JPOP: Decline and the silence of the fans.

[mdo7]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

The exaggeration contained in the above quote, especially the bolded bit, is going off the scale

To you, but you don't see the reality. Until the day that Japan population reach an all-time low, people are going to ask "why didn't Japan do mass export when the population was declining, it could've save their economy??"

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

The exaggeration contained in the above quote, especially the bolded bit, is going off the scale

Until the day Japan manages to break the 145-150 million mark in the population number, I don't see how the situation is not alarming in any extent. Same thing goes for their economy should they focus too much on the bloody domestic market.

[mdo7]

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

Until the day Japan manages to break the 145-150 million mark in the population number, I don't see how the situation is not alarming in any extent. Same thing goes for their economy should they focus too much on the bloody domestic market.

Thank you, a person with a normal sense.

[cyth]

Thank you mdo7 for a new perspective. These social/anthropologist theories regarding Japan, especially the ones made by foreign observers, don't seem as crazy until you put them all together. Truly, thank you.

[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by aldw

Take K-dramas for example, from my observation in terms of production values and acting they are way ahead of equivalents from Japan or Taiwan, and only the high-budget TV shows or films from mainland China approach that level of presentation quality TBO, and the Koreans are pretty consistent with that.

From what little I've seen K-drama is not really that high quality compared with J-drama. But I think the problem with J-drama compared with its peak during the 90s-00s is a stagnation in writing and them continuously using the same actors (ie too much KimuTaku). The recent smash hit Hanzawa Naoki is proof that Japan can still make good stuff, it's just the past few years they've been playing safe due to decline in ratings and thus they, per typical Japanese style, retreat to proven "hit" formulas (ie hire all the once big name actors with all the money you can buy, but screw the script) instead of making new and innovative stuff. It's fine for the locals to like to watch the same actors over and over again because of some patriotic/nationalistic gravitation towards the actors, but even then there's a limit to this (the Hong Kong market for example suffers from the same problem, there are only so many times one is willing to watch Andy Lau or Stephen Chow doing the same thing over and over again even domestically, left alone foreigners looking for something fresh). The decline in J-drama export in the past 10 years is not a problem of production value IMO, but lack of freshness instead.

[sa547]

Which is why I have people in my household who would rather look forward eagerly to the next episode of, say, Game of Thrones (and many others in what seems to be the continuing boom of American television), than endure Asian dramas with recycled cliched plots; they don't want TV shows that make them feel stupid or yawn their way through.

Personally and I repeat, I don't see any decline of the Japanese music, just that there's too many players in the business and the market is largely focused on the domestic market. Also, PM Abe may have to tweak the Cool Japan program, in that it shouldn't be confined only to ACG or idols but also with music, cinema, drama, stage theater, tokusatsu, and other genres of Japanese pop culture.

And the population decline angle is... way too hyped.

[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by sa547

tokusatsu

Speaking of tokusatsu, Pacific Rim is such a slap in the face to the Japanese movie industry - it was essentially Hollywood outed Japan in terms of Japanese-ness AND still be a financial success (proving that no, you don't need to completely Westernize you stuff for the world to accept it). The Japanese movie industry should be ashamed of themselves for never being able to try to even "get it right".

Also the upcoming reboot of Hollywood Godzilla would be interesting to see whether it would be a repeat of what Pacific Rim did as well.

[mdo7]

Originally Posted by cyth

Thank you mdo7 for a new perspective. These social/anthropologist theories regarding Japan, especially the ones made by foreign observers, don't seem as crazy until you put them all together. Truly, thank you.

No the population decline has been acknowledge, what so you don't think J-pop need to go international? Come on, look at K-pop, it's getting more attention then J-pop (or canto-pop), I mean when was the last time Japan ever made a music video that is appealing like Gangnam Style. Also I can't find group in Japan like BigBang, or 2NE1. Wake up, don't you care if Japan is losing it's global relevence on the pop culture scene, South Korea is playing this better then Japan and I say that as a long time anime fan and a new K-pop fan.

