously engage with cross-border dialogue.”
The interconnection between pop-culture diplomacy and cross-border dialogue
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The term pop-culture diplomacy is coined by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan as a
preliminary device for the empowerment of cultural diplomacy by utilizing the pop-culture; it
simultaneously establishes the annectent link to cross-border diplomacy, further the mutual
comprehension and faith of Japan. Governmental pop-culture diplomacy encompasses activities
or feelings produced by the interaction with effective cultural publicity, such as entertainment
(movies, music, television and video games, etc.), sports, politics, fashion, technology. Japan popculture has long been popular worldwide and made its influence on not only Asian regions only
but also the Western countries with some of the dominant themes namely Japonism, Music, Film
and TVs, Anime, Manga, Kawaii culture and Fashion. Japan’s pop-culture diplomacy is a tool for
cultural diplomacy, which is a series of governmental actions, activities, and campaigns aiming at
using Japan’s pop-culture to further the understanding and trust of Japan, in addition, to promote
the cross-border international exchange between Japan and other countries.
Cool Japan: a piece of Soft Power
The Soft Power 30 defines soft power based on the argument of Nye (2004) as the
authority to induce foreign nations and attain a country’s objective by exploiting the attractiveness
of cultural influence deriving from pop-culture diplomacy, which is contradictory to the use of the
coercive nature of the ‘hard power’. Japanese government aspires to use soft power as a mean to
enhance foreigner’s reception of this country through the appeal of the country’s culture. The
Japan Times reports that Cool Japan is a PR strategy established by The Ministry of Economy,
Trade, and Industry as an initial essential component in the soft power promotion. In other words,
it is fundamental to comprehend that the Japanese government is attempting to export their
diverse culture and emphasizing their international influence via Cool Japan movement.
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Iwabuchi has stated that “ Japan’s pop-culture diplomacy goes no further than a one-way
projection and does not seriously engage with cross-border dialogue”. Through his paper, he
pointed out that despite Japan’s pop-culture diplomacy seemed to have finished its objective as a
powerful weapon to internationally enhance the image of Japan; however, it seems to go no
further beyond another objective of softening anti-Japan perceptions or in other words, improving
the international cultural exchange between Japan and other nations. Through examining
Iwabuchi’s opinion, this paper critically put forward reasons why seemingly influential popculture diplomacy fails to improve the cross-border dialogue using one of Japan’s most favorable
popular culture - Film and TVs.
An insight into Japan’s governmental pop-culture diplomacy
Withdrawal from Japan’s initiative
The ineffectiveness of pop-culture diplomacy in improving cross-border exchange is
caused by not only internal factors but also external elements. Along the history of pop-culture
diplomacy development, Japan government has been quite passive in initiating their own popculture policy without waiting for the outsiders' “signals”. A notable case in point is the Japanese
drama “Oshin”, which was well-received in more than forty-six countries (Koichi, 2015). Until
then, the unexpected popularity of Oshin on an international scale urged the country’s prompt
action to organize a conference on Oshin and made the film’s proceedings in 1991, which was
seven years after the soap opera helped Japan burnishing the nation image. Such lateness in
capturing the influence of Oshin and taking advantage of it to shorten the gap between Japan and
other countries may account for partly engagement of pop-culture diplomacy in the cross-border
dialogue process. Furthermore, in 2001, Japan has been recognized as the world’s second-largest
film market according to the amount of film production, right after the blockbusters-created name
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“Hollywood” (Sugaya, 2004). However, until nowadays Japanese films market remains less
popular than its late-emerging counterparts. What is to blame for would be the passiveness of
Japan government in offering policies to support the budding film industry. Unlike United
Kingdoms and French which have specialized organizations aiming at supporting and diversifying
their films industry, Japan has no independent government or consistent policy to promote such a
global-reaching industry. Instead, they wait for the other countries to show “signals” towards
Japanese films instead of actively deciding on luring the audiences in the first place. Furthermore,
the ambiguity in pop-culture diplomacy itself indirectly messed up the whole “story”. Because
Japan still has the reputation of a country lacking in remorse for its past actions (Peng, 2007), the
government hopes that they can take advantage of the pop-culture diplomacy to burnish the nation
image and in return, the project would promote a genuine international cultural exchange between
Japan and nations around the world. However, they seem to have pay excessive concentration on
the former objective and left behind the latter. As an explanation to this out-of-topic success, Fan
(2008) points that ‘The world is increasingly like a gigantic stage on which nations are competing
against each other for attention and affection. Nation branding holds the key to win this global
“beauty contest”’ (p.16), which means Japan’s pop-culture diplomacy is not free from this trend.
