When it was announced in April that ¥11.7 billion had been set
aside in 2009's supplementary budget to create a new National
Center for Media Arts (NCMA) — a museum for manga, anime,
video games and technology art — the news was greeted in the same
way that most cultural-policy issues are in Japan.
Future visions: An initial plan for
the National Center for Media Arts (above). This "Power of
Expression, Japan" exhibition at the National Art Center in Tokyo
in 2007 (below) suggests how the new facility may look
inside. AGENCY FOR CULTURAL AFFAIRS 
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In other words, except for a few short, businesslike reports, it
was ignored.
By the end of May, however, the plan had rocketed to center
stage. In his first debate with Prime Minister Taro Aso, new
Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama devoted one of
just seven questions to the supplementary budget and what he
derisively referred to as the "State-run Manga Cafe."
The need for a central facility to research, archive and exhibit
the country's popular culture — and to act as a kind of
international clearinghouse for these art forms — has been debated
in think tanks hosted by the government's Agency for Cultural
Affairs for around a decade. So long had deliberations dragged on
that in an interview with The Japan Times this time last year,
Tamotsu Aoki, the agency's head, said he didn't think the plan
would get off the ground any time soon.
But what a difference 12 months can make.
Not only is the plan off the ground, but with the supplementary
budget now enacted by the Diet, it is hurtling toward fruition at a
very unbureaucratic speed. "Our job is to proceed with preparations
as quickly as possible," Aoki told this newspaper last week.
Yet while most commentators on cultural policy are cautiously
applauding the development, important questions remain. Why, for
instance, has the plan developed so swiftly over the last year? Why
is the DPJ so hostile to it? And will the facility meet the
expectations of those who have called for its creation for so
long?
The answers to the first two questions are related. Put simply,
the DPJ thinks the plan was fast-tracked either on the orders of,
or to curry favor with, Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is a fan of
anime and manga.
"It's Taro Aso who likes anime. Now the bureaucracy has decided
to build (a museum) for him. . . . It's a nonsense and a terrible
waste of money," Hatoyama told an audience in Aomori on May 9. (For
most media outlets, it was this speech that made the NCMA
newsworthy.)
Yoshiyuki Oshita, a cultural policy specialist at Mitsubishi UFJ
Research and Consulting, said that Hatoyama's and the DPJ's attacks
could be explained in one of two ways. "Either they are being made
without proper understanding of the Agency for Cultural Affairs'
proposed plan," said Oshita, noting that the NCMA is not just for
manga and anime, but also for technology and digital arts. Or the
criticisms "represent a purely politically motivated intervention
into the cultural sphere," he said.
There's probably some truth in both analyses. But the degree to
which Aso was really involved in the plan's genesis is
debatable.
The first official mention of a national facility for media arts
was made in February 2007, in the Second Basic Policy on the
Promotion of Culture and the Arts. "There is a need to consider the
establishment of an international facility for new cultural art
forms such as media art," noted that document — approved by
then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet.
Even that was hardly out of the blue. The original Basic Policy,
from 2002, had declared that "young media artists should be
nurtured . . . and facilities related to these art forms" should be
bolstered. And since 1997, the Agency for Cultural Affairs has been
hosting an annual two-week Japan Media Arts Festival celebrating
these arts.
Last year, just a year into his tenure as head of the agency,
Aoki, an academic by training, created an advisory panel to examine
ways in which Japan could improve the promotion of its culture
abroad. In its final report, the panel urged that the issue of the
establishment of a museum for media arts be "addressed
quickly."
Heeding that advice, in July 2008 Aoki set up a second committee
to consider preparations for such a facility. Chaired by University
of Tokyo Professor Yasuki Hamano, the body published a report this
April that has become a rough blueprint for the new facility.
While the NCMA plan's decade-long gestation period precludes it
from having been initiated entirely at the behest of Aso, the
timing of the Hamano committee's report has raised eyebrows.