Originally Posted by houkoholic

From what little I've seen K-drama is not really that high quality compared with J-drama. But I think the problem with J-drama compared with its peak during the 90s-00s is a stagnation in writing and them continuously using the same actors (ie too much KimuTaku). The recent smash hit Hanzawa Naoki is proof that Japan can still make good stuff, it's just the past few years they've been playing safe due to decline in ratings and thus they, per typical Japanese style, retreat to proven "hit" formulas (ie hire all the once big name actors with all the money you can buy, but screw the script) instead of making new and innovative stuff. It's fine for the locals to like to watch the same actors over and over again because of some patriotic/nationalistic gravitation towards the actors, but even then there's a limit to this (the Hong Kong market for example suffers from the same problem, there are only so many times one is willing to watch Andy Lau or Stephen Chow doing the same thing over and over again even domestically, left alone foreigners looking for something fresh). The decline in J-drama export in the past 10 years is not a problem of production value IMO, but lack of freshness instead.

Actually, ANN's Answerman has the answer why J-dramas are not exported in huge number, I'll quote the article (and yes I was the one that ask Answerman about J-dramas):

Originally Posted by Justin 'Answerman' Servakis

Michael asks:
In a previous column you mentioned that Japanese Dramas are hard to licence. I've actually been interested in watching Jdramas and have noticed that they are almost never available on streaming services like Crunchyroll, DramaFever, and Viki. On the other hand, those three services all have plenty of Korean dramas. What exactly makes Jdramas harder to licence than anime or Kdramas? Is there perceived to be no English language audience for them by Japanese licencors, or is there another issue that makes them difficult to licence? Do large networks like Fuji TV, NHK, and WOWOW even attempt to shop their hit dramas to foreign distributors?

Basically, the Japanese talent agencies make it impossible. They usually co-produce, or at least have some major controlling interest in every series their major star is in, and their standards for how that show is to be disseminated in a major market like America is unrealistic. They demand license fees that nobody could ever recoup, insist on ridiculous limitations on artwork and availability, and basically make life hell for all who might attempt to work with them. It's a non-starter.

Japanese talent agencies are also so spoiled for the level of control they have in Japan that they pretty much don't know how to play well in other markets. Agencies are used to writing marketing disguised as content DIRECTLY for publications, dictating how, when and which photos of their stars can be printed where. The agencies use the threat of withholding access to their stars to enforce these demands, and they get surprisingly little blowback. Some agencies also have yakuza ties, just in case someone was considering screwing with them.

In the case of TV dramas, the agency known as Johnny & Associates (Johnny's Jimusho) is thought by many to be one of the most difficult. Johnny's controls Japan's most popular boy bands and their members, from SMAP and Tokio to V6 and Hey! Say Jump!, and get those guys placed in pretty much all of the popular dramas. Johnny's requires approval on every step of the process, and have a reputation for being so difficult that many companies in Japan refuse to even attempt to work with them. To give some indication of how ridiculous they can get, Cyzo Magazine reported earlier this year that with SMAP's Takuya Kimura reprising his lead role for the Space Battleship Yamato live action sequel, the agency is demanding that all the space battles and CG be ditched in favor of human drama with lots of close-ups.

Every once in a while one of these agencies attempts to do something with an American media outlet, and is quickly taken aback and insulted when Entertainment Weekly or Rolling Stone either a) doesn't care about their pop star that doesn't speak English; and/or b) uses an image in a way they consider improper. And then they take their toys and go home.

Movies tend to be easier to license, as the contracts involved give the talent agencies less say over international deals. But for TV dramas? Forget it. Even if you could navigate those disgusting, fetid waters far enough to actually get to release something, the amount you'd have to pay to license it would surely bankrupt you, and the approvals process would probably prevent you from even getting a DVD out. Not worth the trouble, not worth the expense.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why K-dramas was able to become the first Asian dramas to get a huge popularity outside of Asia, and why Taiwan (and other Asian countries like Mainland China, Singapore, Hong Kong) started to cash in on the Asian drama fad that K-drama caused and why we have less then 10 J-dramas on legal streaming sites. You know I did some research on Japan's past globalization in the 80's. Japan seem to be more active in globalization back in the 80's before the bubble crash which led to the lost decades. When those 2 events happened, Japanese firms that set up offices and corporate overseas started to withdraw from the overseas market.

