ERIA-DP-2019-09

ERIA Discussion Paper Series

No. 295

In the Closet:
Japanese Creative Industries and their
Reluctance to Forge Global and
Transnational Linkages in ASEAN and East
Asia
Shinji OYAMA
College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University,
Japan

August 2019
Abstract: This paper addresses rarely asked questions: is Cool Japan a creative
industries policy and, if so, what kind of creative industries policy is it? It addresses
these questions by examining Cool Japan’s differences from the UK derived and
globally very influential creative industries model. The paper will try to make sense of
these differences by looking at how the Japanese creative industries comprise
businesses of different sizes with a varied history and prestige, how those companies
have complex and contrasting relationships with various state organisations, and how
the forces of globalisation and its free-market and neo-liberal economic ideologies
affect companies in various sectors differently. This will challenge the dominant
narrative of Japanese Creative Industries and Cool Japan in which, it is generally
believed, the former embraces globalisation and digitalisation, and the latter is
responsible for broadening the appeal of Japanese popular culture abroad. This paper
reveals the complexity and diversity of the creative industries from socio-cultural and
politico-economic perspectives often overlooked in the Cool Japan discourse

.
1. Introduction

In stark contrast to other Asian countries, the term and idea of ‘creative industries’
have drawn very little attention in Japan. The term is rarely used outside a small
community of bureaucrats and scholars – even in its translated form, Sōzō Sangyō, or the
English loan word, Kurieithibu Sangyō.1 This is surprising considering that Japan has
been known for its rich and diverse range of popular culture, which is particularly well
received in Southeast and East Asia. However, an idea similar to creative industries has
been widely and hotly discussed in Japan at least since the early 2000s. This idea is ‘Cool
Japan’, which is a discourse about the popularity of Japan’s cultural content (mostly
manga and anime) in overseas markets and various policies to increase the exports of
such cultural content. A growing amount of research on Cool Japan (e.g. Condry, 2009;
Daliot-Bul, 2009; Iwabuchi, 2015; McLelland, 2016; Mōri, 2011; Otmazgin, 2011; and
Valaskivi, 2013) explicitly or implicitly equates it with creative industries policy, but the
specificity of Cool Japan as a creative industries policy as such is not examined.2
In the context of this recent development, this paper addresses rarely asked questions.
Is Cool Japan a creative industries policy and, if so, what kind of creative industries policy
is it? It addresses these questions by analysing Cool Japan, not as a catch-all term for
Japanese popular culture, but examining its differences from and similarities with the
global creative industries model and discourse, which has engulfed the rest of the world
including Southeast and East Asia (e.g. Hartley, 2005). The paper begins by explaining
how Cool Japan differs in several ways from the global creative industries model, given
shape by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport of the United Kingdom
(UK), in particular its ‘Creative Industries Mapping’ (2001), and studied by a growing
number of scholars (e.g. Flew, 2013).3 To make sense of the particularity of the Japanese
creative industries and their varied relationship with the state, this paper will look at how
the Japanese creative industries comprise businesses of different sizes with a varied

1
See Oyama (2015) for a more detailed examination of different terminology used in Japan to refer
to the cultural and creative industries.
2
A rare exception to this omission is a recent work by Kawashima (2018).
3
The definition of the creative industries used by some scholars, such as Howkins (2007) and Pratt
(2005), is much wider and more inclusive because every industry and economic activity contains
creative elements.

1
history and prestige, how those companies have complex and contrasting relationships
with various state organisations, and how the forces of globalisation and its free-market
and neo-liberal economic ideologies affect companies in various sectors differently.
This will challenge the dominant narrative of Cool Japan and the global creative
industries on several fronts. Firstly, as someone who had ‘Japanese creative industries’ in
the job title for 7 years,4 I notice a view amongst many people – both Japanese and non-
Japanese but particularly Asian – that state-led Cool Japan has been very successful in,
and even chiefly responsible for, building the current popularity of Japanese popular
culture.5 This view is undoubtedly influenced by the image of East Asian style state
capitalism. This paper challenges these views by offering a more nuanced assessment of
this causal relationship. These people also tend to believe that the Japanese creative
industries wholly embrace globalisation and digitalisation, which may be derived from
the strong association between Japan and exports and technology. This paper highlights
how Japanese old media groups, for instance, have been reacting to the challenges of
globalisation and digitalisation in a very nation-centric way, which clashes with the global
creative industries model and its unreserved faith in globalisation and digitalisation. It
also highlights tension within the creative industries by introducing emerging internet
companies, which pursue globalisation and digitalisation to such an extent that they
sometimes clash with the old media groups. This paper, therefore, reveals the complexity
and diversity of the creative industries in a different socio-cultural and politico-economic
situation in which the state plays a more nuanced and contradictory role than Cool Japan
discourse.

4
I worked for Birkbeck College in London for 7 years (2008–2015) as a lecturer and programme
director of the Master of Arts degree in Japanese Creative Industries Studies.
5
I am surprised by the number of international applicants, mostly from East and Southeast Asia, who
would like to come to Japan to study Cool Japan at a graduate level so that they can emulate it in
their home countries.

