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

Don't we get this exact same article...

[Anonymous Coward]

...every year? I think it's the result of reporters on vacation at the end of the year, doing a cut-and-paste on the date, and hoping the editor doesn't catch the dupe.

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

[BroncoInCalifornia]

Food used to be most of the economic output. Then we got good at mass producing food.

We had the industrial revolution. Most of the economy went to the manufacture and distribution of manufactured goods. Food became a small percentage of the total economic output.

Now we are very very good at manufacturing stuff. Everything is so cheap now. TVs are cheap. Computers are cheap. Not long ago it was a big deal to buy these mass produced toys. Now they are impulse buy. For a while Japan led the world in this manufacturing revolution.

Are we getting to a point where manufactured goods are not so imporant anymore. Perhaps manufactured goods are becoming a smaller part of the world economy. "Cultural" products are becoming more important and now onece again we are competing with the Japanise.

No way!

[Skynet]

Japan totally gets all it's cool from the United States, and our beloved Governor of California!

Here's proof!

Cultural Imperialism

[tsanth]

I, for one, welcome our new Japanese overl-

oh, screw it.

Re:Cultural Imperialism

[kampit]

Watashi, mizukara, waga wa nuyy nihonji ooba shu no motenasu!

Re:Cultural Imperialism

[falcon5768]

slashdot, where only here someone would translate a "I welcome" comment into Japanese.

Culture!

[TWX]

We durn got all our culture right down here in Texas! We got more culture than a Petri dish!

Re:Culture!

[TWX]

"I didn't know Bukkake was a Texan thing."

Shurtis! We got all kinds of barbeque sauce down here! Mesquite, honeybarbeque, spicy jalapeno, so why not bukkake too? Have to go check the store shelves for that one though. Haven't tried it personally...

Cultural Symbols vs. Culture

[P!Alexander]

I think it's important to note that cultural symbols are not akin to culture itself. Japan can export all the anime it likes but that isn't representative of it's entire culture nor will it affect other cultures enough to make them resemble Japanese culture in something other than a superficial way. For example, Japanese corporate structure and the loyalty given to your company (a structural phenomenon) is unlikely to get passed along through its cultural symbols. Just like American structural phenomenon are unlikely to get passed along through our blockbuster movie exports.

In the end, reality is highly individualized and rarely is a culture made up solely of a selective portion of its symbols.

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

[HunterZero]

That since Japan opened itself up to the west it's been a maniac for other cultures. With the exception of the years before and during ww2, Japan has long been a rabid consumer for American culture, along with european culture.

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. Music is often sprinkled with a hearty dose of engrish as well. Try watching their TV programs sometime, you'll find plenty of american culture. Of course, they like to take it and modify it to their own means and that's exactly what Japan has been doing forever.

This brings up an interesting question: Why are the Japanese so keen to take, modify and integrate other cultures to suit their needs, yet they're still incredibly racist of other cultures? If you doubt their racism, ask why they still have stores and places of business that advertise "Japanese Only"? Of course, for Americans it is a bit hard to understand the concept of being a distinct civilization since we've long been a melting pot, a nation made up of other nations.

But I'm getting off the point. This article is nothing new. The reason why collectables are so expensive overseas is that it's so damned expensive in Japan! Whenever you feel like complaining about the price of dvds, remember that they charge around 40-60$ per dvd, and usually it has half as much as a dvd here in America.

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

[kfg]

Do not forget that Japan "opened itself up" to the west under the gaze of American cannons intent on obtaining Japanese culture.

Thus resulting in the overthrow of the stable "military" Shogunate that had maintained Japan as a land of peace, domestically and internationally, for 250 years or so, to be replaced by militarists who armed Japan and went on an empire by conquest rampage.

A rampage rather overtly based on the western model of such, no less.

You are correct about Japanese racism though. This is a nation that can claim to have no racial issues due to their single race when millions of Japanese born people of Korean descent can't obtain citizen ship and the aboriginal populace is treated as if it doesn't exist, except maybe as a tourist exhibit.

However, through most of their history they have overtly acknowledged that real culture came from the mainland, much as once the English may have held themselves superiour and yet looked to France, Italy and even the German provinces for real culture.

It's a peculiar schizophrenia, but not entirely beyond the realm of understanding.

On the other hand while we have hungered for Japanese goods for the past 200 years or so we too use them as Americans, without becoming Japanese in the process, even while we study Karate and go to Zendos to test our Koan understanding.

We have our own peculiar ways of being schizophrenic, it's just harder for us to see because for us it's normal.

So for the Japanese, or any other culture for that matter.

