'A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots'?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973 (East Asia: History, Politics, Sociology, Culture)

East Asia History, Politics, Sociology, Culture Edited by Edward Beauchamp University of Hawaii A Routledge Series ...

Author: Jayson Makoto Chun

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East Asia History, Politics, Sociology, Culture

Edited by

Edward Beauchamp University of Hawaii

A Routledge Series

East Asia History, Politics, Sociology, Culture

Edward Beauchamp, General Editor Managing Transitions The Chinese Communist Party, United Front Work, Corporatism, and Hegemony Gerry Groot

Making a Market Economy The Institutional Transformation of a Freshwater Fishery in a Chinese Community Ning Wang

The Prospects for a Regional Human Rights Mechanism in East Asia Hidetoshi Hashimoto

Global Media The Television Revolution in Asia James D. White

American Women Missionaries at Kobe College, 1873–1909 New Dimensions in Gender Noriko Kawamura Ishii A Path toward Gender Equality State Feminism in Japan Yoshie Kobayashi Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China The Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution Chris Berry Building Cultural Nationalism in Malaysia Identity, Representation, and Citizenship Timothy P. Daniels Liberal Rights and Political Culture Envisioning Democracy in China Zhenghuan Zhou The Origins of Left-wing Cinema in China, 1932–37 Vivian Shen

Accommodating the Chinese The American Hospital in China, 1880–1920 Michelle Renshaw Indonesian Education Teachers, Schools, and Central Bureaucracy Christopher Bjork Buddhism, War, and Nationalism Chinese Monks in the Struggle against Japanese Aggressions, 1931–1945 Xue Yu Cooperation Over Conflict The Women’s Movement and the State in Postwar Japan Miriam Murase “We Are Not Garbage!” The Homeless Movement in Tokyo, 1994–2002 Miki Hasegawa “A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953–1973 Jayson Makoto Chun

“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953–1973

Jayson Makoto Chun

Routledge New York & London

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

© 2007 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97660‑X (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97660‑2 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Chun, Jayson Makoto. A nation of a hundred million idiots? : a social history of Japanese television, 1953‑1973 / by Jayson Makoto Chun. p. cm. ‑‑ (East Asia, history, politics, sociology, culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97660‑X (alk. paper) 1. Television broadcasting‑‑Japan‑‑History. 2. Television broadcasting‑‑Social aspects‑‑Japan. I. Title. II. Series: East Asia (New York, N.Y.) PN1992.3.J3C49 2006 791.450952‑‑dc22 Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge‑ny.com

SBN 0-203-94299-X Master e-book ISBN

2006012918

Contents

List of Tables

vii

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

PART I INTRODUCTION TO JAPANESE TELEVISION CULTURE Introduction

3

PART II THE HISTORY OF JAPANESE TELEVISION CULTURE Chapter One Prewar Roots of Japanese Television Culture: Imperial Culture, Media Culture, and Radio

17

Chapter Two Postwar Media Culture and Japanese Encounters with TV

35

Chapter Three Pro Wrestling and Body Slams: Early TV as a Mass Event

53

Chapter Four Transforming the Nation: TV Takes Root in Japan (1957–1963)

71

v

vi

Contents

PART III JAPANESE INTERACTIONS WITH TELEVISION Chapter Five Television Spreads to the Countryside

121

Chapter Six Intellectuals Debate TV: Ōya’s “Hundred Million Idiots” and Kato’s “Television Culture”

157

Chapter Seven Protecting the Children and Cleaning Up TV

177

Chapter Eight Politics as Spectacle: Parades, Pageantry and Protests

203

Chapter Nine Anpo Redux: University Riots and a Hostage Crisis

227

Chapter Ten America in Japanese Television: Family Dramas and Cowboys

241

Chapter Eleven After the American Boom: Japanese TV Gains Its Independence

267

PART IV THE MEANING OF THE JAPANESE TELEVISION NATION Epilogue Fractured Television Nation

291

Notes

309

Bibliography

339

Index

353

List of Tables

Table 1. Spread of Television in Japan (% of Households with a Television)—by City

73

Table 2. Spread of Television in Japan (% of Households with a Television)—by Prefecture or Metropolitan District

75

Table 3. Results of the 1961–1962 Survey

193

vii

List of Figures

Figure 1.

The pro wrestler Rikidōzan versus Mike Sharpe, 1954

105

Figure 2.

A crowd watching gaito terebi (plaza television) in 1954

106

Figure 3.

A crowd in rural Itō Peninsula watching a television program

107

Figure 4.

The social critic Ōya Sōichi

108

Figure 5.

The Royal Wedding of 1960

109

Figure 6.

The Anpo protest of 1960

110

Figure 7.

The women’s volleyball team celebrating its gold medal victory during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

111

Fighting between student radicals and riot police at Tokyo University’s Yasuda Auditorium in January 1969

112

The February 1972 Asama-sansō hostage drama

113

Figure 8. Figure 9.

Figure 10. Robert Fuller, the star of Laramie, during his 1961 trip to Japan

114

Figure 11. The Destroyer a.k.a. Dick Beyer

115

Figure 12. Customers engaged in panic buying of toilet paper in November 1973

116

Figure 13. Kikaida and the actor Ban Daisuke at Shirokiya department store in Honolulu, Hawai’i in October, 2005

117

ix

Acknowledgments

I wish to express sincere appreciation to my parents, Raymond Chun and Aileen Hideko Chun, and my aunt Kagimoto Toshiko and my late uncle Kagimoto Hisato for all their love and support. I also wish to thank my wife, Yoko, for putting up with me through the long writing process and for her invaluable assistance by helping me with my translations or giving me her thoughts on Japanese television. A special thanks goes to Dr. Jeffrey Hanes and Dr. Daniel Pope, who provided me with much-needed feedback and guidance in the preparation of this manuscript. I would also like to thank Dr. Arif Dirlik, Dr. Takashi Fujitani, Dr. Alan Stavitsky, and Dr. Naoko Shibusawa for their valuable suggestions. In addition, thanks are due to Professor Yoshimi Shunya, who provided me with extremely helpful guidance with Japanese media history during my research for this book. The staff at Tokyo University’s Interdisciplinary Information Studies Library also gave me valuable assistance in tracking down magazines in their archives. Thanks to Benjamin Holtzman at Routledge for helping me out through the publication process. A thank you goes out to Robert Fuller, Dick Beyer (a.k.a. The Destroyer), and Joanne Ninomiya for taking the time allow me to interview them. Special thanks goes out to Dana Lin Tan and Patrick Patterson for helping revise my manuscript. I also thank Dr. Luke Roberts, Dr. Immanuel Hsu and Dr. Joshua Fogel, and the late Professor Murakami Makoto of Hiroshima University for providing me with much guidance during my early graduate school years. And a warm aloha to my colleagues at the University of Hawai’i at West O’ahu for their support and encouragement. Last of all, I wish to acknowledge my intellectual debt to all scholars of Japanese media history, such as Kato Hidetoshi, Minami Hiroshi, Ōya Sōichi, Shiga Nobuo, Takahashi Akira, and many others. This book would not have been possible without their many contributions toward understanding Japanese television. xi

Part I

Introduction to Japanese Television Culture

Introduction

When we look at the state of today’s mass media, we see that the masses will become happy devouring anything . . . A campaign to turn us into “a nation of a 100 million idiots” through the advanced mass media of radio and television has developed.1 Ōya Sōichi, 1957

A NATION OF A HUNDRED MILLION IDIOTS? A particularly obnoxious program finally goaded the social critic Ōya Sōichi into his one-man crusade against TV. On November 3, 1957, a little over four years after the start of Japanese TV broadcasting, the station NTV broadcasted an episode of Nandemo Yarima-show (The Let’s Do Anything Show). This show would seem mild by today’s standards; a “reality” show that used stunts to pull in ratings. The producers paid a person to wave a Keiō University flag in the Waseda University cheering section during the emotionally charged Keiō -Waseda baseball game. The Waseda fans did not take kindly to the enemy intrusion on their turf and the resulting fracas entertained thousands of viewers—and thoroughly disgusted Ōya.“ Idiots!” Ōya muttered, watching the spectacle of the cheering section unleashing its fury upon the flag waver. This silly show so confirmed his worst fears of television that he wrote an article in which he maintained that TV was turning Japanese into a nation of “100 Million Idiots.” Viewers, he argued, were more often drawn by attention-grabbing lowest-common denominator programs that relied on shock or titillation, rather than by programs that appealed to quality thought. This, he feared, would have a terrible influence on minds throughout Japan.2 Ōya’s writings on television set off a wave of debate over the effects of television on the culture of 3

4

“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”?

the nation. His beliefs mirrored those of many intellectuals, mothers, and government officials throughout Japan, and even the world, over the dangers of television. He had years earlier predicted that TV would become the dominant medium of the nation. But when television spread to every nook and cranny within Japan, he feared how audiences eagerly lapped up what he considered to be low-quality programming. Would Japan end up as “a nation of a hundred million idiots,” glued to the TV set, united around stupidity? Fast forward just one generation and Ōya’s vision of television as the nation’s dominant medium seems prophetic. By 1973, Japan had attained a high level of economic development at a speed unprecedented in this world. Televisions sprouted up everywhere in Japan: in gleaming high-rises, in densely packed public housing projects, in wooden shitamachi traditional quarters, in suburban homes, and in rural farm houses. Within two decades from its humble beginnings in 1953 with a handful of outdoor sets and a few hours of daily programming in Tokyo, the TV industry has spread to every corner of the nation and beyond. In 1954, a mere 0.3% of Japanese homes had television sets; by 1973, over 88% of households in the nation had at least one TV.3 Now let us visit the Yamamoto family, a stereotypical Japanese household to observe how TV became a part of everyday life in 1973. Almost every day, someone in the household turned on the television set. It could be Mr. Yamamoto, home from a long day at work or more likely, after drinking with colleagues. It could be their high school daughter, Keiko, drained from hours of studying at cram school. It could be their young son Ken, eager to watch the latest installment of his favorite cartoon show. It could be Mrs. Yamamoto, a housewife, who enjoys watching TV dramas while cleaning house. Or it could be Grandma Yamamoto, who watches talk shows as a source of daily companionship The Yamamoto family described above is my fictional creation, but their television behaviors, grounded in a study of daily life published by NHK two decades after the introduction of television, revealed Japan’s fascination with this device. A relatively diverse society became a uniform nation of television watchers, one large electronic audience partaking in a vast national consumer culture. The Japanese reigned as the heaviest users of television in the world, with people watching more hours of TV every day than people in any other country. In 1965, twelve years after the introduction of this new device, Japanese spent more time each day watching television than eating, doing hobbies, and conversing with other people combined. Only sleeping and working took up more time. Similar results came out in a survey thirty years later in 1995.4

Introduction

5

Ōya’s prediction of the spread of television came true. How about his prediction of television turning Japan into a nation of idiots? That prediction judges Japanese TV much too harshly. Quality programs have been produced by all stations in Japan, and watching lightweight entertainment programs is probably good for letting off a little of life’s daily stresses. Yet, many people today consider the daily routine of watching television an experience as natural as breathing and have failed to consider the long-term social implications of engaging in this activity. What happens when the whole nation is “rewired” into a media system heavily weighted toward visual images? What happens when the life of TV programs, and ultimately, TV stations, is determined by whether or not they can attract a large enough audience for advertisers? What happens when people throughout a diverse nation watch these same images flickering across their TV sets? What happens when the images are mostly produced in the same city? TV has become an integral part of Japanese life, but the question of how its development shaped postwar Japanese society remains to be adequately explored. A nation’s popular entertainment can sometimes reveal more about its people than its art or literature. For example, the early Tokugawa samurai, as the elite class of society, supposedly devoted themselves to warrior training and book learning. Yet, by the later Tokugawa years, many frequented Kabuki plays that the Shogun had officially prohibited them from attending, showing how these warriors had evolved into urbanized bureaucrats. The Meiji era (1868–1911) saw the explosive growth of a popular press in Japan, a development that signaled the industrialization of society and a growing national consciousness. In the 1920s, Japanese turned to the radio for entertainment needs, revealing the growth of a mass popular media culture in the cities. Since television viewing became the predominant leisure activity of the masses in postwar Japan, exploring this activity will yield much information about Japanese and their society. Centuries from now, if historians have to explain the Japanese nation, they will need to explain why people were so attached to this device called the television set. What follows is a history of Japanese television audiences and the popular media culture that television spawned. Television made its debut in a nation ravaged by war, occupied by foreign powers, and most importantly, shorn of its former colonial possessions. In a short period, the television industry helped reconstruct not only postwar Japanese popular culture, but also the Japanese social and political landscape. In dealing with the introduction of television, Japanese grappled with some of the same phenomena and issues that people in other countries also faced when television was introduced into their countries. Although a worldwide study

6


is beyond the scope of this book, a look at Japanese television could also tell us a more universal message: the social impact when television was introduced into a nation. The year 1953 marked the beginning of television broadcasting in Japan. As the number of sets grew, events such as the Japanese crown prince’s 1959’s royal wedding and spectacles like the overtly nationalistic pro wrestling matches of Rikidōzan became the basis of a TV-centered national media culture. During the early years of television, Japanese of all backgrounds, from politicians to mothers, debated the effects on society. Some argued that television exposed Japanese to the wider world outside of their national borders; others like Ōya Sōichi argued that it was turning them into a nation of “one hundred million idiots.” Still others worried that it created a new generation of children more comfortable with consumerism than with cultural values cherished by their parents. By the early 1970s, the public debate began to ebb. We shall examine the story of TV in Japan up to this point. The public discourse surrounding the growth of television revealed its role in forming the identity of postwar Japanese during the era of highspeed growth (1955—1973) that saw Japan transformed into an economic power. How did the emergence of a national television audience affect the formation of postwar Japanese society? The vast number of articles in the press about TV revealed the transformation of Japan into a nation united around the power of a common television culture. From examining these writings, television played an important role in promoting a postwar national culture centered on Tokyo and laced with American cultural ideals. At the local level, the television set strengthened the home as one of the central social units of everyday life. At the national level, the rapid diffusion of a Tokyo-based national television culture further strengthened Tokyo’s prominence in postwar Japan. At the international level, the presence of American programs such as westerns furthered the adoption of American cultural ideals. Television worked with a capitalist consumer culture to guide and shape both the worldview and the nationalism of Japanese. Yet, Japanese viewers did not passively take in television culture, but rather contested and explored its meaning. Testimony from Japanese will show us how they interacted with television. Much of their testimony has filtered through media such as newspapers, magazines, and books and may not reflect the actual beliefs of people, but rather those of the writers and editors. So long as we acknowledge this limitation, these sources provide a good indication of popular reactions to television.

Introduction

7

UNDERSTANDING THE WAY OF WATCHING AND KNOWING TELEVISION This is a social history of television that looks at how Japanese interacted with their televisions. This medium has become so much a part of Japanese culture that one takes its existence for granted. The importance of understanding the epistemology (way of knowing) of TV cannot be stressed enough. Neil Postman, in his famous critique of TV, is worth quoting at length: . . . . Even the question of how television affects us has receded into the background. The question itself may strike some of us as strange, as if one were to ask how having ears and eyes affects us. Twenty years ago, the question, Does television shape culture or merely reflect it? held considerable interest for many scholars and social critics. The question has largely disappeared, as television has gradually become our culture. This means, among other things, that we rarely talk about television, only about what is on television—that is, about its content. Its ecology, which includes not only its physical characteristics and symbolic code but the conditions in which we normally attend to it, is taken for granted, accepted as natural. Television has become, so to speak, the background radiation of the social and intellectual universe, the all-but-imperceptible residue of the electronic big bang of a century past, so familiar and so thoroughly integrated with American culture that we no longer hear its faint hissing in the background or see the flickering gray light. This, in turn, means that its epistemology goes largely unnoticed. And the peek-aboo world it has constructed around us no longer seems so strange.5

Postman argues that it is important to understand television’s way of knowing. This book, like Postman’s work, will attempt to make the epistemology of television visible again, but in the Japanese historical context. Japanese had to learn how to watch TV at the same time as they had to learn, because of defeat in war, how to be a nation again. During the first two decades of its existence, when TV was still a bewitching new medium, the press generated mountains of articles about the changes they believed this new-fangled device induced in society. A similar parallel could be found in the late twentieth century spread of the Internet. I remember struggling to explain the concept of e-mail to my friends and family in 1992. Mountains of articles appeared in the press detailing the Internet revolution and

8


its effects on daily life. Ten years later, e-mails and web pages became a daily part of everyday life, their novelties no longer worthy of special notice by the media.