2
2. What is Cool Japan?

Cool Japan is a discourse about the overseas popularity of Japan’s popular culture,
mostly manga and anime, and a set of economic, political, and diplomatic policies to
capitalise on it. The term is derived from the article on ‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’ by
Douglas McGray (2009) and became a national buzzword that has inspired an endless
stream of magazine articles, television series, government reports, and new businesses.
Amongst many things, Cool Japan is a response to the opportunities and risks brought
about by globalisation. On the one hand, it is a response to the perceived opportunities
opened up by the globalisation of media – driven by the internet in particular – which
have enabled a massive amount of Japanese content such as manga and anime to circulate
even the remotest corners of the world rapidly, but mostly un-monetised, much to the
chagrin of business (e.g. Lee, 2011). On the other hand, fierce competition from other
East Asian economies – especially China and the Republic of Korea (henceforth, Korea)
– has eroded Japan’s competitive advantage in manufacturing.6 In 2011, the Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) admitted that automobiles and electronics would
no longer promise enough growth (METI, 2011). In 2012, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo
appointed his close ally Tomomi Inada as the first ever minister of ‘Cool Japan’ strategy
to make cultural content one of the next sources of growth and job creation.
METI first set up an office specialising in media and content policy in 2001, which
planned and implemented various media content-related policies. In 2010, it opened the
Cool Japan Office under the Manufacturing Industries Bureau, which is called the
Creative Industries Promotion Office in English. Using the terms ‘Cool Japan’ and
‘creative industries’ interchangeably, METI says it ‘promotes overseas advancement of
an internationally appreciated ‘Cool Japan’ brand, cultivation of creative industries,
promotion of these industries in Japan and abroad, and other related initiatives from cross-
industry and cross-government standpoints’ (METI, 2016). As far as METI is concerned,

6
For example, Samsung surpasses two iconic Japanese companies – Sony and Panasonic – in sales
and profits in consumer electronics, a symbolic sector which has long been a source of Japan’s
national pride and identity (Yoshimi, 1999). In 2016, Taiwan-based Hon Hai, also known as
Foxconn, purchased the struggling Japanese electronics company Sharp, a once revered innovator
in electronics.

3
Cool Japan and creative industries policy are the same thing. Nevertheless, if we examine
Cool Japan as creative industries policy, it has some interesting differences from the
global creative industries model.
Let us look at the report on Cool Japan published in April 2018 by METI, which
explains the rationale and strategies behind the Cool Japan Fund (CJF), whose mandate
is to invest ¥69.3 billion in various Cool Japan-related businesses and provide hands-on
consulting advice (METI, 2018). Learning from more than a decade of debates and some
trial and error, analysed in Kawashima (2018), the CJF’s investment portfolio is divided
into three core industries: media content (mostly anime and manga), fashion and lifestyle,
and food and services. In each industry, the strategy is to focus on developing a platform
and supply chain, which have proved to be a bottleneck in global distribution for Cool
Japan-related content, and to facilitate broad collaboration to help regional firms and
small and medium-sized enterprises expand overseas.
As of May 2018, the CJF had invested in nine companies in media content, four in
lifestyle, three in inbound travel-related business, and 10 in food and related services. In
the content category, in which ¥23.8 billion was invested, it allocated ¥1.5 billion to
Tokyo Otaku Mode, a new internet commerce site selling manga, anime, and other otaku-
related products. It made a ¥1 billion investment in Bandai Namco Holdings, a game and
toy company, for its simultaneous online distribution of anime. It also made a rather large
¥7.5 billion investment in partnership with Imagica Robot Holding and Sumitomo to
purchase SDI Media Central Holdings, a leading media localisation company based in
the United States (US), for ¥19 billion to facilitate the localisation of Japanese content in
more than 80 languages (Nikkei, 2015). It invested ¥405 million in Kadokawa Contents
Academy, a new business by Kadokawa, which operates three schools across Asia to
educate future anime and manga creators (KADOKAWA Contents Academy, 2019). The
fund also generously invested ¥4.4 billion in WAKUWAKU, an entertainment channel
by SKY Perfect JSAT Group, Japan’s largest satellite TV, which broadcasts Japanese
content in eight Asian countries.
In the lifestyle category, which received ¥13 billion, the most substantial investment
was by far the ¥11 billion invested in H2O retailing. This Japanese retail group, which
has annual turnover of ¥850 billion and operates Hankyu and Hanshin department stores,
built a massive retail space in the Chinese city of Ningbo that houses more than 100

4
Japanese stores to provide the Japanese experience to Chinese customers. Another retail
giant with annual sales of ¥1.28 trillion, Mitsukoshi Isetan HD, received a comparatively
modest ¥1.1 billion from the CJF to build a retail outlet that houses Japanese lifestyle
goods in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In the food category, a little over ¥11.6 billion has been invested. The largest two
investments are the Japanese Food Town in Singapore, which consists of 16 restaurants
that offer authentic Japanese food; and a company that operates Ramen chain Ippudo,
which received ¥0.7 billion to expand its international chain. Three investments were
made in the inbound category, including a joint project by seven local prefectures in the
Setouchi area aimed at increasing inbound tourists, which received ¥1 billion, and an
Airbnb-type service for the international traveller, which obtained ¥300 million.

