The Cool Japan Strategy and Tokyo Olympics 2020

This thesis examines Japan's recent political and cultural strategy focusing on the soft power enabled by the popularity of Japan's cool image in its cultural product in the so-called Cool Japan Strategy and its impact on the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. While starting as a political and economic strategy in the early 2000s, Cool Japan strategy capitalized on the popularity of Japanese cultural productions, especially of pop-culture such as anime, manga and video games. Cool Japan Strategy mainly developed to counter the economic stagnation in the 90s and the need to rebrand the Japanese image in response to the anti-Japan sentiment in the emerging East Asian countries due to the war responsibilities in World War II and the colonial era. However, Cool Japan strategy increasingly gained more nationalisitc turn in the 2010s with the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Incident and the return of Shinzo Abe as the role of prime minister in 2012. In such a context, the thesis examines the Next Host City Artistic Segment in the Rio Olympics' closing ceremony. In this ceremony, Shinzo Abe appeared in the costume of super mario as a symbolic representation of Japan's new "cool" image. At first glance, Abe's performance as super mario only seems like a performance, yet this thesis understands it as the reciprocal relation of Cool Japan strategy and Tokyo Olympics to present Japan as new transformed "Cool Nation" for the international audiences as well as mobilization of nationalism and national pride for the domestic audiences.