TELEVISION HISTORY AS A PEOPLE’S HISTORY This book is more than just a history of television: it could also be a history of how the Japanese people used a new technology to make sense of their world during a time of social transformation. One could learn a lot by studying television as a central focus of a history of Japan during the era of high-speed growth, generally considered to be from 1955, the year when Japan’s economy had recovered to prewar levels, to 1973, when the “oil shock” wrecked turmoil on the Japanese economy. For example, the 1960s seemed to be a time of great political stability for Japanese as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party cemented its grip on power through its alliance with bureaucrats and big business. This decade was free of much bloodshed or political turbulence compared to the Cultural Revolution happening across the sea in China, and Japan underwent a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. Yet, this was the time of the Vietnam War and the American bases on Japanese soil generated its share of controversies and popular protests. By the mid-1960s, television had become a household item and Japanese were interacting with their world through this device, especially images that dominated the airwaves: the Vietnam War, the anti-war student riots, or radical student terror groups. TV networks, in search of their audience, were increasingly drawn to cover isolated incidents of student radical terror in order to attract viewers. These televised events colored the views of Japanese during this period. Despite the lack of political upheavals or social violence in Japan, many Japanese saw this era as a time of turbulence. I discovered that Japanese perceptions of the high-speed growth era were often filtered through TV. As an exchange student in Japan, I was unable to get older Japanese to talk about the economic growth and social change or even the politics that I had read about in history books. However, whenever I brought up the Tokyo University riots of 1969 or Asama-sansō hostage incident of 1972, among of the most watched programs in the history of Japanese television (yet relatively unknown outside of the country), these elicited all sorts of reactions and anecdotes. For example, one Tokyo University employee let out an embarrassed giggle when asked about the 1969 campus takeover by student radicals. Their experiences of what they considered to be key events of that era were often mediated through the television set.

Introduction

9

In this sense, a study of Japanese and their TV is the “people’s history” of Japan during the era of high-speed growth. Why a focus on TV as the center of a “people’s history”? As mentioned, Japanese spent considerable amounts of time in front of their TV set spending only more time sleeping and at work. A history of sleeping would not tell us much other than the fact that many a Japanese worker or housewife was tired. And we have many books on the history of work (economics). By looking at a history of how Japanese interacted with their TV, we can catch many nuances of Japan during the era of high-speed growth. TV, because it was a shared experience, had the power to help define the boundaries of the nation’s culture. With almost the entire nation glued to their TV sets, the commercial culture of television also became a defining feature of Japan’s social landscape. This consumer culture helped build the postwar Japanese economy because the domestic consumer played a key role in Japan’s high-speed economic growth. Television’s mass consumer culture played a major role in the growth of domestic demand by helping to popularize the concept of the middle class as a lifestyle centered on consumer luxuries and electrical appliances.6 A look at politics and society through the prism of television can explain how a television-mediated mass consumer culture interacts with politics and society to effect change in Japan. Having a nation watch TV results in neither the unification nor fragmentation of society, but rather a surprising combination of both: people united around and often divided by a national television culture. William Kelly, in his study of postwar Japanese society, looks at how individual differences and the rhythms of life in postwar Japanese society were co-opted, standardized, and routinized in institutions related to work, family, and schooling. Schools, for example, take diverse individuals, and standardize the opportunities available to them in society. The result is differentiated outcomes for its participants, with some going onto first-class universities, others to middling universities, and others ending their education at high school. Difference in Japanese society has not disappeared, but rather been managed through this standardization process.7 Critics like Ōya would probably include TV as one of the key media institutions that helped define and shape these institutional arenas. TV itself also standardized society and negotiated differences within Japan. Like other social institutions, the media culture of TV (which was part of a larger media culture involving all mass media) co-opted difference, embraced much of the population, and regularized their lifestyles. By the mid-1960s, much of the nation as a whole viewed programs produced in the center at Tokyo. By managing to co-opt different lifestyles and cultures, television

10


managed to defuse much of the potential conflict that had simmered over from the Anpo protests of 1960. The events portrayed on television were contested and contained latent tensions, guaranteeing the existence of conflict during an era of great stability.

STUDYING TV TECHNOLOGY AND PROGRAM ANALYSIS For strategic reasons, I have deemphasized a detailed analysis of the TV programs themselves. Of course, looking at the programs and how audiences reacted to them has its benefits. Therefore, the chapter on media events will examine to some extent the programs watched by large numbers of people and how these programs became part of a common culture that helped bind a diverse nation. For example, American-made TV westerns became part of the Japanese cultural identity during the early 1960s, showing the curious relationship between American cultural icons and Japanese nationalism. Hundreds of TV programs appeared on Japanese TV during the period 1953—1973. A book that focused on a detailed analysis of just several dozens of these programs would run hundreds of pages in length. More importantly, as television executives have found out, audience reactions vary greatly. Therefore, when analyzing the specific content of a program, one runs the risk of imposing one’s biases. Can I be sure that the way I interpret a program made in 1963 (before I was even born) is the same as how audiences interpreted it back then? Also, the problem of which programs to study becomes paramount. Even if a weekly program garnered an extraordinarily high 50% rating, it still means that half the nation did not watch it. Most programs were too low in ratings to be indicative of the national moods. Although analyses of TV programs can prove very valuable to the historian, the danger is that a scholars’ analysis of a single program or event such as the royal wedding of 1959 could read more into the program than what many audience members saw. It is easy to claim that the appeal of a TV event such as the royal wedding (which we shall study in a later chapter) happened because of its appeal to Japanese prewar values, while in fact, many audience members could have been drawn to it because of the beautiful pageantry or its appeal to postwar values. Thus, a content analysis could mislead and needs to be balanced with the reactions of the audience themselves. We could, with exaggeration, argue that single programs didn’t matter too much in the long scheme of things. After all, it is doubtful that there are many single episodes out there that completely changed the thinking of TV viewers. A better method of content analysis would instead

Introduction

11

locate a program within the wider context of TV culture. For example, what happens when audiences watch program upon program dealing with the royal family and when other media such as newspapers lavish so much attention on the Japanese imperial family? Ultimately, much of this book will examine the role of new media technology and cultural change. As opposed to the study of TV programs and audience reaction to them, theorists of this school of thought, most noticeably Marshall McLuhan, have argued that the nature of the medium itself is equally important in considering these social interactions with television. 8 In other words, while the content of the programs are of importance, using an approach that stresses how one interacts with the TV may yield surprising findings. Japanese, in their early writings were at first struck by the revolutionary potential inherent in seeing and hearing instantaneously via this new technology. In the early days of Japanese TV, many studies focused on people’s interactions with this new medium. By using the benefit of historical hindsight, some studies can reveal long-term interactions of people and TV technology, something not possible with program analysis. Rather than focusing on the transmission of particular information, TV programs often exist simply to catch and hold the viewer’s attention. The fact of attention means more than the quality of attention, which is difficult to measure.9 This resonates with the view of Ōya Sōichi that television created a “nation of a hundred million idiots” in which viewers would watch anything sensational. Many popular Japanese programs such as the mundane “home dramas” that depicted Japanese families did not need to appeal to such tactics and it is unfair to Japanese TV producers to depict their craft in an unnecessarily bad light. But many, especially news events, did resort to such appeals, and these televised events often affected the Japanese nation. There are limitations to the focus on television technology and its characteristics as a medium. As British Cultural Studies theorists are fond of pointing out, social and historical context are equally important in determining how people use TV. Rather than attempt the impossible task of measuring the effects of technology, one should look at how it becomes both an object and means of debate in public culture.10 For example, TV viewing in Japan, as in many parts of the world, was at first a mass group activity. Due to high costs of TV sets and relative poverty of a nation still recovering from war, most people could not afford a set for home use. Therefore, crowds, sometimes numbering in the thousands, gathered around a single outdoor set to watch TV. But, as incomes rose, so did the number of families who purchased a set for private home use. As television became part of

12


the national lifestyle, it spread new influences and at times, controversial ideas to all parts of the country, thus becoming an object of debate as well as a means of debate. The broader theme of the long-term interaction between media technology and the audience in creating an electronic-oriented nation-state will be the main focus of this book, but there will be many references to audience reactions to key TV broadcasts such as Rikidōzan’s pro wrestling matches, the Crown Prince’s Royal Wedding, the 1960 Anpo demonstrations, the 1969 Tōdai riots, and the 1972 Asama-sansō hostage incident. Ultimately, it is important to keep in mind that an in-depth content analysis of the programs themselves is beyond the scope of this book (after all, what scholar has the time and money to watch the thousands of these programs?) and its emphasis will be on how Japanese interacted with their world through television technology.

PERSONAL THOUGHTS ON TELEVISION By no means was television solely responsible for every social problem haunting Japan or every transformation of society. TV could have also reflected the larger economic trends caused by government policies. Also, important actors such as corporations, politicians, the other mass media, activists, and bureaucrats played a crucial role in shaping postwar Japan. Still, because of its daily prominence, television played a crucial role in shaping how Japanese viewed their world and their pursuit of consumer affluence as a national goal. In this aspect, television became one of the main pillars of a society grasping for a national consensus. By tracing the diverse influences of TV, we can see a distinct way of viewing the world. Also, I am personally not sure if television had turned Japanese into a nation of a hundred million idiots and do not wish to sound snobbish when criticizing the often-shallow nature of Japanese television. Quite the opposite, true to its original vision, TV has brought much enlightenment and quality entertainment to many of its viewers. I grew up enjoying Japanese programs via the Japanese-language station in Honolulu, Hawai’i. My childhood memories are filled with Japanese superheroes, music programs, and samurai dramas. I admit I also enjoyed “mindless” entertainment programs such as music shows, soap operas, anime and comedies that I encountered while doing research in Tokyo. I spent many hours watching them to relax, and found talking about television programs, personalities, or events to be very useful in striking up conversations with Japanese outside of academia, or, most importantly, with family members. And yet I have seen people hooked on seemingly insignificant matters, like a celebrity

Introduction

13

divorce or a politician’s hairstyle to the exclusion of other news. I hope the reader picks up on this ambivalence, and in the academic context, view my uncertainty about television as scholarly balance. I have tried to keep Japanese names in the Japanese order, family name first and given name last. To avoid confusion in the footnotes and bibliography I have placed them in English order, given name first and family name last in footnotes, and vice-versa in bibliographies. I have also avoided using macrons over vowels in commonly used Japanese words, or in names that have commonly appeared in the English libraries (i.e.: Kato Hidetoshi). Let us start our journey through Japanese television history not to condemn, but to seek how its unique way of portraying the world became an important part of Japanese society.

Part II

The History of Japanese Television Culture

Chapter One

Prewar Roots of Japanese Television Culture: Imperial Culture, Media Culture, and Radio

Radio played the same role in prewar Japan as TV did in postwar Japan, serving as one of the nation’s major sources of values and information, and it eventually paved the way for TV broadcasting to become an important means to impose some sort of national cultural order. The prewar roots of Japanese television culture lie in the tensions between two cultures: the government-sponsored emperor-centered imperial empire in the late 19th century, and the urban mass consumer culture of the 1920s. Radio served to mediate these two cultures. When television took off in the 1950s, it did so on the foundations built by radio.

IMPERIAL CULTURE AND URBAN CONSUMER CULTURE IN PREWAR JAPAN Prewar broadcasting played a significant role in assisting the spread of a government-approved culture centered on the emperor. Surprisingly, the modern form of this imperial ideology originated with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. With the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the leaders of the new Meiji government discovered that they needed to transform Japan from a hodgepodge of domains ruled by local lords who pledged loyalty to the shogun into a unified, modern, western-style nation state ruled by a central government. Far from being a unified nation, Japan resembled more a mishmash of local cultures and more importantly, distinct local identities. Attempts to rebuild the nation along the lines of a centralized European nation-state were also fraught with peril. For example, the Meiji government’s dismantling of Tokugawa class system restrictions triggered samurai rebellions and nationwide popular movements. As a result, Meiji leaders used the fiction of direct imperial rule to help give people a symbol to rally around during the building of a modern Japanese 17

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nation-state. In this imperial culture, although an oligarchy handled actual governance, the Emperor, believed to be the direct descendant of the Sun Goddess, served as the supreme spiritual authority. The Japanese were to envision themselves as one family, with the Emperor as the father, and the Japanese as his children, and risk their lives for the emperor as they would for their own family.1 Surprisingly, this concept of an emperor-centered nation had only come about as a fairly recent invention in Japanese history. Historically, with a few exceptions, emperors only had strictly symbolic powers and were out of the popular eye. Therefore, the Meiji government needed to relentlessly drill the emperor’s role into the minds of the Japanese people. The Constitution of 1889 defined sovereignty as emanating from the emperor. Schoolchildren stood at attention every morning to hear the Meiji Emperor’s Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890, a collection of admonitions on morality, read to them by school authorities. The government even built numerous public monuments, fabricated imperial ceremonies, and created national holidays in order to teach Japanese the importance of the emperor.2 By the early 20th century, this official government ideology had taken root in Japan. Still, we also need to recognize the distinct limits to the spread of this imperial culture. The patina of imperial solidarity could not erase the reality of diversity at the local level. Not all Japanese accepted the official culture of the emperor system exactly as the government taught them. Ella Wiswell recalls a mid-1930’s conversation with a Kyushu farmer, Mrs. Tanimoto. Wiswell saw a scroll portraying the imperial couple hanging in Tanimoto’s home, and asked why the Empress always wore a dress rather than a kimono. Wiswell recalls Mrs. Tanimoto’s reply:“ ‘Indeed, she does wear dresses. I wonder why? Her chest sticks out and her neck stretches up. What a long neck she has!’ We both laughed. I suggested that foreign clothes had become a kind of uniform after the Meiji Restoration [in 1868]. Only Meiji-tenno and his Empress are wearing Shinto-style garments in the picture. ‘We decided that it must be a custom that was established rather recently and were both convulsed with laughter. ‘Look at her hair-do and the open neck. She is dressed just like you,’ she exclaimed. I suggested politely that I have no such beautiful jewels. Then I said that we ought not to be talking like this.’ No, no, we shouldn’t,’ she said, but laughter got the better of her. ‘If the policeman were to hear us, he would tie me up and throw me in prison. But he can’t hear, can he?’ I said I thought we were safe. I left her laughing on the balcony, dusting and drying her lacquer-ware. So much for Emperor worship.”3

Prewar Roots of Japanese Television Culture

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Here, one could see how the emperor system had failed to instill respect in this middle-aged farmwoman. Mrs. Tanimoto knew not to joke about the emperor in front of the police. In looking at the emperor system, we must concede that although major institutions such as schools, the military, and the media heavily promoted the idea of the emperor being the symbol for modern Japan, individuals did have the power to reject or ridicule these messages. Perhaps having the image of the imperial couple decorate a consumer item like a scroll diminished their aura of power and made it easier for commoners to ridicule them. By the end of World War I, this government-sponsored imperial culture had to compete with a mass popular consumer culture rapidly growing in the cities and threatening the dominance of imperial culture. By the early 20th century, an urban-based mass consumer culture provided an alternative cultural space to the imperial ideology and so became a concern of officials and middle-class reformers. This mass consumer culture resulted from the rapid growth of cities and, fueled by rapidly growing mass media such as movies, magazines, and newspapers, became part of a larger “media culture” popular among millions of Japanese. This media culture posed a threat to elite hegemony because although it could help promote the imperial-centered culture, it also allowed people to craft an oppositional discourse to government ideology. Maybe the Meiji government’s policy of unifying and industrializing Japan under the fiction of direct imperial rule succeeded too well. The rapid growth of cities accompanied the industrialization of Japan. Much of the urban population lived in the Tōkaidō Belt, a chain of major urban areas running from Tokyo in the east to Osaka in the west. A major travel route in Tokugawa Japan, nearly one in three Japanese lived within the major cities of the Tōkaidō Belt by 1920.4 Along with economic expansion and rapid urbanization came a mass consumer culture that appeared in the major cities. Douglas Kellner describes this kind of commercial mass culture of sound and image in general as a “media culture” that provides resources for a common culture for the majority of individuals and is characterized by the mutual interaction between the producers and consumers. The producers of media culture, in order to convince discriminating audiences to buy their products, must make their media products as appealing as possible. The consumers, while they have the power to interpret the meaning of this media culture, often find their worldviews shaped by the media producers. This media culture also has a strong influence on the social system. On one hand, media culture gets people to identify with the values of the dominant group and helps to establish the hegemony of specific political

20


groups and projects, getting members of society to see specific ideologies as “the way things are.” At the same time, because media culture must work with consumers, it must cater to their needs, thus creating the possibility of an alternate cultural space.5 We can see this alternate cultural space at work in Japan as early as the 1920s in the major metropolitan area of Osaka. Multitudes of Japanese were mesmerized by the movies and jazz of the for-profit electric-lit amusement park atmosphere of the Shinsekai (New World) district. Yet, Jeffrey Hanes points out that rather than being a monolithic mass culture, this consumer culture reflected a mosaic of segmented subcultures, all part of an extraordinarily diverse consumption-oriented urban class.6 Part of the subversive nature of the mass culture lay not in overt appeals against the government, but rather its potential to undo several decades’ worth of imperial unification efforts by accenting subcultural differences. One can see this destabilization process in the flood of western influences that entered Japan through this media culture, for example through magazines and movies. Japanese media scholar Yoshimi Shunya points out that young Japanese liked jazz and imitated the hairstyles, makeup, and dress of Hollywood movies. For their daily lives, they often worked in American-style buildings, watched baseball games, or took Sunday afternoon drives. Japanese took American media culture, and reinvented it into the idea of private, domestic life centered on modern leisure and consumption. Commodities like radio, cars, and household electronics became the symbolic elements of Americanism.7 All of these represented diverse alternate lifestyles centered not on group service to the state, but rather on individual private lives and homes. The right-wing Japanese state of the 1930s found it necessary to officially prohibit this culture through government laws against consumerism and consumption of western culture, such as jazz. The appearance of a mass culture alongside the government-sponsored imperial culture of prewar Japan provoked among officials, intellectuals, and reformers many questions about the shape of the national community. Would this consumer culture fit with the austere official imperial culture? During the reign of the Taisho Emperor (1912–1926) and the prewar years of the Showa emperor (1926–1989) until 1945, government officials made efforts to subordinate the nation-wide media culture to the national imperial culture. With the rise of military rule in Japan, the government recognized the need to forge the people into a highly disciplined national community. Recognizing the threat of an independent mass culture, with Japan’s invasion of China in 1937, the military-dominated government cracked down on conspicuous consumption and implemented the


21

rationing of goods, although the management of a war economy was also a chief reason for these measures. For the moment, the mass consumer culture was suppressed. As our review of Japanese history has shown, during the prewar era, one could see the importance the government attached to culture as a means of establishing control over the nation, although villagers and urbanites did not always believe this official culture and had the power to reinterpret this at the local level. Still, radio played a key role in supporting government efforts to control people through the spread of an officially approved national broadcast culture.

