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Abstract
This paper critically examines the development of what is known as ‘pop-culture diplomacy’ in Japan. In the postwar era, the country’s cultural diplomacy was propelled by the necessity to soften anti-Japan perceptions, notably in Southeast Asia. In the late 1980s, the popularity of Japanese media culture in Asia began to attract the attention of policy makers, while subsequent globalized practices of soft power and nation branding gave greater emphasis to the use of media culture to internationally enhance the image of the nation, which has meant the promotion of ‘pop-culture diplomacy’ and, more broadly, ‘Cool Japan’. It is argued that pop-culture diplomacy goes no further than a one-way projection and does not seriously engage with cross-border dialogue. The Japanese case also shows that pop-culture diplomacy hinders meaningful engagement with internal cultural diversity and suggests the necessity of taking domestic implications of cultural diplomacy seriously.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. MOFA’s official webpage: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/culture/exchange/pop/.
2. Its ratings in many non-Western countries were much better than those of American TV dramas such as Dallas or Dynasty (Lull Citation1991, Singhal and Udornpim Citation1997).
3. Oshin narrates modern Japanese history from a woman’s perspective. Japan’s past is represented mostly in terms of a pacifist woman’s experience of overcoming suffering caused by the war (Morris-Suzuki Citation1998, pp. 134–135). The representation of Japan’s gendered past proves to be useful for the purpose of rendering the more troublesome aspects of Japanese modern history irrelevant.
4. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi’s Policy Address at the National Diet, 20 January 2005.
5. A TV program titled ‘Cool Japan’ (NHK BS2) also started in 2006.
7. Aso Taro, ‘A New Look at Cultural Diplomacy: A Call to Japan's Cultural Practitioners’. Speech made at Digital Hollywood University, Tokyo, 28 April, 2006.
8. Country Rating Poll 2006: http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc06–3/index.html.
9. Bunka gaiko no suishin ni kasuru kondankai houkokusho (A report by the Discussion Group on the Promotion of Cultural Diplomacy), July 2005.
12. For the South Korean case, Cho (Citation2011); for the Japanese case, see, for example, www.kanto.meti.go.jp/seisaku/uec … /lec01_kouen_22fy.pdf.
13. E.g., http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/hiromi_ito2002jp/57705983.html; www.kanto.meti.go.jp/seisaku/uec.../lec01_kouen_22fy.pdf.
14. A 2010 survey on what aspects of Japan people are proud of showed that 90% of respondents in their 20s and 80% of those in their 30s stated that they were proud of Japanese animation and computer games. See ‘Poll: 95% Fear for Japan’s Future’ (12 June 2010, http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201006110455.html). This result suggests a widely infused perception that they are key Japanese culture for the enhancement of soft power.
15. This point is closely related to the fact that multicultural co-living has been developed as an extension of ‘local internationalization’ policy in the 1990s, by which the national government aimed to support local governments in accommodating the increasing number of foreigners staying and living in their constituency with a stated aim of smoothing international cultural exchange within Japan (see Iwabuchi Citation2015).
16. For example, see Kanazawa municipal government’s project of revitalization of the city: http://www4.city.kanazawa.lg.jp/11001/shiminkikou/shiminnkikou9/bosyuu.html. As for a university curriculum: http://info.bgu.ac.jp/faculty/foreign/english-education/.