Cool Japan: the relationships between the state and the cultural industries

Glossary

Bunka kōryūshi: Japan’s Cultural Envoys. Programme established in 2003 by the Agency for Cultural Affairs

Chūkan hōjin: law on the intermediate corporations

Chūō shōchō saihen: central government’s reorganization

Dōjinshi: amateur manga

Dokuritsu gyōsei hōjin: independent administrative agency

Fansub: abbreviation of fan-subtitled. Anime subtitled by fans

Fansubbers: fans completing the subtitles of anime

Gyōkai: industrial associations

Hallyu: Korean pop culture wave. In Japanese hanryū.

Ippan shadan hōjin: law on the general incorporated associations

Josei: manga for young female adults

Kankō rikkoku: tourism nation

Kasumigaseki: district of Tokyo where most of Japan’s ministries are located, equivalent to Whitehall in Great Britain

Keibatsu: family ties

Keidanren: abbreviation of Nippon Keizai Dantai Rengō Kai (Japan Business Federation)

Mangaka: manga artists

Manhwa: Korean manga

Meishi: business cards

Nawabari arasoi: sectionalism of the bureaucracy

Nemawashi: behind‐the‐scenes consensus building

Otaku: avid consumers of manga, video games and anime

Sake: Japanese rice alcohol

Scanlation: scanning, translation, and editing of manga from Japanese into another language

Scanlators: fans completing scanlations

Seikai tenshin: one type of amakudari. Former bureaucrats embracing a political career

Seinen: manga for young male adult

Shingikai: deliberation councils

Shinkokuzai: crime prosecutable only upon a complaint from the victim

Shōjo: manga for young girls

Shōnen: manga for young boys

Tankōbon: book with different chapters of manga

Tōdai: contraction of Tōkyō Daigaku (University of Tokyo)

Tokushu hōjin: special agency

Tōseikai: control associations similar to government-authorized cartels. System established in 1941

Washi: traditional Japanese paper making

Wataridori: one type of amakudari. Ex-bureaucrats appointed several times in the public and/or the private sector

Yaoi: manga of boy-love stories

Yokosuberi: one type of amakudari. Former bureaucrats appointed in public corporations or special legal entities

Zaibatsu: industrial and financial conglomerates that controlled significant parts of the Japanese economy until the end of the Second World War

Zaikai: the main business associations

Zoku: policy tribes of Diet members with a particular amount of expertise in a specific field of governmental policy

Notes

Following the Japanese convention, Japanese names are given with the family name first, and the given name second. Japanese terms are transcribed with macrons, except for places and names of company well-known in English such as Tokyo, Kyoto and Nintendo.

This doctoral research indicates between brackets the figures converted into yen every time that the original figures are in euro, $US or yuan. Appendix B, C and D list the yearly average exchange rates between yen and euro, yen and $US, and yen and yuan.

Introduction

In 1982, Chalmers Johnson published his seminal MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975. The book introduced the concept of the developmental state to explain the state-led industrialization of Japan that took place after the end of the Second World War. In particular, Johnson focused on the role of the MITI¹ (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) in the fast economic development of the country in the aftermath of its defeat. The concept of the developmental state has exerted a huge impact. Since its publication at the beginning of the 1980s, every scholar covering the Japanese political economy has referred to Johnson, whether to express agreement or disagreement. A further proof of his impact lies in the fact that the concept has been applied to other countries in East Asia such as South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore (Amsden, 1989; Haggard, 1990; Wade, 1990). It is not only the rapid economic development of these countries that has aroused curiosity in the West, but as well the involvement of the state in their rapid industrialization.

Nevertheless, amid neoliberal globalization, critics have cast doubt on the viability of the developmental state. In their opinion, this model of state is a vestige of the past that has become obsolescent and redundant. Against the background of neoliberal globalization, the developmental state has lost numerous policy tools, such as the implementation of protectionist measures for nascent industries or the ability to control capital flows. Critics view the unfolding process of globalization as inimical to the survival of such a state. As Hayashi Shigeko notes: “the model of the developmental state is under fire” (2010: 45). What is at stake in the debate between the proponents of the developmental state and of the neoliberal position is the role of the state in economic development, and generally speaking in the economy. The former call for a more active involvement of the state in the economy, for example, in promoting industrialization. This is fundamentally at odds with the neoliberal position which advocates minimum state intervention and a central role for the market in mobilizing the economic resources and initiating the process of industrialization (Hayashi, 2010: 47).

