The exporting of Japanese culture

In doing some researching for my job (for the moment), I've noticed what to me at least is a disturbing although not entirely startling trend.

It started with nihonshu, which you probably know as sake. Looking at the market and export numbers it's gained quite a bit of popularity abroad lately, especially in the US as a trendy drink that's more "cultured." It's caught on easier in the US than Europe since the latter is more strongly dominated by wine culture, but is still seeing more and more growth in larger cities around the world such as NYC, London, Seoul and Shanghai. France is pretty slow to catch onto this because they are still firmly ensconced in their own culture of cheese and wine apparently. Export figures have steadily risen on the strength of the market in the US doubling in the past 5 years and tripling over the past 10.

Contrast this with nihonshu sales in Japan, which have fallen steadily over the same periods. The younger Japanese sees nihonshu as too old school and out of fashion, and even the older folks are starting to shift more towards drinking shochu, the other indigineous drink of Japan. It has Chinese/Korean roots and is actually marketed as soju (Korean name) in the US, but local production of shochu in Japan is high and rising, while at the same time more and more people are leaving the nihonshu up on the shelf.

The most important names in discussions of sake these days also probably aren't what you'd expect. Some discussions I ran across of sake have foreign expert John Gauntner as the big hope for Japanese sake brewers to stay afloat - the thought is that for domestic sales to pick back up, the only way is to go international and show young Japanese how much the rest of the world loves nihonshu, meaning that it's ok for them to like it again too (translation: foreign = cool in Japan). There's also Philip Harper, a Briton who has become the first foreign sake brew master... the fate of sake may progressively be less and less in the hands of Japanese.

Then again today I was looking up numbers on bonsai - you know, the little trees that Mr. Miyagi made in Karate Kid. Like shochu this too finds its roots outside of Japan (China in this case), but Japanese made noticeable adjustments that set them apart from their original counterparts. Anyway, apparently producers of bonsai and related products in Chiba were really hurting as local interest waned, but then about 5 years ago exports out to Hong Kong and China especially but also the EU really started picking up. Exports doubled in 2007 and have grown over tenfold since the beginning of 2005. Yet again, exports step in to fill the local void in the market for a Japanese cultural staple.

I guess I could also throw sumo in there as well, in which foreigners seem to grab quite a bit of the news lately... a European won the Emperor's Cup for the first time last year, and the whole sport is a flutter after a slew of wrestlers get caught smoking marijuana (2 of the 3 I remember caught were foreign). I don't see how there could be sumo without foreigners now or anytime in the near future.

So what's it all come down to? Japanese culture isn't popular enough in Japan, so exporting it looks to be it's only hope for survival. Will it take the rest of the world to show Japan that its culture is actually worth preserving? I hope not, but if so I'll do my part. Heightened appreciation for traditional Japanese culture is good, I just wish there was more of it amongst Japanese as well.