After seeing the success of Korea’s cultural exports, Japan’s Ministry of Economy and Trade (METI) plans to pour more money into Japanese content. But critics complain the ministry’s thinking is still antiquated and unchanged, and this will lead to another “Cool Japan” money-wasting debacle.
https://gendai.media/articles/-/171379?imp=0
21 Comments
It’s only fitting that Abe’s heiress would have us enter the magical world of Cool Japan 2.0, I guess….
Right after she was the one that canceled Cool Japan 1.0, even!
Why? They can’t stand foreign tourists as is.
Not gonna work.
Korea exports “sexy.” Japan exports “cute.” The former has WAY more international appeal.
No one outside of Japan cares about 37 barely legal girls jumping around the stage in faux high school outfits. Shit is cringe everywhere else.
Instead of wasting money, why not start by paying low-level Japanese animators better?
They’re going to attract unwanted tourists, and we can’t have those unruly gaijin spending their money locally.
In reality, Japan’s content industry has been extremely successful in expanding overseas. The statistical data makes that very clear, and the scale is several times larger than South Korea’s.
The real problem is that Japan’s mainstream culture has barely gained any traction abroad. I’m talking about things like TV dramas, live-action productions, and J-pop.
And that really gets under the skin of Japan’s mainstream audience, especially older people.
Japan gatekeeps itself too much. They had their chance in the 90s and early 2000s with jpop, but they blocked everything with copyrights and no filming, while korea used it to expand its reach. Japan has to stop blocking people from sharing anime and also actually try to have its artists venture overseas. But they are too inward looking and believe their market is still sustainable locally
I’m more worried about indoor cooling for the children at centres of learning, and care.
And how long Korea has been pushing it and pumping money into that? Decades. Can Japan last?
The issue here isn’t about the quality or quantity of the “Japanese Content” that Japan Inc. wants to push – it may or may not be good, depending on each individual’s preferences. Subjectively/personally, I think it’s garbage, but that’s just me.
What the real issue at hand is, is that Japan Inc. runs the narrative of the country known as Japan (I like to think of it as Japan’s current Operating System (meaning, it runs, but it’s not the only way to run, so there’s opportunity for Change, however difficult)), and so they dictate what that includes. Precisely because Japan Inc. has a particular definition of that narrative that they’re pushing (kawaii, geisha, samurai, ninja, pokemon, sushi, robots, etc.), it necessarily does not touch things that lie outside of that scope, and that scope is old, dated, locked into the end-years of the bubble era when things were still going comparatively well.
What lies outside of that scope? Many things. For example, I’m well-regarded as one of the progenitors of the akiya boom. I’m not particularly happy with how that has played out (lots of well-edited-but-ultimately-vapid youtube content, for example), but I attribute that mostly to the butting-of-heads that happens when Japan Inc. is late to the game and tries to get its fingers into a sufficiently novel business/cultural development. Basically, Japan Inc. is the annoying little kid that insists it is helping when in fact it is destroying something promising and new.
Independent music outside of the control of Sony/ePlus/etc. Wild game meat, sea salt, local produce. Craft beer has a decent trajectory, but its also easy to see Japan Inc. annoyingly trying to get into that as well. Tourism is a really good one as there are countless excellent places to go to but they aren’t advertised nearly as strongly as KYOTO, and then there’s also the infrastructure issue, but that also plays into Japan Inc.’s hand.
So, what I’m getting at is, any effort that Japan Inc. makes for cultural (and, extrapolating, economic) promotion – no matter how much money is involved – is, in my very critical and experienced opinion, doomed to fail. It’s not for lack of effort; it’s due to a category error – the logic that Japan Inc. operates under necessarily fails in the modern world of 2026.
I work with one of these industries and whether it’s music, game or anime, these export organisations are owned and managed by very very old men who have absolutely 0 idea of exporting stuff. I had the chance to go nomikai with one of the chairmen and it was brutal.
But companies have to kiss ass unfortunately, because these guys are the “industry” and nothing gets approved without their blessings.
Even China is encroaching on the one cultural export Japan succeeded at, “anime and manga”. Who’s gonna tell the ministry that they were already ahead but ruined it themselves.
Is this “Cool Japan” Season 2? Did the bigwigs run out of pocket money?
The thinking itself is wrong. South Korea is 2.5 times smaller than Japan in terms of economic scale. The Korean government is not that competent either. The very idea that the Korean government developed Korea’s cultural industries is nonsense.
Japanese animation targeted the Japanese market, and it succeeded overseas through the competitiveness of animation itself. Korean content is the same. Korean dramas and K-pop both targeted their domestic market and simply succeeded overseas because they were capable enough to succeed there.
Japanese companies themselves need to change their closed-minded way of thinking and build up their competitiveness. To think that they should rely on government subsidies?
Before asking the government for money, companies should first think about expanding onto YouTube and into overseas markets.
Imagine the decade+ they’ve had to observe what Koreas succeeded at doing and only JUST NOW being like, “huh, maaaaybe we try that?”
The moment they do that there will be backlash from otakus in japan believing their media products are being water downed for the west.
“Dank Japan”
Korea succeed where Japan failed is making their kpop more aligned with Western music/taste. Okay, let’s say Japan want to retain its unique style and 95% lyrics in Japanese… at the very least create official websites and ecosystems in English as default so it can appeal outside of Japan.
Dont even need to pour money into it. Simply just make it available overseas…
Government must be schizophrenic they don’t want foreigners but wants to attract more foreigners
Japan antiquated and inflexible. I am shocked🤣🤣🤣