Japan’s pride or Japan’s knife
What is more, Japan tends to be overconfident over the popularity of their own culture as
well as the media culture’s capacity, which leads to a naive assumption that the warm-welcoming
response of popular culture from other countries would evolve beyond the problematic and
historical-related relationships between Japan and other Asian countries. Although there are few
specific proofs indicating that Japanese feels superior over other Asian nations, a few Japanese
admit to feeling humble over their country or culture compared to other countries (Izumi, 2001).
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Taking such a justified pride in one’s country and culture is definitely a good thing but within
Japan’s case, such self-praising adjustment furthers the ignorance of promoting their own popculture diplomacy and leads to the underestimation of other countries’ cultures, all of which result
in the loose cross-border bond that Japan has wished to burnish using pop-culture diplomacy.
Japan’s Prime Minister Aso once refers to the BBC World Service Poll (the one that included
Japan for the first time in an international survey’ positive and negative influence in the world)
and other UK reports as a proof of Japan being among the most favorably perceived nations in the
world. However, in the BBC Service Poll that hails Japan’s reputation as the world second
favorably perceived country in 2006, Aso did not refer to the fact that the survey also reported
that two other influential countries in Asia- China and Korea- shared the same negative
perceptions of Japan. The world is now organizing more and more like a gigantic stage where
Japan’s equally rich in economic and popular cultures countries are emerging, the overwhelming
self-adoring and ignorance of international cultural exchange would in the long term lead to
Japan’s ending up losing the position of one of the world’s best influential nations.
Changes in the outsiders’ taste
Most importantly, similar to the technique of marketing, the taste of the targeted
“customers” plays an important element affecting the success of pop-culture diplomacy. This
means that changes in people taste in the quest for the “image” of Japan would directly show the
probability of success in either the process of nation branding to cross-border dialogue promotion.
Oshin, the famous Japanese soap opera that represents the evolvement in both Japanese images
and other related cross-border exchanges perceived by Asian countries, is the result of meeting
the contemporary taste at that time of the outsiders. As what Iwabuchi (2015) mentions in his
paper, one of the reasons is the fact that the outsiders have come to get fed of Japanese “culturally
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odorless”, which refers to Japan’s super-fast economic emergence and what they quest for is the
“real” Japan or in other words, the “actual” lives and hardships of Japanese people. Fortunately,
Oshin depicts the eventful lives of Japanese women in the early twentieth century, which become
the most unexpected ace that brought about the resounding hit at that time. However, nowadays
since the campaign of promoting nation branding is well-received by other countries around the
world through different kinds of pop-culture diplomacy from films and television, music, anime,
manga to fashion, the outsiders have received quite much information about Japan’s “internal”
images, which means that the questions for what Japanese image that would be able to arouse
excitement and the act of wishing to obtain more information should be the priority of
consideration. This can vary depending on what countries Japan marks as a targeted “customer”
due to regional diversities, however; a sure thing that Japanese government have to consider
would be if they cannot attract the outsiders into an attempt to understand more about their
internal culture in the first place, the following process of using pop-culture diplomacy to promote
cross-border interaction would, by any means, come to success.
