Cool Japan

RESUME
Avec le processus de mondialisation, de plus en plus de pays sont désireux de présenter une image d'eux-mêmes facilement compréhensible et favorable à leurs politiques et le Japon ne fait pas exception. Comme la plupart des pays aujourd'hui, le Japon, avec sa politique «Cool Japan», tente de se créer une image de lui-même à travers des stratégies de l’image de marque nationale. Les racines de cette politique se trouvent dans la diplomatie culturelle du Japon, qui remonte à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale par laquelle le Japon a tenté de créer et de gérer l’image d’une nation pacifique et pacifiste. Depuis le début du millenium, ces efforts de diplomatie culturelle essayant à renforcer une image pacifique et pacifiste du Japon a été transformée à une politique de l’image de marque nationale par laquelle le Japon a commencé à promouvoir son soft power en le fusionnant avec les éléments attirant de sa culture populaire. Même si les termes de « la puissance douce » et « l’image de marque nationale » sont relativement nouveaux, ils sont essentiels pour la compréhension de la diplomatie culturelle japonaise et donc la politique de « Cool Japan » comme elles sont intimement liées.
Dans ce travail, les efforts de marque nationale du Japon sous le nom de « Cool Japan » et par extension sa diplomatie culturelle à travers l'utilisation de la culture populaire sont discutés et évalués selon la notion de la puissance douce développée par Joseph Nye et selon les objectifs et le contexte dans lesquels les politiques de l’image de marque nationale « Cool Japan » sont mises en œuvre.

ABSTRACT
With the process of globalization, more and more countries are keen to present an image of themselves that is easily understandable and favorable to their policies and Japan is no exception. Like most countries today, Japan, with its “Cool Japan” policy, tries to create an image of itself through nation-branding strategies. The roots of this policy can be found in Japan's cultural diplomacy, which dates back to the end of World War II in which Japan attempted to create and manage the image of a peaceful and peaceful nation. Since the turn of the millennium, these cultural diplomacy efforts trying to bolster a peaceful and pacifist image of Japan has been transformed into a nation-branding policy whereby Japan began to promote its soft power by merging it with the attractive elements of its popular culture. Even though the terms “Soft Power” and “nation-branding” are relatively new, they are essential for the understanding of Japanese cultural diplomacy and therefore the politics of “Cool Japan” as they are closely related.
In this work, Japan's national branding efforts under the name “Cool Japan” and by extension its cultural diplomacy through the use of popular culture are discussed and evaluated according to the notion of Soft Power developed by Joseph Nye and according to the objectives and the regional and global context in which “Cool Japan” nation-branding policies are implemented.

ÖZET
Küreselleşme süreciyle birlikte, giderek daha fazla ülke kendileriyle ilgili kolayca anlaşılır ve politikalarına uygun bir imaj sunmaya istekli hale gelmiştir ve Japonya da bu konuda bir istisna değildir. Bugün birçok ülke gibi Japonya da “Cool Japan” politikasıyla ulus marka stratejileri aracılığıyla kendi imajını yaratmaya çalışmaktadır. Bu politikanın kökleri, Japonya'nın barışçıl ve barışçıl bir ulus imajını yaratmaya ve yönetmeye çalıştığı II. Dünya Savaşı'nın sonuna kadar uzanan Japonya'nın kültürel diplomasisinde bulunabilir. 2000li yılların başlangıcından bu yana, Japonya'nın barışçıl ve pasifist imajını güçlendirmeye hedefinde olan bu kültürel diplomasi çabaları, Japonya'nın yumuşak gücünü popüler kültürünün çekici unsurlarıyla birleştirerek güçlendirmeye çalıştığı bir ulus markalama politikasına dönüşmüştür. “Yumuşak Güç” ve “ulus-marka” terimleri nispeten yeni olsa da, yakından ilişkili oldukları için Japon kültürel diplomasisini ve dolayısıyla “Cool Japan” siyasetini anlamak için gereklidir.
Bu çalışmada, Japonya'nın “Cool Japan” adı altında ulusal markalaşma politikaları ve buna bağlı olarak popüler kültürü kendine bir temel edinmeye başlamış olan kültürel diplomasisi, Joseph Nye tarafından geliştirilen Yumuşak Güç kavramına ve Japonya'nın dış politika amaçlarına ve bölgesel ve küresel bağlama göre tartışılmakta ve değerlendirilmektedir.