I ask myself: If the price bubble and the lost decade in Japan never happened, would J-pop, and J-dramas have gone global? Would J-pop instead of K-pop would've gotten mainstream popularity outside of Asia? Would J-dramas had been exported in masses outside of Asia? Could J-pop and J-dramas have gone global if the price bubble and lost decade in Japan never happen:

-Instead of Winter Sonata and Jewel in the Palace/Dae Jang Geum, it would've been J-dramas that launched a Japanese wave worldwide. Would other J-dramas taken place of famous K-dramas (ie: My lovely Sam-Soon, Dong Yi, Jumong, Autumn in my heart, Dream High, Coffee Prince, and Secret Garden), and made Japan center of attention like what South Korea is getting. Would the J-drama version of Boys over flower would've been popular around the world instead of the Korean counterpart.

-Instead of Wonder Girls becoming the first K-pop girl group to make it on Billboard Hot 100, it could've been a J-pop girl group that did that.

-Instead of BigBang winning the MTV EMA, probably would've been a J-pop group (maybe M-Flo).

-There would be more J-pop concerts around the world including South America, Australia, Middle East, and Eastern Europe (which they never do) instead of K-pop concerts. Maybe Japan could've made a J-pop concerts very much like SMTown Live, United Cube Conert, and Music Bank world tour.

-Johnny's Entertainment probably would've become Japan's equivalent of SM and YG Entertainment. Maybe Johnny would've embraced Youtube today if Japan was more active in globalization. Johnny would've become the company that lead the Japanese wave (like how SM Entertainment was acknowledged as the leader of the Hallyu/Korean Wave)

-instead of SHINee becoming the first Asian group to perform at Abbey Road (look at video below). Maybe Arashi or KAT-TUN would've became the first J-pop (and the first Asian) to do that.

-Instead of Super Junior, EXILE could've taken Super Junior's place if the bubble crash never happen. EXILE probably would've form sub-units targeting the Korean and Chinese market like they would've form EXILE-M, and EXILE-K (the same way Super Junior made a Chinese subunit, Super Junior-M). EXILE probably would've done concerts and world tour meaning EXILE would have done concerts in South America instead of Super Junior. I mean look at the video below, this could've been EXILE doing the concert tours in South America instead of Super Junior if the price bubble in Japan never happen.

-AKB48 instead of Girls Generation would've perform on David Letterman, and Live with Kelly. It would probably have been AKB48 that take Girls Generation's place as Asia's top girl group. Maybe AKB48 would've been the one winning the YTMA Video fo the year instead of Girls Generation.

-NHK World probably would've been more like KBS World today. Meaning NHK World would broadcast anime and J-dramas and more J-pop performances. All we get is just news, and some not interesting shows (J-Melo is the only way to watch J-music). Maybe NHK World youtube page would've been more like KBS World YT page.

Originally Posted by sa547

Which is why I have people in my household who would rather look forward eagerly to the next episode of, say, Game of Thrones (and many others in what seems to be the continuing boom of American television), than endure Asian dramas with recycled cliched plots; they don't want TV shows that make them feel stupid or yawn their way through.

Personally and I repeat, I don't see any decline of the Japanese music, just that there's too many players in the business and the market is largely focused on the domestic market. Also, PM Abe may have to tweak the Cool Japan program, in that it shouldn't be confined only to ACG or idols but also with music, cinema, drama, stage theater, tokusatsu, and other genres of Japanese pop culture.

And the population decline angle is... way too hyped.

Again, don't generalize all K-dramas and Asian dramas all the same and use the same recycled cliched plots. I mean can you find me an American show (or an anime) that has a plot like Love Rain. The K-drama, IRIS is nothing like what you describe. Both Reply 1997 and Reply 1994 is not like anything you would find in American show. As a matter of fact, there's not a lot of good American show that appeals to me these day (I was sad CSI:Miami and CSI:NY got cancelled). The only American shows I watched now is Revolution, Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, CSI. But I watched more K-dramas/Asian dramas because they offered something you don't find on American shows.

The population decline in Japan is real, and what made you think this is not true, have you been to Japan??

