Franco-Japanese Relations Today
Recently France has been very involved in trade and cultural exchange initiatives with Japan. Some people see this as being a result of former French president Jacques Chirac being a Japanophile. Chirac has visited Japan over 40 times, probably more than any other world leader outside of Japan, and is an expert on the country. France has started the export promotion campaign Le Japon, c'est possible and the international liaison personnel exchange program JET. Together they built the Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris.
France and Japan have also worked together to improve dire health situations from HIV and underdevelopment in Djibouti, Madagascar, Uganda, and other countries.
Japan and France are also known to share ideas with each other in the realms of art and cooking. Japan has been heavily influenced by French cuisine within the past few decades, as seen on the television show Iron Chef. Anime and Manga are popular in France: manga represents 1,400 of the 4,300 annual book publications and 40% of the comics sales (95 Million € in 2008). The movie Interstella 5555 was a collaborative motion picture with Japanese anime writer, Leiji Matsumoto, and the French house band, Daft Punk. French historical figures and settings from medieval, Renaissance, Napoleonic, and World War eras have served as models for certain popular stories in Japanese entertainment. The purity of Japanese painting and illustration, and likewise the modernity and elegance of French visual arts has resulted in hybrid styles in those creative fields.
The two countries have been collaborating closely in the area of nuclear energy generation.
In June 2005, France and Japan announced a collaboration to build the next generation supersonic commercial aircraft, a successor to the Concorde.
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