El objetivo de esta ponencia es abordar la práctica del cosplay como un doble proceso de interacción simbólica y social, a partir del cual, no sólo se reelaboran imaginarios de otras latitudes, sino se construyen paisajes transculturales y translocales. Para ello se hará un análisis del cosplay, partiendo en primera instancia, de su concepción como práctica de fans; es decir, un proceso de interpretación, apropiación y reelaboración de un texto a partir de las experiencias de vida y estéticas del aficionado; en segunda instancia como puesta en escena y su inserción en la dinámica sociocultural glocal de las comunidades de fans de anime y manga en México. De esta manera, siguiendo la propuesta de Anett (2014), se concebirán las comunidades de afición dispersas en el globo, como escenarios constituyentes de lo que Appadurai llama “paisajes culturales”; es decir, “formas irregulares de flujos de globalización plasmados en lugares físicos e imaginarios, significados a través de la experiencia personal de quienes los recorren”.

O artigo discute a difusão do soft power japonês no século XXI, tomando como lócus de investigação a utilização da campanha Cool Japan no contexto das Olimpíadas de 2021. Percebe-se que na virada do século XX o Japão modificou suas estratégias de política externa, investindo na diplomacia cultural como um dos métodos para atingir seus objetivos. Através de uma discussão teórica realizada com o apoio de alguns materiais oficiais do evento, partimos da hipótese de que o Japão instrumentaliza o Cool Japan para promover seu soft power e criar uma imagem positiva do país internacionalmente, sustentando, assim, seu branding nacional baseado em prestígio e simpatia diante do cenário internacional.

The popularity and influence enjoyed by Japanese video games is irrefutable. There is little doubt, for many scholars, that the Japanese video game industry has helped establish the standard procedures of production, distribution and localization for the global sector. However, beyond titles of overwhelming international repercussion— from Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) to Silent Hills (2015), without forgetting Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985)—very little has been published on the production of Japanese video games destined for the domestic market, where genres unpopular in the West, such as visual novels or dating sims, are the staples. This leads us to consider the effectiveness and necessity of the term gêmu (Picard, 2013) as a sepa-1 Author Biographies Víctor Navarro-Remesal (Guadalajara, 1983) is a researcher in Video Game Design Theory and a specialist in East Asia. His PhD dissertation presents the idea of “directed freedom ” as the basis of the relationship between player a...

What would be the Japanese art has its own history of art without the influence of the Western art, from the end of the 19th century? Throughout the Gutai and Mono-ha movements, and the Japanese Pop art, artists tried to cast doubt on the Western heritage by drawing on traditional and conceptual roots. Space, stage and frontal art, through Shintoism and the pre-war imagery, were used to express a Japanese essence. During the Heisei era, the government created the global phenomenon “Cool Japan” to set up a strong Japanese culture and identity on global scale. In this context, what were the measures and the impact of the Japanese policy? Facing the global art history, how did Japanese artists created a national identity throughout new social and theoretical positions? This study will show how Morimura Yasumasa uses the imagination from the Japanese aesthetic and exoticism to exhibit a certain Nippon imaginary. Quoting and sliding inside the narration of the famous masterpieces, Morimura’s substitutions and hybridizations reflect another historic alternative. In a search of recognition of Japanese path, cross-cultures and cross-genders are instruments to set up a dialogue addressing the Western influence. But the self-portrait and the over-exposition of his Japanese affiliation are not the only processes to claim a Japanese specificity.
The second part will focus on the identification as an “otaku” made by Murakami Takashi himself. He defines Superflat as an art based on a two-dimensional reality that seems to characterize the whole Japanese visual art. Traditional art used to take place in the daily life, thus Superflat produces pictures that coexists with it. Murakami claims for a hybrid art, a merged result from the Japanese Fine Arts, Nihon-ga styles and anime from manga. So, manga appears as a search for identity. Henceforth, Japanese art rejects derivative models from the Western modernism. In this idea, Murakami and the artists of the Kaikai Kiki Corporation update an unbroken path in the Nippon culture.

