Professor Natsume didn't understand
I still regret that when a distinguished professor invited me to give a lecture to his graduate students years ago, the question and answer session ended up not going as well as I had hoped. Here is a partial summary of what I talked about in the lecture:
The creation of Disney Enterprises' Tokyo branch, or Disney Japan, in 1958 was an unexpected catalyst for the flourishing of the character licensing business in Japan. They used the character licensing agreement template even in Japan that Disney Enterprises had used in the United States. No one in Japan understood what it said because it was written in English, but Japanese manufacturers agreed to sign it when they licensed Disney characters and sold products of those characters. One day a small stationery manufacturer became interested in what was written in the agreement and asked someone to translate it into Japanese for them. Although the translation was probably incomplete, it was the first time that the Japanese got an idea, even though it was a primitive level, of the way characters were licensed in the United States. Using this Japanese translation as a starting point, the same manufacturer created a more simplified version for the Japanese market. This was also used in their deal with Toei Animation. Since the Toei Group was a large company, this agreement template soon became known to many businesspeople and eventually formed the prehistory (I repeat, pre-history!) of domestic character licensing in Japan. From the perspective of today, however, it was very incomplete. It took many more decades for the American way of character licensing to be understood and accepted in Japan.
I will give a more detailed account of the lecture at that time in a later essay on my blog. I was thrilled when I discovered this historic fact on my own, but later I noticed that this was beyond the understanding of the graduate students and professor when a student asked me in a question and answer session, "So, it means before the spread of the template created by the stationery manufacturer, manufacturers in Japan used names and figures of fictional characters from manga, TV shows and movies on their products without permission, right? So why did Japanese manufacturers start following Disney's lead as soon as they found out about their way?"
I was very puzzled by this question. I thought I had just said that the American way of licensing characters was unknown in Japan until that time, but apparently, she misunderstood my words, as if I said that "until that time in Japan, manufacturers were allowed to use fictional characters from the cartoons, TV shows and others for merchandising without any permission of the licensers and for free." This surprised me. I did not mean that. But she seemed to be convinced that that was what I meant. No explanation convinced her. Moreover, the professor tried to conclude that it had to be because of protecting monopoly rights. He confused this with the exclusive right to publish, which is granted in copyright law. I replied that they were both wrong, but they didn't seem to understand my explanation.
To their credit, I really enjoyed the question and answer session. As a teenager, I was bullied a lot, and throughout my adult life I have had difficulty talking to people, so talking about my research to a large group of intelligent people was a big challenge, and the fact that I was able to do it helped me regain my confidence. At the same time, I still have a sense of frustration that my discussions with graduate students (some of whom were from France, China, Spain, the United States, etc.) during the Q&A session did not go as well as I had hoped. I wanted to sublimate this mixed feeling into a grand theory, and the idea of writing a book occurred to me. I decided that it should be written in English, the most international language.
You may be a little fed up with all these long posts of mine, but writing in essay form for educated people is the best way to clarify what one means to oneself. I believe it is correct. Honestly, it's a little hard to write something in a non-native language, but thanks to your responses and comments, I'm slowly enjoying it as well as figuring out myself what I really mean. I am very grateful to you.
