The Power of Japanese Popular Culture

A very long debate that goes around the limitation of Japan’s military capability apparently does not leave the country with a dead end option. Instead, the growth of Japan’s economic on the other hand has sent the country to experience the all-time highest GDP record in 2012 by 5957 billion of U.S dollars (Trading Economics, n.d.). Given that fact, there is a quite clear picture to argue that the dynamics of economic activities has somehow embraced Japan’s national power.

As people might know in general that Japan is home to many big automobile and electronics companies which are most likely to be the major contributors to their own economic development. But, leaving the hard power perspective, we have to admit that japan is also a dominant beauty pageant in terms of popular culture.

To understand that, we firstly need to borrow the term coined by Joseph Nye in 1980s in which he defines soft power as “the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion.” The argument emerged in the shadow of the end of Cold Ward. In his publication he basically argues that as the Cold War ended, there was a big shift in understanding the state power. To seize the power is no longer about how states could manage the resources that are in hand, but it’s about “…the ability to change the behavior of the states.” By that, he also argues that there are some changes in the face of power in which somehow essentially reinterpret the way of persuasion by putting ahead the more intangible power resources such as culture, ideology, and institutions (Joseph S. Nye, 2004).

In that case, the author would like to support the argument of McGray which says that Japan is a cultural superpower. Starting from the viral outbreak of Japanese anime Pokemon, all the way to the worldwide acceptance of an adorable pink cat character called Hello Kitty, this particular industry currently has 2 trillion yen of global market share and it is projected to be 900 trillion yen by the year 2020. In addition to that, McGray created a term called Japan’s Gross National Cool to express the on-going phenomenon of Japan becoming a cultural superpower (McGray, 2002).

The Japanese pop culture prodigy is indeed not a result of one night work. The author believes that it is actually more about a work than involves well-measured strategies which make the outcome of their popular culture can be accepted not only by the ‘native’ consumers. But instead, it could transcend the cultural boundaries that the world often sees as the limit of the market. The purpose of this essay is to explain some of the marketing ideas used by the Japanese popular culture industry to gain the acceptance in foreign markets until it can be well translated into “Gross National Cool.”

One way done by the Japanese popular culture creators to attract foreign market is by creating their product to have the appearance as if it is not from Japan but instead of fulfilling some characteristics of the local identity. This particular sense of domesticating Japanese popular culture to the place where it’s marketed has become possible to happen as the Japanese creators apply the national ambiguity into their products.

Hello Kitty is probably the most suitable example to this national ambiguity strategy case. Giving the Kitty character with both Japanese and Anglo-Saxon identity, the creator of Hello Kitty is probably the most iconic figure of cat that has ever been applied to numbers of kinds of products starting from clothing up to the adult biological recreational self-pleasuring tool. The success has also been measured by number, Hello Kitty, as McGray stated, has reached global sales worth $1 billion dollar (McGray, 2002).

This particular product of Japanese popular culture also happened to have certain adjustments along the way. For example, there are several details which involve colors, ornaments, up to the supporting characters that need to be put on the consideration before it finally touches foreign markets. So if any of you go to Japan and see the picture of Hello Kitty with its little snail friend caught in a rain scene attached to a kid’s raincoat, and the next day you travel all the way to the United States, you will probably never find the same Hello Kitty picture being sold (McGray, 2002).

In addition to the process of getting the national income from its popular culture, Danielle Leigh Rich (2011) argues that starting from this (popular culture), Japan has gained the opportunity for enjoying extra privileges by building its foreign consumers’ interests in understanding more about Japanese language, history, and –of course– the culture itself which, not to mention, will affect to the aspect of Japanese national tourism, media consumption, and others (Rich, 2011 ). From this particular grand mechanism, we can see that Japanese popular culture products are actually not only aiming for a focused media-related profit, but they also set a sustain relations with the possibility of getting the income from other major aspect of the state. In the other words, Japanese popular culture has succeed to place their product in position where it can actually outgrow the dense of Japanese nuance and can be easily recognized as a universal identity, or as Iwabuchi calls, that Japanese popular culture is an “odorless culture.” (Iwabuchi, 2002)

With that being said, the author expects that this essay could give a quick overview that in the effort of increasing the national power, a state should not be blocked by the conservative ways. Having a very little scrutiny, soft power such as popular culture can also be significant to increase national power as exemplified in the case of Japan.   

