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The story
Reports say Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has begun coordinating to dissolve the “Cool Japan Fund,” which has supported the overseas expansion of Japanese anime, food culture, and other content. The fund’s cumulative losses have reached ¥54 billion, sparking debate on 5ch’s News Express+ board over whether its investments were sound, the circumstances of its founding in 2010 under the Democratic Party of Japan government, and its reputation as a landing spot for retired bureaucrats (“amakudari”).
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has begun coordinating to dissolve the “Cool Japan Fund,” which has supported the overseas expansion of Japanese anime, food culture, and other content. Its ballooning losses have reached ¥54 billion.
[See in photos] Cool Japan Fund to be dissolved… losses hit ¥54 billion — were the investments appropriate?
■ “Cool Japan Fund” to be dissolved, with losses at ¥54 billion
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The Children and Families Agency's 7-trillion-yen money pit is way worse and hasn't shown any results at all.
Yeah, honestly, this is the one we could really do without.
[Budget Request] METI to invest ¥7.7 trillion in AI, semiconductors, and other growth sectors [Flea Market★]
https://asahi.5ch.io/test/read.cgi/newsplus/1787265626/
The Self-Defense Forces still haven't even taken back Takeshima, you know.
If you want them to actually feel it, the only way is to vote them out.
No chance — their support base is corporations and wealthy asset holders.
But Nico Nico Douga and Cool Japan are cases where people were already calling them bad news at the time, and sure enough, they flopped.
Was Nico Nico Douga really being called risky back then?
It's past its peak and lost a lot of users, sure, but it hasn't pulled out or gone under — you can't really lump it in with Cool Japan, which just kept bleeding money.
At best, the only ones coming out ahead are the companies that actually own the content.
If the point was just introducing Japanese culture abroad, then returns shouldn't have mattered — makes you wonder what they were actually thinking.
In February 2010, under the DPJ government, the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters — headed by then-Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama — adopted the 'Intellectual Property Strategic Program 2010,' launching the government's full-scale push for the Cool Japan strategy and public-private support for overseas expansion.
Background
June 2010: The Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters, headed by PM Yukio Hatoyama, adopted the 'Intellectual Property Strategic Program 2010.'
Content: Positioned overseas expansion, localization, and IP utilization for Japan's pop culture and industries (anime, fashion, food, etc. — 'Cool Japan') as national strategy.
Debate at the time: Early in the DPJ administration, plans surfaced for a national Media Arts Center (nicknamed the 'Anime Shrine'), but objections from the opposition, public opinion, and even within the ruling party over its budget and structure led to a rocky path and an eventual review.
Thanks a lot, LDP.
Guess milking the system (the so-called 'chu-chu scheme') really is the most efficient way to go.
No, they didn't.
[Their heads are Cool-Crazy-Crazy Japan] (wordplay on 'head gone loopy' + 'Cool Japan')
The original scheme was to turn investment targets into amakudari landing spots, but with losses piling up everywhere, that plan fell apart, which is why the fund became unnecessary.
The retired baby-boomer/bubble-era bureaucrats who'd been parachuting into this thing all collected their full retirement payouts and stepped down one after another, before anyone could pin responsibility on them.
Now that the old misers have finally cleared out,
there's no reason left for it to exist, so they're shutting it down.
Of course, there's also a theory going around that bureaucrats are timing this shutdown just to undermine the current administration.
Each of them definitely walked away with several million yen.
Cool Japan's ¥54 billion in losses is bad, but the Children and Families Agency demanding '¥7.8 trillion, hand it over!' is way worse.
The Children and Families Agency's budget is really just funds reshuffled over from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and similar places.
It's not like the budget actually grew because of the agency.
If it's not actually doing anything, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare might as well spend it on something useful instead.
The bad part is they went out of their way to create the Children and Families Agency just to make it easier to push budgets through.
Same people, same places doing the milking either way.
