“What is Captain Majid?” Mr. Takashima started his speech for the AJS Luncheon held at Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on March 25. Former Press Secretary and Director General for Press &. Publications of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), now as the special assistant to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan and as a veteran journalist with NHK background, Mr. Hatsuhisa Takashima shared his views on Japan’s public diplomacy.

Captain Majid is the Arabic name for Japanese cartoon Captain Tsubasa written by Yoichi Takahashi. Popular all across the world, it influenced numbers of well-known succor players, led many youngsters to love succor and produced many famous players. By MOFA, this kind of Japanese popular culture is taken to be one of the best foreign policies.

As a very good example of how effective this kind of power is to promote better relations between nations and peoples, Mr. Takashima referred to the Japanese Self-Defense Forces sent to Samawa, Iraq, in 2003. To help people rebuild their nation, the SDF purified water and distributed it to the residents of the area. When they found Iraqi people very fond of succor, they formed a succor team and played regularly with boy succor teams in the area. They set a cartoon day and enjoyed being together. On the tank lorries to distribute water which ran all over the city everyday they drew illustrations of Captain Majid, a very visible sign of the Japanese friendship. These efforts of the SDF established friendly relations with the local people and helped Japanese in Samawa in the safer environment. Mr. Takashima added that it was Mr. Katsuhiko Oku and Masanori Inoue who found Samawa to be the best for Japanese SDF. Unfortunately they were killed in a tragic incident.

Since 911 incident in 2001, managing the public perception of states has emerged as an important issue. This “new public diplomacy”, changing public in the international relations, is much stronger than any technical instrument of foreign policy, Mr. Takashima affirmed. MOFA is actually busy using Japanese cartoon characters including as the representatives of Japanese pop power to the world. Thanks to these characters, Japan’s image has been improved. In China and South Korea, however, Japan must work more to improve the public perceptions on Japan, Mr. Takashima made a point.

The number of foreign media stationing in Japan is now decreasing, that is, the foreign media carrying the news on Japan is decreasing. Mr. Takashima pointed out that such indifference by foreign media is very worrisome. Japan’s inability to send out messages is another problem, he continued. The failed Japanese campaign and efforts for becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council illustrated how ineffective Japanese public diplomacy had been amongst international scenes and how difficult it is to send out the message of Japanese view. Mr. Takashima stressed that what we need is building capability of getting our message across.

To do so, Mr. Takashima claimed, Japan needs a think tank. The first thing many journalists or influential people in the world do every morning is to check the websites of major think tanks to find out views of different countries, governments, academies in the world. Japan needs to join this well-established information networks. MOFA’s website carries only the information from the government. The hope is that now four major think tanks in Japan have jointly established a new website so as to dispatch views and commentaries of Japan on various issues of the world, which has been long anticipated.

Another important tool for information dissemination to the world is overseas satellite broadcast. China, Korea, France and Qatar are following CNN and BBC. NHK’s overseas broadcasting, mostly in Japanese, targets only Japanese people living overseas. Early next year Japanese government, parliament and industries will set up the world class overseas TV broadcasting, which can become a new window to the world.

Another thing Japan needs is outspoken Japanese, Mr. Takashima added. Japanese young people today cannot join discussion on international arenas. If this continues, Japan would become less inaudible, less known nation in the international community.

Mr. Takashima made his points. “As the second largest economic contributor to the world, Japan’s voice should be more adopted in making process of guiding nations. For the purpose, Japan should form a union for peace, not searching for the way to Security Council. To do so, we need not only animation characters, but young Japanese trained to jump into the international scene willingly and make Japan known far better to the world.”