EARLY RADIO BROADCASTING IN MEDIA CULTURE A major development in Japanese media culture occurred when Japan’s first radio station started on March 22, 1925 at the Tokyo Broadcast Station (JOAK) with announcer broadcasting the call sign, “J-O-A-K, J-O-AK, this is the Tokyo Broadcast Station,” followed by a clarinet and horn performance from a navy band. Only months later, radio stations in Osaka and Nagoya also started broadcasts, making a total of three radio stations nationwide, with 3,500 radio contracts for JOAK alone.8 From these humble beginnings, radio played a major role in building the foundations of a national broadcast culture, which in turn, became the foundation for a postwar Japanese television media culture. By the time television made its debut in 1953, substantial portions of the population had already integrated radio into their daily lives. Television inherited the form of broadcasting created by radio. At first, Japanese radio broadcasts started years before 1925 with individuals broadcasting privately. Mizukoshi Shin cites historians who claim there were already some 50,000 individual radio operators in Japan, with 15,000 in the Tokyo area at the time of the JOAK broadcasts, who both listened to and transmitted broadcasts to each other. These early radio operators were fairly autonomous and beyond the reach of the state, posing a possible threat to the official imperial ideology. Private amateur broadcasting died out when the government began to root out local radio transmitters, replacing them with all-encompassing, central transmitting organizations such as JOAK, which were easy to censor and monitor. Mizukoshi maintains that the significance of the inauguration of JOAK was not as the beginning of radio broadcasting, but as the shift of the Japanese broadcast paradigm. Rather than becoming an active medium of thousands of independent broadcasters both sending and receiving messages, radio broadcasting had turned into a medium of a few large transmitting organizations

22


that broadcast to a passive mass audience-consumer, who, although had the power to interpret broadcasts, could not send them.9 Television inherited this form of broadcasting: a central signal and a mass audience that could only receive transmissions. Even private radio stations fell under government control when they were pushed by the government to merge into a public corporation. By 1926, the government transformed the status of the stations from private companies to nonprofit, public-benefit corporations. Acutely conscious of the power of radio, the government announced a plan in late 1925 to combine the three existing broadcast stations into a heavily government-influenced public broadcast monopoly. Revenues were to come solely from receiver fees sanctioned by the state, not from any independent source of funding. From the merger of these groups in August 1926 came the public corporation, NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai or the Japan Broadcasting Corporation), the basis of the national broadcasting network.10 In the end, the formation of a public broadcast monopoly under NHK meant the end of private control of broadcasting for the time being. The goal of radio broadcasting from the beginning was to promote the spread of a state-approved culture within the nation. A 1925 address at the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Broadcasting Station by station governor Goto Shinpei, reprinted and interpreted in NHK’s history Broadcasting in Japan, illustrated the aims and roles that officials envisioned for broadcasting: The first is the provision of cultural equal opportunity (Radio would demolish the borders between city and country, age group, gender, and social class. And it would provide the benefits of the radio wave universally and equally); The second is the reformation of life in the home (Conventionally, entertainment had been sought outside the home, but families now had more family time and could experience a new form of home entertainment based on radio); The third is the socialization of education (By making cultural and scientific knowledge widely accessible to the public, radio would greatly facilitate progress in public education); The fourth is the speed of economic functions (The prompt reporting of overseas economic affairs as well as conditions in the stock, raw silk, rice and other commodity markets, would invigorate trade).”11


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Government officials such as Goto grasped radio’s potential as an effective tool to unify the nation and assist in the spread of a standardized culture throughout Japan. Radio promised to provide government with a valuable method to help shape home life and contribute to the homogenization a diverse Japanese society. With radio stations under its control, the government used broadcasting to unify the nation and to help spread a government-approved culture to all corners of the Japanese Empire. According to Takeyama Akiko’s study of Japanese radio, the broadcast of the Taisho Emperor’s funeral in February of 1927 drove home the potential of radio to serve as a tool of national unification. In order to bring people across the nation into the ceremony, the government decided to broadcast the funeral procession over the radio. The live broadcast of the funeral procession had a huge impact on the Japanese listeners, who extended their condolences by coming to attention and prostrating themselves in front of radio receivers. Sounds coming from the radio became a substitute for the procession itself.12 Keenly aware of the power of radio to disseminate imperial culture in mind, the government rushed plans for a national radio network into place, and completed the network on November 6, 1928, the day of Emperor Hirohito’s enthronement ceremony. Through this broadcast, Japanese radio underwent a transformation into a national medium.13 We should not overestimate the effectiveness of these early radio events. Only 3% of households at the time of the funeral owned a radio, still a new technology. Because radio was still a new and expensive medium out of financial reach of most Japanese, institutions such as radio shops and newspaper companies allowed others to listen to their high-powered receivers14 Because the audience always had the power to interpret radio messages, we do not have a completely clear picture of the diversity of responses to the broadcasts of the emperor’s enthronement. The fact that radio was primarily an urban phenomenon further limited its influence. Most rural households did not have access to a radio, and even when they did, radio use could be sporadic. John Embree described the lack of excitement over radio in a remote village: when the 1936 Olympic games were broadcast, less than five young men bothered to go to the school to listen at 9 p.m.15 In remote parts of Japan, villagers did not always find radio to be very exciting—as we shall see in later chapters, a fact that stands in stark contrast to the excitement that greeted the introduction of television in rural areas. Yet, radio became the first broadcast medium to unify the nation. Radio calisthenics, introduced Tokyo in 1928, played an important role in the government’s campaign during the 1930s to erase intra-national divisions.

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Having millions of Japanese across the nation moving their bodies daily in unison to the directions of the announcer on the radio helped to create a sense of national simultaneity and established broadcasting as a part of daily life. These exercises were usually done in a large group assembled across the nation in public places. Soon, radio calisthenics became a part of daily life, in which thousands of groups gathered at various locations to do radio calisthenics at the same time. By the summer of 1933, over 40 million people (nearly 60% of Japan’s total population) participated in these exercises.16 Japanese visionaries based their views of television on the precedents set by radio: as a tool to spread high culture (which often meant Western culture) throughout the nation. One can see in early radio programming the government’s identification of “public broadcasting” with serving the needs of the state, not the people. Programming choices revealed this concept of “public.” While entertainment programs like dramas and sports enjoyed popularity among listeners, the government made sure that the primary purpose of radio was to spread its version of culture and enlightenment throughout the nation. From day one of radio broadcasting, the Ministry of Communications limited music and entertainment programs, and put the focus on news, weather, and practical knowledge. The Ministry used the rationale that Japanese, still a poor people, could not afford to indulge in a pleasure-seeking way of life, and that radio entertainment would only lure Japanese away from their jobs. The entertainment programs made up only a minority of most radio programming in the prewar years.17 NHK focused on spreading an officially approved culture throughout the nation through the radio network. As Yamaguchi Makoto points out, NHK even considered the English language to be a language of culture, so it broadcast English conversation classes to the nation as part of a policy to raise the nation’s cultural level.18 Western classical music also became a radio staple, seen by the government as a means to spread modern culture to the rest of the nation. These actions revealed the government’s ambivalence toward mass culture. On the one hand, the government hoped to use entertainment to spread its official version of modern culture. On the other hand, by limiting entertainment and music broadcasts, the Japanese state hoped to prevent radio culture from becoming an alternate cultural space. The broadcasting of classical music and lectures revealed the government’s view of what culture was supposed to be: western, educational, and informational. It was upon these cultural expectations that Japanese began to imagine the possibilities for television.


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EARLY PREWAR VISIONS OF TELEVISION: TOOL FOR THE SPREAD OF CULTURE During the prewar era, literate Japanese, familiar with the concept of radio broadcasting, read in popular magazines about a futuristic radio device with a visual element. The paradigms of radio broadcasting transferred to TV broadcasting: serving the state by efficiently spreading culture to all parts of the nation. This prewar concept of television as an educational tool influenced postwar attitudes toward the new medium as well, so TV did not make its postwar debut to a public unaware of this new technology. First, a brief history of television development is in order. The development of television cannot be attributed to a single person, but the cumulative contributions of many inventors and scientists. The term “television” first appeared in a paper on the subject in 1900 and as early as 1910, two Frenchmen devised a mechanical television system that produced crude pictures of a series of alphabet letters. The world’s first public demonstration of a mechanical television system occurred on January 1926, when the Scotsman John Logie Baird televised human faces to approximately 40 other scientists at his laboratory. In the United States, Bell Telephone Labs and AT&T gave a public demonstration of a primitive mechanical television broadcast on April 7, 1927, when they televised a speech by the then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Although the pictures in this early experiment faded in and out, the transmission of pictures and sound represented quite a revolutionary development for its time. Don Juan, the first motion picture to have a pre-recorded score and synchronized sound effects, only appeared a year earlier in 1926. The Jazz Singer, the first motion picture to use spoken dialogue as part of the dramatic action, only appeared after these broadcasts on October 1927. Advances in electronic television also continued. In September 7, 1927, Philo T. Farnsworth managed to broadcast a fully electronic television picture—a single line on a screen. Only a few months after Baird’s demonstration, on December 25, 1926, Takayanagi Kenjirō, then a professor at Hamamatsu Higher Technical college and later a prominent NHK TV researcher, succeeded in displaying a clear image of the character “イ” on a Braun tube.19 Though television remained in the realm of fantasy as a new technology that the vast majority of people worldwide, even in the major urban areas of the West, had yet to witness, educated Japanese were quite informed about developments in television through the popular press. The prewar Japanese press gushed over the most striking aspect of television, its ability to traverse long distances and bring exotic locales into the home.

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The thought of TV, with its appeal to the visual and aural senses, seemed nothing short of miraculous to early Japanese writers. An article in King Magazine in 1927, which reported on Baird’s and Bell Laboratory’s public exhibitions of television, portrayed TV, translated into Japanese as “musenenshi” (far-seeing wireless), as an extraordinary device: You can freely view through use of this television device even the sight of a Venice evening, a scene of London, a Swiss lakeside, or even as far as an ice field at the North and South Pole. Just as in listening to radio today, with the turn of the receiver dial, the scenery of the place you want to watch appears on the receiver device.

Interesting is the choice of scenery. Rather than focusing on Asian lands, the author promised that Japanese could be in touch with European lands, implying that TV would allow them to be in touch with the West as well. The King writer portrayed television as more than just a fancy gimmick that let one see distant lands. Specifically, television had potential as a revolutionary way to transmit the news: Television does not just show scenery. It can also broadcast the events of the day as they happen. So, for example, if there is a big fire in a town, one can see that big fire as it happens. If there is an earthquake someplace, the terrible sight of that earthquake damage is broadcast live as radio waves, and one can see the exact scene on-location. In other words, one can report true breaking news through television.20

The writer for King stressed the potential of TV to thrust the viewer into contact with a news event. Much like the discourse surrounding the infant medium of radio, writers imagined that Japanese could be in touch with a modern culture through television. The popular weekly Shūkan Asahi, in their March 11, 1928 issue conceived of television not as entertainment, but as a communications device. It pointed out that the playwright George Bernard Shaw dreamed of a television videoconferencing device in his 1921 work, Back to Methuselah: “ . . . There is a description in the play of how, through a certain device, people separated by a barrier of several hundred miles could see each other’s faces and have conversations with each other.”21 By 1930, the Hamamatsu College of Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo Electric and Nippon Electric companies had engaged in television research, and some had even constructed experimental television systems. In June 1930, NHK established the Technical Research Laboratory to


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further their television research efforts.22 The popular press took notice of these advances in television research. The Bungaku Jidai (Literature Age) of April 1932 predicted the uses of television, comparing the limitations of radio to that of a blind man and gushing over the possibility of bringing the outside world into the home: Well, after this wireless telegraph or radio era, what will be the next cutting edge of electric culture? . . . Today’s radio is exactly like a blind person attending a play and paying attention only to the speech. One can hear the sound through the loudspeaker, but one cannot see the figure of the person speaking. However, television has become successfully realized. The new era is that while in one’s home, one can see the Waseda-Keiō baseball game happening at Jingu stadium, or a play as it is being performed on the stage.23

The writer already “visualized” how one could see the outside world through television. Rather than focusing on its potential for drama, writings portrayed television as a visual tool that would allow one to view the outside world from the comfort of one’s home. We can see in these selected early writings of King and the Shūkan Asahi magazines a view of TV as a means to uplift the cultural level of the nation and to expose the people to beneficial international influences. King magazine in 1928 asserted a direct link between cultural advancement and broadcasting: . . . The culture of the human race has accomplished striking progress through the use of radio waves. When people who discuss the cultural history of the human race later this century, they will first write about the radio, which became widespread in the end of the Taishō era, and then they will also dedicate other writings to the development of television, completed during the Shōwa era. Television is indeed one of the most splendid things produced by civilization during the period of the end of the Taishō era to the Shōwa era.24

Writings like this represented the cultural vision of public broadcasting, the driving force in Japanese TV research in the 1930s. This vision of TV as a tool of culture also rang prominent in the United States because many Americans in the 1920s and 1930s viewed television as an instrument of enlightenment and as a unifier of people across the globe. The Germans started the world’s first regularly scheduled television programming in 1935 and the British began their TV broadcasts in 1936.25 But proponents of TV development saw something more valuable than human

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progress at stake, namely national pride. The presence of a national TV system also marked the level of a nation’s culture, and the Japanese could not fall behind other nations such as Britain, America, Germany, Poland, Sweden, France, Soviet Union, or Czechoslovakia that were developing television systems. The Japanese press also reported on these overseas developments in television. Yamamoto Isamu, an NHK researcher, traveled abroad from August to November of 1937 to study western development of television. Although his April 1939 article in NHK’s Hōsō does not reveal his reaction to the social effects of this new technology, it does make the observation that “program-like programs do not exist” due to the low level of television development in America, Germany, and France. Yamamoto considered Britain as the most advanced of all prewar television countries. He wrote of how British television spread the news of the Munich Conference, the meeting of Prime Minister Chamberlain with Adolph Hitler that averted a war over Germany’s claims in Czechoslovakia: “It is said that the returning Chamberlain broadcast a message to the people through TV from London’s airport.”26 Ryo Sayoshi also reported in the July 1939 issue of Chuō Kōron on Chamberlain’s televised message and used it as evidence that the British were the leaders in television broadcasting. Ryo wrote, “Until now in world history, this kind of important incident has never been televised even once.”27 Television could serve the state in a valuable way by helping to unify the nation. In 1937, Nakanishi Kingyo theorized in Hōsō magazine a surprisingly prescient vision of TV. The ability of centralized broadcast organizations to reach the individual featured prominently in his visualization of television: It will be a certainty that we can do live broadcasts of every sport. We will be able to do news television that is rather like the news films in today’s movie theaters, broadcasts of dramas from the studio, and recorded broadcasts. Through the editing of film, we will be able to do pre-recorded television and delayed broadcasts depending on the time difference. Each can be broadcast at a set time on a daily basis together with radio. In the major cities in each country, we will set up enough broadcast stations, and the central broadcasting station can broadcast to anyone anytime.