Although it has been more than a decade since Japanese anime became a popular topic of conversation when discussing Japan, both within the United States and in other countries as well, few studies have empirically investigated how, and by whom, anime has been treated and consumed outside of Japan. This research thus tries to provide one possible answer to the following set of questions: What is the empirical transnationality of anime? How and by whom is anime made transnational? How is anime transnationally localized/consumed?

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) was published in the year that would be dubbed the ‘renaissance’ of Japanese videogames by critics and Japanese game designers. Its release followed a period of commercial and creative decline, mimicry of Western conventions and adherence to mukokuseki game design. Concurrently, Iwabuchi (2015, 2019) has signaled out that, in the wake of the ‘Cool Japan’ policies in the 2010s, the Japanese pop culture mediamix has now become a governmental resource for commercialized nation branding. Departing from the nationalistic rhetoric observed in Nintendo’s recent marketing strategy, this paper critically examines the identity politics of Breath of the Wild. On the surface, the game reads as consistent with its convention of offering a normative Occidental power fantasy whose identity hinges upon a binary Oriental Other. However, the introduction of ‘Japanese’ signifying elements complicates the internal power distribution between the Occident, Orient, and the Japanese Self. Understood through Hall’s (1989) notion of representation as cultural dreamwork, the game emerges as a discursive object whose representations negotiate unresolved cultural, social and political frictions in the Japanese social imaginary.

Included here are page proofs. Abstract:
The challenge with Cool Japan as a media policy that encompasses film and television is that it is, at heart, a descriptive policy that attempts to harness the success of Japanese youth cultures abroad. The challenge with reconceptionalizing film policy within a Japanese context is that film and television is part of a transmedia landscape, and the policies of games, for example, define the policies for anime. Further, this is made more complicated by the fact that traditional film policies such as censorship and classification are often not considered in international trade policies, that those encapsulated by Cool Japan. What quickly becomes apparent is that media policies are not monolithic expressions of cultural needs and mores. They are, instead, often uncoordinated and changeable policies that react to domestic markets and demands, national politics, international politics and economies, trade strategies, and sometimes just idiosyncratic leaders. At the same time that Japan is promoting its film, television, and other media abroad, it is also trying to regulate those same media in its own national borders. Mainstream Japan has an uneasy relationship with its own liminal youth cultures (Daliot-Bul 2014), yet exporting those same cultures for international consumption acts to normalize what is internally seen as undesirable and even deviant behaviours. Finally, as Japan aims to leverage Cool Japan as cultural diplomacy via film and other media, the top-down approach has started to identify objects and practices from traditional culture such as food and traditional crafts and tack those onto a policy that centralized the economic success of the pastiche and sometimes subversive media and practices of its youth cultures. And finally, the NHK, or Nippon Housou Kyoukai (日本放送協会)—Japan’s premiere public broadcasting system, modeled after the U.K.’s BBC—created the television program Discovering Cool Japan (Cool Japan 発掘：かっこいい日本) appropriating it to market Japan to itself and foreign tourists, yet the politics of the broadcasting network has become a conservative voice that enacts invisible policies that are directly opposed to the voices and themes that underlie Cool Japan media. In exploring these above tensions, I aim to highlight the intense cultural ambivalence surrounding media policies in general and Cool Japan in particular as they pertain to film policy and practice within transmedia strategies and national branding practices.

