Read this the day it went up and had to react immediately — no time to let it settle, which I think is a compliment to the piece. The "failed help is better than successful help" inversion is what got me: the idea that the bureaucracy's incompetence at promotion has been quietly load-bearing for the whole ecosystem. Once the state has to defend the culture, it ends up defending the worst of it — a trap I hadn't seen articulated so cleanly.
If I can offer the other end of the telescope, as someone watching Japan from the outside as a place an artist might one day want to grow: I keep snagging on the fact that the $130B is a market-size target, not a check being written. A check funds an approved list — directed, legible, exactly the capturable thing you're warning about. A growth target mostly works by de-risking private capital, and a thicker stack tends to spill over to the fringe it isn't aiming at — infrastructure built for the mainstream, adjacent paid work, more density pulling in patrons and collaborators.
So maybe the capital and the capture are the same event seen from two ends. The piece made me hold both at once on first read — that's the most I can ask of an essay. Grateful for it.
Thanks for your thoughts. One of the most frustrating things about all of these announcements is how little in the way of concrete detail details there have been, despite all the enthusiastic reporting, and Onoda’s comments haven’t instilled confidence.
One of the biggest issues is that manga in particular, but a lot of Japanese pop culture in general, have traditionally been counterpoints to the authorities and the mainstream. That tension is arguably what makes so much of it so good. One might argue that that is a factor of Japan’s pop cultural industries having “grown up” rapidly in the postwar era world order, and that times have changed. But once the authorities become dependent on it, can it retain its soul? It is a fundamental, structural conundrum.
I like the evolutionary perspective you are invoking here. And it resonates, like all around us there’s constant change and the industries are also subject to inception, growth, golden eras, and eventual decline in relative terms. What has risen, will eventually fall, and vice versa.
Oh, it will definitely fall — not because of this push, but because pop is cyclical and trend-driven. Nothing stays “cool” forever.
The elephant in the room is that Cool Japan / content is directly linked to tourism, but what makes visiting attractive is actually economics: the super-weak yen and Japan’s unusually (for a developed country) low wages/prices. When all of that shifts, which it will have to, eventually, will Japan remain as popular?
Damn, this is an interesting point of view, and I need to agree with you that Japan is right now economically, societally, narratively in a weird place! And what adds to the complexity of this entire situation is the fact that I have not seen any tangible reports on that, but it seems that the Japanese are starting to be less welcoming to tourists than they used to be across recent decades. I'm not talking about the Meiji era, or the era where they essentially shut off the gates from the Western or Eastern countries totally, but they seem to be, how to put it, quite fed up with the tourists, and I think it is linked with the Cool Japan/content you are mentioning, because this is what draws people in, like you said. This forcing function seems to be waning and reducing its impact now, so it almost seems like Japan faces an identity crisis of some sorts. This decision to pour more gasoline on the fire of cute manga and pop culture might be one approach to direct the new narratives and to direct the new identity in a particular path. Just like you would imagine having a river and you want to relocate where the river flows because you want to supply the rice fields with water. You create either dams to stop the river or you create new pathways for the river and just let it flow through these. This is incredibly interesting, what is happening there, and I am watching it all with awe and a bit of nosthalgia as well
Highly recommend ‘The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture’ edited by Mark McLelland for folks interested in going deeper. This topic has definitely been a long time coming.
Tell me about it! It’s pretty rough. Patrick Galbraith was one of the contributors and he uploads a lot of his work on Academia.edu as open access. So that’s a bit of a treasure trove. I live in Tokyo so if you ever want me to mail it to you or something, happy to lend it out.
Great analysis, Matt. I have trouble imagining Japanese government intervention going any way but the way past such interventions have gone (thinking of JLPP) whereby a list, often arbitrary and conceived by a single individual, determines what gets funded and promoted. There are knock-on effects—paying for a translation of a book that no one will read still helps a translator who may go on to do more impactful work stay afloat & hone their craft—but it’s hard to see how they achieve a broadly effective promotion effort without a dramatically different approach (words you don’t often hear associated with government programs in any country, least of all Japan).