Nakanishi also envisioned TV helping to unite the Japanese Empire. Building on the common prewar theme of TV as a way to bridge long


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distances, he promoted it as a means to connect Japanese immigrants in distant parts of the world as far as Brazil: For example, there are things like the long-distance transmission of newspapers. Although the duplicates of each page of the central newspapers can be collected immediately on the spot and sent to a remote area, we cannot adequately send a whole page of a newspaper through conventional facsimile transmission. So, we can make a device that is combined with television technology. Thereupon, we can send the page of the newspaper via facsimile and at the place that receives it, a picture of the newspaper can be taken, for example in about an hour. In this manner, it can be duplicated, printed, and innumerable newspaper duplicates can be made. If we do it like this, then this morning’s Tokyo newspaper can quickly be delivered to Japanese in Hawai’i and Brazil hot off the presses.28

Nakanishi expected TV to play a vital role in linking Japanese immigrants overseas with the media of the greater Japanese Empire. We could say that writers conceived of TV as a way of maintaining the Japanese identity of these immigrants. So important was the link between broadcasting and national development that when the Tokyo Electric and Nippon Electric companies had doubts about the practicability of television and suspended their research efforts, NHK continued TV research in order to enhance national power and prestige. NHK believed it important to develop a workable television system in order to demonstrate to the world that Japan was an advanced nation. In 1936, with the awarding of the 1940 Olympics to Tokyo, the planned games became an occasion to display Japan’s television technology. As a result, NHK increased its research and development efforts, bringing in top researchers like Takayanagi in 1937, and devoting three million yen, or 11.8% of its total expenditures in fiscal 1937, toward television development.29

TELEVISION RESEARCH DURING THE WARTIME With Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the commencement of a full-fledged war with China in 1937, Japanese society underwent a thorough militarization and the government rapidly adopted radio as a powerful tool to mobilize the nation for war. Concurrent with the war effort, bureaucrats, radio officials, and social reformers made an effort to regulate Western influences such as fashions and music. In a wartime purge of Western

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influences, they selectively used the power of radio to either promote those Western influences they felt to be beneficial to the country, or to eradicate those that they felt could be harmful to Japanese culture. Ben-Ami Shillony argues that the government faced an uphill task in persuading the public to hate the West because Japanese had been taught for years to admire them for their technological and cultural achievements.30 The government used the powerful tool of radio in an effort to undo Western influence from media culture and Japanese minds. E. Taylor Atkins points out how the wartime government regulated foreign music such as jazz, envisioning a new “Japanified” jazz (often indistinguishable from prewar jazz), supposedly purged of western influences and infused with nationalistic tone or content, that could contribute to the wartime effort.31 Only foreign melodies that were the basis for Japanese songs, such as the graduation song Hotaru no hikari (The Light of Fireflies), sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne,” were allowed.32 As the war dragged on, radio broadcasting turned into one of the government’s main tools of wartime state control over people. The through government control of the airwaves meant the complete victory of the government’s plan to associate the “public” with the state, rather than society. Tada Michitaro writes that by end of World War II, what was considered the private (the extended family household) was almost totally subordinated to the public.33 Radio definitely played a key role in this subordination of the private to the public (state) interest. The state held such a great faith in the power of radio to communicate with its subjects that a national policy was instituted to provide every Japanese with access to a receiver. By 1941, over 45% of all households owned a radio, making broadcasting a powerful medium to spread wartime propaganda and news broadcasts to the people.34 Although the beginning of a full-fledged war with the Chinese meant in increasing diversion of national funds toward the war effort, Japan’s television research still managed to make great strides. Despite the cancellation of the Olympics in 1938, research continued with the goal of establishing a working television system. The July 1939 issue of the intellectual monthly Chuō Kōron reported on Takayanagi’s trial broadcast on the day of the NHK Broadcasting House inauguration in May 1939. It spread the good news that even the general public would be able to see television on television receivers set up at various places around the city during these experimental broadcasts.35 By 1940, NHK researchers created Japan’s first Japanese experimental TV drama, the 12-minute Yugemae (Before Supper), a drama depicting the ordinary life of a family of three before their evening meal.36


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We can see how researchers recognized the importance of TV’s role in creating national greatness in a 1939 article by Takayanagi himself in NHK’s Hōsō magazine. He argued that television itself had become an indicator of a nation’s culture level: Because television is something that advances the greatness of communications technology, these achievements indicate the height of a country’s culture, and at the same time, the potential for a country’s future development. This, it might be said, is a reason why different countries are competing to [build a television system].

Takayanagi also noticed that, according to a report in a British magazine, other nations had spent a huge sum of 300 million yen on television research. He asked why they were putting in this kind of effort: The British and Americans, besides increasing the welfare and convenience of the people through television, are putting much emphasis on the rapid formation of a new industry that can rival radio. The Germans are using TV as an important weapon of propaganda equal to radio in its’ power to cultivate the people’s spirits. All these nations are working on completing a television system, which has become the glory of science, so that they can enhance their national prestige in the world. Also, they expect advances in television as a secondary industry to contribute to general science and to world of communications.37

National interest accompanied the idea of television raising a nation’s cultural level and bringing the world to one’s doorstep. The German example showed that television could be a tool for national mobilization. Yet, governments across the world did not sponsor television research merely for the enlightenment of the populace, or even only for national honor. Of course, as with any new technology, governments quickly grasped the battlefield potential of television. In January 1937, Nakanishi Kingyo predicted military uses of TV either through the development of “noctovision,” television by infrared and ultraviolet rays, or as a means to indicate a plane’s position in a fog.38 In 1939, perhaps with an eye towards justifying to the government the need to continue research on television during wartime, Takayanagi described the military applications of this new technology: Also, in a land war, from above in the airplanes, the condition of artillery sites and scattered enemy armies can be reported by the minute to military headquarters. Information that once had to be transmitted by

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? words can now be transmitted instantaneously by picture. The strategic and tactical result is the birth of a surprisingly huge revolution.39

In another article, Takayanagi predicted that video transmissions to battlefield headquarters would revolutionize warfare, and implied that the advanced nations of the world were racing to develop television because of its military potential. Recently, though countries have not publicly expressed it, I have heard that many are feverishly researching television for military reasons. [. . . . ] However, television is not only for broadcasting, as I have previously written. Based on all of those developments, it has military and communications applications as well. Therefore, each country of the world is engaged in a furious competition to put it to practical use. At present, we are in the homestretch where we are putting utmost efforts into research.40

Arguing that Japan should not fall behind, Takayanagi pledged that NHK would do its part to cooperate with the private sector and the government to develop television and thus to help Japan to implement a workable television system. This could have been a thinly veiled appeal for more government funding, because, the wartime government could not afford to pour money into the development of an expensive and unproven television system during a time of national sacrifice. Japan, a resource-poor nation, could not afford television research during a time of total war, and research efforts came to a standstill as the war effort took up much of the government budget. Television research would continue after the war, but this time under an American-dominated occupation. Still, even only a few years after the start of organized radio broadcasting in 1925, the popular press was beginning to speculate about a TV technology that would allow people to see as well as hear an event or performance. Many prewar Japanese had a general idea of what television broadcasting was about, and it was upon this foundation of knowledge that ideas of TV spread in the postwar era.

PREWAR LEGACY OF RADIO The government’s thorough control of the medium left a legacy for television: a nationwide broadcast network and a public well acquainted with the concept of broadcasting. Ironically, radio achieved its greatest power to reach a nationwide mass audience and unite the nation in a moment


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of national simultaneity during the emperor’s surrender broadcast in August 15, 1945. During this broadcast, the announcer came on the air and said that the emperor had an important announcement for the people. A recording of the emperor’s voice came on, announcing Japan’s surrender in an archaic form of court Japanese. Afterward, while the announcer explained the Emperor’s message to the people, Japanese across the nation confronted their conflicting emotions at the end of war, ranging from sadness to relief. Was the Emperor’s surrender broadcast a media event uniting Japanese in a moment of national simultaneity? Shiga Nobuo remembers listening to the broadcast as a second year middle school student: What in the world was he saying? I hardly understood it at all. My mother who was at my side also didn’t understand it, and we both looked at each other. Because I heard the rumor that “Japan has lost,” I wondered if this wasn’t the surrender announcement?41

Shiga’s experience reveals both the potential and limitations of radio as a nationwide medium. First, the custom of daily broadcasting and group listening had conditioned Japanese to taking in information during moments of national simultaneity. In this sense, Japanese had been exposed to broadcasting, and so could easily adapt their experiences with radio to television. However, radio had limits in creating moments of national simultaneity. First of all, the people had listened to a prerecording of Emperor’s voice, not a live broadcast. Second and more importantly, many listeners did not understand the broadcast, due to the obscure honorific imperial language the Emperor was using and the poor quality of the radio broadcast. Many other Japanese, in the same manner as Shiga, had no idea what the emperor was saying and realized that Japan had surrendered not as a direct result of the emperor’s broadcast, but from other means like listening to the announcer’s subsequent explanation of the emperor’s speech, or through rumors from friends, family, or strangers. Dialect differences, government taboos on openly talking about surrender and a lack of visual cues that TV would’ve provided made it difficult to transmit information to people nationwide. In this sense, radio by 1945 had not created a truly national culture that could unite Japanese in a moment of simultaneity. Postwar television owed much to the prewar legacies of radio, one of the first carriers of the postwar mass culture. The prewar and wartime years saw this broadcast medium become an established part of Japanese life, so when television made its debut in 1953, most Japanese had already been exposed to the paradigms of broadcasting. In the postwar context of

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the collapse of empire, democratic reforms imposed by the Allies, and the start of commercial broadcasting, television would build on these prewar foundations established by radio. TV would, along with other factors such as economic growth and the increase in the urban population, help transform urban media culture from a culture of a minority of Japanese into a truly mass national culture. In the postwar era, this revived media culture, built on the foundations of the prewar years and spread through broadcasting, developed into a postwar national culture.

Chapter Two

Postwar Media Culture and Japanese Encounters with TV

The end of the war also meant the end of Japan’s empire and the primacy of the values that supported it. During the following decade, Japanese survivors of the war faced the task of learning how to be a nation again. They no longer had a common culture imposed from above that could bridge local differences and the symbols of empire and imperial ideology, although still powerful at the grass-roots level, could no longer hold the nation together due to persistent Occupation efforts to discredit them in order to reform society. Although substantial segments of the population still had an attachment to the prewar ideology centered on empire, national feeling had to be expressed through other means. Television, alongside institutions such as schools, the workplace, the family, and other mass media, became one of the important carriers and shapers of a mainstream common culture in postwar Japan. As television spread throughout postwar Japan, it played a key role in propagating values and imposing a degree of order and standardization upon this cultural chaos. To understand how television functioned in Japanese society, we need to briefly examine the postwar context during the introduction of television: the loss of empire, cultural confusion, and the development of a mass consumer society.

THE POSTWAR ERA: OCCUPATION, RAPID SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE Arif Dirlik, writing in 1996, describes the historiography of post-Mao China as “postrevolutionary,” in that despite abandonment of the socialist revolution as a guiding paradigm, the revolution still continued to shape much of Chinese historiography.1 Applying this concept, we can similarly frame the postwar era in Japan as “postimperial,” in that despite a repudiation of 35

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empire as the source of values for society, the historical legacy of the empire still continued to shape much of the postwar debate on Japanese culture. In other words, in the years following the war, Occupation authorities undertook the formal dismantling of the empire, and yet allowed important pillars of the Japanese empire to remain in place. This confusing social and cultural upheaval continued well into the 1950s, the time in which television broadcasting made its Japanese debut. The physical devastation of war and sufferings of the people shattered the prewar imperial consensus. John Dower, in his study of Occupation Japan, writes of the kyodatsu condition, a widespread psychic collapse that followed the initial sense of relief at the end of the war.2 The physical scars of war healed rather quickly, and in less than a decade Japan’s formerly burnt-out cities hummed with activity and rebuilding again, but the mental scars took much longer to heal. Most Japanese went about their daily lives with little problem, but a national ideology capable of filling in the gaping void left by the psychic collapse of kyodatsu developed slowly. According to many contemporary observers, the war and Occupation destroyed the state-sponsored ideology of empire, but failed to provide a reasonable replacement ideology.3 Ivan Morris, writing in 1960 about the collapse of imperial ideology, remarked on the ideological vacuum that still gripped Japan and related this to the break up of kokutai, the national polity centered on the divinity of the emperor: The ideological vacuum that resulted from the break-up of the kokutai ideal is one of the most important aspects of post-war Japan, and the revival of a predominantly inward-looking, non-political, and fragmented form of nationalism has done little towards filling it. No new sense of national mission has emerged to take the place of that which since the Meiji Restoration played so important a part in sustaining the Japanese people.4 (italics mine).

This turmoil may have stemmed from two contradictory yet simultaneous forces: the collapse of the imperial ideology that underpinned Imperial Japan and the persistence of key elements of this imperial ideology years after the end of empire. Much of the imperial ideology lost its grip on the people after the war. The occupation authorities (also referred to as SCAP, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) implemented radical reforms to undo decades of imperial indoctrination. Along with the repudiation of empire came a reversal in opinion concerning ideologies and institutions that the prewar government deemed subversive of the empire.


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The once-banned Communist party emerged with heightened prestige as one of the few organizations to have actively fought the emperor system during the postwar. The throne and military, praised in the early 20th century in schoolbooks and newspapers as the source of progress and modernity, found their legitimacy under attack from a considerable portion of the Japanese populace as the institutions responsible for Japan’s plunge into a militarism. Furthermore, American culture, vilified by the imperial government during the 1930s, became the basis for a postwar democratic culture. The Occupation leadership further confused the postwar situation with changes in their policy goals. SCAP engineered the controlled disintegration of the empire in order to reduce Japan’s potential as a military and economic competitor. It severed Japan’s colonies from the nation, dismantled the military, forced the throne to renounce its divinity, and incorporated New Deal concepts such as labor reform, women’s rights, and educational reform into a constitution imposed on the Japanese. On the surface, it appeared the formal dismantling of the empire provided Japanese a clean break with the past. Yet, one of the hallmarks of the immediate postwar era became the stubborn persistence and subsequent revival of elements of the imperial ideology. The social turmoil immediately following the war only confirmed to Japanese conservatives the importance of the prewar imperial system in holding the nation together. The economy lay crumbling, and with government controls on speech mostly lifted, the repressed grievances of workers came to the surface in the form of labor unrest and leftist activism. Even a substantial portion of American leadership expressed grave concern about the instability it had created with its own policies. In fact, Occupation authorities left important sections of the prewar system intact. In order to gain his cooperation in governing occupied Japan, they did not try the emperor as a war criminal, but rather allowed him to remain in power after he renounced his divinity in a 1946 speech.5 On an official level, Emperor Hirohito sanctioned and promulgated the new postwar constitution that represented a new beginning for Japan, but which also retained the emperor as a symbol of the state and the unity of the people.6 That a prewar symbol of empire had now been transformed into a postwar symbol of democracy only added to the cultural confusion in postwar Japan and kept many Japanese from making a clean break with the past. With American relations with the Soviets deteriorating, SCAP, in the “reverse course” of 1947, moved away from dismantling the structures of empire and instead focused on rebuilding the Japanese economy and military as part of American Cold War policies. SCAP’s new policy orientation now

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emphasized the rehabilitation of prewar bureaucrats, industrialists, and politicians who had the skills to manage a complex capitalist economy. Rather than abolish the empire, SCAP begun to reconstruct its prewar apparatus. Despite the new constitution’s Article 9 renouncing war as a means of settling international disputes, Japan remained entangled in future military operations through its support for the U.S. military. While enough of the prewar imperial apparatus remained to control and regulate society, SCAP implemented just enough reform to prevent a full-scale resuscitation of the prewar imperial structure. With the end of the Occupation in April 1952, Japanese, facing this reformed but intact imperial state structure, confronted the problem of setting goals for a new, postimperial Japan. Would it reaffirm the imperial legacies of empire? Or would it embrace the reformist legacies of America’s revolution from above? With the regaining of national sovereignty, competing Japanese clashed over the future direction of the nation.

CULTURAL POLITICS AND “CHOPPED-UP NATIONALISM” IN 1950S JAPAN Japanese TV debuted during a time of intense social turmoil and cultural divisions. To many observers, the nation seemed to totter on the edge of chaos in the years immediately following the Occupation. TV helped to reunify the nation and reestablish a cultural consensus. In 1950s Japan, most political issues revolved around the definition of Japanese values.7 These debates reflected a cultural clash over which direction Japanese should take in the future: to further reform society or to reconstitute the values that constituted the prewar polity. What should the postwar national community look like? Surprisingly, underneath the rhetoric of cultural division, Japanese society in the 1950s managed to remain free of much bloodshed, saw economic growth, and appeared strikingly stable compared to other societies in transition, such as nearby Maoist China where tens of thousands died in a revolutionary upheaval of society. By 1955, Japanese politics had stabilized on the surface into what political scientist Masumi Junnosuke called the “1955 system.”8 Conservative factions tied together under the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) controlled enough of a majority of parliamentary seats to pass laws, but socialist factions, tied together under the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), controlled about a third of the Diet’s seats, just enough to block constitutional revisions. 1955 marked the symbolic turning point, as the postwar GNP surpassed the prewar peak for the first


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time.9 Political and economic developments in 1955 heralded the era in which Japanese society would attain stability on the political and economic fronts. Yet, during the 1950s, protests and confrontations rocked Japanese society. Why did people feel so insecure if Japanese politics had stabilized in its workings? A focus on the cultural politics of postwar Japan may provide one of the answers. In the context of post-imperial cultural instability, this political stalemate meant that neither cultural conservatives nor cultural reformers felt confident that their ideals were firmly established among the Japanese population. Conservatives feared a radical transformation of Japanese society, while liberals feared that the state apparatus could easily reconstitute along imperial lines. These competing fears manifested itself in the form of social turmoil. As Andrew Barshay points out, although largely forgotten now, many strikes, petition campaigns, mass protests and violent demonstrations against government policies shook the nation during the 1950s. Sōhyō (the trade union federation established in 1950), the Japan Teachers Union, intellectuals, and a large number of organizations challenged attempts by the ruling elites to change the constitution.10 Although many Japanese conservatives invoked a primordial Japanese cultural unity in their calls for cultural reform, we should not view such expressions as indicating a resurgence of Japanese prewar style imperial nationalism. Similarly, we should not interpret the liberal call for Japanese neutrality in the cold war as simple anti-Americanism. Rather, these assertions of Japanese nationalism from both conservatives and liberals stemmed from an ideological reaction to the fragmentation of Japanese society. The pitched political battles and debates became a key manifestation of the social fragmentation of 1950s Japan. Emotionally charged battles accompanied even the reintroduction of moral education in schools, with conservatives hoping to undo what they saw as the excesses of American reforms, and with the left-wing Japanese Teachers Union strongly opposed to what they saw as a prewar style government attempt to impose imperial conformity on students.11 Japanese society in the 1950s also faced other threats to internal stability in the guise of dramatic changes in national borders and in prefectural migrations. Repatriated colonialists and a newly assertive Korean minority underclass, both by-products of years of colonial rule, threatened the idea of Japan as a nation homogenous in culture. An intensified mass migration of Japanese from the villages to the cities brought people from rural and urban Japan into close proximity with each other. While migration