This article is expected to provide an historical contextualization of the Kawaii concept, as well as an overhaul of all the aesthetical apparatus that has been built upon it in the last few years. What in the 1970s was born as an aesthetical revolution by the Japanese youngsters against the straitjacketed social-political Japanese system, today the Kawaii has been both assumed and exploited by the so-called Cool Japan campaigns. The term´s translation into English (cute) or Spanish (mono) does not reach to embrace all the implications of the Kawaii, since the contemporary Japanese reality cannot be understood without it. Therefore, the following article intends to lay some of the necessary foundations for its critical analysis through both an historical and aesthetical reflection of this phenomenon.

Japan is seen as a leader in soft power, but is this the result of government initiatives? What happens when too much government control of information drives Japan's public diplomacy? How effective is Japan at telling its story to the world? A former U.S. government propagandist critically assesses Japan's public communications with the world. The book is the result of two years of intensive research and hundreds of interviews conducted as an Abe Fellow. Snow's updated Japanese language version of this book will be released in 2021.

This paper analyzes the role of Mexican fans in the promotion and distribution of Japanese media content in Mexico, focusing mainly on anime. During the 1990s, in the middle of the global craze for Japanese content, Mexican audiences became highly involved in the consumption of Japanese animation. While new television broadcasting companies began partnerships with Jap-anese enterprises, such as Bandai and Tōei, to bring Japanese media content to Mexico, fans or otaku became not only active consumers but also promoters of anime, hoping that bigger audiences would prompt large media companies to supply more of these cultural goods. After Japanese content was removed from mainstream media in the early 2000s, some of these fans decided to take matters into their own hands and get more involved in the distribution of anime and other related products by starting their own companies. Through trial and error, these entrepreneurial fans discovered ways to navigate the business environment in Japan and establish successful arrangements with Japanese companies that met the demands of the Mexican market, becoming cultural intermediaries that revitalized and created a second "boom" in anime consumption in Mexico. This research argues that Mexican fans of anime have evolved from text readers and poachers into cultural brokers who form a bridge between Japanese anime producers and Mexican consumers, and are, therefore, a central part of the distribution of anime and other Japanese content in Mexico.

The Cool Japan slogan has been in circulation for ten years, and has
been discussed from the points of view of popular culture and creative industries, as well as nationalism and nation-building. Studies focus mainly on Japan itself or the Japanese influence in Asia and elsewhere. This article adds another perspective by focusing on the Cool Japan project in relation to the transnationally circulating practice of nation branding.
The article approaches nation branding with the help of Taylor’s concept of social imaginary. Through the circulation of the transnational idea of nation branding, a particular social imaginary gets formulated, represented, and reproduced and transformed in different localities. This article traces three circulating features in the social imaginary of nation branding in Japan: 1) the transnational
premises of nation branding, 2) the concept of ‘Cool’, and 3) the idea of ‘essential Japanese values’. These are traced through the recent Creating a New Japan proposal, published in May 2011, which connects enhancing the ‘Japan Brand’ with rebuilding the nation after the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Em 2004, o então Primeiro-Ministro e presidente do Partido Liberal Democrático Junichiro Koizumi, interessado na popularidade e apelo do Cool Japan cria a chamada Estratégia da Diplomacia Cultural e das Relações Públicas no Exterior junto ao Ministério de Relações Exteriores do Japão, com o interesse de fortalecer a diplomacia cultural japonesa em busca de elevar a compreensão e confiança do público estrangeiro. Esse esforço é voltado especialmente àqueles para os quais o Japão não possui relação política estável ou dispõe de percepção positiva perante a opinião pública, como a República Popular da China e a República da Coreia, graças ao ressentimento cultivado pela campanha expansionista praticada pelo Japão Imperial e por decisões políticas contemporâneas, como as visitas de determinados Primeiros-ministros ao Santuário Yasukuni, as disputas territoriais pelos rochedos Takeshima/Dokdo rivalizado com a Coreia do Sul, e pelas Ilhas Senkaku/Diaoyu com a China. O objetivo dessa pesquisa é analisar se o discurso cosmopolita dessa política externa de busca por compreensão e empatia do público estrangeiro é genuíno ou se não passa de mera propaganda do país para dinamização de sua economia, por meio das diferenciações teóricas entre diplomacia pública e diplomacia cultural cosmopolita, bem como pela análise de divergências entre os documentos e discursos oficiais versus a prática governamental. Este trabalho finalmente conclui que esta política diplomática está sendo unilateral, buscando apenas benefícios ao próprio Japão. Utilizou-se, como metodologia de pesquisa, a análise de documentos oficiais como o Japan Diplomatic BlueBook e o Cool Japan Strategy, que reúne todas as iniciativas diplomáticas do Japão ao longo dos anos, além das estratégias para essa política externa; empregou-se também à análise documental, com o objetivo de aprofundamento nas questões históricas e, por fim, uso de dados da opinião pública dos países do leste asiático de 2004 a 2016, levantados à partir de think tanks diversos.