Speaking of translators, one wonders how they intend to bring this content to a global audience? Let the constellation of private companies figure it out? Mass adoption of AI translation tools? Seems like another important, traditionally ignored, part of the puzzle that needs figuring out.
Great read, Matt! I appreciate the distillation of the core conundrum you highlight - all of the talk of government boosterism and very little detail about how that will practically function w/o interfering with the creatives who make that happen. Brings up sour memories of the sensational headlines around the US’s National Endowment for the Arts in the 80s.
How much of this effort is focused on fostering more things like the (highly successful) Shonen Jump production model?
Surely Matt in order to be or not to be a fan, you had to judge at some critical point? Or is fandom/nonfandom capable somehow of bypassing such deliberations altogether?
I wonder if the cool Japan folks have studied the wine industry and its use of appellations. That, to me, is what I think the government really wants to achieve. Much as how champagne can only be made in France and everywhere else it has to be sparkling wine or something like that. (I used to teach a Napa case study in my Clusters class.)
I have suggested this very idea (in Japanese as well ) and gotten a surprising amount of pushback from people in the industry. I think the government is silly not to explore this idea if they are serious about making content a foundational pillar of the economy, but who knows how serious they really are.
What type of appellation could Japan be successful in securing for Anime and Manga?
Apparently, anime cannot receive Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) status. These legal frameworks are strictly reserved for agricultural products, foods, and wines whose specific quality or characteristics are exclusively tied to a particular geographical environment (its terroir) and locally mandated production methods.
I was wondering if Japan could apply for some sort of UNESCO "cultural heritage" protection. But! I am also wondering if it would qualify. A lot of anime is not produced entirely within Japan. We are all well aware of the overseas service work in countries like China and South Korea.
It would be cool to see something positive happen. The fans, for the longest time, have been the ones managing the "brand integrity" of anime. Sometimes that has not been a great success.
A lot of my work these days comes from working with creations that are animesque and anime-adjacent. My first rule for those producers is, "Do not even dare to call this anime," and of course, they agree, but once the show or movie is out in the marketplace, we lose control of the conversation. Some journalists do not know what anime is in the first place. To them, it is just a look and a style of animation. Secondly, and probably what I would be most concerned about, is that the audience perception is changing. So, even the most sensitive and considerate animation producers cannot prevent the audience from describing their non-anime anime as "Anime."
AO (appellation of origin) or GI (geogrpahical indicator) would be the way to go: that is how Swiss watches, Harris tweeds, and Murano glassware is recognized. I don't see the fact that much of the behind-the-scenes work of making anime is outsourced as a hurdle (as in how "Designed by Apple in California" does the heavy lifting for the brand, rather than the "Manufactured in China" part.)
Yes, I remembered your post. The fit does seem obvious, and the same Old World vs New World dichotomy from the wine industry would apply nicely here. Napa became successful because France exists - meaning, Napa needed the juxtaposition with France to elevate itself as a new high quality production center.
Btw, I did have the pleasure of hearing Onoda-san speak at a METI Economic Security Forum in December. That event was more focused on critical minerals and semis and the topic areas you might associate with the role.
Read this the day it went up and had to react immediately — no time to let it settle, which I think is a compliment to the piece. The "failed help is better than successful help" inversion is what got me: the idea that the bureaucracy's incompetence at promotion has been quietly load-bearing for the whole ecosystem. Once the state has to defend the culture, it ends up defending the worst of it — a trap I hadn't seen articulated so cleanly.
If I can offer the other end of the telescope, as someone watching Japan from the outside as a place an artist might one day want to grow: I keep snagging on the fact that the $130B is a market-size target, not a check being written. A check funds an approved list — directed, legible, exactly the capturable thing you're warning about. A growth target mostly works by de-risking private capital, and a thicker stack tends to spill over to the fringe it isn't aiming at — infrastructure built for the mainstream, adjacent paid work, more density pulling in patrons and collaborators.