3. Cool Japan as Creative Industries Policy?

Examining the CJF, and the type of investments it has made, reveals some intriguing
points that make Cool Japan significantly different from the global creative industries
model. Firstly, Cool Japan is focused exclusively on international promotion. This is
different from the creative industries model in the UK, which focuses more on domestic
rather than international policy. Contrary to the general perception in Japan, the creative
industries policy in the UK is about job creation and growth and has generally not been
considered part of public diplomacy (Ohshita, 2009: 130), unlike Cool Japan. The idea of
the creative industries was designed, first and foremost, to offset the rapid loss of a large
number of manufacturing jobs (Oshita, 2009: 132). Accordingly, it included several
policies to address youth employment such as a large-scale apprenticeship programme,
particularly in the geographical regions most severely hit by the decline in manufacturing
(Oshita, 2009: 132). In a similar vein, many initiatives directly targeted students. For
instance, the Higher Education Funding Council for England introduced a designated
fund in 2001 to stimulate innovation in higher education. Using this funding, many
universities collaborate with companies in the creative and cultural sector (Oshita, 2009:
134). A creativity partnership initiative also targeted students aged 11–18 to improve

5
‘creativity skills’ in partnership with various creative professionals such as architects and
artists.

Cool Japan has never paid much attention to the issue of youth employment in the
creative industries, although Japan is also coping with the loss of manufacturing jobs.
What is more, the original idea of the CJF was to support small businesses, which,
according to CJF director Mr. Ibuki, ‘do not have the money and experience to expand
business overseas’ (Fukase, 2013). As we saw earlier, however, the CFJ has invested in
some of Japan’s largest companies in the creative industries. Additionally, despite its
fervent celebration of the outbound globalisation of cultural products and services, apart
from the emphasis on promoting inbound tourism, there is a conspicuous absence of
discussion on stimulating inbound investment in Cool Japan-related business, which
would be highlighted much more in many other countries including the UK. For instance,
the government has gradually strengthened, not weakened, the restriction on foreign
investors’ stakes in Japanese broadcasters and the discussion to weakened has only begun
in 2018 (The Sankei News 2018).

Cool Japan is clearly a national branding exercise much more than a creative
industries policy. Key characteristics of Cool Japan as a creative industries policy should
be understood in terms of Japan’s historical relationship with the West and its desire for
Western recognition and approval – no longer in economic terms but in increasingly
symbolic or cultural terms (Iwabuchi, 2015). Prime Minister Abe was explicit about this
point when addressing expert committees on Cool Japan in Cool Japan Fund 2013, stating
that funds totalling ¥50 billion had ‘been secured to communicate Japan’s wonderful and
positive aspects overseas’ (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, 2012). According
to him, the idea was to break a sense of stagnation in Japan and communicate to both
Japanese people and foreigners that Japan and its traditional culture are ‘wonderful.’ This
point is highlighted by the CJF, which states that one of its qualitative investment criteria
is to ‘build brand awareness of Japan in global markets’. It also says that CJF investment
needs to have a ‘knock-on effect’ and a broadcasting effect on consumers worldwide. In
other words, Cool Japan has been used as a complex and contradictory discourse to justify
or indeed presuppose failure in economic objectives through an emphasis on non-

6
economic returns for the nation, such as national branding, cultural exchange, and
international diplomacy (Leheny, 2006).

Equally importantly, Cool Japan excludes television, new media, advertising, and
other industries – all of which are considered the core of the creative industries
(Hesmondhalgh, 2012: 17). For instance, the UK’s creative industries usually include
information technology, software and games, advertising, film and television, publishing,
music and the arts, architecture, design, and fashion in order of market size, so the absence
of these economically significant sectors in Cool Japan is rather conspicuous. The CJF
is focused on the international market for just three industries: media and content (or
manga and anime judging from its investment so far), fashion and lifestyle, and food and
services. Only one of these industries – media content – is usually considered part of the
core of the creative industries. Combining this with a sole focus on the international
market makes Cool Japan’s potential economic impact relatively insignificant compared
with a case where it included the core of the creative industries.
Creative industries in the US generate more than 17% of its annual turnover in the
overseas market, while Japan’s remains low at 2.8%. Therefore, there is room for growth
in the international market. However, if one looks at the size of actual revenue inflow for
media and content – character goods ($315 million), animation ($130 million), and
manga ($120 million) – it becomes apparent that they are not enough to have a substantial
influence on employment and growth, even in the most optimistic growth scenario.7 On
the other hand, there is room for growth in the domestic market as the Japanese content
market is 2.2% of domestic output, which is significantly smaller than around 5% in the
US and the UK. For example, new media, which is mostly absent in Cool Japan, is the
largest industry covered in the UK creative industries policy; and has recorded the most
growth in many countries, including Japan. The government could do much to encourage
domestic growth in the creative industries relative to overall gross domestic product.
METI’s Media Content Industries Department, creatively in 2001, identified early in
the 2000s some of the most important issues within the creative industries that hinder
industrial growth (see also Kawashima, 2018: 22). These included (i) the lack of finance