When History becomes Sexy:
from Historical Revisionism to moe Nation Anthropomorphism

The increasing intermingling in contemporary Japan between nation branding of Cool Japan, historical revisionism, and youth subcultures have contributed to raise popular cultures as a strategic site in the hegemonic re-definition of the past, present, and future of the nation.
This paper addresses the ongoing transformation among younger generations towards a post-ideological and post-modern experience of their national ‘imagined comuntiy’, described as “pop nationalism” (Sakamoto 2008) or “cynical comunity” (Kitada 2005).
A fieldwork on the multiple media platform originated by the historical webmanga Axis Powers Hetalia (2006-present) and on its globalised success among female fandom, will provide further insights on the biopolitical mobilisation of moe (“burning passion”), as a combination of polymporphous pleasure and sexualised parody, shaping emergent representations of national history and identity.


歴史がセクシーになるとき－歴史修正主義から「萌え」による国家の擬人化へ―

今日の日本で、「クール・ジャパン」という国家のブランド化、歴史修正主義、そして若者サブカルチャーがますます交錯していくことで、国家の過去、現在、未来のヘゲモニックな再定義における戦略的な場所としてのポピュラーカルチャーが盛り上がりを見せている。　
　本稿が注目するのは、「ポップナショナリズム」（Sakamoto 2008）あるいは「皮肉な共同体」（Kitada 2005）と記述される、若い世代における「想像の共同体」としての国家のポストイデオロギカルでポストモダンな経験への変容である。
　歴史を扱ったウェブマンガ『Axis Powers ヘタリア』（2006年連載開始）によって生み出された複合的メディアプラットフォームと、女性ファンのあいだでのそのグローバルな成功について、フィールドワークを行う。それによって、国家の歴史とアイデンティティの新たな表象を形作っている、多様なたのしみとセクシャライズされたパロディの組み合わせとしての「萌え」の生政治的な動員について考察する。"

A short research paper on how cultural diaspora affects assimilation towards another existing culture through the focus of cultural artifacts. This paper concerns on how Japanese 'otaku' culture and it's anime subculture has become a phenomenon. Elements of ethics had been included and is subjected to my personal opinion.

In 2004 Kanehara Hitomi won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa prize for her novel 'Snakes and Earrings'. With its violent depictions of street culture, body piercing and cultural clashes, it heralded a radical departure from 'traditional' images of young Japanese women. Kanehara is one of Japan’s new generation of prize-winning young women writers who construct narratives around characters whose lifestyles conflict with the social hegemonies of gender and sexuality. These writers titillate the mainstream reader with their depiction of single women who have no interest in studying at university, getting married or joining a company and who express their sexuality without hesitation or restraint. Their characters are often young women who have no problems living with their boyfriends or single male friends while making ends meet by doing part time work or working intermittently as freeters. Many of these young women authors who have gained critical acclaim, such as Shimamoto Rio and Aoyama Nanae, are the successors of Yamada Eimi, ‘widely considered the pioneer of a new generation of Japanese women novelists noted for their frank, sexually explicit portrayals of women’s lives.’* This paper will examine the work of these authors as they re-write the image of young Japanese women for the new century.
(Recipient of Best Post Graduate Abstract)

