"Cool Japan"? Give Me a Break

"Cool Japan"? Give Me a Break … Reflections from My Experience in Germany

For some time now, television programs celebrating Cool Japan have been everywhere. Yet there is hardly anything less cool than repeatedly telling ourselves, "Japan is cool, isn't it?" Such self-congratulation only exposes how out of touch we are with reality, mistaking wishful thinking for genuine insight. Indeed, one cannot help wondering whether the slogan Cool Japan serves as little more than a convenient distraction from the deep-seated anxiety of a nation that has been struggling to find its direction ever since its economic supremacy began to unravel after reaching its peak in the late 1980s.

The Manga and Anime Boom in Europe

There is no denying that Japanese anime and manga have taken the world by storm. According to the Anime Industry Report 2025, published in February this year by the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA), "The Japanese anime industry reached a record market size of 3.8407 trillion Yen in 2024, representing 114.8% of the previous year's figure. This is 2.1 times the size of the market in 2015 and 3.5 times that of 2002, the earliest year covered by the report. In 2025, the market is expected not only to surpass \4 trillion but potentially to reach the mid-4 trillion Yen range." The report also notes that "Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the overseas market for Japanese anime has accelerated its growth since 2022, expanding to 2.1702 trillion Yen in 2024. ... In 2023, overseas sales exceeded the domestic market by 97.9 billion Yen, and in 2024 this gap widened dramatically to 499.7 billion Yen. The remarkable expansion of the overseas market is becoming increasingly evident, and the gap is expected to continue widening."

I personally witnessed the beginning of this anime and manga boom while living in Frankfurt in the early years of the twenty-first century. In 2002, Connichi, an anime fan convention held for the first time in Ludwigshafen, attracted some 1,500 young people over three days.

In the same year, AnimagiC, an event organized by anime and manga publishers and related companies, was held in Koblenz and drew more than 10,000 visitors.

What struck me most was the sheer scale of these crowds. Only a short time earlier, while living in Berlin, I had struggled to attract even a hundred people to performances of traditional Japanese theatre such as Kabuki and Kyogen. By contrast, these anime events were drawing audiences ten or even a hundred times larger - and they were doing so without any organized promotional effort on the part of Japan itself.

Heroes and heroines of Japanese anime

Sales of anime and manga later stagnated for a time, due in part to the widespread circulation of pirated copies. However, with the emergence of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Crunchyroll, the industry's momentum returned. As noted earlier, anime revenues have surged in recent years, while manga sales in Germany have grown to roughly twice the level they were at the beginning of the 2000s.

The growth of fan conventions has been even more remarkable. During the same period, attendance at Connichi increased twentyfold, from 1,500 participants to around 30,000. Meanwhile, DoKomi, a convention launched in Dusseldorf in 2009, attracted an astonishing 215,000 visitors in 2025.

What Is the True Source of Anime and Manga's Appeal?

For these reasons, inbound tourism continues to grow, and the media are busy celebrating Cool Japan, focusing almost exclusively on the commercial success of anime, manga, and video games. But the question I want to ask is a different one: Why have Japanese anime and manga come to be embraced throughout Europe and North America, surpassing even Disney in popularity? And what does this phenomenon really mean?

Not every anime or manga produced in Japan has become an international success, of course. The first major breakthroughs in the West came in the late 1990s with Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. They were followed by Neon Genesis Evangelion, then Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. More recently, Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer have become global sensations. Alongside these television series stand Studio Ghibli's feature films, especially Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, both of which have earned worldwide acclaim.

In other words, the heart of the anime and manga boom lies in stories that depict the emotional and moral growth of young people. Rather than talking down to children and teenagers simply because they are young, Japanese anime and manga present the timeless coming-of-age narrative of an individual struggling with hardship, overcoming inner conflicts, and gradually maturing. It is precisely this quality that has resonated so deeply with young audiences in Europe and North America. These stories portray, with remarkable honesty, young people confronting their own weaknesses and forging their identities. At the same time, they grapple seriously - within the framework of popular entertainment - with profound questions such as the nature of justice and the value of human life.

