4. The future and potential of globalization
(1)What digital networking can contribute to
In the years ahead, all components of printed matter, namely, text, graphics, and images, will become increasingly digitized and these digital data will be exchanged through communications lines on a daily basis. At a time like this, the implementation of color management is crucial for maintaining flexible production systems that can satisfy customers in terms quality.
Color management requires two elements. One is that the presses are properly tuned to reproduce colors accurately and consistently. The other is to construct a framework that allows customers, designers, printers, and other entities involved in the production of printed matter to adjust colors reproduced in their individual facilities in line with, hopefully, a single set of standards. One of such standards has already been defined as part of the JIS standards. The JIS Committee appears ready to set a standard called 'Asian Color' in the future.
Since it is not the leader of the Japanese committee for ISO/TC130, JAGAT is in no position to take the initiative in the standardization in Asia through that committee. However, I believe there are plenty of opportunities for FAGAT to contribute to standardization activities.
As mentioned earlier, delivery times for print orders are rapidly shortening, highlighting distribution as the most difficult challenge to the globalization of the printing market. Thanks to communications technology, however, the content of printed matter can be freely distributed through communications lines now. For example, Korea, for example, has a communications infrastructure that is even better and more widespread than that of Japan. The head of a medium-sized Japanese printer, which constructed a prepress plant in Dalian, China, said that the local communications infrastructure was superior to Japan's and human infrastructure in the area was excellent. The company first moved into Dalian to perform a large-scale job requiring data entry for study books with a total of as many as 100,000 pages in accordance with a revision of textbooks used in Japanese schools. This experience made the company decide to establish a local subsidiary dedicated to data entry and prepress, in which subsidiary jobs from Japanese customers as well as other Japanese printing companies are now being processed. The prepress business, according to the head of the company, is the most suited to such operations because it involves minimal quality risk.
Mirroring such a state of affairs, there has been an increase in the number of printing firms, which advertise that only prepress work, including text entry, image processing, and composition, is performed overseas. Customers seem to feel more secure about printing overseas with the presence of Japanese printing companies acting as agents.
In terms of cross-border relationships between printing businesses, the fields of content distribution and digital data processing/manipulation look promising, because physical transportation is not an issue in these sectors. In other parts of the world, there is the example of a different approach in which printers operating in different time zones are collaborating with one another to reduce overall production times.
(2)International co-publishing
Japanese comic books have acquired a significant readership in Asian countries. In China, 'Crayon Shinchan' was published and achieved success in 2003. There are signs that Japanese comic books could gain real popularity in not only Asia, but also the U.S. and Europe. In the spring of 2003, Random House in the U.S. formed an alliance with Kodansha to permit Random House's subsidiary publisher to release Kodansha's comic books in May 2004.
In addition to comic books, Japanese novelists such as Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami are popular in Korea, China, and even Europe. Haruki Murakami's 'Umibe no Kafuka,' or 'Kafka on the Shore,' has been ranked among the top three on the Korean bestseller list since its release in the autumn of 2003. Nanami Shiono's 'Romajin no Monogatari,' or 'The Story of the Romans,' sold four million copies in Korea. From what I hear, in China, one of the five most popular authors in the field of literature is Haruki Murakami. Although traditionally the Japanese publishing market has had an import surplus and been concentrated on translating foreign works into Japanese, there is a considerable possibility that Japanese content other than comic books will actively advance into foreign countries in the future. According to one Korean publisher, international co-publishing among Japan, Korea and China should be feasible because people in these countries share a common basis of having read 'Sanguozhi,' or 'The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.' International co-publishing may become a popular form of business in Asia, as it was once in Europe.
If this becomes a reality, there might be the case where, of the first edition copies of a book released by a Japanese publisher, the largest part is published in China, and the second largest in Japan. In such a case, it would be very likely that Japanese printing companies transfer their production facilities to China, where books can be produced and shipped to other countries. They say that, in the Chinese market, as many as 10 million copies are printed of some business books, the scale of which is far beyond comparable numbers in the Japanese market. International business expansion by shifting the target from the saturated domestic market to overseas markets should be a move worthy of attention for the overall printing industry. Shogakukan has already established a company named VIZ in Shanghai.
For the past one to two years, it has been the norm for Korean TV dramas to attain high ratings in Japan, and a CD released by a Chinese group called 'Joshi Juni Gakubou,' or the '12 Girls Band,' was a great success in 2003, permitting the group to frequently appear in TV commercials in Japan. There is no doubt that human, cultural, and economic exchanges among Asian countries will further increase in the future and this will contribute to tightening the connection among Asia's regional printing markets and industries.
Although mutual trust is the key to any kind of exchange, even stronger bonds of trust are needed for business dealings involving printed matter, which usually needs to be produced on an individual and discrete basis and for which there is no universal standard for delivery, quality and pricing.
FAGAT will be given another important reason for existence, if the mutual trust among the FAGAT member organizations can be extended to mutual trust among each nation's printing industry to facilitate various forms of contacts among Asian countries.