The present paper is an approach to othering as a potential factor of coolness. Through the analysis of two case studies−the established cultural phenomenon of Cool Japan, and the rising buildup of what we call Warm Mexico−the aim is to understand the particular conditions of othering that can lead to a " cool " national identity. Japan is taken as a departure point to assess the usage of exoticism as a resource for building a cool national identity, and then the analysis turns to Mexico's current national image to examine the possibility for that same strategy to be applied. The concepts of complicit exoticism, and bounded autonomy are used as theoretical axes to find out the factors involved in the cooling of an othered culture. The paper combines theoretical analysis and a content analysis of two case studies to strengthen the understanding of the links between concepts. The first part focuses on the historical and theoretical background that hint at the variables involved in process of building a " cool " other. The second part is an interpretation analysis of an exploratory content analysis done on conversations with fan communities that have received and replicated othering discourses of two foreign cultures, i.e. Mexico and Japan.

Con el lanzamiento de una serie de estrategias e iniciativas orientadas a mejorar la imagen de Japón ante el mundo e influir positivamente a través de su cultura popular, la sociedad japonesa se ha reconciliado con los 'otaku', una subcultura mayoritariamente juvenil que en las últimas décadas del siglo XX fueron señalados como raros, poco sociales y pervertidos. Esta reconciliación, movida por intereses económicos y políticos, no está desprovista de contradicciones y recelo.

Turkey and Japan have comparable histories of modernization beginning in the nineteenth century. They have since then produced modernities that are considered a mix of “Eastern” and “Western.” Over recent decades, both faced the question of what comes after modernity and began manufacturing their versions of authenticities and cultural exports. This paper comparatively locates two symptoms of this process. “Neo-Ottomanism” refers to the increasing cultural consumption of Turkey’s imperial past while “Cool Japan” emphasizes popular products in entertainment, fashion, youth culture, and food, intending to shift Japan’s image to a “cool” place. Both projects, in different ways, are sponsored by the state; yet their reception in popular culture illustrates the vexed relationship between the state and culture: while states endeavor to colonize culture for their own interests, popular culture provides avenues to outwit the state’s attempts. Popular culture’s autonomy in both contexts has to do with the collapse of traditional hierarchies, which has paved the ways for the promotion and export of new identity claims. Local and global representations of neo-Ottomanism and Cool Japan differ. Internally, they are fragmented; externally, they are linked to international “soft power,” and offer alternatives modernities in Turkey and Japan’s regional areas of influence.

This essay looks at the otaku phenomenon in terms of the production of consumption (what produces consumption, and what consumption produces) primarily three registers: fictions of otaku that stage the repression of otaku desires and identities in order to form erogenous zones; cultural discourses that pathologize otaku consumption; and government policies related to Cool Japan that strive to reconfigure otaku consumption in terms of markets and self-satisfying subjects. Considering these different registers brings into a focus a neoliberal socius or social being, which allows constant intervention into everyday life in the name of the fragility of the global free market by typologizing and pathologizing consumers.

Ère Heisei (1989-2019) : bilan de la création artistique contemporaine japonaise dimanche 12 mai 2019, par Amandine Davre L'abdication au trône de l'Empereur Akihito, le 30 avril 2019, met officiellement fin à l'Ère Heisei qui avait débuté le 8 janvier 1989. Marquée par plusieurs grands événements -crise économique, attentats, désastres naturels et humains -, l'ère Heisei a été confrontée à plusieurs défis. Tous ont influencé la création artistique japonaise, de près ou de loin. La fin d'Heisei marque ainsi le temps des bilans. Revenons sur trente années qui ont marqué le développement de l'art contemporain japonais.