By contrast, mainstream American animation, which had long dominated the field, typically revolved around superheroes defeating villains in straightforward battles between good and evil. It rarely explored the protagonist's inner conflicts, failures, or personal growth. For many Western viewers, Japanese anime and manga offered, for the first time, protagonists with whom they could genuinely identify. It is no coincidence that the football legend Zinedine Zidane has said that watching Captain Tsubasa inspired him to pursue a career in football.

This was particularly significant for girls. In classic Western stories such as Snow White or Popeye, female characters like Snow White or Olive Oyl are ultimately rescued by a prince or a physically stronger man. By contrast, heroines such as Sailor Moon or Princess Mononoke shape their own destinies through courage and determination. That difference has proven enormously appealing. It raises an intriguing question: how is it that societies in Europe and North America, which have long championed gender equality, produced so few popular stories in which girls themselves take command of their own lives? It is perhaps for this reason that, today, roughly sixty percent of anime and manga fans are female.

This suggests that Europe once possessed a literary tradition comparable to what Germans call the Bildungsroman - novels of personal formation such as Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Hermann Hesse's Beneath the Wheel, or Rousseau's Emile, works intended to accompany young people on their journey to adulthood. Over time, however, a widening gap emerged between literature regarded as "high art" and popular entertainment. Serious literature gradually became something beyond the reach of ordinary young readers. Into that vacuum stepped Japanese anime and manga, offering compelling stories of personal growth. A striking example is Vinland Saga. Although it never became a blockbuster in Japan, it has attracted an exceptionally devoted following in Europe. Thorfinn's declaration, "I have no enemies," has resonated deeply with a generation of young people struggling to make sense of a world scarred by hatred and war.

The Anime and Manga Boom Represents Something Far More Profound than Japonisme

The influence of anime and manga has extended well beyond popular culture. Many young people who first became interested in Japan through these media have gone on to study the country more deeply. As a result, contemporary Japanese literature is now reaching European and North American readers through high-quality translations. Today, it is not only writers such as Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto who are widely read abroad. A growing number of Japanese authors - especially women writers - are finding enthusiastic audiences. Even in the United Kingdom, where the spread of anime and manga lagged behind that of continental Europe, Sayaka Murata's "Convenience Store Woman" and Asako Yuzuki's "Butter" have recently become bestsellers, illustrating how interest in Japanese popular culture has opened the door to Japanese literature more broadly.

People who enthusiastically promote Cool Japan often describe the current anime and manga boom as "a new wave of Japonisme." I believe this comparison fundamentally misses the point. The enthusiasm for Japan generated by anime and manga is profoundly different from the Japonisme that flourished in Europe from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Japonisme was, after all, an expression of exoticism. Europeans remained firmly within their own cultural framework and appropriated elements of traditional Japanese culture as decorative motifs for European artistic expression.

The perspective was always European; Japan was something to be admired, or amused by, from above, through a distinctly Eurocentric lens. It was this way of seeing that produced the familiar stereotypes of "Fuji-yama and geisha" and ultimately gave rise to works such as Madama Butterfly, an opera that many Japanese have regarded as a profoundly distorted, even humiliating, portrayal of their country.

Anime and manga, by contrast, are changing the very direction of the intellectual and cultural exchange between Japan and Europe. Ever since Jesuit missionaries first arrived in Japan during the Sengoku period, the flow of knowledge had been overwhelmingly one-way - from Europe to Japan. Europe was the source of ideas to which Japan looked up for nearly five centuries. Today, however, that current is beginning to reverse.

The global popularity of Japanese anime and manga is encouraging people in Europe and North America to question long-established Eurocentric assumptions. As more people overseas grow up sharing Japanese stories, characters, and cultural references, Japanese and Western audiences increasingly possess a common cultural vocabulary. This makes it possible for them to engage with one another not as teacher and pupil, nor as observer and exotic curiosity, but as cultural neighbors speaking a shared language.

In that sense, we are witnessing far more than the worldwide success of a form of entertainment. We may well be living through a genuine turning point in cultural history.

2026.06.26