Japan’s Soft Power and Public Diplomacy

Good Afternoon and thank you for your kind introduction.My name is Monji and I am in charge of public diplomacy in the Foreign Ministry.Prior to the current post, I had been assigned to Iraq as Ambassador of Japan for one year and a half until July 2008, which was quite an experience shown in these pictures.In Arabic, the word Monji of my name means “savior” and this helped me a lot in my job, which, I think was one of the examples of soft power.

Today, I would like to talk about following three points; 1) Why is public diplomacy required? 2) What is Japanese soft power? and 3) Pop culture diplomacy as an example of public diplomacy of Japan.

What is the definition of Public Diplomacy? Diplomacy is normally conducted between or among governments.In public diplomacy, the government, in close collaboration with the private sector, addresses directly people in foreign countries in order to make Japan better understood and to promote the image of Japan in the world.

Recently Japan’s presence or profile has been relatively declining because of the increased importance of the emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil and due to the competition with other countries that put more resources in public diplomacy. For these reasons, public diplomacy is gaining its importance now more than ever.

According to the opinion polls conducted in U. S, to the question “what Asian country is the most important partner for U.S.”, the answer has been Japan but the difference from China is getting closer.In 1995, 55% says Japan and 14% says China but in 2009 46% says Japan and 39% says China.In 2010 these numbers became tie at 44%.

The tools of Japan’s public diplomacy consists of many measures such as providing information on Japan in general or on specific policy matters, invitation programs, intellectual exchanges, students & teachers exchanges, Japanese language education overseas and cultural events.

Due to current tight fiscal conditions, public diplomacy budgets have been reduced for ten years, affecting many important programs. However, the opinion poll conducted by BBC world service resulted that Japan ranked 2nd position as a country providing positive influence to the world next to Germany in 2010.Japan’s good image is still kept in the most Asian countries.In Viet Nam 97% of people responded that they have a positive or rather positive image on Japan.

One of our big concerns is the relative decline of Japan’s profile in the world. For example, the number of research programs and researchers on Japan is in decrease in North America and Europe.Although Japanese language learners increase in the world now reaching around 3 million, in U.S. its number has been decreasing lately.

Let’s move onto soft power.Sources of soft power are culture, value, policy, etc. and soft power is mostly exercised by the private sector and its effect is indirect and takes time to appear unlike hard power.Soft power is important, but it cannot replace hard power. Recently the word smart power is used to combine both powers appropriately to get the most effective results.

Japan conducted humanitarian and reconstruction assistance in Iraq, where I had been posted as an Ambassador.The Self Defense Force troops supported local population by providing purified water and repairing hospitals, schools and roads, etc. Japan provided yen loans to build large scale infrastructures such as power stations, electricity network, rehabilitation of the only port in Iraq, etc. Japan also provided a number of projects under grants aid assistance and trained more than 4000 Iraqi people in Japan or third countries.The SDF activities were highly appreciated and I consider them as an example of soft power type use of hard power. Actually, on Japanese water tank tracks there were illustrations of a very popular football anime character; Captain Tsubasa, which was very well received by Iraqi people.

Thanks to the traditionally good relations and to our assistance, the reputation of Japan in the country was very good, which helped me enormously in pursuing my mission as an Ambassador.I really felt that a good image of a country was a strong soft power.

Many people tend to consider soft power narrowly such as Manga, Anime and J-pops, but it is appropriate to grasp is more broadly including our traditional values and way of life such as the spirit of harmony and co-existence with nature..

Japan is strong in the area of technologies for environmental protection and energy saving. It was because Japan was hit severely by those challenges and Japan overcame them with the use of technology.I think that those technologies may be realized based on our traditional values and way of life. In that sense, they are considers as our strong soft power. We may be done the same in coping with the aging population with the application of our robot technology.

Then let me talk about Japan’s pop culture. Most Japanese does not know how popular our pop culture is in the world.A good example is “Japan Expo” in Paris.It gathered 165,000 enthusiastic Japanese pop culture fans in 4days last July.There are many other similar events all over the world including ”Romics” in Rome with the participation of 75,000.

In these events, Japanese traditional cultures were also introduced such as Judo, Kendo,Origami, Japanese calligraphy, Shogi and Go, etc.I was surprised to see a BattingCenter at Japan Expo in Paris.

It is true that Manga and Anime are leading Japan’s pop culture.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs established “The International Manga Award” in 2007. MOFA then assigned a very popular anime character Doraemon as Anime Ambassador of Japan and showed Doraemon movie in 65 cities in the world.In Laos, children followed the story without understanding the language and I was moved by the communicating power of Anime.

Cos-Play is the abbreviation of costume play in which people dress as characters in Manga or Anime.“World Cos-PlaySummit” is held annually in Nagoya and MOFA is one of the organizing committee members.We see many cos-players in various Japanese pop culture events.But I was also impressed that young girls in foreign countries were wearing Japanese young girls fashion such as Lolita and high school uniform fashions. Therefore, I assigned three young fashion leaders as “Kawaii” or Cute Ambassadors.They were dispatched all over the world to promote Japan’s pop culture and were received with many fans.In Recife, Brazil, 20,000 people gathered for “Kawaii Ambassador’s Fashion Show.One high school in Thailand that modified its school uniform after Japanese Anime character drew eight fold applications for entrance.

The pop culture diplomacy was well received, but there were some criticism.Why does MOFA have to do that?MOFA has other things to do. My answer was four fold;Firstly, MOFA is doing other regular diplomatic activities and the budget for public diplomacy is only 3% of the entire Ministry’s budget.Secondly, overwhelming amount of budget and efforts are directed toward the introduction of the traditional culture.In order to introduce Japan as it is, the pop culture should be included.Thirdly, MOFA is not assisting the pop culture industries.They don’t need our help.Creators may not like the government involvement. Rather, MOFA is asking them to support us with their huge power of attraction.MOFA would like to use the pop culture as a gateway to the Japanese culture as a whole.Fourthly, the government should support them in such areas as the protection of intellectual property to deal with the pirates issues.I do not make any distinction between high culture and sub culture.Culture is something people aspire to express and appreciate.I would like to remind that Kabuki and Ukiyo-E used to be pop culture at the time of their inception.

Lastly, Japanese food and Japanese sake are gaining popularity in the world. I would like to show you several pictures of sake tasting sessions I organized in various foreign countries.Because of these activities, I received a title of “Sake Samurai” from the Younger Council of the Sake Brewers’ Association of Japan.Because sake is soft power as a traditional art and culture of Japan, and samurai is hard power, Sake Samurai can be said to represent smart power.I think that Japan should put more resources in soft power where Japan’s true strength lies and I hope that Japan could become a soft power giant.