Events organised for fans of Japanese culture are enjoying growing popularity all over the world. This research note examines the organisation of conventions in Poland, where the scale of such events is considerably smaller than in Western Europe. It focuses on the example of Japanicon 6 – a convention that took place in Poznan in October 2015 and the general activities of its organising company. A participants’ survey reveals who the convention’s visitors are, what aspects of Japanese culture they find most interesting, how they gain knowledge about Japan, and finally how visitors’ profiles influence the way conventions in Poland are organised. アブストラクト:現在、世界各地で、日本文化ファン向けのイベントが活発に開催され ている。本稿では、西ヨーロッパ諸国における同様のイベントに比して、規模の小さい ポーランドにおける日本文化ファン向けイベントの参加者の実態について、具体的事例 としてJapanicon 6を取り上げ論じたものである。Japanicon 6は、ポーランド西部の都 市・ポズナンにおいて、2015年10月に開催された。同イベントでの実地調査ならびに参 加者へのアンケート調査の結果、Japanicon 6の参加者について、基本的な属性や、日本 文化のどういった側面に参加者が関心を有しているのか、日本に関する知識をどのよう に得ているのか、などといった点を明らかにした。そのうえで、参加者の属性がポーラ ンドに...

Since around 2008, a new type of eager consumption of Japanese traditional, cultural and ideological images and notions has been exhibited by young women in Japan. Called rekijo (history fan girls), they have attracted great public attention. They enjoy visiting historical sites that appear in anime, novels and videogames based on historical fact, and actively participate in events led by local communities. The popularity of such ‘contents tourism’ or ‘pilgrimage’ has had a significant economic effect. Simultaneously, a ‘power spot’ boom has taken place, in which young women visit Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples and historical sites to gain spiritual power. Their ‘“pop” nationalistic’ faith towards the spirits of historical figures, Shinto kami and Buddha may be called ‘pop-spiritualism’ and contributes to building new notions of ‘Japanese-ness’. This article explores the significance of the heritage tourism of young women in socio-cultural and feminist contexts, and discusses how the recent rekijo phenomenon and women's ‘pop-spiritualism’ serves to reconceptualize their national identities and challenge Japanese gender norms. These processes are exemplified through discussion of women's heritage tourism induced by An-an and Non-no in the 1970s, historical dramas in the 1980s, the Mirage of Blaze series in the 1990s and Sengoku BASARA and Hakuōki in the 2000s.

The present paper is an approach to othering as a potential factor of coolness. Through the analysis of two case studies−the established cultural phenomenon of Cool Japan, and the rising buildup of what we call Warm Mexico−the aim is to understand the particular conditions of othering that can lead to a "cool" national identity. Japan is taken as a departure point to assess the usage of exoticism as a resource for building a cool national identity, and then the analysis turns to Mexico's current national image to examine the possibility for that same strategy to be applied. The concepts of complicit exoticism, and bounded autonomy are used as theoretical axes to find out the factors involved in the cooling of an othered culture. The paper combines theoretical analysis and a content analysis of two case studies to strengthen the understanding of the links between concepts. The first part focuses on the historical and theoretical background that hint at the variables involved in process of building a "cool" other. The second part is an interpretation analysis of an exploratory content analysis done on conversations with fan communities that have received and replicated othering discourses of two foreign cultures, i.e. Mexico and Japan.

In 2008 the Japanese government set a goal of attracting 20 million foreign tourists by the Olympics in 2020. The country managed to achieve that goal by last year and has since revised their goal to 40 million tourists by 2020. A big part of the drive to increase tourist numbers has been the government led Cool Japan campaign. Attracting foreign tourists remains one of the mainstays of the Cool Japan campaign, as can be seen in the tourist-focused events and advertising witnessed overseas. One of the key aspects of the Cool Japan campaign has been to promote creative cultural industries, in particular businesses associated with anime, manga and gaming. This can be seen in such promotional activities as the closing ceremony for the Rio Olympics and the appointment of anime characters such as Doraemon, Atom Boy and Sailor Moon as ambassadors for Japan.

However, the campaign has been accused of lacking focus as it tries to simultaneously promote aspects of both traditional and modern Japanese culture. This can be seen in the Japan National Tourism Organisation’s promotional campaigns featuring more traditional aspects of Japanese culture such as temples and festivals. In addition, there have been accusations that the Cool Japan campaign has done little to understand what foreign visitors are actually interested in and how best to promote the country. This paper investigates the success of the Cool Japan campaign and looks at the extent to which this fractured focus is actually attracting tourists. The research draws on data collected in Japan with those experiencing Japan as part of their vacation and interviews with tourists. The focus of this paper is on how the Cool Japan campaign influences potential tourists, and how effective the use of anime characters to promote Japan actually is.

