The Yomiuri Shinbun has reported that Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has recently declared three of Japan’s pretty young things to be Pop Culture Ambassadors of the country…at least for their respective niche fashion groups.
Models Misako Aoki, Yu Kimura, and Shizuka Fujioka have been drafted to represent the lolitas, gyaru, and high school girls of the Nation of Cute, and travel the world promoting Japanese pop culture.
First stop: The upcoming Japan Fest in Bangkok, followed by a summertime stint at the Japan Expo in Paris.
Besides being a clear opportunity for bureaucrats to hang out with young girls, MOFA’s move is one of many in a government movement to promote Cool Japan, the idea that modern Japanese culture can be boxed up, branded, and exported for consumption. In many ways this is true, in the form of manga, anime, video games, and fashion, but these have been highly organic trends that came from the bottom up. Is government truly able to push Japanese trends onto the world to become global trends?
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