Originally Posted by houkoholic

Also the upcoming reboot of Hollywood Godzilla would be interesting to see whether it would be a repeat of what Pacific Rim did as well.

Yeah I'm curious how that will turn out, but it looks better then the 1998 version.

[houkoholic]

Again I hate to be that person to say it but Answerman doesn't know what he is talking about.

While he is correct that Japanese, in many cases, demands outrageous licensing fees for their content (which I've already mentioned), it is NOT impossible to license J-drama. Hanzawa Naoki was shown in Hong Kong and Taiwan cable/TV is less than a month after the show finished its first season, which you can say is such a close release window that it rivals US TV drama's worldwide release window. Again, Answerman is confusing "not doing it the American way in America to an American audience" with "the Japanese don't do this at all anywhere in the world". The 90s saw J-dramas being licensed for TV broadcast all over Asia, especially Hong Kong and Taiwan seems to have lapped them up quite a bit - and that was the foreign J-drama boom. The only point that he got correct is the reason why K-drama seems to have taken over is because of licensing fees, which it is most certainly that K-drama is undercutting the J-dramas, and that J-drama got stale in the 00s which gave an opening to K-dramas to come in.

[mdo7]

Originally Posted by houkoholic

Again I hate to be that person to say it but Answerman doesn't know what he is talking about.

While he is correct that Japanese, in many cases, demands outrageous licensing fees for their content (which I've already mentioned), it is NOT impossible to license J-drama. Hanzawa Naoki was shown in Hong Kong and Taiwan cable/TV is less than a month after the show finished its first season, which you can say is such a close release window that it rivals US TV drama's worldwide release window. Again, Answerman is confusing "not doing it the American way in America to an American audience" with "the Japanese don't do this at all anywhere in the world". The 90s saw J-dramas being licensed for TV broadcast all over Asia, especially Hong Kong and Taiwan seems to have lapped them up quite a bit - and that was the foreign J-drama boom. The only point that he got correct is the reason why K-drama seems to have taken over is because of licensing fees, which it is most certainly that K-drama is undercutting the J-dramas, and that J-drama got stale in the 00s which gave an opening to K-dramas to come in.

Well explain to me why Japan didn't cash in on the drama fad that K-dramas caused (as in exporting J-dramas in huge numbers).

As I said, several Taiwanese dramas were dubbed and shown in South America due to K-dramas being popular over there. I mean on legal streaming sites, Taiwanese dramas (along with some Mainland Chinese, and Singaporean dramas) started to appear more and more on those sites when K-dramas started to get more popular. Why didn't Japan exported J-dramas to South America like Taiwan did when K-drama caused this craze?? So you see Taiwan cashed in on the drama fad, Japan never cashed in on it and I could find less then 10 J-dramas (when I could find over 1,000+ K-dramas, and more then 55+ Taiwanese dramas) on streaming sites. I know Japan tend to be overpricey when it comes to exporting their items. I remember reading this from Wikipedia when it comes to J-dramas:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

In recent years, many theme songs have been licensed from sources outside of Japan. In some instances, theme songs have been licensed from some of the biggest names in the Western recording industry. This practice has disadvantages. When the Japanese drama is licensed outside of Japan, theme music licensing becomes very costly. For example, in the Fuji TV drama Densha Otoko, the opening song and some of the background music had to be replaced in the release that aired on the Nippon Golden Network because they couldn't get the rights to use the music.

So you see, Japan could've cashed in on the drama fad that K-drama caused. Japanese entertainment could've exported J-dramas to South America, Middle East, and Eastern Europe where K-dramas was broadcasted and gain popularity but no, they didn't. So far, only quite a few J-dramas are on streaming sites when I can find a lot of Korean and Taiwanese dramas. I think Answerman is correct, Japan is being reluctant and their xenophobic practice could be the reason why Japan didn't cash in on the Asian dramas fad that K-dramas caused around the world. Also I like to add K-dramas OSTs are the reason K-pop gotten so big and gone global:

[sa547]

Originally Posted by mdo7

The population decline in Japan is real, and what made you think this is not true, have you been to Japan??