RESUMO: O presente artigo analisa o projeto "Cool Japan", uma iniciativa que tem como objetivo principal a promoção de uma imagem "cool" do Japão e suas cidades no exterior. Para realizar este projeto, o Japão trabalha "bottom up", juntando o governo, as universidades, as grandes empresas, como também micro e pequenos empresários, além de artistas para o trabalho em conjunto. Ao final deste trabalho, sugere-se a reflexão sobre o que nos últimos anos tem sido concretizado pelo Japão, em relação ao incentivo cultural e crescimento de cidades criativas, e o que países em desenvolvimento vêm realizando. Palavras-chave: Cool Japan, Política Cultural, Identidade Nacional.

ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the "Cool Japan" Project, an initiative that aims to promote a "cool" image of Japan and its cities abroad. To carry out this project, Japan works "bottom-up" joining government officials, the academy, large companies, as well as micro and small entrepreneurs and artists to work together. At the end of this paper, we suggest the reflection on what in recent years has been achieved by Japan in relation to the cultural growth and encouragement of creative cities, and what developing countries have been conducting.

War memories have been present in Japanese popular culture since the Asia-Pacific War ended in 1945. Manga authors, filmmakers and other artists both the war and post-war generations have created numerous works about war experiences in combat and as civilians, which have often included ideological messages from pacifistic to nationalistic. Nowadays, people in their teens and twenties in the third post-war generation continue to engage the war as a theme within their cultural production. In many cases, their expressions are rooted in the styles of contemporary pop culture, which has gained global attention as part of the “Cool Japan” phenomenon. In this paper, I explore war memories within Japanese youth and subcultures with a focus on three creative processes: editing derivative works, composing original works using digital technology, and bodily performance (cosplay).
Derivative works such as dōjinshi (fan-produced comics) are an important part of Japanese subculture. Fans also create music videos using war movies footage cut and set to music chosen by the maker. Called MADs in Japanese – Music Anime Dōga, literally Anime Music Videos - they are created by fans usually as tribute to a particular movie, for example Otokotachi no Yamato or Eien no zero. Anime and manga footage is also used, and archive footage or photographs can be set to songs or instrumental music. Videos mixing or using exclusively real footage tend to send a stronger ideological message than fans’ tributes to a particular fictional production.
Fans can also compose original works relating to war using Vocaloids – singing voice synthesizers. Vocaloid compositions are usually accompanied by visual elements, from a simple solid background through to almost professional-quality animations telling a particular story. Many of these animations feature Hatsune Miku, a Vocaloid character with a huge number of fans in Japan. Some creators of Vocaloid songs and music videos express their views on Asia-Pacific War and there are various compositions including sentimental kamikaze ballads, heroic combat stories and songs about the horrors of the Hiroshima bombing.
The third form of expression is through bodily performance, in other words cosplay. Cosplayers dress up in military clothes from World War II, have pictures of themselves taken, and then post the photos on dedicated websites. Alternatively, they attend fan events in their costumes, where they “play” short scenes with fellow cosplayers or just walk around and let people enjoy their costumes. There are two trends visible here, especially in the case of photo-shoots. First, many people dress up as Japanese soldiers either inspired by a movie or more generally by history. Second, Nazi-Germany outfits are popular among Japanese. Many Hitler representations derive from the movie Downfall, while Nazi uniforms are created by the fans of the manga series Hetalia. There are also cosplayers using SS outfits as an element of ‘cool’ fashion, sometimes used with erotic (sadomasochistic) stylization.
Based on analysis of these three forms of fan activity – derivative works, original composition and cosplay – this paper analyzes how the younger generations in Japan have incorporated the theme of war into their youth and subcultures as a form of entertainment, and asks at what point such fan activity provides insights into the historical awareness of Japanese youth.