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in the long run helped reduce rural-urban differences, in the short run it carried the serious potential to highlight these destabilizing intra-national differences. These developments hinted at a wider problem: the postwar disruption of national culture had challenged the very foundations of Japanese identity. Popular culture in 1950s Japan, with its strange combinations of conservative imperial symbolism and decadent western iconography, reflected the prevailing social confusion. During the days of imperial expansion of the 1930s, the government portrayed the emperor, the Japanese flag, and Shinto shrines as sacred symbols of the empire to be treated with reverence. Prewar officials labeled foreign imports like socialism and western music as contrary to the empire. Yet, in the confusing cultural atmosphere of the 1950s, one poll revealed that Western-style jazz singers evidenced a high degree of support for the emperor system. And how could one explain other cultural contradictions: the rockabilly singer who performed at a Shinto shrine, or the band of leftist laborers in a May Day demonstration who ended the day by furling their red flag and watching the nationalistic film, The Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War, which glorified imperial expansion? The strange pastiche of postwar Japan even included a strip-tease kabuki and a centuriesold Nō drama performed in the postwar in the nude.12 The emperor himself, the symbol of the imperial state whom prewar Japanese had learned to obey unquestioningly, now became a symbol of postwar democracy. Confused? Millions of Japanese felt the same way. As Maruyama Masao noted, the old nationalism of empire did not die out, “It would be more precise to say that it had vanished from the political surface only to be inlaid at the social base in an atomized form.”13 One fascinating aspect of post-war Japan, according to Maruyama, was the “chopping up” (komagiri) of national symbolism, a fragmentation of imperial ideals that saw the symbols of imperial Japan stripped of their original meaning and combined with other, contradictory cultural symbols. In this manner, individual Japanese at the grassroots level appropriated potent symbols of prewar nationalism such as the emperor, national anthem, and the flag only to recycle them as symbols for new ideologies such as democracy or socialism. Popular culture also turned out to be a source of instability and even a trigger of a cultural civil war. TV helped play a valuable role in healing these cultural differences by contributing to the spread a new national ideology that most Japanese could embrace, one based on consumerism and the image of a new “middle-class” consumerist Japanese family. To understand this development, we need to scrutinize the development of commercial media culture in postwar Japan.


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POSTWAR URBANIZATION AND CONSUMER CULTURE The spread of a mass popular culture in the postwar era helped conceal the differences that threatened the unity of the Japanese nation-state. In the postwar media culture, advertisers characterized the new middle class increasingly by lifestyle (what you owned), not occupational status (what you did for a living). To become members of this new urban-influenced middle class, Japanese simply needed to purchase electronic goods such as washing machines and televisions. When linked up with a national broadcast culture (at first radio, then television) that openly promoted consumerism, this urban commercial culture spread to the rest of the nation. It would be useful to briefly trace the postwar rise of consumerism behind all this. The rise of the middle-class white-collar “salary man” meant that a financially stable life and the possibility of buying new consumer goods were within reach for many Japanese. It is important to note that middle-class Japanese did not engage in unbridled spending on unnecessary luxury goods. To outside observers like Ezra Vogel who did fieldwork in the late 1950s in a Tokyo suburb, the frugal urban Japanese eagerly purchased consumer appliances in pursuit of the bright life of electronic goods. The salary man’s family economized where they could—for example, using handme-downs as clothing for young children—but also saving money to steadily acquire new electrical appliances like televisions and washing machines.14 Vogel brought attention to a new trend in consumption among postwar Japanese that would become very prominent. As Merry White points out, families of the 1950s and 1960s were the first “consumer” families in Japan.15 From the Japanese point of view, this “new middle class” had consumer habits that were a startling departure from prewar wartime austerity habits. This middle class would later play an important role in purchasing televisions and helping to popularize the new medium. The rapid urbanization of Japan from the 1950s through the 1960s played a major role in stimulating the growth of this mass culture. The postwar period saw the revival of cities and the remarkable transformation of the Tōkaidō Belt into a megalopolis. In 1950, one third of all Japanese resided in the major cities of the Tōkaidō Belt. Only a mere fifteen years later in 1965, one half of Japanese lived in these cities, which covered barely 2% of Japan’s total land area. Of these Tōkaidō belt cities, Tokyo, the largest and the nation’s capital, became truly prominent in the postwar as its population grew from 7.5 million to 10.3 million between 1955 and 1965, representing roughly 10% of the nation’s population.16 Alongside its dominance as the social, economic, and political center of Japan, Tokyo also turned into the electronic “virtual” center of Japan. The media agencies in

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this city produced the overwhelming majority of electronic media products such as movies, and later television programs. Serving as the setting, Tokyo functioned as “center stage” for the whole nation. Audiences observed scenes from Tokyo or representations of a modern urban lifestyle as “Tokyo” living. By the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, broadcasting had transformed Tokyo life into the template of a new Japanese lifestyle and the public face of Japan to the world. The rapid growth of a national mass popular media culture, with the lifting of most prewar government controls on speech, matched the rapid pace of urbanization. Previously developed in the cities during the 1920s, this mass culture spread to the rural areas and small cities in the postwar era through the medium of newspapers, weekly magazines, commercial radio, and later television. Especially noteworthy, popular weekly magazines appeared on the market to satisfy the hunger for popular media products. Boosted by long commutes of up to three hours per day that contributed to a huge readership, these magazines had extremely high circulation numbers. In 1959, for example, the magazine Heibon had a national yearly circulation of 1.4 million issues, while Ie no Hikari (Light of the Family), aimed at rural families, ran over 1 million, and even the intellectual journal Chuō Kōron sold 110,000 issues. So great was the popular demand for print media that in 1957, the average family consumed an average of 2.2 newspapers per day, almost two magazines per month, and 8 books per year.17 When studying television, we must not overlook the crucial role that mass weekly magazines played in spreading consumerism and a national media culture in postwar Japan. Japanese continued to read copious amounts of newspapers and magazines especially during their commutes to work or in coffee houses. Even during the TV age, weekly magazines played an influential role in postwar media culture by providing detailed gossip on the events and personalities that people saw on TV. The rise of a white-collar middle class in Japan also helped to define the character of a postwar media culture. White-collar workers, who were college-educated but without time to engage directly in politics, sparked the rise of what Kato Hidetoshi called “middle-brow culture.” According to Kato, in the immediate postwar, countless young Japanese possessed lofty dreams to change society. Their reading habits reflected this orientation toward magazines devoted to serious political and social analysis. By the mid-fifties, however, with the formation of a conservative political hegemony, many of these young people became disillusioned in the battle to transform society. The demands of work often limited their amount of reading. During the period 1950–1955, popular culture, as seen in the


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weekly magazines, lost its heady political orientation and functioned mainly to provide entertainment, with a light dose of politics, to the masses. The realities of work left young white-collar workers little time for dreaming of a new society, and the new spate of easy-reading mass magazines symbolized their slide into political passivity.18 TV culture would later easily adapt to this demand for lightweight entertainment.

POSTWAR MEDIA CULTURE: THE COMMERCIAL RADIO BOOM The revival of a mass national culture also received a huge boost through early 1950s radio, the precursor to television. Once radio became a standard household appliance in the 1950s, it served, along with the older media of newspapers, magazines, and movies, as one of the central tools in the household for information and entertainment. This ushered in the “Golden Age of Radio” in Japan. According to a 1952 NHK survey, Japanese listened to an average of 3 hours and 27 minutes of radio on weekdays and 4 hours and 27 minutes on Sundays. Many Japanese families found themselves gathered around the radio, with peak times being from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.19 Japanese thus became even more conditioned towards making broadcasting a part of their daily lives, helping to set the stage for television. The postwar era saw a shake-up in the structure of Japanese radio broadcasting, as Occupation authorities aimed to “democratize” radio to serve the needs of the people rather than the state, and oversaw radio broadcasts to do this. English lessons, entertainment programs, such as amateur singing competitions, became popular.20 More importantly, NHK no longer commanded a broadcast monopoly in the postwar but faced a hard-nosed competitor in commercial broadcasting. In one of the key breaks with statecontrolled prewar broadcasting, commercial radio broadcasting began in Japan in 1951 and provided radio audiences an alternative to NHK. Unlike NHK, which relied on subscriber fees for income, commercial broadcasting depended on revenues from advertisers, and so needed to attract the largest possible audience if they were to stay in business. Radio broadcasting after the war reflected a two-headed approach, combining the British model of public broadcasting based on the BBC with the American model of private broadcasting of commercial stations. The two approaches to broadcasting would complement each other: commercial stations would operate on the logic of capitalism free from most government restrictions on speech, while the public NHK would act as a counterweight to excess commercialism and serve the public interest. The “Three Radio Laws” of 1950 that replaced the pre-war Radio Telegraph law clearly reveal

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these mixed broadcast goals of the nation. On the one hand, NHK no longer existed as a private, non-profit entity, but rather as a new public-service corporation funded by reception fees. The Broadcast Law specified the establishment of Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) with the goal of satisfying the wishes of the people as well as elevating the level of civilization. On the other hand, in an important break with the past, the law also permitted private enterprises to operate commercial broadcast stations.21 TV would also inherit this hybrid broadcasting structure from radio. What would happen when NHK’s lofty goals of broadcasting to serve the public interest collided with the profit-driven goals of the commercial stations? Commercial stations and NHK could easily view each other as enemies. On September 1, 1951, CBC Radio “JOAR,” the first commercial station, began broadcasting, and other stations soon opened in the major cities. In a key speech to company staff, the managing director of CBC commercial broadcasting station urged his employees to take up the fight, “We are about to invade NHK Island. Press onward with conviction. You are the first shock troops of commercial broadcasting’s assault on the bastions NHK has held for twenty-five years.”22 With its heavy emphasis on entertainment and audience-friendly programs, commercial broadcasting had broken NHK’s monopoly. Now that freedom of speech was enshrined in the new constitution, radio was supposed to bloom into a new cultural space that could promote peace and democracy. Japanese listeners and advertisers eagerly took to this new cultural space and led to a postwar consumer-influenced media culture. Even NHK radio ended up promoting this media culture that mixed consumerism with democracy. The way factory girls listened to the NHK radio drama “Kimi no na wa?” (What is Your Name?), as analyzed in a case study by a farmer named Ono Tsutomu, provides a perfect example of how media culture served as a key component of a common culture for Japanese and helped to promote consumerism. In this popular radio series, which ran from 1952–1954 and was later made into a movie in 1953, a man and a woman meet on a bridge in a chance encounter during the air raid in Tokyo. They fall in love and promise to meet again at the same place at eight o’clock at night six months later. So began a romance between the two lovers, in which relatives and jealous romantic rivals conspired to keep the two apart. This radio drama attained phenomenal popularity among Japanese listeners, and the movie version also became a popular hit. From Ono’s study of this drama, one can see the growth of a common media culture that bound people together. Ono’s wife, a textile worker in the provincial city of Kiryū, noticed that the female employees would stop


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their machines to listen to the radio together, though it meant a loss of income for them, since they were paid on a piece rate basis. In another factory, young girls started work at 4 am in December in an unheated room in order to be able to listen to the drama at home in the evening. Far from accepting this story uncritically, young girls did find fault with this radio drama. Many felt the story was too long and too confusing, with too many tedious events thrown into the plot just to sensationalize the series. They also criticized the personalities of the main characters, especially Machiko, the heroine, as lacking a strong will. Yet, they were hooked on the radio drama. Ono found that rather than seeing it as a simple love story, these women interpreted the story as one resistance to the prewar-style Japanese family. This drama had become the basis of a shared culture among these factory girls. Of twenty-five women Ono surveyed, only one had not listened to Kimi no na wa. One can imagine women across the nation glued to the radio as they followed the exploits of the hero and heroine. 23 But this drama, broadcast on public radio, became more than a shared group experience: it became fodder for a thriving mass consumer culture that involved all types of mass media from print to broadcasting. First, this drama was rewritten as a best-selling book and later became a box office hit movie.24 When the movie version of the drama came out, many of these girls spent two or three day’s wages on a taxi to go to the movie theater. Showing the spread of this drama into consumer culture, fashion words from the film referring to its characters, such as “Machiko stole” (a type of scarf) and “Haruki pants,” became contemporary commodity brand names.25 Although viewers severely criticized the movie for its loopholes and implausiblities, the actress and actor of the film, Kishi Keiko and Sada Keiji, nonetheless, won much national fame. In the end, Kimi no na, which was originally broadcast over the public NHK, became part of a commercial culture of the times. The stage was set for television to make its debut in Japan. It would build upon the foundation of a postwar populace used to the idea of commercial broadcasting, and used to broadcasting as the center of home life. TV also made its debut to a public accustomed to mass popular media culture through weekly magazines, books, movies, newspapers, and of course radio. Television would quickly surpass radio as the main avenue for the spread of a national culture.

EARLY POSTWAR VISIONS OF TELEVISION The debate over TV preceded its arrival in 1953. Japanese debated the shape of the nation’s future TV system and its anticipated effects on society,

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reflecting the ambivalence over television. Would TV operate according to NHK’s vision and serve the broader interests of the nation and public? Or would it run along the vision of commercial broadcasters and attract advertisers by attracting the largest audience possible? Although TV broadcasting had begun in Britain in 1936 and in the U.S. in 1941, it did not become widespread in these nations until the war ended and normal family life resumed. Japanese television research, interrupted by the war, resumed in July 1946.26 Progress was slow as television research ranked as a low priority for a nation still recovering from the ravages of war. Yet, only seven years later, the nation’s first functional TV system, led by the staff of NHK, commenced broadcasting. The desire to spread culture to the nation—along with the desire not to be outdone by their rivals in commercial broadcasting—helped push NHK into accelerating their plans for the inauguration of TV broadcasting. The Yomiuri newspaper threw down the gauntlet to NHK with their January 1951 announcement of plans to start experimental TV broadcasts and to create a commercial broadcast network in Tokyo.27 Simon Partner describes how the idea of television as an ideological tool to help Japan become a U.S. Cold War partner served as a powerful catalyst for bringing Japanese television into reality. In a 1950 speech, Senator Karl Mundt proposed a television system for Cold War allies like Japan to visually illustrate the American way of life. Shōriki Matsutarō, former head of the Yomiuri newspaper, planned to use Mundt’s political backing and technical advice from the U.S to create a commercial television broadcasting system financed by commercial advertising28 With the upstart Shōriki throwing down a challenge, NHK and NTV raced to be the first to develop a television system and so it became a matter of which approach would gain the most popular support once television commenced. Would it be NHK’s approach centered on public networks, or would it be NTV’s (Nippon Television) approach to imitate the American commercial television system? Regardless of the answer, Japanese who had seen TV in action in the U.S. had no doubt this technology would change Japan.

VISITING AMERICA: PREVIEW OF A TELEVISION NATION In the late 1800s, Meiji-era Japanese reformers traveled abroad to Europe and to America to study the process of industrialization and what these changes portended for Japan. Much like these early Japanese travelers, postwar Japanese scholars traveled to the U.S. in order to see firsthand a working television system and to report on its potential implications for


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Japan. In 1951, Kamimura Shin’ichi, formerly the Japanese minister to the puppet state of Manchukuo and later a member of the Radio Regulatory Commission (RRC) wrote of his visit to the United States in the spring of 1950 and his encounters with American television. During his trip, made to study broadcast enterprise in the U.S., he caught a glimpse of a nation undergoing a TV-induced “revolution in social life” no less important than the one caused by the automobile. If cars sent Americans outside the home, then television would bring them back in, and make the family once again the center of social life: Due to the spread of television, lifestyles have reverted to those centered on the family. As a result, the relationships between husband and wife, and parent and child are more intimate. The other side of the coin is that the businesses that depend on people leaving the house—movie theaters, theaters, restaurants, bars, and cabarets—are in an economic slump. However, it has been good for businesses that focus on family life such as household good stores and interior design.

Kamimura observed that through television, the once absent father could now return home and become part of the family, transforming the domestic sphere: The influence of television on American family life is greater than expected. The many people who used to go out at night when cars became widespread in society now gather with their families in front of their televisions. They have returned to the past of “Home Sweet Home.” Even the husbands hurry home from work because they want to watch baseball or boxing. In this manner, various surveys have indicated an increase in closeness between parent and child. Even the number of divorces has probably decreased. You don’t see this in the statistics, but in divorce appeals, some people complain, “If we at least had a television, the family would be a little more interesting,” Interesting newspaper articles sometimes report that in the accompanying division of assets, the spouses fight over the television set.