As a Navy Brat, I lived in Yokosuka once and understand this, and so do some of my friends who actually worked in Japan (for months or even years as migrant workers, exchange students, or professionals). However, I'm not much of a Japanophile but I want to steer clear of the crap made by sensationalist sites and get the real scoop.

I also know that there is a very large elderly population right now in Japan (and was discussed in a Time Magazine article several years ago); if the decline is truly severe as you claim (as if you're saying about it like it was a typhoid outbreak), then it would've required a full Diet session to deal with the crisis. Of course they've began to admit caregivers and health professionals for the elderly, and there's a growing cottage industry whose job is to clear properties of deceased apartment tenants and clean their former quarters.

Of course, as the Olympics are coming round the corner for the second time, Japan itself has to fix its image problem as being a purportedly xenophobic, "weird" society (no thanks to the media, including Japan Today and Japan Times), and that's going to be a tough job.

TL;DR -- No offense, but you're sounding like an alarmist. And I have to take a pinch of salt when I hear things from any know-it-all -- especially a fan -- justifying why his "culture" is more superior than anything else.

[mdo7]

Originally Posted by sa547

As a Navy Brat, I lived in Yokosuka once and understand this, and so do some of my friends who actually worked in Japan (for months or even years as migrant workers, exchange students, or professionals). However, I'm not much of a Japanophile but I want to steer clear of the crap made by sensationalist sites and get the real scoop.

I also know that there is a very large elderly population right now in Japan (and was discussed in a Time Magazine article several years ago); if the decline is truly severe as you claim (as if you're saying about it like it was a typhoid outbreak), then it would've required a full Diet session to deal with the crisis. Of course they've began to admit caregivers and health professionals for the elderly, and there's a growing cottage industry whose job is to clear properties of deceased apartment tenants and clean their former quarters.

Of course, as the Olympics are coming round the corner for the second time, Japan itself has to fix its image problem as being a purportedly xenophobic, "weird" society (no thanks to the media, including Japan Today and Japan Times), and that's going to be a tough job.

TL;DR -- No offense, but you're sounding like an alarmist. And I have to take a pinch of salt when I hear things from any know-it-all -- especially a fan -- justifying why his "culture" is more superior than anything else.

Japan's population decline is going to get worse at some point, but it's a cause for alarm because as I said, Japan has suffered from low birth rate and there seem to be more aging population then youth population hence why things seem to be backward for Japan. There's been some plan for Cool Japan, but I'm optimistic if it will work:

Japanese Government Establishes “Creative Industries Internationalization Committee” to Strengthen the Proliferation of Japanese Anime, Manga, Fashion and Culture Throughout the World

"Cool Japan" Initiative Gets Government Investment Fund

Japanese Goverment Funds New Foreign Channel to Air Anime

I know Japan will fix their image for the Olympic, but can Japan pull off a wave like how South Korea did?? It's not safe to depend on local market when the international market is bigger and can bring in more money.

[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by mdo7

Well explain to me why Japan didn't cash in on the drama fad that K-dramas caused (as in exporting J-dramas in huge numbers).

As I've explained before, Japan has a No.2 complex. They were only interested in chasing the American market which made them blind to the other regions. Also there were serious economic issues in the 90s-00s where the other regions (such as Asian and South America where you pointed out) has little money compared to Japan's huge economy which made the industry deemed it wasn't worth the effort to enter the other markets because the money they can make back is peanuts compared to their local revenue and how much effort is needed to do so (and to a certain extend, still true today). To them, it was "America or nothing". Obviously this is not true for other players like Korea or Taiwan where every extra market is probably a good return for them.

I think Answerman is correct, Japan is being reluctant and their xenophobic practice could be the reason why Japan didn't cash in on the Asian dramas fad that K-dramas caused around the world.

