Uncool Japan: A New Reevaluation of Cultural Diplomacy

Abstract

The fact of the greatest presence of East Asian popular culture in the world is already known. In particular, Japan’s creative industries were pioneers in providing content through manga, anime, video games, and pop music, gaining interest from the growing number of fans. Perhaps belatedly, Japan’s cultural diplomacy integrated it by launching the Cool Japan campaign (a concept that is derived from the academic sector). This paper has the objective of making an assessment of Japanese cultural diplomacy and weighing the dividends of Cool Japan (in terms of soft power) against the growing competition from South Korea and China.