Ambassador Of Anime

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Yomiuri: Pop culture key to foreign relations, new report says
An advisory panel to Foreign Minister Taro Aso that was established to improve cooperation and understanding between Japan and other countries has drawn up a report proposing the use of Japanese pop culture, including comics and anime, as a diplomatic tool...According to the report by the Council on the Movement of People Across Borders, Japanese pop culture has become enormously popular with young people oversea....The council also proposed the establishment of a so-called ambassador of anime culture--a person who would introduce contemporary Japanese artwork to other countries...more...

[American Oyaji]

When the Japanesegovernment starts to use anime as a proganda tool outside of it's own borders, (it already uses it INSIDE the country) it will be the end of the fun.

[Ptyx]

Besides food that is their only exportable cultural assets. Litterature, Music, Art and movies lag waaaay behind.
It's natural they want to push that up. Plus the manga companies got majorly screwed when they entered western markets failing to understand how popular their stuff could be in the west. They sold the rights to manga and anime for less than half than what it was worth. It's changing nowadays.
A friend of mine has a comics publishing company in france, they translate and publishes manga as well as publishing french authors.
Even the shittiest manga will sell twice as much as their domestic stuff, with no promotion whatsoever. A manga costs nothing to make, it's black and white on shitty paper and a japanese major helping you translate it for less than $500.
The price to license a mildly popular manga used to be less than a 1000 bucks. The dragon ball license in france was sold for less than 5000 bucks. They sold it in the 10 000 copies each volume and they are still being printed today.
In the 80's every kid's show on tv in Italy and France featured only japanese animations programs because it was much cheaper than americans one and of course much cheaper than to produce those domestically.
They use to give their shit away, stuff that was way higher quality than anything that was produced for Tv at the times.
They lost big in the west by thinking it couldn't be as profitable as it was in Japan. Of course the buyers from europe and the States were comforting them in that idea since it kept the prices low.
Now they're waking up and the prices are going up.
The most expensive serie ever sold in france was FullMetal Alchemist last year, it sold at $10k.
Manga is responsible for the sales of comics going up in France in the last 10 years in a sector which was declining in sales for the last 20 years before that.
It's a goldmine for comics publishers and they made a lot of money by screwing japanese companies. They're losing money to foreign companies that have nothing to do besides translating the stuff and printing it. They don't even have to market it, it sells by itself. It's a big waste for the big publishing companies of japan who were too stupid to realize they were sitting on a goldmine.

On a sidenote, US have used hollywood for doing propaganda since the Second World War. The US are the most agressive exporter of culture in this world.
Actually the US have been trying to export their way of life to every single part of this globe for the last 50 years.

Culture is a strenght and japanese culture is incredibly weak outside its own borders because they don't promote it.
And they lost a lot of money and influence because of their firm belief that japanese culture cannot be exported.

They're making a smart move by supporting manga and anime, they should have done it earlier.

[Mulboyne]

It's a big waste for the big publishing companies of japan who were too stupid to realize they were sitting on a goldmine.

Japanese publishers definitely should have earned more more but the success of manga wasn't a foregone conclusion. First Publishing produced the earliest translations of "Lone Wolf and Cub" in the late 80's but went bankrupt before they could finish the series. The comic book market collapsed in the early 90's, leading to the failure of a large number of stores and even industry leader Marvel went under. Based on that early experience, Japanese publishers assumed that the market wasn't receptive especially since they noted that overseas interest in Japan was high during the bubble but waned when the bubble burst.

They can be faulted for not having more confidence in the global appeal of their product but there weren't too many people predicting the subsequent explosion of interest back then. Two developments proceeded to play a big role: the growth of the internet and the increased use of digital technology in publishing which sharply reduced production costs. Another important factor - attribute it to what you will - was the arrival of the female comic book reader as a significant market. When these three things are taken as givens, then the success of manga seems obvious but if you put yourself back in the world when they weren't there, then some of the deals struck at least look understandable, if not particularly clever.

[adamukun]

Where the heck is that report? I can't find it for the life of me.

[Ptyx]

I'm not saying they should be blamed for not opening the market themselves. But the fact is, none of three big Manga publishers exists outside Japan, they're still licensing stuff that should have been published by themselves outside Japan.
The video games industry didn't make the same mistakes, Foreign branches of big japanese video games companies were started earlier.

[Mulboyne]

Where the heck is that report? I can't find it for the life of me.

I can't find the report itself, only news coverage. This is the Japanese version of the story and here's a reference to the Council on the MOFA website. Toyota's Fuji Cho is the chairman.

[Kuang_Grade]

The video games industry didn't make the same mistakes, Foreign branches of big japanese video games companies were started earlier.

