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?

[Taro Toporific]

Cool Japan or Coal Japan?
Huffingtonpost.com | 2016-May-23
...Coal is the new cool, because it’s a little known fact that unlike its G7 partners, Japan is in the process of building 49 new coal-fired power stations -- whilst also being by far and away the largest financial backer of coal infrastructure in the region. From 2007 to 2014, Japan provided over US$20 billion in coal financing abroad...
...Japan is the odd one out as only country in the G7 building new coal-fired power stations, despite promising the rest of the world to do the opposite...
More...

lump-of-coal-award_Japan.jpg

cool-coal-japan-smokestack_640X.png

___________

Read more of Coal-kun's whiny polemics at: coaljapan.org

mr-happy-coal.jpg

[matsuki]

Finally...a way the jijibaba can contribute to Japan's future! Let's turn them all to coal!! (they're already 300 million years old)

[Taro Toporific]

Finally...a way the jijibaba can contribute to Japan's future! Let's turn them all to coal!! (they're already 300 million years old)

Well, there is a precedent for that use.

...I shall not speak of the railway in Cairo, for it is like any other railway---I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, 'Damn these plebians, they don't burn worth a cent---pass out a King.'
---1869; S. L. Clemens

laughing-mummy.jpg

Actually, the mummies have the last laugh.

[Takechanpoo]

its time to revive KUSHIRO COAL MINE CO.,LTD.

[legion]

Sounds like a cue for a song