7
All figures are from METI (2011).

7
for small to medium-sized content production companies; (ii) the unequal relationship
between production companies and distributors such as broadcasters; and (iii) the lack of
producers who can manage both production and business, including finance, accounting,
distribution, and international marketing. These are all significant issues which continue
to slow growth across the creative industries, but they retreated into the background as
Cool Japan took centre stage.
Unlike countries such as the UK or Korea, where a single agency/ministry oversees
the creative industries, Japan has half a dozen ministries and agencies involved in Cool
Japan. These ministries compete against each other at the cost of overall coordination –
METI; the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (broadcasting and
telecommunication including the internet); the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan; the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (arts support in general);
the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (tourism); and the Ministry
of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Japanese foods). The absence of broadcasting and
the internet should also be understood in terms of inter-ministerial rivalry since these
industries, while a significant part of the creative industries, are not regulated by METI
(Matsui, 2014).
To summarise, there are vital differences between the global creative industries
model and Cool Japan, but these differences, their contexts, and implications are largely
overlooked in existing research. Despite its significant divergence from the global
creative industries model, what Cool Japan has achieved, relatively successfully, is to
project the image of a nation where the creative industries – not limited to media content
but more generally – are taken seriously and are supported generously and aggressively
by the government to seize opportunities opened up by globalisation and digitalisation.
What is masked is the current shape of the core of the creative industries and their much
more nuanced and contradictory relationship with the state as well as globalisation and
digitalisation. The following section looks at the core of the creative industries and
discusses how different actors interact with the state and negotiate the effect of
globalisation and digitalisation differently.
4. The Current Shape of the Japanese Creative Industries

8
 In the context of more than 20 years of relatively slow growth since 1993, it has
become commonplace to talk about Japan’s problems – particularly in terms of its
contrast with other Asian countries, which are growing at a much faster pace. This is
evident in the case of China or, in the context of the creative industries, Korea, where
some of its cultural products increase its presence in the region, and whose ‘success’ has
been closely studied in the planning of Cool Japan (Chua and Iwabuchi, 2008; Jung, 2011).
However, it is also essential to have a regional perspective on the Japanese creative
industries. In many ways, Japan still has the most advanced creative industries in Asia as
the following examples show.
In 2012 recorded music sales, Japan was the second largest market in the world with
a trade value of $2,727 million – half the size of the US market ($5,916 million) and twice
as big as the UK ($1,310 million). Korea was the second largest market in Asia at
$497 million, about 18% of Japan’s market value, while China accounted for
$292 million or 9.3% of the Japanese market value (Longlow’s Diary, 2018). In terms of
advertising spending, which indicates the size of the commercial media market, China is
the biggest ad spender in Asia at $86.2 billion, followed by Japan with $42.51 billion,
Korea with $12.55 billion, and Indonesia with $9.76 billion (Statista, 2019). This trend
more or less follows the same pattern for other sectors and genres (Dentsu Sōken, 2014).
For many years, the creative industries in Japan have consistently produced highly
localised and differentiated products in the sizeable domestic market in fierce
competition.8 The market size is declining slowly as the population dwindles, but it is
nonetheless worth remembering the sheer size of the Japanese creative industries.

8
It has been argued that the Japanese system, including media, evolves through decades of fierce but
closed competition into something of a Galapagos – so different from the global model that few
people outside the country understand it. (For discussion of Galapagosisation, see Mizukoshi, 2014).

9
5. Old Media

Let us turn our attention to what in Japan is called the mass communication industry,
or masukomi gyōkai, which is significant, the most privileged and influential part of the
creative industries, and which hereafter I will call old media. Such old media is not
considered at all in Cool Japan discourse, indicating that it is operating in a different
political and cultural sphere. To put it bluntly, while Cool Japan is concerned with the
overseas market and thus a positive response to globalisation, old media resists the effect
of globalisation, sometimes with state aid, as well as a challenge from new media –
reflecting the complexities within the Japanese creative industries.
Old media consists of old and established companies in what has been usually
referred to as the four media: broadcasting, publishing, newspapers, and advertising. The
most significant players are NHK (the world’s largest public broadcasting company) and
five large media groups that own television and newspapers through cross-ownership.
These include Yomiuri newspaper and Nippon Television, Asahi newspaper and TV
Asahi, Sankei Newspaper and Fuji television, Mainichi newspaper and TBS, and Nikkei
and TV Tokyo. Added to this are publishers such as Kadokawa and Shogakukan and large
advertising agencies such as Dentsu and Hakuhodo. The list of major players has not
changed significantly for well over 50 years, reflecting a lack of competition and
disruptive technological innovation. These old media companies control the Japanese
creative industries.
Employees in old media companies have long enjoyed prestige, exceptionally
generous salaries, the security of lifetime employment, and other perks. The jobs are
usually long and tiring but are consistently represented as fun and stimulating. The pay is
better than in large banks or finance, and far better than in global manufacturing
companies such as Toyota or Sony. Toyo Keizai, a business journal, publishes the top 300
companies with the highest average salary. Of the top 20, seven are old media companies.
Most commercial television companies in Tokyo and Osaka ranked in the top 20, all of
them paying close to ¥15 million in average annual salaries. Fuji television has been in

