Japan's so cool it's slushy

[Samurai_Jerk]

Surprise, surprise! It seems Cool Japan is a just another shady corporate slush fund.

Originally set up to promote Japanese anime and manga, the "Cool Japan" campaign has morphed into something much, much bigger.

"Cool Japan should be about supporting new, creative businesses, but instead it's being taken over by big business," Kota Matsuda, an opposition party member of Japan's upper house of parliament and founder of Tully's Coffee Japan, told CNBC by phone.

Two years ago, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe blessed the campaign with an official seal and even appointed a "Cool Japan" minister in charge of strategy. Since then, with an eye to advertising Tokyo ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games, the campaign has been expanded to include fashion, music and even food.

The campaign even has its own investment fund, the Cool Japan Fund, and a 40.6 billion yen ($341 million) war chest to match its big ambitions.

[...]

So far, almost all the projects that have been funded by the Cool Japan Fund have been tied to its shareholders, according to Matsuda.

One example is the 11 billion yen joint venture to launch a new television channel to broadcast Japanese content in local languages. Cool Japan Fund's chairman Kazunobu Iijima is a board member of the private sector partner, cable channel operator Sky Perfect JSAT, which in turn is a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings, another Cool Japan Fund shareholder and one of Japan's biggest media conglomerates.

Other projects include a new Japanese food court in Singapore and new shopping centers in Malaysia and China, all of which will be operated by major Japanese department store chains.

[matsuki]

Corruption between corps and state....being called out by upper parliament member that just happens to be the founder of another corp. I guess Tully's wasn't Japanese enough to get promoted?