So maybe the capital and the capture are the same event seen from two ends. The piece made me hold both at once on first read — that's the most I can ask of an essay. Grateful for it.
Thanks for your thoughts. One of the most frustrating things about all of these announcements is how little in the way of concrete detail details there have been, despite all the enthusiastic reporting, and Onoda’s comments haven’t instilled confidence.
One of the biggest issues is that manga in particular, but a lot of Japanese pop culture in general, have traditionally been counterpoints to the authorities and the mainstream. That tension is arguably what makes so much of it so good. One might argue that that is a factor of Japan’s pop cultural industries having “grown up” rapidly in the postwar era world order, and that times have changed. But once the authorities become dependent on it, can it retain its soul? It is a fundamental, structural conundrum.
I like the evolutionary perspective you are invoking here. And it resonates, like all around us there’s constant change and the industries are also subject to inception, growth, golden eras, and eventual decline in relative terms. What has risen, will eventually fall, and vice versa.
Oh, it will definitely fall — not because of this push, but because pop is cyclical and trend-driven. Nothing stays “cool” forever.
The elephant in the room is that Cool Japan / content is directly linked to tourism, but what makes visiting attractive is actually economics: the super-weak yen and Japan’s unusually (for a developed country) low wages/prices. When all of that shifts, which it will have to, eventually, will Japan remain as popular?
Damn, this is an interesting point of view, and I need to agree with you that Japan is right now economically, societally, narratively in a weird place! And what adds to the complexity of this entire situation is the fact that I have not seen any tangible reports on that, but it seems that the Japanese are starting to be less welcoming to tourists than they used to be across recent decades. I'm not talking about the Meiji era, or the era where they essentially shut off the gates from the Western or Eastern countries totally, but they seem to be, how to put it, quite fed up with the tourists, and I think it is linked with the Cool Japan/content you are mentioning, because this is what draws people in, like you said. This forcing function seems to be waning and reducing its impact now, so it almost seems like Japan faces an identity crisis of some sorts. This decision to pour more gasoline on the fire of cute manga and pop culture might be one approach to direct the new narratives and to direct the new identity in a particular path. Just like you would imagine having a river and you want to relocate where the river flows because you want to supply the rice fields with water. You create either dams to stop the river or you create new pathways for the river and just let it flow through these. This is incredibly interesting, what is happening there, and I am watching it all with awe and a bit of nosthalgia as well
I should also note, as a mark of how “real” this is getting, that the Nikkei just launched an entertainment index, tracking the health of the content industry. https://asia.nikkei.com/announcements/nikkei-launches-new-stock-index-tracking-japan-s-entertainment-industry
Highly recommend ‘The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture’ edited by Mark McLelland for folks interested in going deeper. This topic has definitely been a long time coming.
Amazing read as always, Matt!
Would love to read, but those Routledge cover prices.….!!
Tell me about it! It’s pretty rough. Patrick Galbraith was one of the contributors and he uploads a lot of his work on Academia.edu as open access. So that’s a bit of a treasure trove. I live in Tokyo so if you ever want me to mail it to you or something, happy to lend it out.
Interesting read !
Great analysis, Matt. I have trouble imagining Japanese government intervention going any way but the way past such interventions have gone (thinking of JLPP) whereby a list, often arbitrary and conceived by a single individual, determines what gets funded and promoted. There are knock-on effects—paying for a translation of a book that no one will read still helps a translator who may go on to do more impactful work stay afloat & hone their craft—but it’s hard to see how they achieve a broadly effective promotion effort without a dramatically different approach (words you don’t often hear associated with government programs in any country, least of all Japan).
Speaking of translators, one wonders how they intend to bring this content to a global audience? Let the constellation of private companies figure it out? Mass adoption of AI translation tools? Seems like another important, traditionally ignored, part of the puzzle that needs figuring out.
