ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationships between Japanese language and studies education in Australia, Brand Japan, and its soft power. It has surveyed an inherited history of Japanese language education in Australia, layering onto it other influences such as geopolitical and sociotechnological impacts that appear to have been significant in the last 20 years. It is known that Japanese soft resources have been influential, even well before official interest in their consequences caught up with their actual consumption by audiences worldwide. The chapter elaborates on a third point here regarding the identity connection with Japan and Japanese ways in connection to learners' consumption of Japanese mass culture products. It suggests the mediation between technology and how fans and others learn about Japan could be understood as a relationship in which the technology has become in loco praeceptoris. The chapter discuss the potentials of both positive and negative, that these technologies and media offered.
