SOLD OUT Toward a Knowledge Society: U.S.-Japan Perspectives

March 1, 2006

Speakers
Ian Condry, Assistant Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies, MIT
Douglas McGray, freelance writer
Kostas Terzidis, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
Motohiro Tsuchiya, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University

Moderator
Ken Belson, Business Reporter, The New York Times

A distinguished panel of researchers on culture, art and media shared their insights on the accelerating movement from an industrial to a knowledge-based society in Japan and the U.S.

Moderator Ken Belson of The New York Times began the discussion with a reflection on the Hello Kitty phenomenon, the subject of his recent book. The sweet-faced cat's success as a commercial brand image represents "Japan's ability to take ideas and export them, in ways that perhaps nobody envisioned after World War II, but also Japan's penchant for importing ideas and repackaging them and reproducing them," he commented.

Freelance writer Doug McGray said that when he wrote an article entitled "Japan's Gross National Cool" for the magazine Foreign Policy, he invented the GNC metric in a spirit of fun, but with a serious intent. Pop and high culture "can get written off as trivial, but there is power in it" through architecture, product design and many other areas of economic endeavor.

During his research as a Japan Society media fellow in 2000-2001, Mr. McGray had noticed a paradox in Japanese newspaper coverage. The news and business sections were filled with unhappy reports on the recession, but the back-page articles on culture and the arts conveyed a sense of optimism and success. "Japanese culture was booming in the U.S. and around the world," as foreigners became fans of anime, made Japanese-influenced live-action movies like the Matrix series, devoured sushi from the local supermarket, wore fashion made or inspired by Japanese clothing designers, and bought Play Station and Gameboy video games for their children, he recounted.

How to account for this? There was hardly a connection between the craze for video games and the popularity of sushi, Mr. McGray pointed out. Nor did the migration of Japanese design and other cultural elements appear to be simply the result of successful marketing campaigns.

Mr. McGray's eventual answer--Japan's gross national cool--embraces several factors. For one, Japan has continued to be "an incredibly early adopting culture," he said. Sony executives told him that they still do most product launches in Japan because it gives them such a quick read on the market: new products "either sell like hotcakes, or they won't sell at all." Luxury-goods sales and youth spending remained strong even through the recession. Perhaps most important, Japan--unlike France among others--seemed to be experiencing the spread of "an open culture [that has] little anxiety about the national culture being polluted by globalization," Mr. McGray said. Japanese companies freely borrow ideas from other countries, and that "seems to make the output travel a little better" when Japan sends its exports abroad, he commented.

When government contemplates working to promote such trends, however, its greatest chance for success may lie in restraint, Mr. McGray concluded. Beyond ensuring that contemporary art gets funded and reducing structural barriers to the rise of creative industries, government "should find a way to get out of the way and let what happens happen."

Ian Condry, a cultural anthropologist at MIT, addressed the role of fansubbing--the term comes from "fan subtitling"--in contributing to the spread of anime from Japan to the U.S. Fansubbing is a phenomenon whereby groups of 10 or 12 anime fans, generally non-Japanese fans, collaborate online to translate and distribute the latest Japanese anime broadcasts.  Together they take a show, digitize it, write English subtitles and post the subtitled episode on the Internet so that English-speaking fans can view it for free. The fansub groups represent a kind of "dark energy," in Professor Condry's view. Their enthusiasm and devotion are undoubted--but they're appropriating someone else's copyrighted works without permission.

Anime TV, videos and films in Japan are big business, with $2 billion of sales in 2002, $18 billion if anime-related apparel and other products are included; and globally, 60 percent of animated cartoons are Japanese in origin, Professor Condry noted. The groups acknowledge that their versions infringe the copyright on the original anime program, he said. However, they contend that their work supports, rather than damages, the anime industry.

Fansub groups are not paid for their work, Professor Condry continued. The fansub versions typically include onscreen notes that explain obscure or historical references, reveal hidden jokes, and even provide karaoke verses complete with a bouncing ball, all of which adds "an extra dimension of cultural depth" that is valued by the audience. Groups do a good deal of self-policing. They post notices that their work is not for commercial use. Some work only on unlicensed series, and many take their versions off the Internet when an official DVD is distributed. Significantly, there have been few threats of lawsuits against fansub groups, he added.