No, Answerman is wrong. Japan isn't xenophobic, he wants to blame everything on culture but he is ignoring actual business factors that may be playing a bigger role in all of this. Something a lot of people without knowledge and contact with entertainment business don't know is that they look at piracy and think "wow look at all those people downloading this, if I can make 1 buck off all of these it will surely be a business success!", but in reality that is NOT the case. Hulu is a prime example of how streaming is a very tough business. On one hand licensing fees are expensive across the board, and bandwidth isn't free either. Then you have people who would never pay even if it is a cent and bitch and moan about even 30 seconds of ads because they've been used to no ads via torrents and has no ethical thinking to support the content creators. These are also actual factors as to why the entertainment industry prefers dealing with free-to-air model which involves multi-million dollar TV stations actually capable of paying million dollars worth of royalties and rights to broadcast the shows instead of internet streaming site which the majority operates at a loss, or they crunched the numbers and see that the return for licensing these shows may not actually be profitable. Japan's situation and history had it such that for the longest time they were comfortable locally where the market is self sufficient and they didn't need to expand but they never planned for the "what if" situation - what if the domestic market collapsed? What if the other markets successfully entered our market? etc that is not xenophobia, but just sheer business incompetence and a reactionary attitude due to narrowed vision for being in too comfortable of a position for too long.

[mdo7]

Originally Posted by houkoholic

As I've explained before, Japan has a No.2 complex. They were only interested in chasing the American market which made them blind to the other regions. Also there were serious economic issues in the 90s-00s where the other regions (such as Asian and South America where you pointed out) has little money compared to Japan's huge economy which made the industry deemed it wasn't worth the effort to enter the other markets because the money they can make back is peanuts compared to their local revenue and how much effort is needed to do so (and to a certain extend, still true today). To them, it was "America or nothing". Obviously this is not true for other players like Korea or Taiwan where every extra market is probably a good return for them.

Well I will agree with you that Japan is too focused on the US market too much that they sort of underestimate the Four Asian Tigers/Dragons which Taiwan and South Korea are part of. They focused on the US market too much in the end, they didn't look at other rising Asian market and now look what happen, other Asian countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea had economic breakthrough. Like for example, I read it Taiwan surpassed Japan in term of per capita GDP and standard of living:

China Times-Has Taiwan surpassed Japan in terms of Per Capita GDP?

The Economist-Taiwan and Japan: Breaking Formation

various economic sources have reported that South Korea may surpass Japan in term of GDP:

The Economist-A game of leapfrog: South Korea may soon be richer then Japan

Asahi (originally written by Dong-A Ilbo)- South Korea to surpass Japan in average income by 2031

South Korea set to become richer then Japan

There is no doubt the Hallyu Wave is playing a big role for South Korea's economy. I like to add a picture what happen when Japan focused too much on the US market and didn't take their Asian neighbor seriously.



See that picture above, Japan is not taking their neighbor's competition seriously. Hence why Taiwan and South Korea will overtaken Japan by their GDP, Taiwan and South Korea never believe in self-sufficiency like Japan does. If Japan wants to get above the four Tigers/Dragons they have to target the international market, if the population decline continue, then Japan's future GDP is not going to look very promising. Also while Japan's music suffer, K-pop sales has been going up thanks to the Hallyu. Look at the picture below:



All these because Korea take the international market seriously unlike Japan. I'm going to quote this part of the article:

Originally Posted by Korea Times

Last year alone the export of K-pop content grew 20 percent to 260 billion won ($235 million) and industry watchers speculate that the market will maintain its current size or get slightly bigger.

I like to add a little note about targeting the US market: South Korea was doing the same thing like Japan is doing. But South Korea take their fanbases outside of USA seriously unlike Japan. I'll quote this from one of the article about K-dramas popularity in Latin America:

Originally Posted by Joan Macdonald of Kdramastars.com

According to a recent article on NPR, content provider Dramafever expanded its content in Latin America this summer and the region now counts for 12 percent of its business. Even in the U.S. about 35 percent of kdrama viewers are Latino.
Dramafever CEO Suk Park told NPR that the numbers for Latin American viewers caught Korea's entertainment industry by surprise. The focus has been on the U.S. market, not realizing there was so much interest in Latin America, but the interest has become obvious.

So South Korea had that same mindset like Japan, but the difference is that South Korea made sure not to ignore the Latin American market no matter how small their market is, they get their K-drama fix down there last year hence why several high profile K-dramas was dubbed and shown there. At least South Korea understand and studied the market beyond USA, Japan doesn't.

