Growing talents in Anime and Manga

 I am serving as the overall chairman for the “Anime and Manga Human Resources Development Government Linkage Consortium”. It is a job in the Ministry of Education. The other day, I invited Mr. Tetsuya Chiba, and teachers from Monkey Punch and held a symposium. 
I had such a conversation:

“ I am someone who likes to read. However, I only read manga. Manga forms a part of my   body. In the NHK program, “The 100 books of Japan”, where 100 people choose a book each,   I was the only one who chose a manga. I was reproached by university officials who watched the program, but I refuted by saying that “Japan is a country of manga”. 
  I like watching the television, especially anime. Anime forms a part of my body. I sing old anime songs in Karaoke and my friends who go with me are often stupefied by this. 
  In the past, when I was spending all my time watching anime and reading manga, I was admonished as being irresponsible. I was subject to regulation from the perspective of government. 
 But now, anime and manga have become national treasures. I am serving as the content research chairman for the government intellectual property division, and all eight ministries are barnstorming on how to develop our pop culture further, which includes anime and manga. 

The other day when I was visiting the University of Frankfurt, I realize that the Japanese Department is facing manpower issues as they only have two staffs despite 500 students who are mostly anime lovers. I also held a class to PhD students of Peking University in a time when anti-Japanese sentiments are swirling. Instead of being given difficult questions, I was asked to talk more about manga and anime in Japan. 
  So how exactly should we develop this industry? At the intellectual property division or other meetings, it is an unwavering that developing the necessary human resources will be a huge task in the development of pop culture for the future. However, what must we do specifically? 
  This is not yet understood, despite government officials from the University of Tokyo Law Department coming together and thinking for years. This only includes receiving the wisdom, sharing that approach and spreading it from people who have created anime and manga, teaching them and making them into businesses. As digital technology becomes more widespread worldwide, anime and manga are also rapidly globalizing. I would like to grow human resources, attracts talents from abroad, and spread the rich Japanese expressions to the rest of the world. 

  In addition, the foundation for anime and manga is formed from the power of a wide range of people. It is the expressive power of one million people, as anyone can draw characters and draw manga during classroom lessons. I think it is important for us to nurture this kind of force from young people. I have also carried out workshops for a decade, teaching young kids to use digital technology to create works such as anime. 300,000 people so far have participated in these workshops. 
In fact, in terms of activities such as creating and expressing (including children), Japan is actually leading the world. However, this is still not integrated well to our country’s curriculum. 
Japan currently possesses a very large force. I hope the country can spin off an effective human resource development strategy.