Honestly, investing in the textile industry in the first place seemed like a stretch to me.
That's how you aim to bring back a technology powerhouse.
The current government has this in its policy mix too, at least nominally, but it's Tamaki of the Democratic Party for the People pushing it hardest.
Not trying to promote him or anything, but if there's one place to focus, it's this.
No more wasting budget on 'Cool Japan' slogans — this is the time for targeted investment.
Japan's science and technology were never the problem — it's the neglect of patent protection that's why people say Japan 'has no technology.'
Prioritize STEM, cut back on humanities/social sciences at private universities (budget for the STEM shift)
¥300 billion fund to support universities shifting toward STEM — 'more popular than expected,' though some projects stalled
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASTCV2D7GTCVUTIL02GM.html
According to government sources, the Ministry of Education will add ¥20 billion to the fund for launching new STEM departments in this fiscal year's supplementary budget.
The fund was created in fiscal 2022 with a total of about ¥300 billion, an unusual program that supports universities from the survey stage, even before a new department is finalized.
Part of the remaining balance plus the increase — about ¥100 billion combined — will mainly go toward encouraging large private universities in major metro areas, which currently lean humanities-heavy, to shift toward STEM and blended STEM/humanities education.
The Ministry of Education has set a goal of raising the share of university students majoring in science, engineering, agriculture, and health fields from the current 35% to 52% by 2040.
National university operating grants: Ministry of Education requests ¥1.2 trillion, an all-time high
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA200LN0Q6A820C2000000/
Up to ¥4 billion per school to expand STEM programs at urban private universities… Ministry of Education responds to future labor shortages
www.yomiuri.co.jp/kyoiku/kyoiku/news/20251112-OYT1T50057/
They spent over ¥7 trillion setting up the Children and Families Agency
and they're still planning more tax hikes going forward.
At this point it looks less like an anti-declining-birthrate agency and more like a pro-declining-birthrate one.
Takaichi's obviously going to take responsibility for this, right?
It was Naoto Kan who set this up, though?
Their favorite hostess-club girl, or a luxury car, maybe?
If tax money gets spent and Japanese content ends up spreading around the world, isn't that the goal achieved right there?
Even without tax money — actually, even with the government piling on regulations — the content industry spread around the world on its own strength.
Politicians just jumped on the bandwagon afterward and took credit for it.
Background and Key Points
Cool Japan Fund was created in 2013 as a public-private investment vehicle (METI holds the largest stake, with private companies also contributing), designed to help Japanese content, food, and lifestyle brands expand overseas — the “Cool Japan” brand-Japan strategy traces back to the DPJ’s 2010 Intellectual Property Strategic Program under PM Hatoyama. Unlike a subsidy program, it was structured as an investment fund meant to eventually turn a profit or at least break even, taking equity stakes in ventures like anime distributors, Japanese restaurants abroad, and content startups. Cumulative losses reaching ¥54 billion (roughly $360 million) reflect years of write-downs on investments that failed to generate returns, and METI’s move to dissolve it follows repeated Board of Audit and Diet criticism over its investment screening and oversight.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t whether ¥54 billion is a lot of money — several posters wave that off by comparing it to far larger sums spent elsewhere (the Children and Families Agency’s multi-trillion-yen budget). The actual disagreement is over what the fund was ever supposed to achieve: some argue it was structured as a for-profit investment fund and should be judged as a financial failure, while others argue that if the goal was cultural diffusion rather than returns, the losses were beside the point and profitability was never the right metric.
What the thread doesn’t spell out is the structural criticism that has followed the fund since its founding: its governance was long flagged as a soft landing spot for retired METI bureaucrats (amakudari), meaning oversight of investment decisions was arguably compromised by the same ministry with a stake in placing staff there — a conflict of interest more consequential than any single bad investment.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Cool Japan Fund to Be Dissolved… Losses Hit ¥54 Billion — What Went Wrong?“.
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