This doctoral dissertation supports the statist position. It is misleading to describe globalization as an all-powerful force leading to the retreat of the state from the economic field, in other words, a process of convergence towards an Anglo-Saxon, minimalist state. Globalization does not imply an all-or-nothing choice between convergence and non-convergence (Malcolm, 2001: 266). In other words, globalization is not pre-determined or universal, but rather flexible and diverse (Hook and Hasegawa, 2006: 5). Instead of asserting the demise of the developmental state, it is much more illuminating to speak about its evolution and adaptation in an evolving, new context (Wong, 2004). This is the position taken in this dissertation. The fact that Japan caught up with the Western industrialized countries in the 1970s does not imply that, as a result, the Japanese developmental state has come to a standstill. The logic of catching up has been replaced by the logic of keeping up in order to maintain the competitiveness of the Japanese economy (Weiss, 2000: 27). Developmentalism in Japan is not dead. Nowadays, the Japanese government continues to conduct industrial policy rather than waiting for “natural” market outcomes. It still identifies promising industries that it supports (Pekkanen, 2003: 211-3).

This thesis thus employs the concept of the developmental state to investigate the relationships between the state and the cultural industries in Japan within the framework of the Cool Japan policy. The Japanese cultural industries have been under the spotlight since the publication of Douglas McGray’s article Japan’s Gross National Cool in 2002. In this famous article, the author gives an account of the vitality of Japanese pop culture (anime, music, manga and so on) and its popularity around the world, despite the stagnation of the Japanese economy in the 1990s. He is above all the first to have made the connection between Japanese pop culture and Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power², asserting that Japan has a formidable reserve of soft power at its disposal (2002: 53). Not only in Japan but abroad³ as well, this article has exerted a major impact. In particular, it was through the publication of the McGray’s work in Foreign Policy that Japanese policy-makers and intellectuals⁴ began to discuss their country’s soft power (Lam, 2007: 352).

Such popularity came as a surprise to Japanese policy-makers. They did not pay much attention to cultural industries until the beginning of the 2000s because they judged them to be an unprofitable sector that could not benefit the national economy, so unworthy of being the subject of state policies (Otmazgin, 2012: 37). But the enthusiastic reception of Japanese popular culture around the world since the 1990s, for instance the international success of Miyazaki Hayao’s Spirited Away and Pokémon, has contributed to the evolution of the attitude of the Japanese government. Nowadays, it is actively promoting Japanese pop culture abroad in order to stimulate domestic economic growth and to present a friendly image of the country to foreign audiences. It considers such cultural products as vehicles of soft power, hoping that their attractiveness and international popularity will contribute to the government’s diplomatic agenda. The sector of cultural industries is now considered as a legitimate area for state intervention (Otmazgin, 2012: 51).

Cool Japan is the policy framed and implemented by the Japanese government to promote the Japanese cultural industries abroad. The anime and video games companies as well as the manga publishers did not wait for the support of the government to commercialize their products in the foreign markets. The Japanese authorities reacted to the popularity of these products, but did not initiate their massive dissemination. It can even be argued that the main agent of the worldwide diffusion of this pop culture has been piracy, such as in South Korea and Taiwan where it was banned. In China, piracy is endemic (Katsumata, 2012: 144). The advent of the Internet has reinforced the flow of illegal products.

Among the cultural industries, this thesis examines in detail three sectors: anime, manga and video games. The anime and manga industries have strong links as the vast majority of anime is adapted from manga (Yokota Masao Interview, 06/03/2014). For a long time, the anime companies were simply considered as an extension of the manga publishers. In fact, Japanese policy-makers did not consider this sector as an industry (Choo, 2009: 217). The Japanese video games industry is also the focus of this study because it has reached a global audience as big as the anime and manga industries.

The aim of this research is to examine the relationships between the Japanese state and the Japanese cultural industries. Three research questions are at the heart of this work:

1. 
   How have the industries of anime, manga and video games reacted to the government’s policy, Cool Japan?
   
2. 
   What do they expect from Cool Japan, given that the exports of their products were well underway before the implementation of this policy?
   
3. 
   Are there any gaps between the government and the cultural industries concerning Cool Japan? If so, what are they? And why?
   