10
the number one spot for many years. Large national newspapers and Dentsu are also
amongst the top 20, with average salaries of well over ¥12 million (Akamine, 2013).9
Naturally, competition is fierce amongst college graduates to get into old media
companies. There are 300 applicants for each new Fuji television opening. Old media is
notoriously conservative, and they rarely hire outside a small number of elite universities.
Graduates have to go through the same recruitment process as for manufacturing or
banking companies. This means wearing a dark suit, filling in ‘entry sheets’ or
standardized job application forms, and going through a series of routinized interviews.
Old media is a male-dominated world. At major Japanese commercial television
companies, only about 20% of all employees and less than 10% of employees above
manager level are women. NHK, a public broadcaster, is worse, with 11% women and
2% women above manager level (Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office, 2011). In
addition, broadcasters and other large companies generally hire not a small number of
graduates based on their connections, such as a close family relationship with large
advertisers, other media companies, politicians, regulators, or other celebrities.
For example, many important ruling Liberal Democratic Party politicians had their
sons and daughters at one of the big old media companies. The nephew of the current
Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is now at Fuji television. Former Prime Minister and Liberal
Democratic Party kingpin Yasuhiro Nakasone’s daughter is at NHK and his grandson is
at Fuji. Former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi’s daughter, who was also a minister at
METI, was at TBS. Two former governors of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara and Naoki Inose,
had their son and daughter work for NTV and NHK respectively. A similar practice is
common in large advertising agencies and newspapers. This shows the social status of
working in old media and its cosy relationship with the establishment.
Contrary to some global discourse surrounding the creative class (Florida, 2002), this
demonstrates that old media is not interested in hiring people with a creative spark as
administrators of creativity. From the perspective of these groups, this is hardly seen as a
problem, as most of the real creative works have been outsourced to a large number of
small production companies and independent creators, which can hire the type of

9 The average includes young employees in their early 20s and administrative staff, so those in the
prime 30–50 age group earn significantly more (President, 2007).

11
Harajuku-style flamboyant youth featured in Cool Japan promotion. The working
conditions for the youth in smaller firms in the creative industries are dire. While this
issue is mostly ignored, the predicament of Japanese animators has drawn some attention.
According to Mōri (2011), 73% of young Japanese animators earn less than ¥1 million a
year; 44% of them are in their 20s and 40% of them quit within 5 years. In television
production, the exploitation of this outsourced labour has been so severe that the
regulators, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), have intervened
to protect production studios (MIC, 2014; see also Shibayama, 2010). A similar gulf in
salary and career prospects, stability, and social status exists within old media across
different sectors. This is also the case in the creative industries of other developed
countries, typically expressed as the ‘exploitation of dreams’ (e.g. Gill and Pratt, 2008;
McRobbie, 2015), but what is characteristic about Japanese old media is that it is more
difficult to ‘work your way up’ as the job market lacks mobility and flexibility. Large
companies in old media are still reluctant to hire mid-career professionals. In reality, the
window to join opens just once for selected university fourth-year students participating
in university recruitment programmes.
Rather than the flexible and creative environment usually celebrated by the literature
on the creative industries (Florida, 2002), then, working conditions in the most prominent
Japanese media industries seem instead to conform to the strict rules, regulations, and
management typical of Japanese corporate culture (Low, Nakayama, and Yoshioka,
1999). Old media have a very cosy relationship with regulators, who have been reluctant
to change regulations and promote competitiveness in this highly protected sector which
has produced little growth, hardly add employment and, regarding broadcasting in
particular, shows little appetite to go digital or global. If anything, Japanese regulators
have helped these media oligopolies to maintain their privileged positions, effectively
precluding ownership change and foreign investment (MIC, 2005).
Content with a large local market, old media has not been much concerned with going
global. Japan’s most prominent media group, Fuji Media Holdings, had turnover of
¥646 billion ($6 billion) in 2018 and was leading the Japanese television industry with a
series of highly successful variety shows and trendy dramas, including the famous Tokyo
Love Story which was consumed widely in Asia (Iwabuchi, 2002; 2004). While being the
biggest television group in Japan, the group’s overseas sales account for less than 1% of