While it seems hard to fathom now, the home video game industry was mostly a US based during its early period (magnavox, pong, atari 2600, and even the mighty Nintendo licensed Donkey Kong to ColecoVision for a home system)....But after atari imploded (not too long after foolishly turning down a licensing opportunity to sell the famicon/NES under Atari's name in the US), Nintendo came into the US and helped remake the marketplace here in the US. So I would propose it wasn't good planning on the part of J publisher/developers but rather common sense that prompted J game companies to have foreign branches...huge chunks of the market were outside of Japan on day 1.

As for the bigger question, if manga was depended on US comic bookshops for market presence, manga would still be a unknown word in the US. During the same time as the comic book market down turn in the 90s (although I would suggest Marvel's bankruptcy was more a result of Ronald Perelman's financial double dealings vs. the market downturn....but the downturn certainly didn't help), much of the US book market was shaken up by mega bookstore chains opening large stores with deep inventories, which eventually put many small bookstore out of business. Given that manga is often comes in large number of vols, it would be unlikely that many mom and pop stores would be interested in stocking 5 different titles of 10 vols each (and it would be very expensive to educate/sell to 1000's small accounts). But for the larger stores, that would not pose much of a commitment on trail business. So now Viz and others like them only needs to deal with handful of major chains to get sufficient presence in the marketplace. With that manga beachhead established, it was much easier to find other retailers (like wal-mart and target) to carry some manga as well. I believe similar retail bookstore consolidation has taken place in various other markets over the last 15 years, although likely not as significantly as it has occured in the US.

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Aso eyes comic-book heroes to rescue diplomacy

It's not without good reason that the chief of the country's foreign policy has been pushing his favorite manga comics on his staff at the Foreign Ministry. Japanese pop culture, according to Foreign Minister Taro Aso, is the way forward; the future of Japan's foreign cultural diplomacy. And he wants to ensure his staff are familiar with it. According to Aso, it's the country's anime, or animated films, along with manga, J-pop music and girly fashions that will draw overseas interest well into the future. So sure is he of this notion, that a cultural diplomacy strategy focusing entirely on Japanese pop culture has been drawn up. Bureaucrats and diplomats have even been formally asked to study manga in earnest as part of their "awareness training"...

... The big question, though, is how to translate the popularity of Japanese "software" into a full-blown interest in Japan. The Council on the Movement of People across Borders is an advisory council of the Foreign Affairs minister, headed by Fujio Cho, chairman of Toyota Motor Corp. Last November, the council's special committee on pop culture compiled a report regarding the application of Japanese pop culture to promote cultural diplomacy. Specific measures and policies include a program to designate young and upcoming anime creators and dispatch them abroad as "cultural ambassadors." Another plan is to create a "Japan manga grand prize," a competition targeting foreign artists. A total of 12.4 million yen has been budgeted for fiscal 2007 for such programs.

There are, however, some big hurdles to be cleared, especially in regard to securing partnerships between the public and private sector. As Yasuki Hamano, a professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School, points out, while the new game plan demands collaboration between the two sides, the government needs to remember that some aspects of Japan's pop culture are less than wholesome. And it won't be able to hide that fact. "Pop culture is not all snow-white--there is a down-and-dirty side, too," says Hamano, who also chairs the ministry's special committee on pop culture. "But the government should not be censoring its content"...more...

[Mulboyne]

Japan Times: Ambassadors manga and anime

...In a matter of years, the overseas image of Japan has become dependent on its pop culture exports. Manga and anime are now Japan's new ambassadors...However, as Japanese manga and anime become loved beyond expectations, they have also come to represent the culture as much as cameras or Mount Fuji did in previous generations. That representation is something of a mixed blessing...one wonders about the larger ramifications...

...Even more than government actions, overseas aid or diplomatic initiatives, pop culture has the power to really form a picture in the minds of other nations' people. One wonders, then, about the effect of avid reading of manga and viewing of anime without any better understanding of Japan's complex culture. The violence and sexuality in some manga do not correspond precisely to the daily life here. They present almost a dream image of one aspect of the culture, one that is likely to be misinterpreted.

Longtime Japanophiles might wish for other cultural forms to be so broadly accepted. The artistry of a Kurosawa film or the richness of a Tanizaki novel feels missing from most of the story exports these days. Yet, maybe the very best of any culture can never be exported on a grand scale but remains reserved for a smaller interest group. Hopefully, though, interest in manga and anime might lead fans to search out other parts of Japanese culture. It already seems to be encouraging language study in many places around the world. Hopefully, too, the myth of Japanese uniqueness can be reconsidered here in Japan. After all, if Taiwanese, Brazilian and French children all love to read manga, they must have a lot in common with Japanese children. If the same fantasy stories appeal to so many different cultures and across so many different languages, then, uniqueness may be a different thing now...

...Call this cartoon diplomacy or analyze the reasons in detail, but the international concept of Japan will be formed by manga and anime for years to come. That may lead to some curious misunderstandings, but is also a tremendous opportunity for international exchange, even if it is only drawings.