In a more serious vein, Kamimura noted that television helped to expose the tensions between group activities and those of the individual family. He speculated that in the postwar, people would retreat to their families, and feel bothered by visits from neighbors who did not own a television set. He wrote that the housewives associations had begun to complain that neighbors thronged in the evenings to the homes with televisions,

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forcing the host families to bring out snacks and deal with the cleanup afterwards.29 Despite the fact that television would make people want to retreat to their families, Kamimura did not anticipate the atomization of society. Since families across the nation would be watching the same programs, he wrote of television as a tool that had the potential to unite a whole nation. In this way, the farmers of mountain villages, the people of the fishing towns, and the people of New York and Washington, all sit together in front of the president, look at his expression, and hear his speech. Not only can they see and listen to United Nations assembly debates, but also operas, theater, and sports. What is more, in the trivial changes in the daily lifestyle—clothing, eating, housing, raising children and cooking—the whole people become one and see and hear the same thing. For tens of millions of people to see and hear the same thing at the same time is a big thing. From the way that the people look at and think about things to their daily lifestyles, the whole country, without knowing it, is becoming one through television. Fukuzawa Yukichi said, “Morals do not enter through the ear, but enter through the eye.”30

Consider the reason for pointing out the unification of the country through television. The breakup of the imperial system meant that Japan ran the distinct possibility of losing the national unity that had been painstakingly built in the previous decades. Kamimura saw not just a lifestyle change, but also the homogenization of an entire nation through television. His reference to Fukuzawa Yukichi, one of the Meiji-era modernizers who traveled abroad and later promoted the adoption of Western ways, shows his understanding that television had the potential to change Japanese civilization. Television, being a visual medium, could easily transmit values to the citizenry in an easy to understand format and so this time, television would help unify the nation into a modern, democratic, and rational culture, firmly allied with the U.S. Ominously, negative changes accompanied the rise of TV. This new medium easily hooked children, leading Kamimura to write, “When children watch television, they become completely engrossed in it, and also do not study; and in their heads, they only think of television heroes, and indulge only their imagination.” He accurately predicted a plague of obesity in America due to all that time spent watching television, and only halfjokingly reported that because housewives gorged themselves on candies and chocolate while watching TV, “ . . . their stomachs have become bad,


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and the numbers of people seeing the doctor have increased. This is a little in jest, but it is true that the sales of diet medicines have increased.”31 Besides recognizing TV’s effects on families, Kamimura also echoed the prewar focus on television as a device to spread culture to the masses, but warned that in America, its commercial nature led to the vulgarization of high culture. . . . [T]he level of taste of the masses is low and so television productions have become popularized, leading to criticism from the literati. I saw a television broadcast of CBS’s pride, Caesar’s theater [Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows] in which Shakespearean theater was done in modern clothes, and felt that it was too vulgar.

Yet, Kamimura also saw a glimmer of hope from American television. Critical dissatisfaction with the poor quality of television programming forced the networks to develop more shows that introduced high culture to the people: . . . [A]s for this fall broadcast, each television network is putting efforts into the classics. From Shakespeare to Turgenev’s Smoke, and beyond, broadcasts of works from playwrights like Ibsen, Chekhov, Rostand, and Pirandello are planned. There are various criticisms of this plan, but these programs will enrich the cultural lifestyle of the people.32

Like many early critics of television, Kamimura saw good culture emanating from the playwrights of Europe. His views of culture resembled those of prewar writers in its adoration of European upper class culture. Even America, the land of vulgarized popular culture, could enjoy the benefits of European culture through the wonders of television. Although his description of American TV may have overemphasized the power of the new medium and ignored other causes of social changes, such as the rising American economy and growth of suburbia, Kamimura’s critique typifies the fascination of many Japanese writers with this new technology and its supposed powers to transform society. Later, after TV broadcasting commenced in Japan, the mass media echoed Kamimura’s beliefs about television’s extraordinary influence in bringing families together, and its effect on the nation’s cultural level. The movie executive Ōzawa Yoshio also first experienced television during a stay in the United States, which he described in a 1951 article in the magazine Maru. The hotel he stayed at when visiting Hollywood

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charged $3 extra for a room with a television. Ōzawa’s experiences served as a warning of what was in store for Japanese due to the addictive power of television. From his movie industry point of view, he considered the quality of television programs to be quite awful: Television is still in development just like how movies were exactly 25 years ago. The stars were not top-class, and the techniques, acting, and stage direction were mostly undeveloped. Also, the good programs were only on Friday or Sunday from 8:00 to 9:00.

Despite finding television inferior to movies in terms of quality, this movie director found himself drawn into the world of television because the broadcasts grabbed his attention. TV became an addictive part of his daily routine. During his visit to the United States, he obsessively watched television programs, especially in sports broadcasts. The live nature of televised sports events, he observed, made him feel as if he were watching the game in person, and this heightened its excitement: It was fascinating to have a television set. At the hotel, I woke up in the morning and immediately I turned on the television. It grabbed my attention so much that I had no time to read the newspaper. When I turned on the TV during a big sports night game, the game developed right before my eyes. I felt the excitement of the spectators right by my side. This is not like the movies, where you see yesterday’s game tonight. It is not seeing a game today that happened two or three days ago. Because one is watching a game as it occurs, one feels the excitement that comes from that simultaneity.33

To writers such as Kamimura and Ōzawa, electronic America would serve as a foreshadowing of the changes to come in Japan. The constant reference to America in TV discourse revealed how Japanese envisioned the U.S. as a model electronic society. The views of people like Kamimura were only those of high-ranking bureaucrats or individual authors, but even the popular press claimed in a similar manner that in order to see what television would do to Japan, one need only look at America. The press also picked up on the idea that television would affect families for both better or worse. The Sunday Mainichi predicted on the eve of the television age in 1953 that given the American precedent, children would behave badly due to television’s need to broadcast attention-grabbing programs:


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The effect on families is a double-edged sword. The reason is that the sponsors broadcast the most attention-grabbing programs and so the children watch westerns and gangster movies on the screen. They cannot separate themselves from the front of the set, then imitate these programs when they play in front of the TV, and so they fall into lack of exercise and lack of studying.

The Sunday Mainichi also raised the specter of gender issues. Television could disrupt the gender order by distracting women from their domestic role in society. Even housewives are attracted to television, which one can only enjoy through sight and sound, and for a long time they neglect their housework. Because people are critical of television today, the company rules are to scrutinize the contents of broadcasting and so now children improve their knowledge through TV. This has created a happy family and this criticism [of television] has somehow lit a fire.34

Educated Japanese readers had an idea of what plusses and minuses to expect from television when NHK began broadcasting. On the one hand, judging from what happened in America, TV could bring the family together. On the other hand, critics recognized that television would need to be regulated. Failure to do so would mean the penetration of commercialism into the middle-class family, children glued to the tube, and neglect of household duties by domestic housewives. Broadcasters would have to be selective in their choice of programming, lest there be disruptions to the family as a unit. If TV would make Japan modern like America, then there was an ambiguous quality about this modernity. Would being modern mean warm family made dysfunctional by too much TV?

Chapter Three

Pro Wrestling and Body Slams: Early TV as a Mass Event

“Watching Rikidôzan beat up the foreigners let me vent some of my stress. The spectators, rather than just enjoying the match, were more into seeing the foreigners get cut down.” —Spectator describing his reaction to watching the pro wrestler Rikidôzan thrash American wrestlers.1

Japanese showed considerable ambivalence toward television when it made its debut in 1953. Only the richest Japanese could afford to purchase a set, and the picture quality left much to be desired. In order to establish TV as a medium, some broadcasters and elites hoped to attract these wealthy audiences with programs featuring high culture. Yet, TV achieved a popular breakthrough when crowds numbering in the thousands flocked to public TV sets to watch that most cultured of all programs—pro wrestling. The charismatic Rikidōzan proved to be the star that established television’s popularity. We can learn a lot by examining how Japanese first responded to TV when it made its debut. Two distinct intertwining visions ran through early commentaries on television. One concerned television’s raison d’être as a public service dedicated to uplifting the cultural level of the nation. The other envisioned television as a way to entertain viewers and sell them goods in the process (or, as many advertisers increasingly saw it, sell goods to viewers and entertain them in the process). Consistent with the increasing commercialization of Japanese society, the vision of television as entertainment prevailed when viewers largely ignored what civic-minded broadcasters thought was good for them and instead watched what the advertisers and commercial broadcasters figured they wanted: a daily diet of spectacles and lowest-common denominator entertainment. The early popular reaction to TV bore out this trend. 53

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THE BATTLE BETWEEN NTV VS. NHK The “arms race” between the public broadcaster NHK and the private commercial broadcaster NTV provided the social context for early Japanese TV. According to the historian Shiga Nobuo, NHK tried to block the establishment of private broadcasting and argued for the continuation of NHK’s broadcast monopoly. When NTV president Shōriki Matsutarō tried to reach some sort of principle of coexistence between public and private broadcasting, NHK gave him the brush-off, “It is wholly due to Shōriki that the time is ripe for the realization of TV, and we thank him for that. However, the ones who will do TV are NHK, and so we ask that you please back down.”2 In 1951, NHK mounted a huge campaign against NTV’s licensing by bringing in its labor union and other unions to conduct a propaganda campaign against NTV’s application for a broadcasting license. In October, they distributed posters throughout the nation that read, “TV is for public broadcasting! We are absolutely against “sellout television”!—NHK labor union”3 In the end, NTV received its license in August 1952, a few months ahead of NHK, which got its license in November. Now that both private and public stations had received their broadcast licenses, NHK and NTV traded accusations against each other in an effort to convince the public of the superiority of their system of broadcasting. The public corporation NHK became the first to commence television broadcasting on Feb 1, 1953 with a broadcast from its Tokyo station of a scene from a Kabuki play. The private company NTV, on the other hand, found its ambitious plans to broadcast before NHK derailed by production difficulties. It would not start broadcasts from Tokyo until August 1953.4 Published on the same day as the debut of television, the article “Terebi Nihon kokoroe chō” (Guide to understanding Television Japan) in the magazine Sunday Mainichi illustrated NHK’s and NTV’s competing visions. The views of one NHK programming production chief continued the prewar line of thinking about broadcasting: he proposed using television to enlighten the citizenry. He indicated that NHK would educate viewers to pursuits such as arts, cooking, and dancing. We are the face of public broadcasting and so we are stressing school broadcasts for young people’s education and educational broadcasts for housewives. Therefore, we will do daily broadcasts of practical lectures in the arts, cooking and etiquette. For example, we will explain how to wear Japanese-style clothes while showing a person actually wearing them. We will also do lectures in lesson format on topics like Japanese dancing and ballet.

Pro Wrestling and Body Slams

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NHK’s concept of educating the citizenry relied heavily on political broadcasts and news and took advantage of television’s “simulcast” ability: In our general education programs, we are aiming to spread political knowledge. We plan to broadcast live on-the-spot broadcasts from the Diet, political debates and also news. On the other hand, we will also have programs like news analysis, and weather forecasts with weather maps. As for entertainment, we plan to show live on-the-spot sports broadcasts, which have attracted the most interest on television.5

NHK envisioned television broadcasting as a tool of national enlightenment that could cultivate and refine the citizenry. This broadcasting philosophy also reflected NHK’s dependence on revenues from subscriber fees for each set purchased. Because televisions were too expensive for most Japanese, NHK needed to appeal to the wealthy classes to buy these sets and watch TV. It cast TV not just as a mere entertainment device, but also as way to spread the high arts. NHK’s broadcast lineup on its first day of TV broadcasting reflected this philosophy. Alongside the news ran programs such as Opera Talk, Children’s Hour (singing, variety show, etc.), This Week’s Star (live from Tokyo’s Hibiya Public Hall), and Japanese Comic dialogue.6 Could NHK grow a television system based merely on revenues collected from the wealthy? The problem persisted: television remained a luxury item priced out of reach of most working Japanese, limiting its development into a national broadcast medium. Even upper middle class whitecollar workers had to scrimp and save in order to buy a television. While in 1953 the average wage earner’s monthly take home pay was around ¥ 15,000 ($42), even the cheapest 14-inch domestically produced sets went for about ¥175,000 -180,000 yen ($486 ~ $500), or a little over a year’s wages. Beyond this, NHK monthly subscriber fees meant that a set owner had to fork over an extra ¥ 200 per month. Simon Partner points out that, by comparison, in the mid-1950s a modest home could be purchased for ¥200,000, only slightly more than the cost of the cheapest TV.7 The Yomiuri Shimbun of February 12 1953 illustrated the lengths to which even the wealthy had to stretch their budgets in order to afford a set: The advertising company claims in an ad that even a top class salaryman who makes 25,000 yen can buy one with monthly payments of 3 to 4 thousand yen. However, the catch is that the cost of the television is taken out of the money for movies or going to sports events. Furthermore, this ad applies to only people that don’t drink liquor.

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If the wealthy could barely afford TV, one doubts that an upper middle class white-collar worker would give up movies, sports events, and liquor in order to watch a small, flickering black and white image on a relatively unproven technology. While NHK appealed to culture in its strategy to win over the moneyed elites, NTV took on populist overtones in a different strategy aimed at the masses. After all, NTV aimed to turn a profit, which would only happen if they could deliver a huge audience to the sponsors. The February 12 1953 issue of the NTV-affiliated Yomiuri Shimbun emphasized this populist message. Although television seemed to be an exorbitant luxury item, the paper observed that in America most TV viewers were average people. Since America represented a harbinger of things to come in Japan, the working classes would clearly enjoy television in the near future. ‘TV is for the masses. Unbelievably, in America, only the upper classes do not watch television,’ said Dr. Chiba Shigetarō who just came back from America earlier this month. ‘The rich would rather go to nightclubs and watch live shows together. . . . The ones who enjoy television with their families are those without money, jewelry, or free time. Therefore, TV owners tend to be middle class to upper lower class families. If you think I am lying, go to the tenements and see for yourself. Television antennas are lined up all in a row on those rooftops.’8

NTV revealed its programming goals in response to NHK. NHK emphasized that commercial broadcasters, with their need for profit, would aim only for audiences in the major cities and neglect in the countryside. NTV rebutted this by attacking the public broadcaster’s elitism and by portraying themselves as the champion of the masses: Television is for the masses. Just like radio and newspapers, we must make every effort to widely spread television to the people. Here, the meaning of television being for the masses is that it should not be a thing only for the wealthy and a blessing for just the major cities, but at the same time must be spread to every nook and corner of the entire nation.9

NTV attacked NHK’s dependence on subscriber fees for revenue. As long as this was the situation, television would be only for the rich. Yet, could NTV get enough sponsors to be profitable? The Sunday Mainichi pointed out on the eve of television’s debut on Feb 1, 1953, “ . . . in the


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end, the major difference in the dispute between NHK and the commercial network centers around who can overcome economic problems.” NHK took a dig at commercial broadcasting in this issue of the Sunday Mainichi when it pointed out the economic difficulties commercial broadcasters would face: For example, even in America, every commercial station is suffering from debt. If a station suffers from red ink, then it will have to obey the sponsors, and naturally, vulgar programs will come out. Because of high advertising fees, it is the viewers who will be paying more for the goods in the end.

The commercial broadcasters responded to questions of profitability by pointing out American assistance and questioning NHK’s economic viability. They argued that television would bring down the cost of goods by allowing manufacturers to sell more: On the contrary! In America, there was red ink because $400,000,000 was spent in two years as preparatory research expenses. Here, we are receiving that technology lock, stock, and barrel, and so we will be profitable in two years. By comparison, NHK will run a deficit in 5 to 6 years, and their loans will only increase because of their debt! As for the advertising fee problem, we think that if manufacturers can sell lots of goods because of advertising, then it is only natural that the cost of goods will go down through mass production.10

The commercial broadcasters’ argument implied a belief in the spread of consumer culture, its benefits for the people, and the role television could play. Television would help to sell goods, which, through economies of scale, would help to drive down prices in general. Thus, the commercial broadcasting paradigm linked television and consumerism from the very beginnings of broadcasting. As TV spread to homes throughout the nation, so too did commercialism.

