Japanese Pop Culture: Photo: ©Getty Images Its Problems – & Its Enormous Potential by Roland KELTS

COVER STORY • 5 Japanese Pop Culture: Photo: ©Getty Images Its Problems – & Its Enormous Potential By Roland KELTS By now, the images associated with through which young loners meet one Japan’s global pop juggernaut are news to another online in order to kill them- no one. The terms anime and manga are selves together in the bricks-and-mortar no longer explained in parentheses in the world offline, have begun haunting Western media; they have become as com- headlines at home and abroad. monplace in English as the words spaghet- “There doesn’t seem to be much opti- ti and pizza. Original anime titles are now mism,” says veteran professor, translator broadcast in over 70 countries, comprising and author Shibata Motoyuki of his stu- over 60% of animation programs world- dents at the University of Tokyo, one of wide. And the combined size of the global Japan’s most prestigious and best-known anime and anime-related merchandising academic institutions. His current classes market is estimated to be worth over $30 contain what he calls “the first generation billion, with the US market alone in modern Japan to grow up without the accounting for more than $6 billion – a sense that things would get better.” figure exceeding the value of Japanese steel “We’re the risk-averse generation,” a exports to the United States. 20-year-old female student at the Author’s book “Japanamerica” In the 21st century, Japan’s pop cul- University of Tokyo explained to me. ture industry faces two enormous chal- “We grew up too comfortable to take younger fell from 35.4% in 1950 to lenges: a declining consumer and pro- risks.” 13.6% in 2006. Practically speaking, ducer base at home; and a mystifying While conducting research for my the steep drop means that there simply market, driven largely by the technolo- book Japanamerica, I found that the aren’t that many young talents available gies of the so-called “new media” (the social ills afflicting Japan’s younger gen- to the pop industry today. Internet, cell phones, et cetera), as its erations and the pessimism they betray Economically speaking, it means that products, ideas and images breach inter- began to form a narrative nexus, tying Japan’s pop industry faces an employee’s national boundaries at record speed. an increasingly anemic youth culture to market – their workers can demand bet- the anxieties felt by many in the anime, ter conditions and wages or work else- The Next Generation manga, toy, game and other pop cultural where. And spiritually? “It means I industries about their economic futures. won’t do this for hours on end for the The combined effect of Japan’s assault next 20 years,” one young artist told me, on the global consciousness is a vision of Pessimism about Pessimists “unless I get paid for it, and paid well.” a contemporary nation bursting with What to make of the apparent dispari- energy, inventiveness, color and light, It’s not hard to find pessimism about ty between the image of a vibrant “cool and giddy with newfound success – qual- the young pessimists. Michael Arias, the Japan” – and a domestic youth culture ities we generally ascribe to youthfulness: Japan-based American director of the that is shrinking in size, hope and ambi- being young, or at least perpetually feel- recent anime feature Tekkonkinkreet, tion? ing that way. Many foreigners see in illustrates his concern by reciting the today’s Japan the face of the future. names of several professional anime Outsourcing the Japanese Genius But inside Japan, specters of darker artists and directors in their 40s and hues shadow the horizons: an aging pop- older: his industry and craft may be The Japanese pop industry is seeking ulation and a declining or stagnant finding audiences abroad just as they are to sustain its profit margins by outsourc- birthrate; an expanding class of young, dying in Japan. ing their labor, especially in nearby part-time workers (freeters) with check- “Making Tekkonkinkreet, I was fortu- Asian countries. Anime giants like ered resumes and scant skills; and so- nate enough to work with some of the Tezuka Productions, official producers called NEETs (“Not in Employment, best talents in the field here in Japan,” of the now-deceased father of the form, Education or Training”), with their CVs Arias says. “And I heard over and over Tezuka Osamu, boast of their Beijing and skill sets suspended in mid-youth. from the veterans on my staff how factory, and next-generation auteurs like Stories of pathological young shut-ins depleted the ranks have become in the Appleseed auteur Aramaki Shinji admit (hikikomori), who withdraw into their last 10 years or so.” that “we are teaching our competition to bedrooms and virtual worlds to avoid According to the Japanese govern- create Japanese originals.” the real ones, and Internet suicide pacts, ment, the percentage of Japanese 14 and Among those working the front lines 18 JAPAN SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2008 COVER STORY • 5 Photo: ©2006 