Talk:Cool Japan

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:29, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Article name

I suggest moving this article to "Cool Japan." The term "Gross National Cool" is notable enough to be included in the text largely as it is, but seems to have been coined and used by one person, Douglas McGray. Otherwise, this phenomenon is referred to in the sources provided as "Cool Japan." Any objections? JFHJr (㊟) 16:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Page moved. JFHJr (㊟) 20:32, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

i live outside asia and i can be sure the biggest asian influence in popular culture is japan;but is most in field of manga-anime,but korea,the other big asian developed country is growing,but more in the field of tv series,the korean dramas,but of course korea have some popular manhwas like goong and japan some films like battle royale — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.235.130.88 (talk) 22:25, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

But you have to note that most Korean pop groups start out in Japan to gain recognition and a fan base, then go back to Korea to gain recognition. Also, Japanese cuisine is very much "cool". - M0rphzone (talk) 01:26, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Origins

I suggest that the article include the importance of Cool Japan in relation to the economy and international relations. The Cool Japan movement is a means by which Japan has expanded its pop culture to markets across the globe. It is also important to remember Japan's infamy after World War II, and that Japan used its pop culture to communicate and ease tension in South East Asia. BrmWhitsit (talk) 02:40, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

References

Missing from the list

Should include AV or pornographic too. Why not add that too? You know what I mean. Yes, I was talking about the AV culture. Destroying the lives of the youngsters and whatnot, while ripping money from it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.49.56.226 (talk) 01:26, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

If you have a reliable source to back up its inclusion, please feel free to re-add it. --DAJF (talk) 02:35, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

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Let's separate "pop-culture diplomacy" from "cool Japan".

The article conflates a few things. Pop-culture diplomacy is separate from the Cool Japan initiative. This has caused some confusion for people. In particular, this article cites it and the author went on to repeat this misinformed definition of cool Japan on NPR. Dplre (talk) 03:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Whether or not you agree with Steffi's argument that connects Cool Japan to war crimes denial, etc., it is not incorrect to say that Cool Japan is related to pop-culture diplomacy. McGray's article that pretty much catalyzed the whole damn thing is clear about this: National cool is an idea, a reminder that commercial trends and products, and a country’s knack for spawning them, can serve political and economic ends. As Nye argued in this magazine more than a decade ago, “There is an element of triviality and fad in popular behavior, but it is also true that a country that stands astride popular channels of communication has more opportunities to get its messages across and to affect the preferences of others.” (And it shouldn't be lost that the article was published in the magazine Foreign Policy.)

Koichi Iwabuchi's paper cited in the article is also clear about this:

Around the beginning of the present century, Japan’s pop-culture diplomacy was firmly institutionalized with the ‘Cool Japan’ policy discourse, which sought to capitalize on the popularity of Japanese media culture in global markets [...] It should be noted that the development of pop-culture diplomacy, and more broadly ‘Cool Japan’, was propelled by the increasingly ubiquitous discourses of soft power and nation branding in the exercise of cultural policy. [...] Many governments including Japan are interested in more expedient ways to use media culture to establish appealing images of the nation, smooth international political negotiations and boost the economy: in effect the soft power paradigm has actually been superseded by the imperatives of nation branding...

Now, Iwabuchi does acknowledge conflicting definitions of the concept by different Japanese ministries: MOFA distinguishes itself from METI in its engagement with Cool Japan by emphasizing that the purpose of the promotion of Japanese media culture should not be reduced to market promotion only and that the enhancement of Japan’s cultural standing in the world should take precedence. However, its pop-culture diplomacy is not fundamentally different from METI’s economy-driven policies in that they both share the aspiration of boosting the nation’s brand image though the promotion of Japanese media culture. It is true that the "Cool Japan" program under METI is economic and not necessarily diplomatic—but "Cool Japan" as a concept is more than just that program. Perhaps we could add that bit to the article to clarify things though. Sandtalon (talk) 06:02, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

My argument is that the Cool Japan initiative is quite recent. Cultural diplomacy is an aspect of it. It started from the idea that the perception of Japanese coolness is a soft power asset, as stated in McGrey's article.

Conflating the initiative, the concept of coolness as soft power, and the popularity of Japanese pop culture itself is confusing. The coolness came before the government paid attention to it. Before this, there's little concrete government action we can point to to explain the rise of media exports, it was mostly economic happenstance. The criticisms seem to be about popularity of Japanese media in general.

I don't have any great ideas on how to fix this though. Dplre (talk) 16:58, 30 October 2024 (UTC)