> Is anime & JAV to blame here?

Yes, people are going to be interested in a culture based on its cultural exports and Japan punches way above its weight in terms of cultural exports. And it's not just anime and JAV, it's also literature and music. Having content that you want to consume will make it easier to get motivated and to stay motivated. On top of that intermediate and advanced language learning is, to a large extent, driven by media consumption so the availability of a large amount of interesting content simply makes Japanese easier to learn than many other languages.

This is also how nearly everyone learns English.

When China will start exporting interesting content more people will want to learn Chinese and succeed in learning it.

> therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel

Learning a Chinese language for the business, diplomacy or travel opportunities is a stupid, stupid idea. In the English-speaking West, bwtween 1.6% and 5.0% of the population are native speakers of both some Chinese language and English. The business and diplomacy opportunities that require a Chinese-speaker all go to these people*.

Nobody's going to hire some rando to speak Mandarin when it's equally easy to hire a person who's as good as the natives, and got to spend the 3 years of effort one needs to learn Mandarin on picking up some other useful business skill.

Travel opportunities are not great, either: normally, you can visit the PRC for 15 days, you're railroaded throughout your whole trip, and you're required by law to stay in a select few hotels where the staff speak English anyway. If you're looking to learn a language for the tourism opportunities, you're much better served by learning Spanish, Russian, or for that matter Japanese, which allow you to visit a lot more otherwise hard-to-access destinations.

* You have a slight edge if you also speak some obscure language in a country with few English-speakers who nonetheless want to trade with China. There are very few such countries. All of Africa is out (English and French have very high penetration), as is South East Asia (Chinese itself has a high penetration), as is the Arab world: a few Eastern European countries such as Hungary might qualify, but guess what, Hungary also has a sufficient number of native Chinese speakers to saturate the demand in that niche market.*

You are also missing that American soft culture is even stronger than what Japan exports. It's just been around longer and normalized for so long it is just normal to consume American media outside the US. I've ran into people that know more about US laws than the laws of their home country just from watching US television

As for Japan, it's not just the western nations. Taiwan also has a huge fascination with Japan. Many Asian nations have like Japan for their strong soft culture, but detest the Japanese government for historical treatment of these nations. Japanese and American governments are heavily invested in soft power. Here is a long but interesting video discussing Japanese soft power https://youtu.be/IM2VIKfaY0Y?si=H0gRcyKtu4kMUaCj

South Korea has also had a lot of success with soft power. It's just had a later start than Japan and the US.

I have lived in Japan for many years. There is a certain phenomena where foreigners when they meet each other in the supermarket experience a moment of awkwardness like we entered each others TikTok feed. You don't know if one should smile or not, nod, or ignore. One of the main reasons here is that foreigners in most non-tourist parts of Japan stick out like a sore thumb. Therefore, you are quickly falling into a main-character type of mindset. Then, for decades Japan has been the embodiment of the future. Most of William Gibsons cyberpunk work is build around Japan. That Tokyo in particular is a huge concrete Moloch that constantly bridges centuries old history and neon lights and tech underlines this. Anime/Manga have established Japan as a new cultural leader as the west has falling behind telling engaging stories. The recent Netflix success of OnePiece and the Korean Squid Games are just two data points on this. Japan is mysterious.

With all that said, it may be the last true adventure into a unique culture that is challenging yet safe and accessible.

> Is anime & JAV to blame here?

Why "blame"? Isn't it perfectly reasonable for people to take more interest in a country that's supplied them with interesting cultural exports than one that hasn't?

> Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese, therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel.

Only to the extent that you want to do business, diplomacy, or travel with China. More people are interested in Japan.

If I were to guess, Japan has a huge cultural presence in the west via comics, cartoons, and video-games. It is also "good weird." And historically it had a legendary reputation for electronics. That is a lot of western mindshare, especially amongst nerds. Chinas historic reputation is cheap crap and oppression. It has almost zero cultural presence in the west. I suspect between kpop and Korean dramas, westerners consume more Korean than Chinese media.

