The 2008 World Cosplay summit will be taking place this weekend in Nagoya, and senior vice foreign minister Itsunori Onodera (pictured above) has been meeting with cosplayers to promote the event:

The sixth-annual World Cos-Play Summit in Nagoya, central Japan, is expected to draw 28 contestants from 13 countries, including China, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. The two-day contest will name a winner on Sunday, but it was unclear if there would be any prizes.

Onodera acknowledged he didn’t recognize the cartoon characters, but said that Japan is serious about aggressively promoting animation and the culture that it represents overseas.

The country has been trying to use the power of pop culture to raise its clout on the international stage, recently appointing cartoon cat robot Doraemon as an ambassador.

“Japanese culture has spread abroad through animation. As a nation, we support animation and hope to make the best use of it as an important diplomatic tool,” Onodera said.

Read more at Yahoo! News and the event’s official homepage.