They are investing heavily in AI translation companies. It’s another problem that I should probably touch on in a follow up piece.
Ah, of course. That makes sense because everyone knows the best entertainment is created with AI. Please do follow up!
“Or shackle them. I don’t judge.”
May we all be free of judgement and shackled to the extent our imaginations enjoy it. Thanks M.A.!
Thank you very much for your insight work.
Another point to think about in Japan is the anonymity where people seek.
X, YouTube, and many other SNS, including Nico Nico as you mentioned of over-laying comments on top of other's video enjoying chaos.
There are issues, government interference, religion, uncontrollable crime rate in certain regions.
It's a growing pain and need some dramatic remedy and it's not only the foreigners.
Great read, Matt! I appreciate the distillation of the core conundrum you highlight - all of the talk of government boosterism and very little detail about how that will practically function w/o interfering with the creatives who make that happen. Brings up sour memories of the sensational headlines around the US’s National Endowment for the Arts in the 80s.
How much of this effort is focused on fostering more things like the (highly successful) Shonen Jump production model?
I'm reminded of the famous Reagan quote
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.”
Not quite sure how you translate that into Japanese but I think it would be worth doing so.
Surely Matt in order to be or not to be a fan, you had to judge at some critical point? Or is fandom/nonfandom capable somehow of bypassing such deliberations altogether?
I wonder if the cool Japan folks have studied the wine industry and its use of appellations. That, to me, is what I think the government really wants to achieve. Much as how champagne can only be made in France and everywhere else it has to be sparkling wine or something like that. (I used to teach a Napa case study in my Clusters class.)
I have suggested this very idea (in Japanese as well ) and gotten a surprising amount of pushback from people in the industry. I think the government is silly not to explore this idea if they are serious about making content a foundational pillar of the economy, but who knows how serious they really are.
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/anime-is-the-champagne-of-japan
What type of appellation could Japan be successful in securing for Anime and Manga?
Apparently, anime cannot receive Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) status. These legal frameworks are strictly reserved for agricultural products, foods, and wines whose specific quality or characteristics are exclusively tied to a particular geographical environment (its terroir) and locally mandated production methods.
I was wondering if Japan could apply for some sort of UNESCO "cultural heritage" protection. But! I am also wondering if it would qualify. A lot of anime is not produced entirely within Japan. We are all well aware of the overseas service work in countries like China and South Korea.
It would be cool to see something positive happen. The fans, for the longest time, have been the ones managing the "brand integrity" of anime. Sometimes that has not been a great success.
A lot of my work these days comes from working with creations that are animesque and anime-adjacent. My first rule for those producers is, "Do not even dare to call this anime," and of course, they agree, but once the show or movie is out in the marketplace, we lose control of the conversation. Some journalists do not know what anime is in the first place. To them, it is just a look and a style of animation. Secondly, and probably what I would be most concerned about, is that the audience perception is changing. So, even the most sensitive and considerate animation producers cannot prevent the audience from describing their non-anime anime as "Anime."
AO (appellation of origin) or GI (geogrpahical indicator) would be the way to go: that is how Swiss watches, Harris tweeds, and Murano glassware is recognized. I don't see the fact that much of the behind-the-scenes work of making anime is outsourced as a hurdle (as in how "Designed by Apple in California" does the heavy lifting for the brand, rather than the "Manufactured in China" part.)
That is an excellent point that I completely missed regarding Apple tech.
Yes, I remembered your post. The fit does seem obvious, and the same Old World vs New World dichotomy from the wine industry would apply nicely here. Napa became successful because France exists - meaning, Napa needed the juxtaposition with France to elevate itself as a new high quality production center.
Btw, I did have the pleasure of hearing Onoda-san speak at a METI Economic Security Forum in December. That event was more focused on critical minerals and semis and the topic areas you might associate with the role.