Japan has been exporting its culture for decades with games(Mario/Zelda/Final Fantasy..the list goes on). And nowadays anime is also very popular.

China has nothing really, can't think of a single interesting Chinese game/movie/TV show. If you include Hong Kong a few appear, but that isn't really China, and output has died since China forcefully took over.

Maybe it is just me but I also find Chinese really annoying in the way that it sounds, very harsh and unpleasant, something about the tones gives me a mild headache.

>What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese?

The first thing to point out is that this goes both ways which goes a long way to explain why Japan is more accessible. As someone who is German, the amount of anime that features vaguely German settings and names (sometimes extremely grammatically broken) for no good reason has always been funny to me. Influential popular media figures like Kojima are obsessed with Western pop culture in their own right, etc.

Even the more literary or nationalistic Japanese cultural figures are often steeped in European culture, see Yukio Mishima. You can recognize Kafka in Kobo Abe's books, so as a Western reader it's both different and familiar. Chinese culture is harder to get into and in particular traditional Chinese culture is more impenetrable yet.

Japan was occupied by America and the society forcibly reconstructed and aligned with the west whereas china is culturally independent and harder to access? Just a thought.

Japan is also a convenient 'bridge' of what is commonly categorized as Western culture and Eastern culture. This is somewhat by their own design, and has a long history given both their own Westernization efforts from their infamous imperial days and post occupation. That gives them a unique niche of exotic and yet somewhat comfortably familiar so that it more often feels 'weird' but not necessarily 'alienating'.

China is the new kid on the block in comparison, even if China was a robust democracy they would be at a disadvantage in cultural propagation from this. They try to promote some of their own cultural products but a dictatorship self-sabotages anything too good or popular having a deliberate chilling effect.

Korea as a third culture makes a decent comparative reference. They are 'newer' culturally than Japan (in terms of widespread western cultural exposure) but South Korean music, film, and TV are growing and more evident among younger generations. There are some western Manhwa fans but it is still more niche.

> I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say.

If you do, it's not because of the question, but the condescending way you're framing it ("Pathological"/"NPC behavior"/etc.) If you're curious you could simply express your curiosity and people will be happy to share their thoughts.

> What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese?

Certainly cultural exports play a role just like they do with any country. Lots of folks are obsessed with the USA and New York City because of USA cultural exports.

Anime plays a big role in this, but it's not the only major export. Cars, video game consoles, video games, cameras, movies, music, art, food. Food! Japan's reputation across all of these things is very high, or at least has been at some point. There's a lot that's come out of Japan that has captured a lot of peoples interest and imagination as a result.

>China is the new emerging superpower.

Japan is the regional cultural superpower - that doesn't require they have the largest economy or military.

The fact that anime & JAV can be blamed is an outlier behavior, China had been investing a lot in anime-game directions but so far don't seem like they're on track to be as dominant as Japan is; there hasn't been significant CAV/TwAV/KAV/PhAV/VAV movement yet(partly because "blurred porn is not porn" defense isn't valid in most Asian countries?)

I'd note that some of Chinese(including Taiwanese) fringe content do seem to resemble that of Japanese ones from couples of decades ago, so there is possibility that this apparent anomaly is just phase errors. Or not, we'll see...

You’re thinking about power and money, but also should consider culture exports. I’d say it’s a combination of being a friendly nation to the west, being different, actively promoting culture internationally through media and, you know, still 3rd/4th largest economy. An extreme amount of recent travel in Japan also shows people some unique perspectives that people haven’t seen in their home countries (cleanliness, public infrastructure and etc.). I understand you can experience some of it in China as well, but there’s a massive difference between visiting Tokyo and Shanghai/Hong Kong.

Also add millions of people who grew up with anime in 1990s/2000s who are professional adults now. That helps as well.

People don't find authoritarian communism aspirational.

> Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese

Obligatory 'Chinese ain't a language, you probably mean Mandarin' comment aside, part of the issue may be that Chinese languages are (mostly?) tonal, which for many Westerners is quite a blocker. N=1, but when I see a down-and-then-up tone, my brain just goes 'nope'.