NFTs and Japanese Culture: a Growing and Diverse Community

The Japanese NFT community is in its early stages. In this article, we will provide an overview of the community from the point of view of cultural exports, particularly the world of manga and video games.

A technologically advanced society like Japan is a natural place for non-fungible tokens to thrive. And while NFT adoption has been slow in Japan so far, we believe conditions are ideal for sustained growth and innovation.

The Home of NFTs in the East

Japanese values ​​align with the essential nature of NFTs. For example, omoiyari, which refers to awareness and consideration for others, is taught to Japanese children from an early age. This principle resembles community building and concerns about barriers to entry common in NFT projects. Values ​​such as ganbaru (effort) and gamman (perseverance), cultivated through years of quality education and broader socialization, drive the continuous learning essential for Web3 technologies and overcoming barriers.

Anime and the Mangaverse

Japanese animation, known as anime, takes inspiration from manga. Manga are similar to comics in the Western world, which emerged after World War II. So we have the term ‘mangaverse’, which plays on ‘metaverse’. The visual nature and rich heritage behind established manga and anime present natural opportunities to transfer to the metaverse in the form of non-fungible tokens.

Otaku Coin

OtakuCoin presents itself as a community for anime lovers. Otaku is a Japanese term that refers to someone with an intense interest in something, often anime. In the OtakuCoin app, community members receive coins by expressing their adoration for anime, watching trailers, and sharing information on social networks. The direct feedback that anime studios receive bridges the gap between the audience and the creators.

CloneX: Murakami x RTKFT

A popular NFT project in the mangaverse is CloneX. According to our data as of writing this article, CloneX ranks sixth among collectibles offered on the Ethereum blockchain. RTFKT (pronounced ‘artifact’) and contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami collaborated on this project that combines commercial art, street fashion, and metaverse experimentation in the form of avatars. The collaboration makes sense because RTFKT is a strictly metaverse brand while Murakami is one of the richest living artists. Your name brings instant recognition and credibility to any project.

Unlike traditional brand offerings, the CloneX team emphasizes how their creation has been made for the metaverse rather than carried over from a brand’s historical catalog. Your Web3 avatars can be used by their owners in the metaverse. At the same time, we can see correspondences between Murakami’s previous work, where cute manga-inspired characters float in flat abstract landscapes on a Hokusai wave.

However, in NFT form, Murakami’s work becomes closer to the public, an extension of its owner, while his previous work existed only as objects. That NFTs can drive innovation in the work of one of the world’s most celebrated artists speaks to their generational rarity as a force for artistic metamorphosis.

Murakami.Flowers

The cuteness of Clone X’s avatars comes with a touch of danger. On the other hand, Murakami’s flower project softens the danger into bright-dot art reminiscent of 1970s Japanese television games. However, some danger lurks. The number 108, which alludes to bonnō, or earthly temptations, contrasts with its colorful exuberance. That same number also serves as the pivot point for the project, because the combination of 108 backgrounds and 108 flower images adds up to a total of 11,664 non-fungible tokens available.

NFT Festa 2022

Held entirely in the metaverse in spring 2022, NFT Festa brought together over 500 NFT artists with an emphasis on French and Japanese creators. The week-long event was free and required no cryptocurrency wallet. Anyone who could create a project could submit their data, arguing for a more level playing field for NFTs. Strangers could find themselves alongside a well-known and respected figure in the exhibition.

Azuki

At the time of this article’s publication, Azuki was ranked fifth among the most popular NFT projects according to our data. Purchasing an Azuki NFT grants a user access to The Garden metaverse. At the core of the Azuki metaverse we find the ethics that guide the NFTs themselves:

Build open communities
Consciously go against the barriers that are repeated and restricted in the real world
Decentralized decision making
Upcoming features of the physical world
Although Azuki is directly inspired by manga culture, we want to point out that the project is not Japanese. However, it marks an acknowledgment of the NFT community in relation to this culture.

Gaming with Blockchain and Japan

Gaming is common in many non-fungible token projects. In the early stages of blockchain gaming, two Japanese games were released: Double Jump Tokyo’s My Crypto Heroes and Brave Frontier Heroes. But we could say that the approval of the Enjin Coin by the Japanese Virtual Currency Exchange Association in March 2021 opened the door to more projects in the Japanese market.

The Azuki community plans a game for its metaverse and Murakami flower NFTs recall the early years of Japanese gaming. Some of those early gaming brands are still in business. Among them, Nintendo and Sega have shown interest in NFT projects, although they have not yet described the form their projects will take. Square Enix, on the other hand, has fully committed to the potential of NFTs, blockchain gaming, and the metaverse in general.

The Enjin Ecosystem

So far, Enjin Coin (ENJ)’s main contribution has been receiving approval from the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA). ENJ is the first gaming token to receive such approval. It was created by the Singapore-based company of the same name, whose gaming platform has more than 20 million users.

ENJ’s main strength is that it is designed with gaming in mind, unlike many other cryptocurrencies. Enjin serves as a common currency in several games where players can earn NFT loot.

Square Enix and the NFT Ecosystem

We can see in the President’s New Year’s Letter how the metaverse is converging with the company’s research and development in artificial intelligence, extended reality (XR), and the cloud space. Square Enix’s recent sale of some of its major Western intellectual properties to Embracer Group for $300 million quantifies the brand’s commitment to funding metaverse ventures, including NFTs.

Dungeon Siege, a Square Enix property, already appears in The Sandbox. The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based metaverse built on NFT collectibles. Within The Sandbox, Dungeon Siege players will be able to purchase NFT plots of land and in-game items as avatars.

The dynamic between Dungeon Siege and The Sandbox resembles the Murakami-RTFKT collaboration: an established metaverse entity and a real-world entity contribute their strengths to exchange benefits that NFT enthusiasts can enjoy. Square Enix has been creating popular role-playing games for decades, Dungeon Siege being one of those titles. The Sandbox has established itself as a top-notch metaverse that has landed collaborations with Snoop Dogg and SHIBUYA109 Entertainment Corporation.

Preserving Cultural Authenticity with NFTs

Authenticity can make or break many NFT projects. When a nation’s cultural heritage plays a role, as Japan’s does in the cultural exports we have discussed here, we argue that authenticity is an even greater concern. NFT and metaverse creators who reference a rich cultural history would do well to incorporate it as a core concern. The same for investors. An attractive surface could disguise cultural and historical missteps in a project that attempts to draw on the past without considering context.

That being said, the mangaverse has established itself around the world and large Japanese companies have begun investing heavily in the metaverse. This is a solid foundation for future collaborations and innovations in the years to come in the Japanese NFT market.