Taiyo Matsumoto / Shogakukan, Aniplex, Asmik Ace, Beyond C., Dentsu, TOKYO MX Photo: ©Imagi Studios “Tekkonkinkreet” “ASTRO BOY” Photo: ©2007 Shirow Masamune / Seishinsha-Ex Machina Film Partners are young Chinese and Koreans studying The J-Pop appeal “might soon be the fan-artist (doujinshi or coterie maga- coded as China or Singapore in the zine) phenomena in their respective coun- future,” agrees American professor and tries – and whose pop cultural outputs author Anne Allison. “But after that, I threaten to eclipse Japan’s in the coming don’t even think it will be assigned to years. Numerous cultural producers in countries anymore.” Japan, from toy, anime, manga and video The so-called “gross national cool” of game companies to fashion designers and Japan’s “soft power,” so memorably others, are now outsourcing their manual introduced by American journalist labor to their Asian neighbors. Even as Douglas McGray in 2002, may be giving executives bemoan the dwindling talent way to the failure of Japanese creators to and opportunities for younger Japanese at control and master their own output. home, they are willing to go to Asia to Predictions of an increasingly pan- widen the talent pool. Asian production of pop culture terrify Japanese in the industry and many gov- Real Cool? Real Money? ernment officials, who have begun to speak of a “crisis” of confidence in San Francisco-based Frederik L. Japan, even while their pop icons loom Schodt, the author of the recently pub- over New York City. lished Astro Boy Essays and a translator and interpreter for Tezuka in the 1970s, New Media envisions Japan’s continental counter- parts as the next frontier. “In the United Since Japanamerica’s publication, States, the Japanese version of comics bookstore and lecture hall audiences, “Appleseed: Ex Machina” and animation is going to be challenged journalists and social critics, professors soon by competing products from Korea and students, otaku fanatics and interest- signals, criss-crossing the 50 states and and China,” he says, noting that many ed readers alike have embraced the beyond – you will get a clearer picture of importers and publishers are now active- Mobius Strip as a way of understanding what is happening now: It is tying the ly seeking and cultivating artists from a bicultural relationship of increasing two countries even closer together. both nations. “Also, young Americans intimacy and mutual awareness. And if The father of anime and manga, who are enamored of manga and have you can imagine the strip in motion – Tezuka, idolized and imitated American been raised on them will eventually start whirling through the winds of the artists Walt Disney and Max Fleischer creating their own, as some already are.” Pacific and DSL, cable and satellite TV some 60 years ago. As I write, the first JAPAN SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2008 19 COVER STORY • 5 Photo: ©Imagi Studios Photo: ©Takashi Okazaki, “GONZO” the Mobius strip: They will not title their film Battle of the Planets. They will use the original Japanese title, Gatchaman, because that is what it is called, and that is what Americans want today – the original Japan, raw, unfil- tered, unaltered, un-hyped. Hollywood Hopefuls James Cameron’s vote of approval for a remake of Battle Angel has transformed the relationship between Hollywood and anime/manga, according to Hayashi Yoko, president and founder of Artwoods, a company devoted to con- necting Tinseltown with Tokyo. Her partner in Los Angeles was responsible for turning Mr. Titanic into a manga maven, and Hayashi is hoping more such transformations are in store. “The Cameron decision was a big thing for Hollywood,” she says. “If “GATCHAMAN” Cameron was pleased, Hollywood pro- “AFRO SAMURAI,” the joint US-Japan production ducers thought, then we all suddenly major exhibition of Tezuka’s protean want manga. And when they learn that aters across North America equipped illustrations is on display at San manga are already a big hit in interna- with 3D digital projectors capable of Francisco’s Asian Art Museum – tional markets, they become even more actually showing Battle Angel upon its installed simultaneously with an exhibit enthusiastic.” release in the summer of 2009. of master Yoshimoto Taisho’s Edo- and But not everything in Japan can be Titanic, indeed. Meiji-era woodblock (ukiyoe) prints just exported so successfully – partly because down the hall. So-called “high” and of conditions in both countries. Trans- Japan’s IP Challenge “low” Japanese arts are colliding under cultural titles such as Afro Samurai and one American roof, and Tezuka, long Tekkonkinkreet, whose creative evolu- Harnessing intellectual property (IP) considered a genius and cultural icon in tions are chronicled in my book, had is a problem for anyone in the creative Japan, is suddenly and finally making mixed critical and commercial recep- or content-producing industries world- headlines in a country whose artists first tions, both in the United States and in wide.

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