12
its total sales. This dependence on domestic sales and indifference to the international
market is the same at all the major broadcasters (Ohba, 2012). In comparison,
Walt Disney has ¥5.7 trillion in revenue (23% overseas) and News Corp. has
¥5.15 trillion in revenue (20% overseas).10
On home soil, Japanese old media has stopped Western competitors from challenging
their domestic dominance. Western media has so far failed to mount any serious challenge
in broadcasting, publishing, newspapers, or advertising. Japanese old media is protected
by various regulations and policies, including strict resale price maintenance, limited
membership to news sources for newspapers,11 and other news media and broadcasting
laws banning the foreign ownership of broadcasting stations. Overall, old media has
resisted the effects of globalisation at home surprisingly successfully and, barring a few
exceptions, diverges from the typical neo-liberal and free-market imperatives of the
global creative industries by withdrawing to the domestic market.
In turn, the Japanese government and its various regulatory agencies have been
reluctant to do much to change business practices or promote innovation in this highly
protected sector, which has produced little growth and employment and shown little
appetite to go global. For instance, a myriad of regulations and practices that prevent
digital distribution in publishing, broadcasting, or music from flourishing has been left
untouched so that the old system can continue to benefit from the current copyright laws
(Kidokoro, 2013). It has done little to break Dentsu’s monopoly on media buying in
Japanese advertising business, which has prevented innovation and new entrants in
creative production (Sasaki, 2007). It does too little to change unfair practices in which
television networks exploit numerous small production studios12 or pay little to no fees

10
Publishers such as Shueisha (Japan’s largest publisher with annual sales of ¥123 billion), which
publishes the most popular manga weekly Shonen Jump, have been more active in developing
international business as they push manga content. Nevertheless, its overseas business is
proportionally not as large as the world’s largest international publishers such as Pearson or
Thomson Reuters. Exceptions also include Japan’s largest advertising agency, Dentsu, and Nikkei.
Dentsu acquired British advertising agency Aegis in 2012, raising its overseas sales ratio to 54% in
2015. Nikkei, with annual sales of ¥300 billion, acquired the Financial Times, one of the world’s
most prestigious business newspapers with annual sales of ¥50 billion. Both are missing in the Cool
Japan discourse.
11
This system is called Kisha-kurabu seido (reporters’ club), which only give reporters from large
Japanese newspapers and television companies access to news sources such as the police,
government ministries, and other important public and private institutions (Freeman, 2000).
12
For example, the UK’s creative industries policy has an independent production quota that

13
for the use of specific bands of the electromagnetic spectrum to transmit signals, for
which the mobile operates pay hundreds of billions of yen (Ikeda, 2006). It has effectively
banned new entrants and ownership change in the television industries and overseas
investment.

6. New Media

Another huge part of the creative industries that has been missing in the Cool Japan
debate in Japan is new media, which has grown rapidly since the 1990s – challenging the
dominance of old media for the time and attention of Japan’s 100 million internet users.
New media is almost by definition more global. With the benefit of global ‘platforms’
(Gillespie, 2010) such as YouTube and Netflix, it is much easier for new media
companies to go global. Accordingly, unlike in the world of old media, Google, Facebook,
Twitter, Yahoo!, and other global media companies have firmly established their position
in the Japanese new media ecology. Japan has also produced home-grown new media,
which is competing with Western media companies in many areas.
One of the biggest and in many ways representative (in terms of its hybridity) new
media players is Yahoo! Japan, which is only 30% owned by Yahoo! Inc. in the US
(unlike subsidiaries in other countries that are majority owned) and thus retains
substantial autonomy from Yahoo! Inc.13 It offers different services from Yahoo! Inc.
and is a market leader in many areas including search (competing relatively well with
Google), auction (pushed eBay out of the country), news, and other vital services. With
net sales of ¥897 billion, Yahoo! Japan was already the biggest media company in terms
of sales in 2018, ahead of Yomiuri Shimbun group and Fuji Media Holdings; and is by
far the most profitable.14 The management teams of many new media companies, as well

mandates large networks like the BBC to buy a share of programming from independent production
companies. It also allows independent television production to retain the copyright unless stipulated
otherwise in the contract (Doyle and Paterson, 2008).
13
This is because Tokyo-based SoftBank Corp. is the biggest shareholder in both Yahoo! Japan and
Yahoo! Inc.
14 Dentsu is excluded because it treats billing as sales, which is not compatible with the other
accounting systems.

