Creative Japan

During the 1990s, foreigners began to consider Japanese culture as "cool", so says the Japanese government. Visual anthropologist Steven Fedorowicz featured "Creative Japan", a website celebrating Japanese popular culture, in his blog on July 30th, 2007 (see post). The Japanese embassy in the UK and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan both have a hand in the maintenance and oversight of the website entitled "Creative Japan", and thus it is interesting to see how they claim foreigners (especially youth) should perceive Japan.

"Creative Japan" has a diverse display of aspects of Japanese contemporary culture: anime/manga, fashion, literature, technology, etc. Some text briefly covers what is significant about that sector of popular culture, complemented by small, blurry photos perhaps found on a Google image search. The visual accompaniment is lacking--sometimes indistinguishable or unexplained--and the editors should consider how foreigners likely visit this site for the pictures alone, perhaps scanning the text at best.

"Creative Japan" gives off the sense that Japan is a nation proud of how its emerging culture has reached the corners of the world. It is celebrating its uniqueness while allowing other cultures to embrace it. As my anthropology professor Jeff Hester has lectured, "Nihonjinron" is a term referring to the discussion of the uniqueness of Japanese culture in relation to foreign countries, and I feel that "Creative Japan" is an example of this. Of course it is difficult to capture the essence of a living culture in a few fuzzy photos and abstract text, but I believe they express the point quite well.

Please visit Creative Japan to develop your own opinions. The movie still displayed at the beginning of this post is taken from Creative Japan's anime section.