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| Former PM Koizumi At Cool Japan Launch July 2007 |
It has been 10 years since the then former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi launched the Cool Japan marketing campaign to internationally sell Japan as not only a cool destination for vacation but exchange study, academic research, business exchange, and cultural exchange.
Elated by the international attention, Japan’s bureaucrats and CEOs
reformulated the concept of "national cool" into a Cool Japan marketing
campaign that could reach new consumers and add soft power to Japan’s
manufacturing achievements. And it seemed to work ... for a while.
Leading
media soon had Cool Japan columns and programs. Tourists were invited
to the country for Cool Japan tours and seminars, with obligatory stops
at the kawaii (cute) capital, Harajuku, and the anime-drenched district of Akihabara.
But the hoped-for revenue streams didn’t pan out.
North American manga sales peaked in 2007 and then declined, resulting in a wave of layoffs at international manga distributors.
According to the Japanese Ministry of Economy,
Trade, and Industry’s 2012 “Cool Japan Strategy” white paper, Japan
exports only 5 percent of its Cool Japan contents – not quite one-third
of US creative industries’ 17.8 percent.
The
industry created a bubble that has now burst, says Mr. Galbraith,
author of “The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to the Subculture
of Cool Japan.” “Some say anime is dead,” he observes in Tokyo, “while others who still like it say it’s overpriced, and end up illegally streaming it.”
Even
Japan’s mighty video games are losing their worldwide cachet. Legendary
game designer Keiji Inafune was recently accused of having a “Charlie Sheen moment” in his calls for Japanese studios to wake up to their growing irrelevance.
The
marketing of the phrase Cool Japan itself creates an awkward problem:
“To call yourself cool is by definition uncool – and it defies Japanese
modesty,” says Manabu Kitawaki, director of Meiji University’s Cool Japan program.
“Creativity doesn’t spring from marketing,” he continues. “The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry hired Dentsu for its Cool Japan campaign. It’s become a way to funnel money to a big ad firm.”
The otaku
culture (a term used to describe people with intensive interests in
anime or manga) celebrated by Cool Japan can also be problematic
overseas. Critics complain of the use of the popular girl band group
AKB48 as cultural ambassadors. “AKB48 may represent Japanese culture,”
says Yukio Kobayashi, president of Tokyo music agency 3rd Stone From The
Sun, “but underage girls in sexy clothing … to me it’s basically legal
child porn.”
Experts also say the country focused for too long on
producing highly developed but unexportable products. They say the
sheer size of the domestic market made foreign fans of Japanese culture
an afterthought – and that when Japanese contents industries did look
abroad, the rush of interest in Cool Japan created unrealistic
expectations.
“It’s the boiling frog scenario,” says the Ryotaro
Mihara of the new Creative Industries Division at the Japanese Ministry
of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). “With Cool Japan the market
shrank bit by bit," he says referring to Japan's domestic manga, anime,
and music markets, "so there wasn’t a sense of urgency” to reach
international consumers.
By contrast, says “Japanamerica” author
Roland Kelts, “The Korean government invested a lot of money in its
domestic pop industry and went after overseas markets. “Places where
J-pop was formerly popular, like Southeast Asia, have switched to K-pop.”
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
disaster then came along to deal a cruel blow to Japan’s image. “You
can call Japan ‘cool’ all you want,” says Japanese film critic Mark
Schilling, “but images of the tsunami and reactor meltdowns are stronger
now in many foreign minds than any miniskirted pop idol.”
As
the challenges facing Japanese soft power sink in, some say the first
step to addressing them may mean ditching the Cool Japan slogan
altogether.
METI’s Mr. Mihara admits there has been criticism. “A
debate is needed within Japan,” he says, “to come up with a better
phrase to explain Japanese culture.”
Rather than Cool Japan
slogans, Japan may be better off promoting specific aspects of Japanese
culture. “What you want is Cool X, Y, or Z,” says Steve McClure, former
Billboard Asia bureau chief and publisher of McClureMusic.com. “Branding a cultural movement in terms of national origin is dangerous.”
This is an area where Japan should have an advantage. “Gangnam Style” may have 800 million YouTube views, but Japan produces a broader range of success stories.
Last year in North America, vintage singer Saori Yuki had a No. 1 song on the iTunes
jazz chart while dance music star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu topped iTunes’s
electronic music chart. “It’s almost irrelevant whether Japan is cool or
not, because there is enough cool stuff here anyway that will sink or
swim on its own,” says Mr. McClure.
Instead of throwing money at
marketing campaigns, experts say Japan should support its struggling
domestic contents industries. Japan spent just 0.12 percent of its
national budget on the arts in 2008, the latest year for which
comparable figures are available, whereas South Korea spent 0.79
percent, and China 0.51 percent.
Public funds would be effective
in industries like manga and anime, where young “kamikaze” animators
burn out from long days and salaries that average only just over 1
million yen (about $12,185) per year.
Indeed, though Japan once
dominated the industry, work is increasingly done by its low-cost Asian
neighbors. “There is a culture of manga and anime that is currently in
critical condition,” says Galbraith. “The manga market cannot be allowed
to fail. It is the base of the contents industry in Japan.”
Public
money would also be useful in helping Japanese artists make expensive
trips abroad. “We get many requests from overseas fans,” says King
Record’s Sayaka Yamada, who manages the international catalog of girl
groups like Momoiro Clover Z. “Financial support would be very helpful,”
she continues. “Japan should study Korea, which invested a lot to
promote K-pop artists.”
Observers say Japan production houses
should empower the “scanlators” who post pirated manga. “They need to
join with other companies to make a Web presence that’s attractively
priced and branded,” Mr. Kelts counsels, pointing again to South Korea,
which has been much more proactive about utilizing the Internet and
branding its culture.
“When a Pixar
film comes to Japan, it’s branded as a Pixar film,” Kelts says. “Nobody
knows Japanese anime studios like Production I.G. Cool Japan was fine
in the early phases, but at a certain point distinguishing brands have
to emerge.”
An initiative by METI’s Creative Industries section,
which was formed just last year, may speak to new efforts in this
direction. METI funded a “Harajuku Street Style” market in Singapore. “Kawaii
styles are very popular there, but Japanese fashion businesses have
difficulty operating overseas,” METI’s Mihara says. “We provided a
budget to help them get established. Pooling their efforts, we had 13
brands available in Singapore for the first time.”
Experts
also say Japan needs to get away from stereotypes. “We need to convey
the depth of Japanese culture beyond manga and anime,” says Meiji’s Mr.
Kitawaki. “Behind manga and anime there is a rich culture, for example
the animism of Shinto. Or take modern Japanese design’s ability to
manage extremely small spaces – this is also Cool Japan.”
The massive worldwide outpouring by the likes of Lady Gaga after the Fukushima
disaster hinted at the reach of Japanese soft power. And a recent
global poll by research firm StrategyOne ranked Japan the world’s most
creative country.
Mr. McGray, in his famous article, foresaw two
possible futures for Japan. It could either employ its vast potential
soft power to reinvent itself, or, he warned, lurch toward further
uncertainty.
He leaned toward optimism, saying, "Japan's history
of remarkable revivals suggests that the outcome … is more likely to be
rebirth.”
Yet 10 years later it is certain that Cool Japan has lurched to not only uncertainty but uncool because what equates as cool to 60+ year old politicians is certain to be uncool to the rest of society.