14
as their employees, are generally much younger than those of old media, and the new
media job market is significantly more flexible and mobile. Yahoo! Japan had 5,547
employees in 2015 (excluding subsidiaries) who are on average 35.6 years old of age and
make ¥7.1 million, with a turnover of 4.7 years. In contrast, the average age of 6,112
employees at the broadcaster Fuji Media Holdings, the parent company of Fuji television,
is 44 years with an average salary of ¥15 million. These figures are also reflected at the
very top: Yahoo! Japan’s CEO is 45 years old, while Fuji’s CEO is 75 years old.15
In social media, Japan has a different ecology from Western countries (Mizukoshi,
2014; Takahashi, 2010). Tokyo-based Mixi was a market leader for a long time, although
it has been taken over by Facebook and Twitter. Mobile social gaming platforms are the
newest forces in new media in Japan, having exploded in the last decade. One of the two
major players is GREE, which started operations in 2004 and whose revenue surpassed
¥150 billion in 2012 and 2013, mainly from the controversial kompu gacha (a random
reward system that costs players a large amount of money) (GREE, 2019). The other
social media platform, DeNA, recorded net sales of ¥202.4 billion and profit of ¥79.2
billion in 2013, marketing similarly controversial but hugely profitable games (DeNA).
Both DeNA and GREE have invested in foreign markets and mergers and acquisitions.
In 2013, the world smartphone game category included five Japan-based companies
(Gangho, Line, GREE, DeNA, and Supercell owned by SoftBank and Gangho) (MIC,
2014: 73). LINE, developed by the Japanese arm of Korean company Naver, is
developing a considerable user base with its playful messenger-based social app. At the
end of 2018, LINE had 194 million active users globally, of which 164 million were in
Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand (Uniad 2019). Other notable Japanese players
include Ameba (blogging platform used by Japanese celebrity blogs with a page view of
230 million pages per month) run by Cyberagent, an internet ad agency.
Large new media companies have become popular amongst graduate and mid-career
professionals. Toyo Keizai (2014) reported that DeNA, GREE, and Cyberagent have
become the new top three companies for students at the prestigious University of Tokyo,
ahead of trading companies, banks, and management consulting, which have traditionally

15
Based on corporate data published on Yahoo! Finance
http://stocks.finance.Yahoo.co.jp/stocks/profile/?code=4676.T (accessed 20 July 2018);
http://stocks.finance.Yahoo.co.jp/stocks/profile/?code=4689.T (accessed 20 July 2018)

15
attracted these top students in recent decades. New media companies offer a competitive
salary, opportunities from a significantly younger age than old media, and more exciting
and entrepreneurial working environments. In 2014, DeNA hired 28 University of Tokyo
graduates and Cyberagent hired eight, while the once-revered Asahi Newspaper was not
able to hire a single student from the University of Tokyo – signalling the decline of old
media vis-à-vis new media.
In the midst of the shift in the balance of power, old media seems to have mixed
feelings including contempt, suspicion, fear, and reluctancy to work with new media,
particularly as the decline of old media is irreversible but noticeably slower in Japan than
in other developed countries (Dentsu Sōken, 2014).16 To further this defensive interest,
old media often seek intervention and outfight protection from regulators at the cost of
the overall competitiveness of the creative industries. 17 In this connection, a view
inspired by Cool Japan, in which Japan is seen as a nation where the creative industries
are taken seriously and supported generously by the government to seize opportunities
opened up by globalisation and digitalisation, does not seem to hold. Instead, what this
analysis attempts to show are the different ways in which sectors within the creative
industries are negotiating the forces of globalisation and digitalisation.

Conclusion

Cool Japan is uneven as a creative industries policy, and that unevenness is

attributable to a number of local factors including its character as a national branding
campaign and the rivalry between different ministries. This paper has attempted to show
some of the critical characteristics of Cool Japan as a creative industries policy and the
current shape of the core of the Japanese creative industries and their various relationships
with the state, which have been understudied. Moreover, an overarching view of the
global creative industries model, based on open trust in the free market and the neo-liberal

16
For instance, 80% of recorded music sales in Japan in 2012 were physical compared with the US
where only 34% were physical.
17
See Oyama and Lolli (2016) for further discussion.

16
economic model, does not hold if seen from Japan’s perspective. This paper begins to
show how the deterministic narrative, depicting the linear and inevitable spread of the
global creative industries model, needs to be analysed through the complex articulation
of global processes with local socio-cultural and politico-economic specificities.
If Japan had the global creative industries model, it would have led to much more
comprehensive deregulation and globalisation, both inbound and outbound, in the core of
the national media and cultural industries. Heizo Takenaka, an infamous champion of
neo-liberal reform who was a former Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications
and Minister of State for Privatization of the Postal Services, remarked in 2006 and again
in 2015 that for Cool Japan to be really ‘effective’, it would need a ‘Japanese Time
Warner’ (Sangyō Kyōsōryoku Kaigi, 2015). This would mean allowing a merger between
NTT, Fuji, Shūeisha, and so on to compete with Western media conglomerates.
Nevertheless, even Takenaka, who managed to privatise the Japanese post office, which
had the largest savings bank in the world, failed to achieve this (Lechevalier, 2014). As a
result, Japan is still relatively insulated from the incursion and discourse of the global
creative industries, which has contributed to an idiosyncratic organisation or ecology of
its creative industries – producing distinctive, if characterised as Galapagos, forms of
popular culture that continue to intrigue international audiences, particularly in Asia.

