Book Section in ‘The Routledge Handbook of Global Cultural Policy’
Cover: The Routledge Handbook of Global Cultural Policy, 2018. Source: Routledge.
The Routledge Handbook of Global Cultural Policy, edited by Victoria Durrer, Toby Miller and Dave O’Brien, 2018, Routledge.
Tomoko wrote a book section entitled, ‘Japanese cultural policy, nation branding and the creative city’; in ‘The nation state and cultural policy’ chapter (Part VII).
Excerpt
Cultural policy as practiced by nation-state governments, international non-government organizations such as UNESCO, or as an academic discipline, has a relatively recent history in the post-World War Two era. Yet it has a long pre-history which can be traced back to the international expositions of the mid 19th century. International expositions provided displays of the latest industrial, military and communication technologies along with art, crafts, folk cultured exotica from Western nations and their colonies. Japan quickly saw the importance of using the international expositions not only to learn about western civilization, but also as an opportunity to display and legitimate a particular image of Japan to the rest of the world,1 especially as it had been long closed off from the West in the Tokugawa Era (1603-1868). More importantly, to avoid the threat of Western invasion and keep its independence, the new Japanese government after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, decided that rather than attempting a military defence, a cleverer strategy could be to become seen as a civilized nation-state by the West that was worthy of equal treatment. This was because ‘the best defence against the Western nation-state was the construction of a modern, legal state of its own’ (Najita and Harootunian 1990:716). It must be noted that to follow the Western nation-state model also involved colonialism; hence Japan developed a policy of endorsing its civilizational credentials by showing its national power and colonial ambitions to the rest of East Asia.
Prior to the emergence of the twentieth century mass media and the revolutions in communication technology, which are powerful devices to influence not only people’s view of everyday life, but also public opinion, one of the most effective political devices to bolster a nation’s image, in order to enhance its political influence, was international expositions. This is what we would now call public diplomacy. Public diplomacy can be understood as a political strategy entailing cultural practices/activities which are framed by cultural diplomacy. While public diplomacy is always associated with a certain political objective, cultural diplomacy does not opt for mere political propaganda-driven campaigns, rather it fosters the intention of winning ‘hearts and minds’ and establishing mutual trust. It is implemented by establishing ‘a selected national image by exporting appealing cultural products’ (Iwabuchi 2015:419, emphasize added).
These cultural products are usually categorized as ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004), a term which has frequently been used in the context of ‘Cool Japan’.[2] In the Japanese context, soft power has often been equated with Japanese popular culture, such as manga, anime, video game and fashion. Following Nye’s concept, it can be understood that the soft power works in creating ‘more receptive to Japan’s positions through the dissemination of the country’s cultures and values’ (Iwabuchi 2015: 419-420). The growing consciousness of the significance of cultural power in the context of contemporary cultural diplomacy, and the potential of Cool Japan as a new cultural policy, can be seen as a strategy that developed since the year 2000, in order to draw attention from consumers around the world and make Japanese popular culture not only a globally successful popular culture for revitalizing the economy, but also as an effective vehicle for soft power and cultural diplomacy. The idea of creating positive image of the nation so as to sustain or improve its privilege or advantageous position in the global national ranking can be seen as closely bound to that of nation branding. Whereas conventional public diplomacy targeted the creation of amicable international relations between nation-states, the new cultural policy and nation branding via soft power, sought to appeal to both ordinary people who were their own national citizens, and people in other countries.
Although nation branding aims to cultivate a better image of Japan among Japanese people, initiatives such as the Cool Japan one, are not necessarily the most successful ways to cultivate consciousness of national belonging and a positive image of Japan. Rather, a positive image of one’s own nation with nationalistic sentiments might be stimulated by global mega-events, such as the Olympics and International Expositions. Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, has been elected as the host city for the next Olympic and Paralympic 2020 Games. There has been considerable concern in Tokyo about how best to present and stage itself to promote a positive image of contemporary Japan; one which should be significantly different from that of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The image of Tokyo inevitably stands for the national image of Japan. In this sense, Tokyo can serve as the most effective cultural diplomatic device. The device could also work to cultivate Japanese people’s positive self-esteem, as well as to heighten other counties’ perceived image of Japan.
The idea of city as ‘cultural powerhouse’ (Yeoh 2005:945) has been discussed in debates about creative cities (Kong 2014). Although Tokyo has been widely acknowledged as a huge economic and political centre and mature consumer city, it has been far behind in becoming a world-class creative city. To improve the current situation, a new cultural urban plan has been proposed since 2014. Contrasting the dominant image of cultural richness in south central Tokyo (e.g. Aoyama, Roppoingi and Ginza), the proposal highlights the rich traditional cultural resources of north central Tokyo (e.g. Ueno, Hongo, Akihabara, Kanda, Jimpocho and Yushima). Through an attempt to re-activate, re-discover and re-connect traditional cultural assets in these regions, the new cultural urban plan, ‘the Tokyo Cultural Resources District Vision’ proposes to create ‘a cultural unit’. This idea could be expanded to apply to all regions throughout Tokyo. Each cultural unit can be seen as composed of diversified local/regional cultural assets. Then eventually all cultural units of the various communities/locals/regions could transform Tokyo into a ‘cultural museum’ (Yoshimi 2016).
This paper attempts to briefly outline how Japanese cultural policy has developed in its political and economic environments from the early 20th century to the present. This can illuminate the complex relationship between the political objectives of public diplomacy and various practices of cultural policy. Focusing on contemporary cultural policy in Japan, the paper also examines the Cool Japan initiative and the ways in which it has been expected to be a vital cultural device for creating a new image of Japan as a pioneer of soft power, and a political device for improving Japan’s self-esteem and reputation for other countries. In this light, the Cool Japan initiative can also be closely related to the principle of nation branding.
Since Japan has been elected as the host city of the next 2020 Olympics, the paper also locates the effort of nation branding within the context of creative city policy in Japan, drawing on an on-going city project, the Tokyo Cultural Resources District Vision. The paper argues that this can be seen as a new type of urban reform to challenge conventional mega-scale city planning and creative city policy. By proposing the re-connection of cultural assets to enhance cultural value, and connectivity of people to pick up as many voices as possible, the Tokyo Cultural Resources District Vision emphases the importance of creating networking not only as top-down cultural resources used at the regional level, but also among cultural specialists, local communities, NGO, the government institutions and various civic groups. In this light, the paper asserts that the Cultural Resources District Vision can be viewed as a good speculative case to suggest that crucial elements of the lived cultural policy can be brought together to work as a practice of re-vitalization of cultural values and a consensus-making process to enhance mutual understanding, collaboration and active participation.
[1] In fact Japan was one of the first to present itself to the world with a national pavilion at 1867 Paris Exposition. This was followed by the participation of the new Japanese Meiji nation-state at the 1873 Vienna International Exposition.
[2] Soft power - The term, soft power was coined by Joseph Nye (1990) reflecting to the Cold War context, it was believed that ‘cultural diplomacy may well be a more appropriate weapon than warfare’ (Anholt 2015:194). This development was further fuelled by the Bush Administration’s response to the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001. It must note that Cool Japan was not only prompted by nation branding, but also by the spreading ‘soft power paradigm’ (see Fan, Y 2008).