Japan's Empire of Cool

The Wicked Priest writes "The Washington Post is reporting that culture is among Japan's leading exports." Talks about Anime, Manga, Music, Video Games and so forth. Interesting reading.

Comments

The U.S. is a major exporter of culture as well

[xeno_gearz]

Actually, this is far from anything new. For the United States, as well as Japan, culture is a huge export. The United States, for example, exports much of Hollywood to other countries. This in turn ends up to equating an export of culture as the concepts of particular movies are absorbed by the individuals who view them. Hollywood is the best example but television and music also fit into the equation as well.

There's one thing that Japan has over the United States when it comes to the export of culture, though; that's Hentai. :)

Re:The U.S. is a major exporter of culture as well

[Narf Narf]

That's not true. First of all, anime is not cool. Second, kids here dream of being all sorts of stupid things. Just like in America, they have all sorts of dreams when they are kids. The difference is maybe that they realize earlier that they are just going to end up being boring office workers like everyone else. While Americans, for example, persist on chasing fantasy careers for longer into their lives. But, this country is not nearly as homogenous as it is made out to be.

Re:Yeah, that's interesting until you consider...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just take a walk throughout Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ueno or Akihabara. You'll find a massive number of japanese teenagers (and adults) wearing shirts with "engrish" on them.

Walk through any trendy shopping street in a Western city and you'll see shirts, crockery, posters, just about everything, with random Han characters on them. What goes around...

Japan is a major importer of culture

[Anonymous Coward]

No offence to any Japanese people, but Japan is actually a major importer of culture. Their strength lays in taking in good things from other people, and improve on them, making them better. Other than anime, the modern Japanese absorbed a lot from western countries.

In the ancient time, most of its cultural customs came from China around the Tang dynasty. Examples include Kimono, Buddhism (which in turn came from India), original style of Samurai sword (the difference been in the straight edge of the blade instead of curved), the ancient form of Japanese language itself, and so on. The things about Japan is while they took on these things as their own and retained them as time went forth, China continoued to change through out various dynasties.

Re:Japan is a major importer of culture

[belmolis]

The Japanese language did not come from China. Japanese and Chinese are unrelated languages. Japanese borrowed many Chinese words and the Chinese writing system, starting prior to the Tang dynasty, but the core of the language was not borrowed from China. It is also worth mentioning that there was not all that much direct contact with China. To a large extent the borrowing of "continental" culture was via Korea.

Re:Japan is a major importer of culture

[belmolis]

"To a large extent the borrowing of "continental" culture was via Korea." Where do you think Korean ancient culture was influenced by?

That's why I said via Korea rather than from Korea. It is true that there was some direct contact with Tang China, but the heavy influx of Chinese culture, including the writing system and Buddhism, clearly came via Korea, much of it prior to the Tang. Chinese writing was probably introduced (in the sense of scholars teaching the Japanese to read and write - objects with Chinese writing on them reached Japan earlier) at the beginning of the fifth century, that is, around 400 C.E., two hundred years before the foundation of the Tang Dynasty.

The Japanese named their ancient capital to the same name as that of the Tang dynasty, translated to "Eastern Capital".

This is not true. Tokyo does indeed mean "Eastern Capital", but it is not the ancient capital of Japan. During the Tang Dynasty, the capital of Japan was at Nara, near Kyoto. Later it moved to Kyoto. In those days, Tokyo was known as Yedo (now pronounced Edo in Japanese as a result of the loss of /y/ before /e/) and was considered the boondocks. Edo became the de facto capital when Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan (effectively after the battle of Sekigahara in 1602, formally in 1615) and did not become the official capital until 1868. It is called "Eastern Capital" in contradistinction to Kyoto.

Can't believed they failed to mention that...

[chendo]

And the costumes and atmosphere of the recently concluded "Matrix" series were rooted primarily in Japanese manga.

Highly likely the manga they're talking about Ghost in the Shell (recent coverage)

Not just the same but even more so...

[xigxag]

For those people who can't be bothered to read the article, one of the main points was that:

A record 3 million people around the world are now studying the Japanese language, compared with only 127,000 in 1997, according to the Japan Foundation and Tokyo's Marubeni Research Institute.

So, in other words, there is a measurable increase in the cultural cachet of Japan, it's not just a static, ongoing event. And it's not just about manga and anime, but food (sushi restaurants are now ubiquitous in any large city), and jrock/jpop, the prime examples of which are Glay, KinKi Kids, Puffy (known in the US as Puffy AmiYumi so as to avoid confusion with a certain hiphop impresario), Hamasaki Ayumi, the New York born Utada Hikaru and Morning Musume, a group of currently 15 girls that form the most well known part of a pop empire.

Furthermore, even anime seems to be taking up an ever larger bite of the US Cartoon Network's schedule and the traditional Saturday Morning/after-school children's fare. It's even made a few recent ventures into wide release cinema in the US.

However, one could argue, I think persuasively, that's Japan's cultural upswing is part of a larger trend in the Asia-fication of Western culture. What started with egg foo yung and chop suey has now branched out to shabu-shabu and kimchi. What began with Speed Racer and Godzilla has developed into Princess Mononoke, cosplay and Shaolin Soccer.

Re:Cultural Imperialism

[Yosho]

Hm.. It's difficult to preserve the English phrase's structure and have it make sense, but I think it might be better as:
Watakushi, mizukara, shinshii nihon no shu wo motenashite orimasu.

That is, of course, assuming we're trying to be polite to our overlords. ;-)

Re:Yeah, that's interesting until you consider...

[Yosho]

Actually, from what I understand, many of the "Japanese Only" signs are because shops don't want people who can't speak Japanese fluently. I have an American friend who visited Japan a while back, and he told me that he accidentally walked into a shop with a "Japanese Only" sign once; the shopkeeper yelled at him in bad English for a moment, but after my friend started speaking in Japanese to him, the shopkeeper apologized and welcomed him in.

Granted, I'm sure that some of them are just racism, but not all.

Re:Yeah, that's interesting until you consider...

[bugbread]

"If you doubt their racism, ask why they still have stores and places of business that advertise "Japanese Only"? "

Hmm...the only places I know with signs like that are brothels (due to the much higher incidence of AIDS in foreigners than in Japanese) and in baths up in Hokkaido that have had numerous run-ins with drunken Russian sailors who refuse to clean themselves up before getting in the communal tub. I'm not sure either has to do with racism directly, any more than blood transfusions from Brits being denied in the States does.