Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

look at common misdiagnoses of "trends" — especially in Japan.

A lot of Japan-oriented trend blogs seem to push "cool" products as "trends" without any evidence that consumers agree

This essay is not to say that there isn’t noteworthy reporting on innovations, novelties, and borrowable ideas from the Japanese market, but there is always an error of over-reporting these as "mass trends." If we return to the initial problem in analyzing the "rent-a-luxury-bag" phenomenon, the best course may be to err on the side of skeptical neutrality. reporting on new products and services is great fun for blog posts, but overselling novelty as "trend" can create a false sense of market realities.

Japanese pop culture, such as fashion, manga and anime, has been considered "cool" overseas for a while, but the government and domestic business community are not making the most of such popularity.

It has been 10 years since Japan cool became popular, but Japanese industry is not doing a good job of making the most of it, as it is often mocked: The biggest gainer from Japanese anime is Hollywood.

The Economy, Trade and Industry Minister' Industrial Structure Council recently released a report that devoted a great deal of space to the Japan cool issue. Following is an extract from the report.

Japan is reinventing superpower—again. Instead of collapsing beneath its widely reported political and economic misfortunes, Japan’s global cultural influence has quietly grown. From pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and animation to cuisine, Japan looks more like a cultural superpower today than it did in the 1980s, when it was an economic one. But can Japan build on its mastery of medium to project an equally powerful national message?

But cultural accuracy is not the point. Less important than authentic American origin is the whiff of American cool.

Yet Japan is reinventing superpower again. Instead of collapsing beneath its political and economic misfortunes, Japan’s global cultural influence has only grown. In fact, from pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and food to art, Japan has far greater cultural influence now than it did in the 1980s, when it was an economic superpower.

Y1.ys("dy"); Subscribe Y1.ys2("dy"); AD2.init({ site: 'DY', area: 'BANNER', width: 728, height: 90, admax: 1, banid: 'dy-banner' }); AD2.cAds(); AD2.dBanner();   JAPANESE Home National Sports Business World Features Columns Editorial Top Essay Culture Arts Weekend Book Review The Language Connection Scene Science & Nature Home>Features>DY Weekend Weather DY Weekend  Top THROUGH OTAKU EYES / Journalist tracks lost pop culture treasures Makoto Fukuda / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer For one reason or another, t

y these works slip out of circulation and fade from view, as if they are cut off from the world, in a series of reports in which he calls them fuin sakuhin, or sealed works.

The pressure on Akiba Walker's Paradise has been heating up, and the media has also joined in the game by adding more spice to the weekly Sunday drama. Today at Akiba, an interesting phenomenon has happened; a group of policemen whom the otaku calls the 'blue people' were followed by groups of reporters from TV stations and behind them is an even bigger group of curious crowd.

Cultural commentators such as Keiichi Kashiwabara, a professor of philosophy at The Open University of Japan, blame the growth of otaku culture for the widening chasm between youth and mainstream society.

Sunday's attack has prompted politicians and health care professionals to lament again the country's high rate of depression and anxiety, especially among stressed school children.

Experts warn separately that the virtual world inhabited by Japanese youth has caused many to become too comfortable with the idea of seeing dead characters return to life. As Ukyo Murakami, a 14-year-old boy, told the AFP wire service yesterday: "I'm afraid [Kato] did this because he played video games. But he should have known that, in life, you can't hit the restart button."