The self-orientalist projection of Japan's brand image: Parallelism in its foreign cultural policy in the Philippines and Indonesia

Japan has been juxtaposing the world’s understanding of its Oriental background in making known its “authentic” Japanese voice, and scholarly criticisms point to Japan’s identity as unnatural and overly idealized. The study applied Self-Orientalism to analyze its brand image and authentic self. It contends that Japan is a self-oriental actor that engages in a strategic process of essentializing, styling, and conveying versions of its authentic self away from Western labels via its brand image, and to which country targets like the Philippines and Indonesia elicit unique responses to Japan’s policy parallelism because of their cultural horizons. In this case, the research examined Japan’s brand image via motives and self-perception, studied the varied reactions to Japan’s brand initiatives, and described Japan’s promotional challenges and self-oriental strategies abroad. The conclusion reiterated Japan’s multielement image as a Westernalized East and the target reception and response process based on the cultural horizon and strategic essentialism.Keywords: Brand image, Self-Orientalism, cultural horizon, target countries, Westernalized East, and Japan