ABSTRACT
Introduction The increasing spread of its media culture in the world is perhaps one of the most significant changes occurring in the last ten years or so regarding contemporary Japan. The perception of Japan as a faceless economic power has been displaced by an image of a cultural power that produces and disseminates ‘cool’ and ‘cute’ cultures to many parts of the world such as animated movies, comics, video games, characters, fashion, food, film and so on. While this change can be seen as a corrective to the under-evaluation of cultural creativity that has long been developed in Japanese society, the pendulum seems to be swinging to the other pole of over-celebration. We have witnessed the proliferation of euphoric views, both domestically and internationally, of Japanese media culture in the world that appraise new kinds of cultural creativity that are different from their American counterparts and that argue for a significant role played by Japanese media culture in the international promotion of good images of Japan as well in its national economy.
