Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, Volume 11, No.1: 21-29 The Internet: An (other) agent that disseminates Japanese ‘soft power’ resources Poowin Bunyavejchewin 1 The popularity of the Internet has affected international politics in many ways; however, it is seemingly overlooked by most scholars, and in particular, realists who view the Internet as low-politics. This article argues that the impact of the Internet on international politics should not be underestimated. By focusing on the capabilities of the Internet in general and P2P net- works in particular, this paper shows how the Internet is able to disseminate soft power re- sources. This is demonstrated by an examination of the dissemination of Japanese soft power resources through BitTorrent. Finally, it is concluded that the Internet is a plausible agent for distributing the resources of soft power; however, once disseminated, soft power resources do not always transform into soft power. In the end, contextual conditions within states always apply. Keywords: Japan, soft power resources, Internet, BitTorrent Introduction The invention of new technology has always changed international politics in some way. The creation of the atomic bomb led to a period of long peace because it became a deterrent among states as well as an indicator of material capabilities. In fact, military power is always a factor in technological innovation and information technology is no exception. Information technology in general and the Internet in particular was originally invented for military pur- poses in order to create technology that could function even if some of its parts had been de- stroyed. In contrast to previous technologies, the usage of the Internet has not been limited to the military sector; instead, it has been commercialized and individualized. Moreover, the nature of the Internet derived from the motivations for its development—namely, no central- ity and no ownership—has led to its application by various actors with different intentions. Anyone, can access this new medium anywhere by adopting TCP/IP, the protocol of the Internet. Thus, the Internet is arguably the most powerful technology in the post-Cold War era. The popularization of the Internet has brought about the rapid development of de- vices and software based on the function of the Internet for commercial purposes. The peer- to-peer (P2P) system is one of these developments. The developers of this system adopted the logic of the Internet network as the systems defining characteristics; therefore, decentraliza- tion is one of P2P system’s most notable features. In addition, the P2P network system boosts the capability of the Internet in that it provides autonomous resource sharing which enables speedy transference of information among Internet users. Many types of software rely on this system. BitTorrent, for instance, is widely used among Internet users, especially younger us- ers (Chadwick 2006). 1 Poowin Bunyavejchewin is a postgraduate student at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Hull, UK. Contact: P.Bunyavejchewin@2009.hull.ac.uk