Kualitas Informasi dan Kecerdasan Masyarakat

Image source: http://morallowground.com/

Di era yang serba cepat, semua hal seolah dituntut pula untuk mengikuti pola perputaran yang serba cepat. Termasuk dalam urusan penyajian berita di media massa, seiring dengan tingginya permintaan dari masyarakat berkaitan dengan ketersediaan informasi, penyajian berita pun kini seolah lebih mementingkan siapa yang mampun muncul lebih awal dibandingkan dengan siapa yang mampu menyediakan berita yang informasinya akurat.

Tercatat bahwa beberapa kasus ketidakakuratan penyampaian berita sempat terjadi baik di dalam maupun luar negeri. Seperti contoh pada kasus ledakan bom di kota Boston, A.S 2 tahun silam, banyak media yang disinyalir terlalu spekulatif dalam menyajikan berita pada masyakarat. Padahal sebenarnya keakuratan data yang disajikan belum bisa dipastikan (baca selengkapnya disini).  

Hal ini bisa disebabkan oleh beberapa hal, selain tingginya permintaan dari masyarakat yang membuat lalu lintas berita menjadi sangat cepat seperti yang sudah disebutkan diatas, hal yang tidak bisa dipungkiri adalah sisi komersial dari pemberitaan itu sendiri yang menyebabkan munculnya tendensi untuk terus menyajikan berita tanpa terlalu mempedulikan kualitas berita tersebut.

Moneter.co, salah satu portal berita ekonomi di Indonesia melaporkan bahwa, berdasarkan data dari Asosiasi Surat Kabar dan Percetakan Dunia (World Association of News Paper and News Publisher) pendapatan secara global dari bisnis surat kabar tahun lalu bisa mencapai angka 200 miliar dollar A.S (baca selengkapnya disini). Hal ini tentunya belum termasuk dengan pendapatan dari perkembangan media online yang semakin hari semakin popular.

Karena tingginya lalu lintas dan besarnya peluang keuntungan yang bisa dihasilkan dari bisnis tersebut, kini bahkan beberapa perusahaan media seperti Los Angeles Times telah menggunakan instrumen robot yang dibuat oleh system alogaritma tertentu. Robot ini mampu secara otomatis menuliskan sebuah berita lengkap beberapa saat setelah suatu kejadian berlangsung (baca selengkapnya disini).

Perubahan tingkat lalu lintas informasi yang menjadi serba cepat tidak seharusnya selalu kita pandang secara negatif. Sebagai masyarakat pada umumnya, seharunya fenomena ini menjadi titik dimana kita terpacu untuk menjadi lebih kritis dan sadar terhadap kualitas informasi yang kita terima. Banyaknya ketersediaan informasi di media massa seperti sekarang secara tidak langsung memberikan kita ruang untuk bisa membandingkan dan menilai keakuratan informasi yang disajiikan. Sistem demokrasi yang mengizinkan kebebasan persebaran ide dan informasi di masyarakat, seharusnya mampu membuat kita untuk menjadi lebih cerdas, tidak sebaliknya.  

THE DYNAMICS OF U.S. - ROK ALLIANCE

Source : Google Images

Background

The involvement of the United States in U.S. - ROK alliance has been resulting such of dynamic tension in the relationship of South Korea (ROK) and North Korea (DPRK). It shall be ackwoledged that the alliance which was made by U.S. is one of many reflections of effort in spreading their hegemony over the continent of Asia. Coming up into such understanding, it will put us in no wonder if the coalition between U.S. and South Korea could possibly invite the other surrounding party -who is not aligned with U.S.- to feel the 'insecurity' (yet it is probably interpreted as threat), as the existence of U.S. - ROK alliance is advancing themselves in certain cooperations.

