WIN-WIN! with ODA-man: legitimizing development assistance policy in Japan

Abstract

Official development assistance (ODA) constitutes one of Japan's most important foreign policy instruments as it builds Japan's global network and supports allies in the Southeast Asian region and beyond. In the context of a rising China and an increasingly severe fiscal and demographic situation at home, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) promulgated a domestic-oriented legitimation campaign featuring a popular anime character rebranded as 'ODA-man' to increase public understanding of and support for Japan's ODA. Drawing on interpretivist analysis of performances at a development cooperation promotion festival, anime videos on the MOFA YouTube channel and interviews and examining the use of rhetorical strategies, this article provides an in-depth study of the promotion of one of the central instruments in Japan's foreign policy repertoire. Though he comes off as goofy and benign, ODA-man's messages are serious ones that reproduce dominant economic and security narratives about Japan and the world. Analysis points to both innovation and path dependency in Japan's foreign policy repertoire; while ODA-man may be new the story he is telling, and the way that he is performing it, is very much familiar. The article further illuminates important trends in the public legitimation of foreign policy in Japan.

Capturing Power Shift in East Asia: Toward an Analytical Framework for Understanding “Soft Power”

“…First and foremost, soft power is problematic as an analytical category as there is a lack of linkage to any concrete impact on hard questions such as national security or other "hard security" issues. Much of the research has been vague on actual outcomes or looked for an outcome that is in fact not an outcome-emphasizing, for example, the number of Confucius Institutes, the number of Chinese festival celebrations, the findings of opinion polls or how cultural artefacts such as manga and anime have spread, but without convincing tracing effects (Gill and Huang 2006;Kurlantzick 2007;Paradise 2009;Holyk 2011;Wortzel 2013; also see Bukh 2014 for a historical review; Chu, Kang, and Huang 2015;Yennie Lindgren 2020).…”