The results of a JT poll of foreign
tourists asked if they would visit the proposed new
facility. MATTHEW KAUNDART / JT GRAPHIC
An Agency for Cultural Affairs spokesperson confirmed that
"there had been talk within the committee that their report would
be published in the summer." For some reason, however, that date
was advanced to April — in time to be included in the supplementary
budget. The DPJ thinks this speed-up followed pressure from Aso,
and that — in the words of DPJ Diet member, Seiji Ohsaka — "they've
rushed it into the budget before anything is decided."
Agency for Cultural Affairs head Aoki explained what happened as
follows: "In March, we were told it would be possible to apply for
funding for this kind of facility within the supplementary budget.
We were very appreciative of this opportunity."
In other words, the "pressure" — if it can be called that — was
interpreted less as a stick than as a carrot, and a particularly
attractive one at that.
"The Agency's annual budget is very small in comparison with
other countries," Aoki added, noting its ¥102 billion allocation
for 2009 is about a third less than South Korea's and seven times
less than France's. "This opportunity was much appreciated," he
repeated.
Of course, the official line on the NCMA plan's inclusion in the
supplementary budget is that it will serve as a fiscal stimulus in
the current economic downturn — which is why the supplementary
budget was created in the first place.
Mitsubishi UFJ's Oshita added his analytic weight to this
argument, explaining that in terms of immediate economic stimulus,
¥11.7 billion spent on a museum is no worse, and no better, than
spending it on a new road or bridge or, for that matter, "digging a
hole and filling it again." The important question, he said, is
whether or not it can stimulate industry in the future.
Promotion of Japan's so-called media-contents industries
(including manga, anime, TV and film) has recently become a high
priority within several government ministries — including the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Internal Affairs and
Communications Ministry and the Foreign Ministry. Hence it was
probably this prioritization, Oshita suggested, that convinced
Cabinet members that the NCMA-as-fiscal-stimulus idea was worth a
try.
The DPJ's objections to the NCMA have subsided slightly since
the ruling Liberal Democratic Party used their coalition majority
in the Lower House to enact the supplementary budget — effectively
overruling the objections of the Upper House's DPJ majority.
However, argument about the NCMA will likely flare again during the
upcoming election. Importantly, the DPJ is refusing to say whether
or not it will terminate the plan if it wins power. "We're still
considering how to approach that issue," a party spokesperson said
by phone last week.
For his part, Aoki would not be drawn on the consequences of a
change of government. "We will respond to the circumstances in
which we find ourselves," he said.
So, as things stand — and with ¥11.7 billion now in the coffers
for buying land and constructing the building — it is full speed
ahead as far as the Agency for Cultural Affairs is concerned.
Fast forward: Exhibits at the new
"Manga Museum" are likely to resemble those at 2007's "Power of
Expression, Japan," an exhibition held to document the first 10
years of the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Media Arts
Festival. AGENCY FOR CULTURAL AFFAIRS
The April report tentatively names the new facility the
Kokuritsu Media Geijutsu Sogo Senta (which, for lack of an official
version, this writer translates as "National Center for Media
Arts"). It also recommends that the center should be four or five
stories high and around 10,000 sq. meters in total area — and that
it should be built within the next two or three years in Tokyo's
waterfront Odaiba district.
As for its activities, the plan says the NCMA should research,
collect, nurture and exhibit the work of young creators in the
fields of manga, anime, video games and art forms using computers
or electronic media.
It is envisaged that such a center would attract 600,000
visitors a year, including researchers and tourists from around the
world, and generate ¥150 million in ticket sales annually.
However, nothing is set in stone, and deliberations on all of
these details are set to continue within the NCMA "planning office"
recently established within the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and
also within a new committee of specialists that will be convened in
the near future. An Agency spokesperson revealed to The Japan Times
on Friday that the new committee will publish a revised "basic
plan" for the NCMA in July and that an architectural competition
will be held soon after that. In September the architect, location
and a detailed NCMA "project plan" will be announced.
In terms of attracting researchers from abroad, most
commentators agree that the potential is great. "Still," explained
Jaqueline Berndt, deputy director of Kyoto International Manga
Museum's research center, "I worry whether this will be a scholarly
institution. At the moment we get many many e-mails from foreign
scholars, especially graduate students, who want to research or
want information or resources." The new NCMA, she said, will need
the resources and staff to foster such exchanges.
