Chinpokomon Diplomacy

In a post-rule of law world, Japan bets on fantasies to see it through

In the accelerated “move fast and break nations” timeline we’re living in, seven days feels like seven years ago, but that is when Japan’s “otaku in chief” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba flew in to Washington D.C. for a meeting with President Trump.

I knew this would be a weird sort of summit, but even I wasn’t prepared for the levels of weirdness we experienced over the course of a thirty-eight minute press conference. I can’t think of any other White House pressers that opened with a foreign leader hoisting a photo of the President surviving an assassination attempt. Stranger still was that the photo was actually the cover of a book Trump is giving out to visitors. This led Ishiba to remark that “you must have felt you were chosen by God.” This is something you would never, ever hear an average Japanese person say. Unless, perhaps, they were one of the less than 1% of Japanese who identify as Christian. Which, in fact, Ishiba does.

On the surface, the conversation went smoothly -- at least for the American President, who announced Japanese concession after concession without ceding much in return. And Ishiba pointedly refused to engage with questions about tarrifs. It might make one wonder what Japan stands to gain. The short answer is everything.

Trump is a veteran Japan-basher from the Eighties (and well beyond, far beyond the point anyone in the States considered Japan an adversary anymore). With one exception: the late Shinzo Abe. Abe broke through by analyzing Trump's character and appealing directly to to his sensibilities: golfing, hanging out, and basically going along with anything and everything the President wanted.

However, there's a saying in Japanese: "the clever hawk hides its talons." Ishiba is cannily continuing his predecessor's pop cultural pushes; the Japanese press revealed his gifts to the President, which included a golden golf driver and a gilt samurai helm. What might seem a traditional sort of gift is actually another pop cultural appeal: Shogun swept the Emmys, and Otani peacocked in a similar helmet on the baseball diamond. The Japanese government has announced a plan to make cultural exchanges, in the form of tourism and cultural exports, a pillar of its economy going forward. And the New Cool Japan strategy proposes doubling the production capacity of Japanese content-production industries. This is key, and when you look at Japan not as a manufacturing powerhouse but a pop-cultural superpower, you see that the relationship between Ishiba and Trump echoes that of Japan and the world.

Japan, once a feared enemy, is now seen as a friend by pretty much everyone outside of its immediate neighbors of China and Korea. And even their citizens love Japanese anime, manga, and games. Perhaps no other nation has ever so successfully transformed from a public enemy into a factory of dreams. As I’ve written about before, Japan’s pop-cultural products have grown even more ubiquitous and influential than its manufactured goods were in the postwar era, and one secret to their success is how Japan stays out of the headlines economically, politically, and militarily. Preserving this status quo is what Japan stands to gain from playing a dove rather than a hawk, a pussycat instead of a tiger. And it’s nothing new.

Way back in 1999, South Park aired an episode called “Chinpokomon.” It was a parody of what was then a very new, and to some very frightening, fad: Pokémon, the first Japanese packaged fantasy to explode at such a scale among kids around the world. In the episode, a series called “Chinpokomon” sweeps the children of South Park. It is soon revealed to be a Japanese plot to brainwash children into bombing Pearl Harbor again. (The South Park creators were never known for subtlety.) Every time an adult lodges a complaint against the company, its executives tell them how big American penises are compared to Japanese, and the problem briefly goes away. Eventually, it escalates to the highest eschelons of government. President Bill Clinton takes to the airwaves to announce that the Japanese have solved the problem… by praising him as “mammoth and dinosauric.” And so it goes.

We are now witnessing Chinpokomon diplomacy firsthand. Protocol means little to the current American administration; history and treaties even less. Everything is up for grabs, for the right price. But maintaining the US-Japan security alliance is key for Japan, for the island nation is surrounded by powerful rivals. Japan has only a small self-defense force, and nowhere near the population needed to scale it up to the size it could withstand a prolonged conflict with a neighbor.

During his first term, Trump dumped the Trans-Pacific Partnership and instituted tariffs on Japanese steel. Abe stuck by him nonetheless. For befriending Trump saved Japan from getting undermined in more insidious ways, militarily and strategically. And as an added bonus, avoiding arguments or trade wars ensured that Japan's cultural products could continue to be consumed without friction abroad.

Ishiba built his career as an “anti-Abe,” but he has enthusiastically embraced his rival’s charm offensive. Many other nations are gearing up for what are looking to be zero-sum negotiations with the American administration. But to quote another pop-cultural touchstone, sometimes the only winning move is not to play. By deliberately avoiding antagonizing America in any way, even at expense of seeming passive or even losing face, Japan keeps its profile low, and the consumability of its pop cultural exports high.

Japan, a post-industrial society with a plunging birthrate, needs pop culture to survive going forward, and placating Trump makes that easier. Foreign consumers are already starting to outnumber domestic domestic ones when it comes to anime and manga. And for the moment, it appears Japan’s leaders see Trump as the most important consumer of all.