The Comparative Japanese Culture Division and International Cooperation Division are working together to further discussions on e-Japanology research and development. E-Japanology is a trial project to construct a network to transmit Japanology and Japanese Studies overseas using technology. In this meeting, we invited a guest from a company currently handling anime business who talked about the following: i) the differences between large scale anime businesses such as Disney, which have expanded direct sales strategies and anime businesses which go through local agents overseas, ii) efforts to protect content quality in the face of "unauthorized products" (illegal copy products) distributed overseas, iii) acceptance of Japanese anime overseas by a niche strata (growing mania) and the social status as culture, iv) the origin of the quality of Japanese anime and manga (comic) products, and more. In the discussion and Q & A session, comments were made on the principle that the only way to localize cultural products is by an accurate translation of culture, the high quality of Korean comics which come close to that of Japan's, and policies proposed and led by the Japanese government, such as Cool Japan and All Japan, which were a little behind the times and an overestimate of the current situation.

Through the meeting, we reconfirmed that "overseas expansion" for academic research and education is different from businesses which assumes market competition is a given, and that its true value lies in various forms of "open access," which emphasizes pure relationships and where size of regions, parent organizations and social status do not matter.

(Tsutomu Tomotsune)

Handout ( PDF )

Photo gallery ( PDF )

Poster ( PDF )