Public Diplomacy and National Identity in the UK and Japan

Summary

The final seminar in the 2010 seminar series, ‘States in Change: National Identity in the UK and Japan’, explored the ways in which aspects of foreign cultures and national interests may be communicated and projected abroad. Concepts such as ‘soft power’ have contributed to changing definitions of public diplomacy, a term which was first used in US diplomatic circles in the 1960s. With respect to the UK and Japan, the speakers explored how educational exchange programmes, language training and cultural events may impact upon public awareness in the host country. The promotion of ‘Cool Britannia’ in Japan and ‘Manga’ in the UK may serve to illustrate how public diplomacy choices are made, and how contemporary marketing culture can guide such choices. The impact of public diplomacy policy on perceptions of national identity abroad formed part of the wider discussion that concludes this year-long series.

The chair, Charles Grant, began by introducing the concept of soft power, a term coined by Harvard University’s Joseph Nye in the late 1980s, as the ‘attraction of a country to other people’ and its good and desirable elements. Going on to define public diplomacy, which he admitted as being difficult to explain, he described it as being when a government pedals soft power. Positing that governments don’t understand soft power and that they should be as hands off as possible, he went on to introduce the two speakers.

Following on, the first speaker, Professor Mike Hardy, started by saying that there are a range of issues which lie between hard and soft power; if hard power is force and military coercion and soft power giving, then in between can be found sharing and persuasion. Hardy, himself an advocate of the long-term benefit of getting close and sharing, admitted that this is subject to all manner of constraints by those who give money and have their own agendas.

Moving on to the question of global challenges and national identity, Hardy stated that the world is riven by challenges including turbulence, (shifting) power relations and connectedness – which refers to our physical, virtual and conceptual connections. Identities are also changing in this more mobile world remarked Hardy; national identities have, in fact, been transcended as more people enact their identity across borders.

Hardy predicted that we will have more of the same in the future as we continue to grapple with many multiple identities and profiles. As identity tends to be about social belonging and whole sets of interlocking attitudes this acceleration of multiple identities will, no doubt, have an impact on public diplomacy and cultural relations. Self-awareness becomes important with these resultant whole sets of interdependencies around these transformations and challenges, which need to be promoted as a social good. The way forward for public diplomacy is, Hardy continued intervention by community leadership to promote and solidify relations and through engagement with people worldwide.

The second speaker, Ken Okaniwa, described his work at the Embassy of Japan as involving the promotion of Japan in the UK. Sharing the results of a 2010 BBC World Service survey conducted in 33 countries in which Japan ranked second out of 17 countries, just after Germany and two ranks above the UK, Okaniwa went on to say that Japan would no doubt have scored much lower if such a poll had been undertaken just after the Second World War or in the 1970s at the time of trade friction. The Japan Foundation, founded in 1972 and Japan’s principal organisation for promoting international cultural exchange, was set up to redress such negative perceptions.

Happily the image of Japan in the UK is positive and appeals in terms of its ‘cool’ modern pop culture as well as its more historical aspects. This appeal is, to no small extent, the result of concerted efforts by its government, companies and grass roots organisations to promote and enhance Japan’s image. Nevertheless, while the image of Japan has been improving, China’s emergence is a challenge and of concern to Japan.

Okaniwa went on to say that though Japan is a contributor on the global stage its efforts often go unnoticed. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), having perfected underwear for astronauts, for example, donated some to the 33 Chilean miners trapped underground and at the time of the Icelandic volcano eruptions, helped provide satellite images.

On a more positive note, Okaniwa pointed out that despite the fact that the only Japanese person to figure in ‘Time 100’ was the former Prime Minister Hatoyama and that the Japanese economy stopped growing in 1996, the number of those studying Japanese has increased four-fold since 1990 perhaps as a result of the interest in manga and pop culture.

While the promotion of Japanese culture does undoubtedly contain an element of business, promoting cultural exchange is also an end in itself. The Japan Matsuri 2010 at Spitalfieds, East London attracted tens of thousands of people, one of its highlights being Jah Wobble performing while ‘ikebana’ was arranged on stage. Another recent innovative project was Yukio Ninagawa’s kabuki production of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Barbican in 2009, demonstrating that it is often easier to successfully incorporate new interpretations of Japanese culture outside of Japan.

Okaniwa commented that visitors to Japan often remark on how modern it is while marveling at the way it has managed to retain its indigenous culture. In concluding, he said he hopes Japan will be a source of inspiration for the world, thus continuing to attract attention through its seventeenth century spirit of ‘mottainai’ or ‘no waste’, for example, now an important concept for the future of humanity when interpreted as the environmental mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle, or by improving technology such as robotics, in order to serve the ageing populations worldwide.

The comments following the talks covered a range of issues including references to creating salesmen of diplomats, the opinion that the internationalization of Japanese society may be more positive than the further development of robots, the gap between the identity the government may want to promote which may be at odds with what people may want to promote, how public diplomacy deals with economic competition, the evolution of Japanese and British identity in the face of the rise of China, the self-deprecatory self-image of the UK and Japan being a strength and a weakness, advice for Russian and Chinese approaches to public diplomacy and whether the Japanese government is doing anything to change perceptions of its women.

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