An insight into non-state viewers’ perception
Foreign audiences’ apathy
The first manifestation of the inefficient pop-culture diplomacy is the minor effect of
Japanese media cultures on foreigners’ perception of this country, which consequent upon the
laches for the advancement of international cultural exchange. Despite the prominent success
Japanese film had achieved, its coverage seems limited because of the language and culture
barriers, as a result, the Japanese film industry has not gained its universal recognition. The Cool
Japan promotion office established by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) on
June 2013 was allocated 50 billion yen in the national budget for infrastructure promoting
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Japanese content overseas to spread the charm of Japanese culture internationally. This is,
however, an adverse step in the erroneous direction. The Policy of Cultural Affairs in Japan,
version Fiscal 2016 (p.25) reports in the category of “Promoting Film Arts”, that there is no
policy aiming at analyzing foreigners’ predilection for Japanese films. Therefore, Japan popculture diplomacy is assessed as ineffective because although its content was comprehensively
improved, it had no capabilities of fulfilling the inclination of diverse foreign audiences.
Consequently, outsiders are no longer interested in Japanese culture and Japanese cultural
products have a tendency to be reduced despite the tremendous effort of the government in
extending Japanese soft power.
Strained relationship due to historical conflictual issue
The negative historical memories of Japanese colonialism in Asian countries is indeed
tightly associated with the insignificant effect of Japan pop culture diplomacy despite the
Japanese government’s tremendous effort. Particularly, Korea is usually brought up when it
comes to the past territorial issues of Japan colonial domination. According to Kang (1997), Japan
established its regressive colonial regime on Korea in 1905, marking a gloomy protectoral epoch
of this country. Korean citizens had been ruthlessly exploited by the Japanese military that until
the present day, when the past elapsed, the soreness had not been pushed behind and it intensifies
their hatred for Japan. Although Japanese media culture appeals a minority, they simultaneously
concern historical issues critically as a research conducted by Iwabuchi (2015) indicates that
notwithstanding the constructive impact of Japanese contemporary media cultures, the past,
people’s memories of the past and the bias against Japan cannot be pushed back. Taking the case
of “comfort women” issue, the Japanese government has been hesitant to tread on this delicate
ground for decades which arouses the antagonism of Korean. In the words of Min (2003), Japan’s
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former colonization of Korea is the main contributing factor both to “the forced mobilization of a
large number of young Korean women to Japanese military brothels and the more brutal treatment
of Korean sexual slaves than their Japanese counterparts”. While Korean film-makers have
pursued and released numerous films about women who were abused as sexual slaves during
wartime, this is a ticklish puzzle to Japan government as there are no films related to this problem
is projected in this country, which considerably contributes to their aggression of Korean. Kuki
(2013) points out that Japan had neither redressed the severe damage caused by the comfort
system or declared any legal Diet’s statement to concede their responsibility. Many Korean
comfort women claimed that they endure an aggrievedness and claim that they have been
deprived of justice because of the neglect of the Japanese government and their vagueness in
policy engaging this problem.
Patriotism
Lastly, the intensely competitive relations and foreign countries’ growing soft power are
absolutely crucial factors contributing to the diminished opportunity to spread Japanese popculture. Chua (2012) demonstrates in his paper that many Asian countries also became keen to
promote their own cultural products and industries to internationally enhance the image of the
nation. For instance, the South Korean government has sought to build on the sweeping
popularity of South Korean media cultures known as the ‘Korean Wave’. Alongside the rise of
Hallyu Wave and the explosion of Korean drama fever, this country has dominated the
entertainment industries in the grand scale, particularly the Asia region. Analyses conducted by
Yang (2012) reveals that in terms of the performance of the broadcasting industry, the export of
Korean cultural products, most popularly Korean films and dramas, has relentlessly increased and
reached its peak in the last decade; thus, considerably contributes to the prosperity of Korea and
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the diffusion of Korean cultural uniqueness. However, it is interesting to note that Japan, China,
and Taiwan are the three main destinations of Korean Wave spread. Hence, as the rapid growth of
Korea’s soft power, the fondness of foreign viewers towards the Korean culture is either Japanese
culture is less appealing or they incline to endorse their own proud country. The Korean’s success
stirred neighboring countries including Japan to extend their cultural diplomacy activities, thereby
contributing to the soft power competition that has been escalated in continental scale in recent
years.