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 ERIA Discussion Paper Series
No. Author(s) Title Year
In the Closet: Japanese Creative
Industries and their Reluctance
2019-09 August
Shinji OYAMA to Forge Global and
(no.295) 2019
Transnational Linkages in
ASEAN and East Asia
The Contents of Power:
2019-08 Narrative and Soft Power in the August
David LEHENY
(no.294) Olympic Games Opening 2019
Ceremonies
Value Added Exports and the
2019-07 Local Labour Market: Evidence August
DUC Anh Dang
(no.293) from Vietnamese 2019
Manufacturing
Domestic Value Added,
Prema-chandra
2019-06 Exports, and Employment: An August
ATHUKORALA and
(no.292) Input-Output Analysis of 2019
Arianto A. PATUNRU
Indonesian Manufacturing
The Impact of Global Value
Chain Integration on Wages:
2019-05 Sasiwimon W. August
Evidence from Matched
(no.291) PAWEENAWAT 2019
Worker-Industry Data in
Thailand
A Spark Beyond Time and
2019-04 August
Tamako AKIYAMA Place: Ogawa Shinsuke and
(no.290) 2019
Asia
Navigating Low-Carbon
Naoyuki YOSHINO and
2019-03 Finance Management at Banks August
Farhad TAGHIZADEH-
(no.289) and Non-Banking Financial 2019
HESARY
Institutions
The Next Generation
2019-02 June
Seio NAKAJIMA Automobile Industry as a
(no.288) 2019
Creative Industry
2019-01 Cool Japan, Creative Industries June
Koichi IWABUCHI
(no.287) and Diversity 2019
Exporter Dynamics and
Mar
2018-20 Keiko ITO Productivity Dispersion within
2019
Industry
Exchange Rate Movements,
Tomohiko INUI and Exporting by Japanese firms, Mar
2018-19
Young Gak KIM and the Role of R&D and 2019
Global Outsourcing

23
No. Author(s) Title Year
The Exchange Rate and
Chandra Tri PUTRA and Exporting: Evidence from the Mar
2018-18
Dionisius NARJOKO Indonesian Manufacturing 2019
Sector
Product Innovation, Exporting,
and Foreign Direct Investment: Mar
2018-17 Sizhong SUN
Theory and Evidence from 2019
China
T Yudo WICAKSONO, Failure of an Export Promotion
Mar
2018-16 Carlos MANGUNSONG Policy? Evidence from Bonded
2019
and Titik ANAS Zones in Indonesia
Alfons
Entering the Export Market: Do Mar
2018-15 PALANGKARAYA and
Trade Missions Help? 2019
Elizabeth WEBSTER
Kazunobu
HAYAKAWA,
Toshiyuki MATSUURA, Export Dynamics and the Mar
2018-14
Nuttawut Invoicing Currency 2019
LAKSANAPANYAKUL,
and Taiyo YOSHIMI
Imported Intermediate Inputs
and Plants’ Export Dynamics Mar
2018-13 Sadayuki TAKII
Evidence from Indonesian 2019
Plant-product-level Data
Regulatory Dissimilarity: A
Kaoru NABESHIMA and First Look at the Newly Mar
2018-12
Ayako OBASHI Collected Non-Tariff Measures 2019
Database
Economic Potential of the
Vientiane–Ha Noi Expressway Mar
2018-11 Masami ISHIDA
Based on Experience of the 2019
Mekong Region
Innovation Process in Public
Mar
2018-10 Byeongwoo KANG Research Institute: Case Studies
2019
of AIST, Fraunhofer, and ITRI
Technical Change, Exports, and
Ha Thi Tan DOAN and Employment Growth in China: Feb
2018-09
TRINH Quang Long A Structural Decomposition 2019
Analysis
Multi-product Firms, Tariff
Liberalisation, and Product Feb
2018-08 Ha Thi Tan DOAN
Churning in Vietnamese 2019
Manufacturing

24
 No. Author(s) Title Year
Quantitative Assessment of the
DUONG Lan Huong,
Impact of EMS Standards on the Feb
2018-07 Tsunehiro OTSUKI and
Firms’ Attitude towards Product 2019
Etsuyo MICHIDA
Safety
Division of Labour Amongst
Nobuya FUKUGAWA,
Innovation Intermediaries in Nov
2018-06 Masahito AMBASHI and
Agricultural Innovation 2018
Yuanita SUHUD
Systems: The Case of Indonesia
Masako NUMATA,
Masahiro SUGIYAMA,
Technoeconomic Assessment of July
2018-05 Gento MOGI, Wunna
Microdrigrids in Myanmar 2018
SWE and Venkatachalam
ANBUMOZHI
Can Indonesia Secure a
Rashesh SHRESTHA and June
2018-04 Development Divided from its
Ian COXHEAD 2018
Resource Export Boom?
Ayako OBASHI and Are Production Networks Passé June
2018-03
Fukunari KIMURA in East Asia? Not Yet 2018

Lili Yan ING, Wei TIAN, China’s Processing Trade and May
2018-02
Miaojie YU Value Chains 2018
The Eurasian Land Bridge The
Role of Service Providers in
May
2018-01 Richard POMFRET Linking the Regional Value
2018
Chains in East Asia and the
European Union
Previous year of ERIA Discussion Paper, can be found at:
http://www.eria.org/publications/category/discussion-papers

25