The U.S. - ROK is a mutual defense treaty which was signed in October 1953 under the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Syngman Rhee. The main concern of this treaty was first to make sure the South Korea's national security as it was established right two months after the end of the korean civil war. The alliance appears very important for both U.S. and South Korea. For U.S., securing its position in South Korea is so much helping them in positioning the U.S. continental base which will probably be managed to prevent the potential threat from China and Russia. In the other words, it has helped U.S. in managing its geo-strategic position (Jung-Ho Bae, 2009).

Moreover, South Korea also surely appears as an important trading partner for the U.S. as it is showing very significant value in terms of gross national income which successfully touches 35 times larger than the North Korea's and 240 times greater in the trade volume. The other thing is, South Korea is also a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (abbreviated as 'OECD') since 1996, popularly known as a group of economically successful nations. Not to mention that now South Korea is the seventh largest trading partner of the U.S. 

However, the mutual benefits that are gained by both U.S. and South Korea need to face the up and down phase as it's clashing with some of principles held by the surrounding opposistion state such as North Korea in which it leads up to several tangible disputes gestures. Therefore, this article will attempt to focus on explaining the dynamics that occurs within the existence of U.S. - ROK alliance in the Korean Peninsula.

Dynamics of U.S. - ROK alliance

Soon after Rhee's administration was over, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun came into administration with different foreign policy practice in which it went to be more Pan-Koreanism. This perspective approaches the idea to reconcile the South and North Korea. It was signaled by the instruction of president Roh to relinquish U.S. operational control over South Korea.

This policy seemingly appeared to the U.S. as an obstacle. Apparently, political pivot must be done by the U.S. under George W. Bush's administration by implementing the "strategic flexibility" policy, a policy which was prepared to respond to conflicts anywhere they are needed, it did not limit the geographical scope, but necessarily for all over the world.

Long story short, in February 2008, Lee Myung-bak, a leader of the opposition party came into the administration with a more pragmatic foreign policy. This pragmatic policy was translated as the confrontational gesture toward North Korea and the return of U.S. - ROK alliance as Lee was also committed to repair the previous flaws and weaknesses of the alliance's framework. As the President Lee implemented such policy, North Korean press had a counter-productive coverage about him that he was a Korean traitor (Kwang Sub Kwak, 2006).

The dynamics does not stop there, the dispute actually continues up until the present day. In the year of 2008, North Korea launched its nuclear test, satellite, sinking the Cheonan Warship, and pointed guilty for the Yeonpyeong island bombardment. There was no definitive answer of why such action was done by the North Korea, but looking into it barely, it coud probably be the form of confrontation that was tried to show by the North Korea towards the South Korea, in the sense of U.S. - ROK alliance. 

There are actually some theories which explain why North Korea acts very confrontatively on the advance movement of South Korea under the framework of U.S. - ROK alliance. First, the exercise of U.S. - ROK alliance highlights the vulneralbities of North Korea in term of military arms race. Second, the military exercise is also giving impact toward the psychological pressure as the military of South Korea -under the support of U.S.- has been set in the highest level of alert. Third, the support of power that is gained by South Korea also creates a tangible economic disparity, in which it will be related to the readiness and strength of the North Korea itself (Abramowitz, 2001).

Conclusion 

It cannot be denied, the presence of U.S. in South Korea through U.S. - ROK partnership has somehow made the tension between South Korea and North Korea comes into an escalating tension. The tension which allegedly derives from the North Korea's anxiety on the massive development of South Korea has also led them to launch several confrontation act in order to press down the on going U.S. - ROK alliance.

References

Abramowitz, Morton. (2001). Testing North Korea : The Next Stage in U.S. and ROK Policy. United States : Council on Foreign Relations. 

Jung-Ho Bae. (2009). The U.S. - ROK Alliance in the 21st Century. Korea : Korea Institute for National Unification.

Kwang Sub Kwak. (2006). THE US-ROK ALLIANCE, 1953 - 2004: ALLIANCE INSTITIONALIZATION. United States : ProQuest Information and Learning Company.



Also See :

THE INTEREST OF NORTH KOREA IN US-ROK ALLIANCE (BY. MEINAR)

THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE U.S. IN NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA RELATIONSHIP (BY. HIKMALINDA)

STRATEGIC PATIENCE OF US TOWARDS NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT (BY. LINDA)