asking your inputs about the Bunkacho project, the National Center for Media Arts

[Hideaki Fujiki]

Dear KineJapan list members,

As many of you would know, the plan by Japan's Agency for Cultural  
Affairs (Bunkacho, a subsection of the Ministry of Education,  
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology)  to found the National  
Center for Media Arts (Kokuritsu media geijutsu sogo senta) has had  
the approval of the Diet with the national supplementary budget  
(approximately, 12 billions yen) this year, but it has created a big  
political controversy. A couple months ago Prime Minister Aso  
declared the establishment of the center, which is often called  
"Anime no dendo (The Pantheon of Anime)," but this triggered the  
Democratic Party of Japan (Minshuto)to attack on the plan. Minshuto  
members insist that the Center would spoil our taxes, and we should  
instead spend them for more practical measures like ones for rescuing  
poverty and improving the birth rate. More lately, even some members  
of the Liberal Democratic Party (Jiminto), like Kono Yohei, expressed  
the objections against the plan, although the Minister of Education  
maintains putting the scheme into execution and it is unlikely that  
the plan will be cancelled (because it has had the approval of the  
Diet and also has been designed in the long-standing context in which  
the Agency has conducted the "Cool-Japan" project and the Media Art  
Festivals, among others).

In this condition, for quite complex institutional reasons, I, who am  
affiliated with a (semi-)national university of Japan, am put under  
pressure to write a newspaper article for supporting the plan of the  
Center. I don't want to commit myself to this kind political matter  
(and, actually, I am sympathized with the Democratic Party's  
objections to a considerable degree), but I seem not to be able to  
escape this situation.  On the other hand, I also thought that this  
might be a good chance to publicize opinions and ideas by researchers  
like KineJapan members. I guess that the establishment of the center  
itself is not so bad for many of you as researchers. Actually, the  
Bunkacho bureaucrats don't have specific ideas about what the Center  
should be and what facilities it should have, while they seem to have  
in mind the National Film Center as a model.  (In their plan, the new  
center should be for "media arts," especially anime, manga and other  
popular culture materials, while it excludes films, which they think  
should continue to be under the management of the Film Center.)  
That's why, I suppose, they can't convincingly defend themselves  
against the attacks by the Democrats, who criticize the center as a  
typical example of "hakomono gyosei." So I am now thinking that while  
avoiding becoming a purveyor to the governmental power, I will try to  
write an article from the ground up and to recommend the bureaucrats  
to reflect researchers' ideas and requests on the future center.

Then, I would like to ask you, researchers both inside and outside  
Japan, questions like the followings:

What facilities and services do you think the center should have in  
general and/or for your own research?
What materials do you think they should collect and store?
Are there any events and activities you would like to hold in the  
center? If there are, what facilities would serve you?
Overall, what center or archive is desirable for you?
How significant would it be for global culture as well as Japanese  
culture and society?

Any other suggestions and advices will be appreciated as well.  
Although a newspaper article is usually very limited in space, I will  
try to incorporate into my manuscript as many opinions from the list  
as I can. I will send a completed manuscript to a major Japanese  
newspaper in a month or so, though it has yet to be guaranteed or  
accepted for publication.

I would greatly appreciate helps by any of you.

Hideaki

p.s. I can find the Agency's plan at http://www.bunka.go.jp/ 
oshirase_other/2009/mediageijutsu_090514.html.


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