EARLY ENCOUNTERS WITH TELEVISION: STICKER SHOCK With its heavy emphasis on live events, early television was an extension of the public sphere, in which large outdoor crowds (or the lucky few in their homes) could enjoy events far away from where they were actually taking place. Early programs, primitive in their quality, relied on the spontaneity of the moment for entertainment. A lack of facilities made it difficult

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to produce programs domestically. Japanese television producers, despite taking a crash course in production in the U.S., knew very little about how to produce programs, so early broadcasts focused heavily on sports or simple studio programs, which only required one camera or angle.11 Viewers had little choice of programs to watch. In the first months of 1953, they were limited to NHK programming, until NTV could start broadcasting. The combined broadcast hours for both NHK and NTV ran to only about eleven hours per day. Still, viewers could watch simple, but highly entertaining programs. One of NHK’s popular programs was Gesture, a program similar to one in the U.S. in which television guest stars played a game of charades in front of the live studio camera. Other shows included the first TV drama (in which the TV cameras accidentally caught an actress changing costumes off the set) and news. Evening shows included ballet, Japanese manzai performances, and of course, sports, which dominated the early Japanese airwaves. Despite its image as a station to enrich the culture of the nation, NHK broadcast the first major televised sporting events in Japan in 1953: sumo, the national high school baseball championship, and professional baseball.12 Although broadcasting was at first limited only to Tokyo, the national popular press churned out numerous articles about this new medium giving us a glimpse into early popular reactions to TV. Many writers felt national pride in Japan running a functional television system. On the first day of TV broadcasting, the Mainichi wrote, “. . . Japan will also at last enter the ‘Television Age.’”13 Yet, some Japanese also felt doubt about TV’s viability. The TV screen images flickered bright and dark whenever they moved, and often became double images from radio waves reflected off tall buildings. So poor was the quality of early television images that one journalist wrote, “It is two weeks since the beginning of television broadcasting, and I am impatiently thinking ‘Is TV going to be like this?’”14 Commenting on TV’s high costs and impracticability, the Mainichi observed that only company presidents could afford sets for their families. Even if one could afford a set, the huge American-made televisions were suitable only for large American living rooms, and caused placement problems for the smaller Japanese homes. The television is placed wherever there is a fireplace or a sofa. In any case, in the company president’s house, there are doubts as to whether or not it is good to put a 17-inch or larger screen TV in a small Japanese room. The reason is that in order to gaze at this big TV set, if you are not at least 2~3 meters from it, the scanning line flickers, and


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the picture does not come out clearly. If the television is placed in the alcove, you have to step back quite far, and watch from the garden.15

In fact, the Mainichi pointed out other worries, like the tall iron antennas being too heavy for the roofs of Japanese homes or their being struck by thunderbolts during the frequent typhoons that hit Japan every year. Coupled with the hassles of NHK subscriber fees, the Mainichi concluded that because of television, “In the family there is much pleasure and also much pain.” The general public seemed interested in television programming, but the cost made it impossible for most to buy a set. The Mainichi wrote about a mobile television van that traveled around Japan to promote television. An estimated 20,000 people viewed singing and sumo programs via the van. Many saw TV for the first time, with reactions ranging from fascination to bewilderment: Among the spectators, half, from beginning to end, did not move. The rural people more than the urban people, children more than adults, men more than women, were the ones who did not move. Among the 20,000 people, 70% saw television for the first time. Also, at Asakusa a 30-year-old man who was bewildered by the NTV staff said, “What in the world is that? I’ve seen it before, but it’s not a movie . . .” When you see this kind of situation, there are many people who have been lost by the rallying cry of the “Television Age.’ Would Japanese feel so enthusiastic about TV that they would be willing to purchase one?

Often their interest quickly deflated when they found out from the staff about the prohibitive cost of the sets: They were the same questions everywhere. “How much does a receiver cost?” “The model you are watching now is 290,000 yen.” After that there were no more questions, not even about monthly payments. The figure of 290,000 yen echoed in the people’s heads. The spectator’s facial expressions somehow reflected the present state of Japanese television.16

As long as TV remained out of financial reach for all but the richest Japanese, it would only elicit blank stares, not an urge to buy. The Mainichi warned that

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Families can watch and fully enjoy the Waseda-Keiō baseball classic, Japan Derby, or even movies in their homes, but first they need to consider the problem of TV receivers. No matter how you say it, what is hindering the spread of television is its high cost.17

Without a doubt the future of television looked bleak. TV seemed to be nothing more than an enjoyable but costly toy to watch. Yet, in the early years, tens of thousands of working Japanese managed to watch television. How was this so?

EARLY JAPANESE TELEVISION AS A PUBLIC MASS EVENT Judging from the reactions displayed in 1953 in “Terebi Jidai,” (The Television Age), an article in the February 12, 1953 issue of the NTV-affiliated Yomiuri Shimbun, television sets seemed to sell like hotcakes in the first few weeks of broadcasting. . . . The greeting at the television shop is, “We’re completely sold out. If you want to be on our waiting list, you will be 418th in line.” When you ask when will the next televisions arrive, you are given a curt answer that they are not sure. This television shop owner will be kowtowing at the television maker’s office several hours later pleading, ‘Please deliver the next televisions you get to me.’ Of course, the television shop counter still has a display set to use for advertising. Beyond that the TV sets have disappeared without a trace. The televisions are selling like hotcakes to the masses who say that they want to buy one even though it is too expensive.

This craze for the first televisions took place despite the obstacle that the average working person found it next to impossible to afford a set. The Yomiuri hinted the simple reason for the quick sales of television sets: they made a great business investment. It was not so much families, as small businesses, that were buying up the sets. Installing a television set in front of one’s business would attract more customers. In this connection, the Yomiuri interviewed a small shopkeeper waiting in line to buy a TV: The fishmonger who will buy a television says, “That butcher chap in front of me installed a television and attracted a jostling crowd of shopping housewives. I think that it would work great wonders if I also put the great television god in front of my store.


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The Mainichi also noted in February 1953 “signs that read ‘this shop has television’ have been appearing at coffeehouses, restaurants, and beer halls.” However, customers did not linger at stores to watch television for long periods of time: According to the shop owners, they have not made too much of the customer-drawing powers of television. Rather, they worry that the customers will sit in their seats too long. According to some calculations, television’s effect is actually not that great. But contrary to expectations, there hasn’t been an increase in the number of customers who won’t leave, and so above all, the owners are relieved. In the end, TV’s effect is just that people remember the names of the shops that have television. 18

Perhaps the lack of lingering customers resulted from NHK’s monopoly on programming until NTV started operations, and thus the lack of programming options. Whatever the case, many people wanted to watch some television, but TV sets still remained out of financial reach for all but the richest Japanese. The great bulk of Japanese could not afford a TV to watch in the privacy of the home as they heard was done in America. As a consequence, early television viewing took the form of gaitō terebi (plaza televisions)—communal viewing in public places such as restaurants, train stations, and barbershops. Contrary to some of today’s criticism of television as a medium that saps community spirit and turns the nation into a series of individuals glued to their individual sets, in many parts of the postwar world, early TV viewing was at first a mass communal activity. Due to the cost of television sets, huge crowds would gather around public sets at train stations, department stores, coffeehouses, or even temples to watch popular programs. Even in the television superpower America, in October 1947, only 55 percent of the 7,514 television receivers in Chicago were in private homes. The rest were in bars and grills and in other public places.19 NHK and NTV pursued different strategies through gaitō terebi. NHK, dependent collecting subscriptions from the TV set owners, installed TVs mainly in hospital waiting rooms and ward offices in an effort to convince potential buyers to purchase a set. Yamanaka Josaku, who headed NHK’s gaitō terebi project, suggested NHK’s strategy in a 2003 interview: “We wanted people to get the feel of having a real TV set in the hope they would buy one for their home.”20 NTV employed a different strategy from that of NHK. While NHK worked on increasing the number of television sets in use, NTV focused on the number of people watching programs (thus

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increasing their attractiveness to advertisers), a strategy that succeeded in attracting vast numbers of viewers and played a key role in establishing television in Japan. While NHK broadcast more highbrow programs (with the exception of sports), NTV concentrated on attention-grabbing programs. Rather than fixate on the number of sets sold, as NHK had with its strategy of funding through viewer fees, NTV president Shōriki Matsutarō focused on delivering a huge audience to advertisers, who would then foot the bill for television production and broadcast costs. At first, he put several dozens of 21-inch and 27-inch TV sets in strategic locations of Tokyo like train stations or the front of department stores where crowds passed on their way home. “Live billboards,” as he called these public television sets installed on streets of Tokyo, primarily became a way to advertise to audiences by bringing them to the commercials.21 Given the nature of his marketing strategy, Shōriki needed programs that quickly caught the eye, not highbrow education programs or artistic performances. Sporting events like sumo, boxing, or pro baseball fit the bill, attracting crowds of people on their way home from work. The boxing world flyweight title match between Shirai Yoshio and Terry Allen drew especially huge crowds.22 Large crowds would gather around a single television set placed outdoors, with viewers craning their necks to get a better glimpse of programs aired on this new technology.

REFIGHTING THE WAR THROUGH RIKIDŌZAN’S PRO WRESTLING The broadcasts of professional wrestling in February 1954 featuring the charismatic Rikidōzan, a former sumo wrestler (and also a Korean who passed himself off as Japanese), reeled in large audiences and popularized TV. Rikidōzan teamed with the judo legend Kimura Masahiko to battle the Sharpe Brothers for the tag team championship broadcast over a three-day period. In a Japan only a few years removed from a ferocious war with America, crowds numbering in the thousands gathered around a single outdoor TV set, roaring with nationalistic approval as Rikidōzan administered a ferocious thrashing to the white wrestlers. Much like television itself, interactions between big business and transnational influences spawned pro wrestling. The initial sponsorship for Rikidōzan’s pro wrestling came from the Mainichi Shimbun. The newspaper had searched for a good sports story, but could not bring the U.S. allstar baseball team to Japan and the Mainichi’s baseball team, the Orions, had fallen out of the pennant race. The Mainichi turned to pro wrestling


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to sell papers and make money. Over 20,000 people gathered in front of the plaza TV at Shimbashi station for just one of Rikidōzan’s matches.23 “Many people, pushing shoulder to shoulder, watched the screen, and cries of ‘Wah! Wah!’ rose up,” recalled one viewer. A resident of Wakayama City, far from the capital, remembers how an electric goods shop set up a TV facing the street. “Viewers spilled out onto half the street. It was very hard to run around and avoid getting hit by cars.”24 Although television ownership rates were low, huge numbers of people in the Tokyo area managed to view the Rikidōzan/Kimura versus Sharpe Brothers matches. By November of 1953, NHK’s data showed only 13,000 registered televisions, and another 7,000 unregistered sets, for a grand total of 20,000 televisions. In terms of subscribers (and even non-subscribers), the television audience seemed miniscule. Yet, these numbers do not do justice to the massive crowds who watched the matches on gaitō terebi. NTV claimed that 23,000 people watched the set in front of Shimbashi station, 9,000 in front of Jiyūgaoka station, and 10,000 at Kawaguchi station.25 In a more conservative estimate, the Asahi Shimbun wrote in 2003 that, according to NTV’s archives, 900,000 people watched the championship series over three days.26 If we consider that Tokyo’s population at the time was 8 million people, then an overall audience equal to roughly 1 in 9 people in the Tokyo area watched each pro wrestling broadcast. The numbers indicate that, at least in Japan’s largest city, television viewing took the form of a mass public event involving a huge number of people. These broadcasts used blatant nationalist imagery of the hero Japanese and villainous Americans reminiscent of prewar propaganda to whip the crowd into a frenzy. In these staged wrestling matches, the Sharpes (who were actually Canadian) would use every dirty trick in the book to beat up Rikidōzan whenever the referee was not watching. Finally, Rikidōzan’s patience would snap at the brothers’ dirty tactics, and he would unleash a barrage of karate chops to fell the foreigners. Upon doing so, wartimeera cries of “Nippon banzai” (Long Live Japan) would ring from the massive television audience gathered in front of the plaza television. Given the huge size of the crowd, these pro wrestling broadcasts were more like mass nationalist rallies than innocent television entertainment broadcasts. NTV’s Shōriki clearly understood the nationalistic appeal of Rikidōzan. “For the Japanese masses who lost in the war, I want to show them the strength of the Japanese by beating up the Americans.”27 In the Kantō area at least, Rikidōzan’s broadcasts became a moment for the crowd to refight the war and emerge victorious via plaza televisions. In one instance, television producers worried about the spillover crowds watching plaza TV. When they went to the police to apologize, they discovered that the police

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chief also grasped the value of Rikidōzan providing a cathartic mass event for the Japanese: Although they could apologize later, they went to the police station resigned to making a written apology. Unexpectedly, no matter which police station they went to, rather than demanding a written apology for the chaos caused by pro wrestling’s popularity, the police were favorable. One police station chief said, ‘as for the pro wrestling broadcasts, it’s been a long time since the end of the war that we exalted our country. Furthermore, it has value as a national event so don’t worry about it at all. Next time, we just humbly request that you contact us early.’ The police gladly took care of crowd control.28

An overly large crowd watching the match on a plaza TV at Ueno Park created a hazard when many viewers ended up watching from the trees to get a better glimpse. To prevent an accident from occurring, an NTV employee called the ringside announcer, who then broadcast a warning for the surprised Ueno crowd that it was too dangerous to watch from the trees.29 The broadcast power of television to send images simultaneously to different spots across the nation transformed these wrestling matches into mass events. Japanese could relive the war but this time do it right and come out victorious. This phenomenon of a defeated, dispirited people refighting a war through the media could also be seen elsewhere outside of Japan. Douglas Kellner writes of a similar process in 1980s America, when the huge popularity of the movie Rambo: First Blood Part II in the 1980s allowed American audiences to refight the Vietnam War and come out winners. 30 Part of the power of pro wrestling on television came from Japanese knowing that they were part of a much larger television audience across Tokyo watching the same event. This simultaneity became the foundation for television culture’s transformation into a national culture. Pro wrestling fit well with the unique qualities of TV as a visual medium as it just could not be enjoyed in radio, especially to an audience unfamiliar with this new “sport.” The Sunday Mainichi of July 1955 attributed pro wrestling’s popularity to the ability to see and hear the spectacle on television: With radio, one can only listen, and so people who have never seen pro wrestling have no previous knowledge that it is different from sumo, and show no interest. However, television shows the lurid and exciting


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sight of the essence of pro wresting, the sound of fighting, and the moans of the athletes.31

Aramata Hiroshi writes that NTV used American-made zoom lenses to produce a clear close-up of Rikidōzan. It was like being in a front-row seat, very important because unlike sumo, the flow of the sport could only be understood through the power of the close-up.32 The action was underwhelming watched in person from a distant seat, but through television and the power of the close-up, pro wrestling became a spectacle that overwhelmed the senses and grabbed one’s attention. As a result, pro wrestling succeeded “spectacularly” and attracted staggering numbers of viewers. We can see in pro wrestling the beginnings of a common national culture that could bring people together and serve as a conversation topic. Hirono Kiyoko, a resthouse manager in the mountain village of Tajima in Fukushima prefecture, recalled how only the village chief had a TV in her town. People would finish dinner quickly on the days of pro wrestling broadcasts and fifteen to sixteen people would crowd into the village chief’s house. The men would crowd on the tatami mats while the kids would stand on the dirt floor with the horses and they would all watch the match together. The village chief would welcome the kids with potato manjū. After the broadcast finished at around eleven at night, the kids and adults would discuss the match like a big roundtable. “That move of Rikidōzan’s was amazing!” “That part was good!” Before they knew it, the discussion spilled to the next day in town or at school.33 Such was the impact of Rikidōzan’s matches that even today, many Japanese remember him for the way he beat up Americans and allowed them for a moment to feel as if they had emerged victorious from the war. Hayazaka Akira remembers: For television, pro wrestling was the savior and as an image, pro wrestling was extremely interesting, right? When I came to Tokyo, I soon saw on plaza televisions how Rikidōzan beat up the Americans, and nothing could have been more pleasant that that. We lost the war, but this time we gave it to the Americans through karate chops. (Laughs)”34

Pro wrestling broadcasts became a vital component of a larger national culture. This televised “sport” could combine with other cultural elements, which were stripped of their prewar meaning, to help create a new postwar Japanese culture. Even exotic dancers copied his moves while

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dancing on stage. Of course, we should avoid exaggerating Rikidōzan’s impact on Japanese society. Only people in the Kantō area at first could see his matches via television. When asked many years later if he saw the famous match with the Sharpe brothers, the famous pro wrestler Giant Baba remarked, “I was still in Niigata’s Sanjo City. Until I came to Tokyo, I didn’t know about it.”35 However, through the example of Rikidōzan karate chopping his way through the evil foreign wrestlers, one could see the potential for television programming to serve as a source of nationalism. Even today, this wrestler is a cultural icon that many Japanese recall fondly. Now that the audience had been attracted to commercial television, the next step was to advertise to them. Commercials began to worm their way into Japanese life through television. Station technicians botched first TV commercial, which was for Seiko watches, when they failed to load the film properly and managed to broadcast only a pulsating line of light.36 Despite technical setbacks like these, potential advertisers quickly noticed the success of television in drawing in viewers. Aramata points out that during the Rikidōzan pro wrestling broadcasts, Yamaichi Securities alone spent 400,000 yen on one day’s worth of commercials, or half the day’s total ad revenue for NTV.37

EARLY TV MANIA: SPREAD OF PLAZA TV The private sector also played a major role in making their own gaitō terebi and spreading the popularity of television. The trend of businesses using sets to draw in customers only accelerated as television gained popularity. Huge crowds would gather around public sets at department stores, coffeehouses, or even temples to watch TV programs. Even as late as 1956, television still drew in customers for businesses. One barbershop owner proclaimed: Because of television, the customers who hate being in a crowded shop are not in the least irritated when they have to wait for tens of minutes. On the contrary, during the recent first sumo tournament of the year, enthusiastic fans came to get a shave almost every day. On the days the shop was closed, they felt depressed.38

Television sets became a way for people to watch live events as a group and for savvy businesses to make money. At first, mainly the elite classes purchased televisions. When TV broadcasting had just begun in February of 1953, 70% of the sets in one shop were sold to company


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presidents for home use or for gift giving. However, the demand for sets from coffeehouses and companies steadily grew. Many of the customers for television were small businesses. In a June 1955 survey, NHK discovered that nearly half the registered television owners consisted of businesses that wanted to use television to attract customers. Of its 68,000 TV reception subscribers, 45% were businesses such as coffee shops, restaurants, and beauty salons, 35% were company owners, senior executives, artists, and professionals, and less than 1% were farmers.39 Television sometimes inadvertently decreased business. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, coffeehouses continued to use young waitresses to lure customers. With the advent of television, customers would ignore the women and watch the coffeehouse TV instead. One coffeehouse waitress complained, “Humph! That customer, he’s been sitting there for three hours, you know! I hate it,” leading the Yomiuri to notice “At the coffeehouse that placed a television set to attract customers, the girls cry over being replaced by televisions. The appeal of television is stronger than girls . . .” Coffee shop owners complained to the Yomiuri about the customers who would order a cup of coffee and nothing else: When there is a sumo tournament, it is so packed that there is no room to sit. There was even a large crowd gathered outside the window. But, customers just sit there and last through a cup of coffee for three hours.40

By mid-1955, the media reported that stores got around the problem of freeloading customers by making them part with their money to watch television. Shrewd coffeehouses charged customers an entry fee of several hundred yen, while others made customers buy at least a hundred yens worth of cakes to go along with their coffee. Beer halls and some restaurants made customers place a minimum number of orders.41 One could always drop in on the home of a neighbor who owned a TV. For many Japanese, buying a television set meant instant popularity because friends and neighbors inevitably flocked to the home of the lucky owner. An enterprising Japanese local politician in a village 60 miles from Tokyo found a way to harness the power of television as early as 1955: he bought a television set, put it in his living room, and let the general public watch it. Because the shops in the area still did not sell television sets, crowds flocked to his place to watch TV programs, and as one could have predicted, he won the election. Unfortunately for him, viewers watching sumo, baseball, and pro wrestling broadcasts continued to gather in his living room even after the election. Such was the price one had to pay for political power.42

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Radio shop owners also gained popularity because they could watch the sets they were supposed to sell. One person told the Yomiuri about how he saw his first television as a child in the early 1950s: The teacher, whose family ran a radio shop, told us, “Our house just got a television, so come over to watch it. Sumo is on, you know.” On the way home, I spoke to an upperclassman student, who was the neighborhood bully, and immediately he took several underclassmen including me to the teacher’s home six kilometers (4 miles) away. When I returned home after watching television, the day had grown late. And then just as predicted, my father scolded me. I said, “I went to the teacher’s house, and we all saw television! We all went to watch the sumo wrestlers!” The excitement of watching television for the first time won out over the fear of a scolding.