Discussion
A compromising solution
The effectiveness of Japan’s pop-culture diplomacy has obviously raised Japan’s status as
one of the world’s most powerful culture in the world. From the non-state actors’ perspective,
such mutual influence would earn Japan a greater range of cultural diversity. However, from the
paper of Iwabuchi, Japan itself has not seen to have received the exchanged cultural diversity
seriously. The reasons behind such failure in facilitating international culture exchange would
vary from Japan’ sides to other countries’ factors as what mentioned in the previous parts, but
what matters would be how to use prevailing popular culture to tighten the bond between Japan
and other countries. The first and foremost solution would be heartfelt apologies from the whole
country to other nations for Japan’s military past. Although it is true that Japan has made
apologies to Korea and other nations on behalf of their Prime Minister, such representative,
informally verbal apologies would never be able to release the pain and anger from other
countries. Thus, a formal paper that clearly states Japan’s remorse and apology may further enable
the promotion of cross-border exchange. What is more, rather than focusing on beautifying
Japanese culture only, other countries’ taste in Japan should be highly considered. Therefore, the
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question now should be what the next themes that would have the global reach to the world. Most
importantly, Japan government must remember to place other countries’ culture a balance
position to that of Japan and openly welcome the cultural integration from other countries within
Japan.
The Hallyu Wave of South Korea
Apart from the allure of Korean pop-culture itself, apparently, the public diplomacy
delegated by the government is an equally important element contributing to the striking success
of the Hallyu Wave. The entertainment industry has received profound support institutionally and
financially from the government. As stated by Holliday and Wong (2014), the government
invested $5.2 billion, which accounts for 1.4% government spending on promoting culture and
media; moreover, this number is increased to 2% of the national budget. On the other hand, many
cultural events had been organized, as well as they have established numerous cultural centers
that teach the Korean language in many foreign countries. Also, they concentrate on honoring
artists who have the devotion to the development of Korean culture with the South Korean
Government Medal, as known as, the Order of Cultural Merit (Statues of the Republic of Korea).
This act contains the appreciation and the tribute of the government towards artists who
contribute to the culture. Accordingly, given the case of Japanese pop-culture diplomacy, it is
reasonable to take immediate action to effectuate the soft power and reciprocally, advance the
cross-border dialogue.
Conclusion
The pop-culture diplomacy proposed by the Japanese government has exerted profound
and comprehensive influences upon not only Japan itself, but also the world. This thorough
impact, in other words, Japan’s unique ‘soft power’ demonstrates the emerging status of this
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nation in the world arena. Regarding the widespread of Japanese culture, it has evoked a
phenomenon that manipulates other nations to adopt Japan pop-culture; as a consequence, the
cruciality of Japan ‘soft power’ has been emphasized. With the aid of the prosperous economy
and soft power, the position of Japan has been consolidated which leads to the veneration of
weaker countries and the anticipation of stronger countries towards this country. Nevertheless, in
the other way around, soft power has not completely assisted Japan in the cross-border cultural
exchange. The reason behind the failure in taking advantage of pop-culture influence to tighten
the bond between Japan and other countries range from internal to external factors. The former
consists of the passiveness from the Japanese government in initiating pop-culture diplomacy, the
overwhelming pride in Japanese people’s mindset and the retardation in capturing the recent taste
of the outsiders. On the other hand, in terms of external factors, the fatigue of foreigners, the
negative perception of Japan images due to past invasion and the vast development of other
countries’ ‘soft power’ has led to the stagnation of Japanese cultural extension. In conclusion,
these factors have proved that the pop-culture diplomacy of the Japanese government goes no
further than a one-way projection.
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