An Essay on the Relationship between "Cool Japan" and Trade Policy

Although the Cool Japan policy consists mostly of export promotion policies and thus is deeply related to trade policy, its trade-related issues have not been investigated in detail. If Japan is to further such export promotion policies, however, it is inevitable that these issues must be managed. This paper thus discusses how such export promotion policies could be understood from a trade policy perspective. This paper first takes an overview of the Cool Japan export promotion policies (backgrounds, definitions, objectives, approaches, examples, evaluations, etc.), and then proposes trade-related issues to be considered when driving them forward. Such issues include (1) how the "purpose" of the Cool Japan export promotion policies, i.e. the spread of Japan's lifestyle and values to the world's consumers, might be disputed by other countries; (2) Cool Japan export promotion policies suggest that the long-accepted dichotomy of promoting free trade in cultural goods/services versus protecting cultural diversity is, in fact, not a trade-off, and that Japan may be able to act as a "third party" in trade negotiations for cultural goods/services to achieve both at the same time; (3) "Corporate foreign policy"—which is proposed to be necessary in forming truly effective World Trade Organization (WTO) related trade policy—might also be indispensable in forming truly effective Cool Japan export promotion policies.