Originally Posted by houkoholic

No, Answerman is wrong. Japan isn't xenophobic, he wants to blame everything on culture but he is ignoring actual business factors that may be playing a bigger role in all of this. Something a lot of people without knowledge and contact with entertainment business don't know is that they look at piracy and think "wow look at all those people downloading this, if I can make 1 buck off all of these it will surely be a business success!", but in reality that is NOT the case. Hulu is a prime example of how streaming is a very tough business. On one hand licensing fees are expensive across the board, and bandwidth isn't free either. Then you have people who would never pay even if it is a cent and bitch and moan about even 30 seconds of ads because they've been used to no ads via torrents and has no ethical thinking to support the content creators. These are also actual factors as to why the entertainment industry prefers dealing with free-to-air model which involves multi-million dollar TV stations actually capable of paying million dollars worth of royalties and rights to broadcast the shows instead of internet streaming site which the majority operates at a loss, or they crunched the numbers and see that the return for licensing these shows may not actually be profitable. Japan's situation and history had it such that for the longest time they were comfortable locally where the market is self sufficient and they didn't need to expand but they never planned for the "what if" situation - what if the domestic market collapsed? What if the other markets successfully entered our market? etc that is not xenophobia, but just sheer business incompetence and a reactionary attitude due to narrowed vision for being in too comfortable of a position for too long.

You may be right, you may be wrong. But I talked to other people on other anime sites and reading some sources from anime companies (ie: Funimation, Viz Media, etc...) when it comes to licensing stuff. Some people say Japan overpricing stuff for international release because of their xenophobic practice and thinking US market has more money then Japan. So I still believe Japan's xenophobic practice and yes I can factor in the business side of how licensing work, but also I know Japan is very scared of piracy and strong on copyright laws. About the anti-piracy law Japan has, very draconian. Also ironically, an article from a Hallyu site have said that piracy may have played a role in the Hallyu wave.

[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by mdo7

You may be right, you may be wrong. But I talked to other people on other anime sites and reading some sources from anime companies (ie: Funimation, Viz Media, etc...) when it comes to licensing stuff. Some people say Japan overpricing stuff for international release because of their xenophobic practice and thinking US market has more money then Japan.

You see, the thing I hate about throwing the whole xenophobic word around is that it feels like the US companies are just putting the blame on the Japanese side so they themselves don't get the blame from the English speaking audience which might not be looking at the whole picture. But if you go back far enough in the 90s and early 00s, we also knew that it was the US companies themselves whom were engaged in price bidding wars so as to get their hands on any sort of new anime stuff (Full Metal Alchemist was reportedly VERY expensive to buy) - but did any of them ever thought about *not* paying for the ridiculous prices the Japanese demanded? No, every US licencor had big egos and didn't want to miss out and screwed it up for not only themselves, but pretty much the entire world. So it isn't *just* the doings of the Japanese side (but they aren't blameless, they should have done due diligence to make sure the US companies could actually pay what they say they could on the contracts, so again, pure business incompetence working here), but the US side had contributed to this as well by inflating the expectation of the Japanese side. And due to this some US anime companies stretched themselves so far that they went under and/or filed for Chapter 11 (*cough* ADV *cough* but oh look they came back under a different name! woohoo freed from legal obligations to pay their debt back to the Japanese!). It's no wonder the Japanese starts not trusting the US side - this isn't xenophobic, it's common business sense!

This is why I say Answerman is wrong.

So I still believe Japan's xenophobic practice and yes I can factor in the business side of how licensing work, but also I know Japan is very scared of piracy and strong on copyright laws. About the anti-piracy law Japan has, very draconian. Also ironically, an article from a Hallyu site have said that piracy may have played a role in the Hallyu wave.

Again it's not being xenophobic. Heck, Japan is now letting *China* of all places do simcast. China, the Kingdom of Piracy and currently Japan's arch enemy in territory disputes. How could you call that xenophobic?