It is also expected that the facility will be popular with
tourists. "This could be a really vital tourist resource," said
Takeshi Komiya, senior director of HIS Experience Japan, a leading
inbound travel agency. But he warned: "You can't just say, 'OK, we
built a center.' You need to explain to visitors, 'Yes, we have
Kyoto and Nara, but this is also an important part of Japanese
culture.' "
Top 'crat: Tamotsu Aoki, head of the
Agency for Cultural Affairs, discusses plans for the new National
Center for Media Arts in a JT interview this month. EDAN
CORKILL
In a quick survey of foreign tourists in Tokyo's upmarket Ginza
shopping district and in the "subculture Mecca" of Akihabara last
week, The Japan Times found that in each location 60 percent of 20
tourists polled said they would visit such a facility.
Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the April report is that it
says management of the facility will be outsourced to private
enterprise, with the intention of it being entirely
self-financing.
The closest thing to a precedent for such a business model would
be Japan's regional museums, management of which can now be
outsourced to "independent administrators." The key difference,
however, is that in the case of the regional museums, the
independent administrators are paid a set fee to run the
facilities. The NCMA administrator would have to operate the entire
institution solely on whatever income they manage to wring from
it.
Even stranger is the suggestion that the NCMA's collection would
be bankrolled by its own income. It is hard to imagine that a
private management firm appointed on a three- or perhaps five-year
contract would bother expending precious operating funds on a
cost-heavy, largely unprofitable collection.
"There has been talk of there being some manga artists willing
to donate works to the NCMA," one Agency for Cultural Affairs
spokesperson said sheepishly, before Aoki added that this, too, is
an area awaiting further consideration.
The planned NCMA has also been criticized from within the manga
and anime fraternities.
Manga artist Kei Ishizaka declared at a DPJ hearing on the plan
that, "manga fans would not come and look at original drawings hung
in frames using government money."
But, for every skeptic, there appears to be a supporter.
For instance, manga artist Machiko Satonaka was so "fearful that
the plan would be swept aside" that she gathered like-minded
colleagues and set up her own press conference on June 4 to
register their support.
"The preservation and restoration of precious original manga
drawings, which are deteriorating rapidly, is urgently required,"
she told the assembled reporters.
Others still have voiced concerns that the NCMA plan might be a
cynical attempt by the government to enlist manga and anime for the
enhancement of Japan's geopolitical influence. If so, that's news
to Berndt, of the Kyoto International Manga Museum. She recalled a
recent foreign graduate student hellbent on uncovering just such a
motivation. "Maybe from a European perspective, it looks like that,
but in Japan . . . there really isn't one," she said, almost with a
hint of disappointment.
Still, perhaps the most important point is one that Aoki, from
his position as head of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, is at
pains to make.
"People keep referring to this as a museum of manga and anime,
but it is not," he said. "It also includes all the technology and
digital forms of expression."
Mitsubishi UFJ's Oshita went even further. "The definition of
media art is very difficult. Although it does include manga and
printed matter, I think at its core will be the idea of
eizo (video content)," he said. "As can be seen from the
popularity of (video-sharing Web site) YouTube, videos are now the
central parlance of the Internet. They will change the way we
communicate."
Oshita sees the new facility as a potential clearinghouse to
filter out and preserve the best of the myriad, but ephemeral,
video content that now floods the Internet — from television
programs to advertising to amateur-produced parodies and video
diaries.
While not quite as revolutionary in his thinking, Aoki also has
his sights set on distinguishing Japan from the rest of the world.
"Japan has been a global leader not just in anime and manga, but in
digital art," he said. "Making a facility like this is a way to
maintain that leadership."
Perhaps. But while Aoki and others are keeping one eye on the
world and the other on the task of quickly planning for their new
facility, there's a lingering threat that in the next few months
their feet could be pulled from under them, and the museum could be
demolished before it is ever built.