There’s a big music trade meet going on in Cannes, France this week. And JETRO, the Japan external trade folks, and the Music Publishers Association are doing a big sell of Japanese pop music. For the first time at the annual MIDEM show, there’s a Japan Pavillion. 58 record companies and talent agencies are represented. You can listen to CDs and watch DVDs by over 100 of Japan’s top young artists, including Puffy and Moriyama Naotaro. J-pop is a ¥1.6 trillion industry (yes, trillion – that’s about $16 billion) and is second only to the US. But it exports only ¥2.9 billion and imports nearly ten times that, mostly from the US. Could this be the beginning of a wave of Japanese pop hitting the world market?