Also you must remember that the reason why licensing is such a legal mess is because the Japanese originally set up the consortium model to spread out the risk it took to make anime - this was a very good business move for them for their local market but has the unintended consequences of making the licensing a bit grey, but this also has nothing to do with being xenophobic either because it wasn't like the Japanese people banded together to say "hey let's form consortiums so we can protect ourselves from the evil gaijins!" - they just never considered that people might actually want to license their stuff! Again, call that short-sighted, ignorance, stupid and whatever, but it's NOT xenophobic.

[asaqe]

We are veering off the original intent of the topic which is to discuss the problem of JPOP being crippled by the popularity of KPOP and other factors and mdo7's post involving KPOP utterly demolishing JPOP.

[Xero8420]

Since 2010, K-pop got increasingly popular, but I'm not sure about J-pop. In 2011, I think things got worsened Japan was because of the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima incident. Since then, Japan was probably more focused on the state of getting its country to stand together. For that, they relied less on overseas matter and more on domestic reconstruction. Right now, I think things is getting better in Japan.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[houkoholic]

Originally Posted by asaqe

We are veering off the original intent of the topic which is to discuss the problem of JPOP being crippled by the popularity of KPOP and other factors and mdo7's post involving KPOP utterly demolishing JPOP.

We all know that Kpop is killing Jpop in the export scene, everyone can see that (even if they don't want to), the only thing worth discussing is why that is so. mdo7 was the first hypothesis that the Jpop decline might be due to Japan being xenophobic by bringing up similarities to anime and j-drama and Answerman's rant on the subject, I'm correcting him by saying why Answerman is wrong.

Also something that Answerman is also wrong about licensing Jpop - the licensing of Jpop for internet streaming for example is actually trivially easy - you can go through JASRAC (the Japanese equivalent to RIAA), which governs something like over 90% of ALL Japanese commercial music rights. Flip over any commercial Jpop or anime or seiyuu CD that is NOT doujin and I would guarantee that 99% of the time you would see the JASRAC logo - which means you could obtain the rights to the songs on that CD from JASRAC. JASRAC has an English website so you can go and read it. No traps and legal grey or whatever. It's bloody expensive (that's why no one wants to license them herp derp), but it's not HARD/impossible/xenophobically setup with roadblocks for foreigners like Answerman is making it out to be. Go read JASRAC's terms for internet download/streaming here for yourselves instead of listening to the nonsense response from Answerman. And of course the reason why nobody is wanting to license these is because for the price you will end up paying for doing things the legal way, you've probably already lost the business to casual piracy and the diehard fans which would buy CDs for collection would rather buy the Japanese CDs anyway.

So this goes back full circle to why the Japanese don't do it themselves - which we've already covered. The Japanese is reactionary and was in a position where they don't think the other markets (except the USA) yield them enough return to bother doing it themselves. So they concentrate on the domestic market and when it comes to overseas market they'd rather sit on their thumbs and wait for someone to come to them instead.

[Xero8420]

Originally Posted by houkoholic

So this goes back full circle to why the Japanese don't do it themselves - which we've already covered. The Japanese is reactionary and was in a position where they don't think the other markets (except the USA) yield them enough return to bother doing it themselves. So they concentrate on the domestic market and when it comes to overseas market they'd rather sit on their thumbs and wait for someone to come to them instead.

Well this partly support my POV that Japan is concentrating on domestic matters instead of overseas matters since then. That gave Koreans the edge to thrive on international market while Japanese withdrawn themselves from the market after what happened in 2011.

By the way, I bet that K-pop is popular was also because many audiences are more interested on looking for hot, sexy, pretty, beautiful chicks like Girls Generation.

[sa547]

Originally Posted by Xero8420

Well this partly support my POV that Japan is concentrating on domestic matters instead of overseas matters since then. That gave Koreans the edge to thrive on international market while Japanese withdrawn themselves from the market after what happened in 2011.

Even before the earthquake, and ever since the movie Shiri sank Titanic, the South Koreans have already made a dent in Asian pop culture, not just music.

Originally Posted by Xero8420

By the way, I bet that K-pop is popular was also because many audiences are more interested on looking for hot, sexy, pretty, beautiful chicks like Girls Generation.

To add: safe, wholesome, pure, perfection, and dominating. Which is why I wasn't sold in it... I feel intimidated than I want to listen.