KFG

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

[Tenebrious1]

This brings up an interesting question: Why are the Japanese so keen to take, modify and integrate other cultures to suit their needs, yet they're still incredibly racist of other cultures?

It's pretty simple, same reason you find racism in certain parts of the States and in ethnic neighborhoods in cities. In monocultures, there's nobody around to point out that you're being a racist when everyone thinks the same.

I'm Japanese, growing up in the burbs of NYC, I was stereotyped and the subject of racist remarks my entire childhood. It wasn't until I moved away to more metro areas that I found more acceptance. So racism still runs strong in the States, make no mistake about it.

"National Pride" is ok, we see a lot of pride parades here in NYC. But just start to say something bad about another race, everyone jumps all over you for being a racist. You can't say anything about another culture without being condemned as a racist. We're forced to be politcally correct or face a civil lawsuit. That's a long ways away from being an integrated "melting pot" society as we'd like to believe.

Japan isn't much different in terms of racism; the only difference is that there aren't people forcing them to watch everything they say, so they don't think about it. Yeah, many will openly discriminate and don't think twice about it, I hear about it from my caucasian friends who live in Japan. It's really that they haven't been forced to accept other cultures, socially or legally.

What Japan really needs is Al Sharpton to stir things up, make them more aware of how racist the society is. Not sure if even he can do it, but it'd be a good start.

Japanese Music ?

[tealover]

I haven't been paying attention to the Billboard top 100 recently, but are there some Japanese rock bands that i don't know about ?

I talked to an exchange student from Japan...

[grungebox]

recently at this party I was at. Apparently, he says Japanese don't look down on Americans like Europeans do (admittedly with reasonable justification). He said Hollywood movies are huge over there as an earlier post mentioned, and the stars are on posters all over the place. For some reason, Brad Pitt is hot right now.

Although the one interesting bit of Japanese culture that's taking over like crazy is manga. If you look at Border's or Barnes, you'll see five or six shelves of Manga, and American comics have been pushed into one small shelf at the end. It's apparently the "in" thing for youngsters, much like Fear Street books were the "in" thing back when I was in school.

Food for thought...

Re:I talked to an exchange student from Japan...

[Guppy06]

" If you look at Border's or Barnes, you'll see five or six shelves of Manga,"

Just a shame that 5 out of those 6 shelves are all Dragon Ball...

Like this?

[herrvinny]

The significance of anime

Anime And The Tech Lifestyle

Movie Review: Princess Mononoke

An Extensive History of Anime

This story is not exactly a dupe, but much of it is discussed in these earlier topics.

OT, but has anyone had any success in loading /.'s search function? It always times out on me for the past two weeks or so, and I have to keep resorting to using Google search (which is not really a hardship, since Google beats out /.'s search function easily, but still, I'd like to at least access it.)

It's because they're different

[SamSim]

I think basically what the West is beginning to realise is that Japan is an entire culture which, while being easily as technologically advanced as America (and in many ways more so), is totally different from America. It's new, it's unusual, it's different, and a lot of it is stuff that Westerners have never even contemplated before, let alone seen.

Kids are insane over Dragonball Z because super-kung-fu-firing-fireballs-from-fingertips-fly ing-about-kicking-people-through-mountains genre just doesn't exist in America. Sure, it's an appalling series on many levels, but it brings something new to the table and for them, that (combined with its testosterone content) makes it worth watching.

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]

"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)

Is Japan Really Cool ?

[tealover]

How many hot girls do you know that love manga, anime and videogames ?

And please, no anecdotes about "my wife does!"...I'm talking in the general case. Walk into a bar on the Upper West Side talking about Castle in the Sky to the 6'0 Brazilian supermodel and she'll stare at you blankly while planning her escape.

Japan has a niche with a certain segment (nerdy people) but their culture doesn't have broad appeal to the masses. Sure, videogames pull in a lot of money but they're typically bought by young men.

The readers of this site will love the article because it will affirm something they want to believe in, but it doesn't really make it true.

Japan Rocks

[molafson]

I like Japan. It rocks. The food's good, people are respectful of each other, and you can buy beer in vending machines. However, I feel compelled to tell you all that I hate anime. Lots of Japanese people hate it as well. (Similarly, many Americans hate Hollywood films, network television, etc.)

I feel that American anime fanboys like anime mostly because it is different. To be a fan of anime makes them feel special (because ordinary American people are not very familiar with anime apart from Pokemon et al.)

Lastly, what I hate even more than anime are anime-themed RPGs. Thank you for letting me vent. No offense intended.

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.