For combatants in the copyright wars, the example of the fansub groups may provide a fruitful alternative to lawsuits and digital rights management stratagems, Professor Condry suggested. "There's a kind of energy that can be tapped, and that we should focus on to understand this connection between producers, content, technology and fans. [It is] out of that energy that you build business models, and not the other way around."

Motohiro Tsuchiya of Keio University discussed recent research in which he and a colleague compared cultural qualities perceived to foster creative endeavors in Sweden and New Zealand. He cited social theorist Richard Florida's book The Flight of the Creative Class, which ranked Sweden first in "creative competitiveness," with Japan second and the U.S. fourth. The interviews his team conducted in Sweden indicated that familiarity with American culture, heavy exposure to the English language through popular television programs watched by children, free university education and the Nobel Prize tradition are seen as playing a role in establishing the importance of knowledge work in Sweden's economy, he said.

Interest in the potential of New Zealand's creative industries has increased since the filming there of the Lord of the Rings cycle and other internationally distributed films, Professor Tsuchiya observed. Despite its small size and remote location, the country has a cosmopolitan tradition, art is popular, many speak multiple languages, and the Maori and English cultures increasingly borrow from one another.

Japan's own highly educated population is a competitive advantage, Professor Tsuchiya noted. Also an advantage is Japan's "soft power," meaning "the ability to influence events through persuasion and attraction rather than military or financial power," he said. However, as a specialist in international relations, Professor Tsuchiya expressed skepticism about the impact of anime and other pop culture elements. There is a huge energy generated by kids buying comics, but in the end this is entertainment, not something with serious implications for Japan's position in the world, he suggested. In his view, the real message that Japan is sending through its culture is one of dignity, perseverance and the desire for global peace.

Kostas Terzidis, an architect at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, discussed research he conducted at UCLA a few years ago on the structure of creative groups in business.

One might suppose that creative groups whose members are all alike can communicate more easily within the group, and therefore are more able to come up with creative solutions to problems, he said. However, his study suggested that homogeneity "can lead to a lack of originality, expressiveness, imagination, and therefore creativity." The research also indicated that creative groups are more effective when their members have complementary skills and talents, and are diverse not merely in ethnicity, but in culture, Professor Terzidis commented. He used as an example the team of thieves in the movie Ocean's Eleven: the talents of each character create a synergy that enables the group to accomplish more than any single individual could achieve.

"Designers, creative people, don't know what they're doing," because what they do "is beyond the traditional, literal, verbal ways of thinking," Professor Terzidis stated. Creative work communicates information not expressly but tacitly, through implication and connotation. One way the design world addresses what is not yet known is through competition, which looks not for the hypothetical best solution, but for the comparatively better one, he pointed out. In a competition, the judges choose a solution that is better than the runner-up; the decision isn't necessarily based on market value. Architecture can be a model for business, in that "we have this ability to see both ways, a kind of balance" between explicit reasoning and implicit creativity, he concluded.

Among your students in Japan, what is the role of English proficiency in catalyzing the viral marketing of Japanese culture? Is language really a barrier?

For undergraduate students, English is still a difficult task, and in fact Chinese and Korean, which are easier for Japanese students to learn, are competing with English for students' attention, Professor Tsuchiya replied.

The precise meaning of a work may not be as important as the social experience of sharing it with others, Professor Condry added. For example, fans of hip hop who create their own English-language overlay make use of a cultural object not necessarily because it is of such great intrinsic interest, but because "it's interesting enough, [and then] it becomes part of a social communication."

There has been a sentiment in Japan that people who are bilingual are in some sense inferior. Does this carry over to those who are engaged in fansubbing?

"Being bilingual is finally being appreciated," answered Professor Condry. "Within the fansub groups it's the translators who are most sought after."

What effect will the changing presence of women in Japan have on these elements of Japanese culture?

Professor Tsuchiya replied that there is indeed subjugation of women in anime, but it's promising that there are also female heroes, for example in the Miyazaki films.

Why has the nonconformist culture of anime flourished in a society that is consensual and prizes conformity?

"One thing to remember is that subcultures are intensely conformist in their nonconformity," Mr. McGray responded.

--Katherine Hyde