Therefore, this doctoral dissertation is consistent with the literature on the diversity of capitalism (Albert, 1993; Hall and Soskice, 2001; Amable, 2003). This literature avoids the pitfall of providing only a typology of capitalisms, that is to say being too descriptive, by focusing also on the theoretical foundations of such diversity. Two elements have captured the attention of these authors: on the one hand, path dependence; on the other, institutional complementarities (Lechevalier, 2014: 4). Within the varieties of capitalism approach, a rich literature which addresses the case of Japan exists (Boyer and Yamada, 2000; Dore, 2000; Streeck and Yamamura, 2001; Boyer et al., 2011; Lechevalier, 2014). For instance, Sébastien Lechevalier argues that the profound transformation of the Japanese capitalism caused by the implementation of neoliberal policies since the 1980s does not imply convergence towards American or European capitalisms. Japan continues to represent one pole of capitalist diversity (2014: 157).

Secondly, another contribution of this doctoral project is to offer evidence to support the claim made here that Cool Japan represents an industrial policy. This is one of the core arguments developed in this thesis. True, a consensual definition of what an industrial policy is does not exist, as definitions vary according to stages of development, states, regions, and over time (Aiginger, 2007: 297, Vanden Bosch, 2014: 11). The definitions⁵ available differ on several issues: targeting sectors versus broad measures impacting many or all industries (sectoral versus horizontal); restructuring mainly large firms versus promoting the role of new actors (passive versus active); promoting competitiveness through broad measures versus choosing specific industries, companies and regions; and allocating subsidies to industries for political reasons versus supporting “dynamic activities” such as innovation and training (Aiginger, 2007: 299).

Within this plurality of understandings, the definition used in this research is the following: “Industrial Policy is any type of intervention or government policy that attempts to improve the business environment or to alter the structure of economic activity toward sectors, technologies or tasks that are expected to offer better prospects for economic growth or societal welfare than would occur in the absence of such intervention” (Warwick, 2013: 16, emphasis in the original). Based on this definition, this work demonstrates that Cool Japan is an industrial policy. This is the purpose of Chapter 5. To avoid any confusion, the aim of this thesis is not to evaluate the Cool Japan policy, per se. It is beyond the scope of this doctoral research to discuss the effectiveness or not of this policy. Suffice it to say here that the proponents of industrial policy stress market failures, whilst the opponents emphasize government failures and rent-seeking of some interest groups.⁶ In the case of Japan, Marcus Noland claims that the link between industrial policy and economic growth is weak, or even non-existent. In his opinion, due to political reasons, the main recipient of state fund was “large, politically influential “backwards” sectors” (2007: 1). In contrast to Noland, Saadia M. Pekkanen asserts that the Japanese government chooses the industries to support more for economic considerations than for political ones (2003: 204). In other words, no consensus exists among scholars on the question of the effectiveness of industrial policies.

Thirdly, as the interest of the Japanese state in cultural industries is relatively recent, their relationships remain under-investigated. It is true that Kukhee Choo has written how, via Cool Japan, the Japanese state supports the anime industry and about its reaction to such policy. Yet, she limits her investigation solely to this sector (2009). Whilst she goes on to analyze the efforts of the government to promote Japanese popular culture globally in a recent book chapter, she does not address what opinion video games companies and manga publishers have on this policy (2012). Nissim K. Otmazgin and Eyal Ben-Ari argue that “there is an inherent tension between the policy side with its emphasis on intentionality, planning, and foreseeable consequences, and the dynamic, unintended, often not fully planned nature of the production and dissemination of pop culture” (2012: 19). Despite the intentions of politicians and bureaucrats, the processes of production, dissemination and consumption of popular culture cannot be totally controlled (Otmazgin and Ben-Ari, 2012: 20). Nevertheless, again, they do not consider the reaction of the sectors investigated in this thesis.

This means, another contribution of this doctoral dissertation is to examine how the industries of anime, manga and video games react to the Cool Japan policy. This is examined in Chapter 6. It is argued that the main gap between this governmental policy and these industries is the timing of this policy. These sectors also would like the government to combat more vigorously piracy.

Finally, this study demonstrates that Cool Japan represents another instance of the sectionalism (nawabari arasoi) of the Japanese bureaucracy. For Johnson, “Japan is a system of bureaucratic rule” (1982: 320). Bureaucratic regimes produce two kinds of conflict: conflicts within the bureaucracy, and conflicts between the bureaucracy and the central political authorities (Eisenstadt, 1956). In Japan, ministries compete with each other to protect their domains, to extend them, to increase their budget and for prestige. This inherent feature complicates the coordination and cooperation between the ministries. This issue is examined in Chapter 5.