Doraemon As A Japanese Popular Culture Product
Doraemon is a robot cat character in Japanese anime, a virtual member of many families in Japan. It’s been loved by adults and children all over the country. Not only famous in Japan, this robot cat also very well known in other countries. It has been aired as a television program in more than 11 countries such as China, Taiwan, Korea, etc (Craig 2015).
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First appeared in the 1970s, the comic was about the adventure of a robot cat in order to help Nobita solve many various daily problems and become successful. He was sent by the future’s Nobita in the 22nd century to prevent Nobita from poverty at his contemporary time. This robot with all the spectacular gadgets and the ability to solve any problems can easily fulfill the dream of every child (Adhikary 2015).
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Doraemon Goes Abroad
Reproduced from: Doraemon Wikia n.d.
Before getting into further discussion, we must first understand “what is popular culture?”, “How do we define it?”. Popular culture can be understood as a culture which is loved by a large number of people or widely favored (Storey 2009). This is not the only way of defining the term. Popular culture can also be the leftover part of high culture, commercial culture, the culture of people and made for people with its authentic (Storey 2009).
Doraemon can be an example of Asian popular culture product. Since the beginning, it’s received much love from the audience, mostly children. The series with the focus on children’s domain, it illustrates the freedom life of children, promoting the creativity and their own domain to freely dream of whatever they want. Doraemon has offered children the happy world that every dream can turn into reality. Furthermore, it also emphasizes the relationship between human and machine, this is very important after the postwar period.
All the technology that remind people of the total devastation but when it associates with children it changes the idea and reinforces new meaning that the advanced of technology could make the world better. For such reasons, Doraemon has successfully made it way in many nations. In Indonesia, people enjoy watching Doraemon so much and create image alliance between Indonesia and Japan. Not only in Indonesia but Taiwan and China also show the positive effect and a lot of favor for this series (Craig 2015)
Reproduced from: Doraemon Wikia n.d.
Doraemon Goes Abroad
However, this was not always the case. If we trace back to the past: After historical Japan’s defeat in World War II, Japan changes into an introvert country. With the obsession of cultural uniqueness, they don’t want to spread culture in the world. Despite being a part of Asian geographically, Japan still separates it from Asia in their mental map.
With the rapid economic development of Asian countries in the 1990s, the Asian value thesis which promoted by Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad has emphasized the limitation of Western modernization. Therefore, Asian was no longer interface with being undeveloped and need to be civilized. Instead, this is the bridge that erodes the boundary that Japan draw with Asia, making its way to return to Asia. This is when the process of exporting Japanese popular culture begin since they want to boost the position of Japan in Asia and also affirm the support of Japanese culture (Iwabuchi 2002).
The development of technologies has enhanced the reach of popular culture and transform Asian market into the battlefield of transnational products (Iwabuchi 2002). With the case of Doraemon, it has been aired as a television version in many places. The appearance of it in Vietnam in 1993 was because of a Vietnamese student who enjoy the series while study in Bangkok. Hence, he translates it into Vietnamese and sells it in his home country. After arriving at Vietnam, Doraemon has left his impact on comic writers for children and transform their work, making it more creative rather than just about moral education.
Not only in Vietnam, the positive influence of Doraemon also being recognized in Cambodia when educators and parents see it as a role model for having good manners, love, and respect for parents, etc (Craig 2015). Since Doraemon shows the relevance values between Japan and other Asian countries, it explains the reputation of this series throughout Asia (Craig 2015).
Globalization
After 200 years of isolation, globalization is the key to the import of Western creative invention and also spread out the Japan popular culture to the world (Tsutsui 2010). Therefore, globalization is the process of global engagement and adjustment which result in the intersect imagine “space” between two separate areas (Iwabuchi 2002). In the case of Doraemon, it has been exported to many countries and well-received by different nations. It’s no doubt about the global popularity of Doraemon, yet it’s still lack of popularity in the West compared to Asia since there is the difference in cultural perception (Cooper-chen 2010).
It is because Doraemon still keeps its Eastern values background which that prove the localization process and the adaption to different cultures can not assure the success (Esser, Smith & Bernal-Merino 2016). Doraemon with its traditional aspect of Japanese made it hard to relate. Therefore, the series with the 'slice-of-live' genre, using talking animals was usually for kids entertainment. In addition, it reinforces the idea of parents can control their children without effective communication. As a consequence, these series don’t have a wide range of audience in the US. Not only in the West, another country such as Bangladesh also doesn’t favor this series. Although it’s received a lot of love, politicians still trying to ban Doraemon to air on their country. The impact comes from Doraemon popularity worries politician that it might lose the interest of children in learning native Bengali language (Adhikary 2015).
The Impact Of Doraemon
We can see the impact of Doraemon in the effort to reduce the tension between China and Japan. He was so famous to become the cultural ambassador of Japan, the appear of Doraemon in the middle of the intense situation have eased the Senkaku Island ownership conflict (McCurry 2015). In this case, Doraemon is more than just an anime character but have a duty in foster a favorable image of Japan. This is what we call the “soft power” of cultural export to leverage and attract other countries (Widarahesty & Pradipta 2016). We can understand “soft power” as a way to accomplish outcome without the need to use force and it helps in eliminating the resistance occur when using economic or military power. For this purpose, in March 2008 Doraemon has been called under the name Cultural Ambassador by Foreign Ministry (Cooper-chen 2010). It also leaves a huge impact on merchandising in making Doraemon become one of the most popular symbols of the country.
Reproduced from: The Telegraph 2009
Nevertheless, Doraemon imprinted products such as stationery, phone case, etc are famous among young people and children in Asia. For that reason, Japan has taken over the United States and become the world's largest comic exporter (Adhikary 2015). In order to lower the production cost of Japan’s animation, they have to relocate workplace in other countries like Taipei or Seoul which result in 50% of Japanese animation products was made overseas (Lim, Lim, Ping & Tseng 2016). By having oversea animation studios, not only that it will lower the wage but also turn other Asian countries into potential growing markets (Craig 2015).
We can see the relationship of popular culture in the practice of everyday life at the start of cute business from Japan in the 1970s. It involves produces and promotes anime characters based goods such as the character straps for cell phones. Not only this creates the physical bond with the character but also the emotional connection that people form with the character (Allison 2003). To conclude, we can not deny the popularity and its impact on many countries. However, different places will perceive Doraemon differently. Popular characters in the US will more likely to be active and strong while the Japanese audience prefers cute characters and acted as a buddy. From one popular culture product, we can understand the diverse perception of different cultures.