China, which regards itself as one of the world’s oldest civilizations, but one that has been repressed by outsiders, has often made culture a battlefield. It has tussled with its neighbors and rewritten history textbooks. In other instances, soft power skirmishes may be seen as substitutes for hot war. So China’s recent embrace of Japanese movies may be more complicated than audiences falling for the cuteness purveyed by Japan’s cartoon factories.

Pop culture has worked a powerful magic in South Korea, turning it into one of the coolest places on the planet, which begs the question: How can Singapore get in on the act? The Hallyu fever, which started around 20 years ago, had overtaken Japanese pop that held sway from the 1980s to the early 1990s, and shows no sign of cooling.

Hit Taiwan TV drama “The Way We Were” is set to screen in Latin America next month, helping share the nation’s pop culture and soft power with viewers throughout the region, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aug. 12.

About 20 U.S. high school students enjoyed Japanese pop culture together with Japanese university students on Tuesday in Tokyo’s Harajuku area, known as a center of youth culture. The American students are the winners of the National Japan Bowl, a Japanese language competition created by the Japan-America Society of Washington, D.C., in 1992.