Rather than meting out punishment, the father, who sometimes worked at a local sumo ring, also fell for the charms of television. . . . My father, who worked as a yobidashi (caller in the sumo ring), said, “Really? Well, tomorrow, let’s go with Daddy.” Riding on the back of my father’s bicycle, the two of us went to see it. After coming home, my mother also scolded us but said “Never mind.” My father said, “It was fun!” Like father, like son.

There were others who felt wary of TV. A housewife recalled to the Yomiuri that when she was a child in 1955, her father refused to buy the family a television. When told by the appliance store salesman “television is interesting,” her father replied, “I won’t buy it because it is interesting.” In other words, the father did not want the children hooked on TV. She continues: My Dad would buy anything for us—even weekly magazines, comics, or books—but television was a no-no. When we dared to ask our dad the reason, he answered, “Even books or comics are good because you choose them yourself.” I was young so I did not understand what he meant.43

This girl’s father seemed to have understood the potential power of television, and felt it important that his children to be able to choose their own entertainment, not just what the television station had to offer them. We should not forget the role of gender in shaping these early television audiences. Judging from pictures of these crowds, plaza television


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audiences overwhelmingly consisted of males. The Sunday Mainichi in 1955 took up this theme of gender and noted that TV allowed women and children to “attend” these sports events via television: When the matches occur in hot weather or bitter cold, or when the tickets are sold out, women and children cannot come near. The plaza televisions or the family television come alive with women and children, or people with no free time or money.44

Although more research needs to be done on this issue, we can speculate that, given the nature of the crowds at night and the social prohibitions against proper women being in the streets at night, the early plaza television audiences consisted of mostly men, and especially male workers on their way home. But for those few women who had a set at home, TV gave them access to nighttime mass public spectacles like pro wrestling. Despite its astronomical cost, television exerted a powerful appeal over Japanese viewers, and the actual size of the Japanese audience in the major cities dwarfed the number of sets in use. The nature of television viewing had undergone a paradigm shift: rather than focusing on increasing the number of TV sets, broadcasters focused on attracting audiences. Television broadcasters managed to overcome the hurdle of expenses by relying on of sponsors willing to subsidize the cost of broadcasting in exchange for the right to advertise to the audience. Consequently, stations needed to attract huge audiences in order to keep advertisers happy. Television broadcasts thus took on the flavor of entertaining mass events that could appeal to wide an audience as possible. In the democratic postwar age, Japanese gathered in the thousands to watch Rikidōzan’s pro wrestling matches. Was television truly demonstrating its potential for enlightening the masses and spreading culture? This early period of mass viewing did not last long. The more television prices fell, the more families bought sets for their own personal viewing, resulting in a shift of the paradigm of television viewing back to individuals in their homes. How would families and individual Japanese interact with this new media technology once it had become an everyday household appliance?

Chapter Four

Transforming the Nation: TV Takes Root in Japan (1957–1963)

A helicopter pilot, speaking at a time in 1957 when 15.2% of households owned a television, observed the following about changes in the physical landscape of Tokyo: Looking from the sky, it is utterly breathtaking how television has spread to every home in Tokyo! Now, the antennae are sticking up all over the place. At this rate, Tokyo will be completely carpeted with TV antennae by the middle of this year.1

With this pilot’s words in mind, the Tokyo Tower, a television transmission tower built in the late 1950s, fittingly became the symbol of a new Tokyo. By then, the falling prices of television sets, along with a rising economy, meant that the urban Japanese middle-class could purchase televisions, increasing their numbers across the nation. Television ranked along with refrigerators and electric washing machines as the “three sacred treasures” of electrical appliances that urban Japanese sought for a modern lifestyle.2 With major metropolitan areas at the center, television began to spread outwards and in a little over the next ten years, from 1953 to 1963. By the mid 1960s, nearly 3 in 4 Japanese households had purchased a TV set. This growth in sales is more amazing when one considers that it did not take off until 1957, first in the major urban centers, then spreading to the provincial cities, and finally reaching the countryside with its villages and rural hamlets. The increased purchase of televisions had a significant effect on Japanese families. Lured by easy access to entertainment via television, family members began to gather around their sets in the early evening. Before long, TV had become one of the central avenues of family interaction: a focus for family gatherings, and means to popularize the recent postwar 71

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ideal of nuclear family as the model for Japanese to emulate. While some families used television as a way to promote conversations, other families watched in silence, physically close in the same room, but emotionally distant. The growth of television also had implications for women, as they became among the nation’s heaviest users of the new medium.

SKYROCKETING GROWTH OF TELEVISION SALES ACROSS JAPAN Because of the astronomical cost of television sets and the limited range of broadcasting to the Tokyo area, a mere 866 parties signed up for television subscriptions when NHK first began broadcasting in 1953. Television made fairly slow progress in establishing itself in the nation. By March of 1954, the number of subscribers had grown to 17,000—impressive numbers but still a small fraction of the overall population. By December 1956, more than three years after the start of broadcasting, NHK could boast 400,000 TV contracts, or about 2.3% of all households. By contrast, in the United States, where television broadcasting had a longer history, television had become a truly national medium. In 1957 there were 38.9 million television receivers, representing 78.6% of all households. 3 Only in the late 1950s, TV finally began its transformation into a national medium. The booming economy and the falling price of sets due to production line methods meant that middle-class and even working-class families could afford to purchase a television for home use. A domestic-made 14-inch set, which cost a whopping ¥175,000–180,000 ($500) in 1953, cost only ¥60,000 ($167) by 1958, a little under three months of income for the average Japanese worker. By 1963, TV sets were even more affordable when the price of a black and white set cost only one month’s average income. Rising incomes, the use of installment plans, and a desire to match the purchases of neighbors and to “keep up with the Tanakas” sparked television ownership.4 The number of televisions began to reach a critical mass in most urban areas between 1957 and 1962. In 1957, only 7.4% of city households, and over 10% of households in the major cities of Tokyo and Osaka owned televisions. By 1960, for the first time, over half of households in Osaka city possessed a television (52.1%), with Tokyo (42.3%) and Nagoya (40.9%) not far behind.5 One could say that TV took root in urban Japan by 1960. Table 1 shows the spread of television in areas that the government classified as cities. During this TV boom period of the late 1950s, television usage also spread from the major urban centers to provincial cities. Before long most

Transforming the Nation

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Table 1. Spread of Television in Japan (% of Households with a Television)6—by City 1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

Whole nation

2.3

5.1

11.0

23.1

33.2

49.5

64.8

All Cities

3.5

7.4

15.4

30.6

39.6

55.5

69.6

Tokyo

5.7

10.3

19.3

35.7

42.3

58.0

71.9

Osaka

5.2

11.5

24.2

44.7

52.1

66.6

77.3

Nagoya

3.1

7.5

14.3

28.6

40.9

59.5

76.3

Hiroshima

0.6

2.6

7.6

20.0

31.0

48.5

64.3

Kumamoto (Kyushu)

0.5

2.2

8.5

20.0

28.6

41.6

54.0

Sendai

0.6

1.3

3.1

11.5

24.7

42.9

61.7

Sapporo (Hokkaido)

1.1

3.3

9.8

25.2

34.5

52.8

68.3

Matsuyama (Shikoku)

0.2

1.7

7.0

17.1

26.7

41.7

56.6

Source: Adapted from “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan).” Hōsōgaku kenkyû (Studies of Broadcasting) 8 (1964).

Japanese cities could receive television signals because of the transmission towers and relay stations being built across the country. By 1956, major urban areas, from Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido to Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyushu lay within range of a TV station. In 1957, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued broadcast licenses in large numbers to prospective stations throughout the nation, and most of the major provincial urban areas soon fell under the nationwide television umbrella, achieving complete national coverage through relay stations by 1958.7 The statistics on the growth of television clearly reveal the nationwide spread of TV. Beginning in 1958, the number of TV sets in Japan (or, cynically speaking, those sets the owners officially reported to NHK) literally doubled with every passing year. There were a million televisions in Japan by May 1958, which doubled to two million by April of 1959, during the nationwide live broadcast of the Crown Prince’s wedding to a commoner. By December 1961, a little under a half of all households in the nation (49.5%) owned a television set, marking an important milestone. By the end of 1962, nearly 10 years after the start of TV broadcasting, 64.8% of households had a TV.9

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Table 2. Spread of Television in Japan (% of Households with a Television)8—by Prefecture or Metropolitan District Nation

Tokyo Metro.

Kanagawa Saitama Pref. Pref.

Osaka Hokkaido Kagoshima Metro. Pref. Pref.

1957

5.1

15.2

9.6

5.4

13.5

2.1

0.6

1958

11.0

26.8

21.5

11.9

28.1

6.2

1.6

1959

23.1

44.2

43.5

28.7

50.3

17.2

4.6

1960

33.2

43.2

52.0

43.8

54.3

27.2

9.3

1961

49.5

54.6

70.9

68.2

68.6

43.9

17.4

1962

64.8

65.8

84.4

86.3

79.7

61.1

27.3

Source: “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan).” Hōsōgaku kenkyû (Studies of Broadcasting) 8 (1964).

On the national periphery, in relatively rural places like Kagoshima toward the southern end of the Japanese archipelago, which had a lower standard of living and lack of electricity, televisions still had not taken root by 1962, and only 27.3% of homes owned a television. On the other hand, Japan’s white-collar suburbs were saturated with televisions. Saitama prefecture, with its numerous bedroom communities of white-collar workers who commuted to Tokyo, topped the nation in 1962, with 86.3% of homes possessing a TV, and some individual communities within the prefecture having television ownership rates exceeding 90%. In the Osaka metropolitan area, almost 8 out of every 10 homes had a television. Tokyo, probably due to the influx of poorer newcomers from other parts of the nation, was close to the national average at 65.8%.10 Thus, TV first took root in the urban areas, and took a little more time to become established in rural parts of Japan. Table 2 illustrates the difference in television rates between center and periphery. By December of 1963, nearly three out of every four households (73.4%) in Japan had a TV set, for a total of 15 million sets nationwide. In global terms, Japan had become the country with the second largest number of television sets, second only to the United States, and ahead of West Germany, France, and even the United Kingdom.11 If having many televisions was a sign of modernity, then Japan had truly emerged into a new era. By the early 1960s, television had taken root in society and been transformed from a novel gadget into a highly desired household appliance that appeared in homes nationwide. An economic boom worked hand in hand


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with TV to create a consumerist Japan. In 1960, the Anpo demonstrations, which will be covered in a later chapter, plunged Japan into a political crisis that raised the specter of violent clashes. Prime Minister Kishi had to step down to take responsibility for his high-handed handling of the Anpo issue, and Prime Minister Ikeda, having learned the lesson from Kishi’s downfall, worked with bureaucrats and big business to focus government policies on economic prosperity through his “income doubling plan.” The government had political objectives: rapid economic growth would foster political stability and strengthen the ruling party’s grip on power. Japan underwent a period of incredible “high speed growth” from the 1960s to the early 1970s. With rising affluence, many Japanese began to worry less about politics and more building an affluent life for themselves. As incomes rose beyond the government’s wildest expectations, those who might have dissented from government policies were co-opted into a life centered on “my home” (mai hōmmu) of private pleasures and consumerism. Laura Hein calls attention to the government’s role in creating this culture of consumerism. For decades, the government had exhorted its citizens to practice economy and thrift, but with the income-doubling plan, the government had reversed course and officially sanctioned consumer spending.12 The propagation of a consumer ideology helped establish a sense of normalcy in Japanese lives. An evening in front of the TV set and its exposure to commercialism was becoming part of Japanese daily life. An important cause for TV’s popularity could have been the general lack of leisure facilities in a nation now oriented toward economic growth. A Japanese professor told David Riesman in 1961 that one of the reasons for the greater importance of television in Japanese daily life than in American daily life was the lack of leisure alternatives: There is less to do in Japan; in our leisure time, people here either do nothing—that is, take a nap—or watch television, or do other things inside the house. There are fewer places to go, because of the population density. In the United States, people go to the beach or to the movies.13

Television clearly began to replace radio as the family medium and became a habitual part of the life by the 1960s. A 1965 NHK survey showed that Japan led the world in television watching. Japanese viewed three hours of television a day, even more than the second-place Americans who watched only 2 hours and six minutes a day, and much more than the French, who watched only an hour and a half a day.14 TV viewing as a daily activity was surpassed only by sleep (average of eight hours) and labor (average of almost eight hours). By contrast, Japanese devoted only

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one hour a day to reading.15 These figures need to be taken with a grain of salt because people’s lives were far more diverse than the survey indicated. Millions of Japanese still spent their evenings at the workplace, at restaurants, or at bars. Many young Japanese still met with their friends for a night on the town. Students still eagerly devoured intellectual journals at the nearest bookstore. Yet, these statistics do, at the minimum, reveal that TV was no longer just a novelty gadget, but rather had become a significant part of everyday life.

“NO NEED TO BOTHER WITH THINKING”: EXPLAINING TO TV TO HOUSEWIVES The more families that bought televisions, the more the act of viewing changed from a mass outdoor public event to a private activity conducted in the comfort of one’s home. A TV buying guide for housewives in the November 25, 1956 issue of the weekly magazine Shūkan Asahi recorded this shift in the paradigm of television viewing. From this guide, we can see how Japanese learned to enjoy this new medium. Even more importantly, we can see the feminization of television, as women became the heaviest users of TV in Japan. The question was no longer if television would come to one’s area. Rather, as the Shūkan Asahi put it, “[b]ecause television coverage has developed this much, one can catch a station’s signal anywhere and so it is only human that everyone would want to buy a television. The question is ‘when is the time to buy a television?’” As household managers, housewives were still putting off their purchases of television in 1957, believing that the price of sets could go down further. Television manufacturers told the Shūkan Asahi that “We think that the price will not get any lower than this” to make these women stop waiting for the price to fall and start purchasing television sets. One other reason for their hesitation to but a TV was that sets were so fragile. The Shūkan Asahi recommended that the buyers ask if a service guarantee came with their TV sets, since they usually broke down twice a year, which on average cost families an extra 200 yen a month.16 Because many housewives felt so unfamiliar with television, the Shūkan Asahi article needed to inform them of its pros and cons. In explaining how to watch television, it acknowledged that this did not require much brainpower. The way to enjoy TV is through receiving it, and so you just turn on the television switch, and idly pass the time gazing. A feature of receiving enjoyment is that there is no need to bother with thinking. Activities like


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reading a book are a pain because you have to be involved. But there is a fear that television may create passive people. In Britain, the homes that have television antennae are those of non-intellectuals, while the homes that do not have antennae are those of intellectuals.

The Shūkan Asahi cast television as an essentially passive medium that offered programs requiring no intellectual activity on the part of the viewer. It was important to realize that television could be both good and bad, depending on how it was used or misused. First of all, too much TV could destroy one’s health: You must sit still to enjoy television just like you do for the movies. It is said that Americans sit in front of the television for an average of three hours during each weekday. If one has insufficient natural sports or outdoor recreation, and looks at the more or less flickering screen for a long time, then the eyes will also become bad. In other words, TV is not very good from a health standpoint.

Aside from the risk of turning into what we today would call “couch potatoes,” one’s children might also be affected by the mindless nature of television: We often hear that people are troubled because the kids don’t study or begin to stay up late. The programs are generally vulgar (teizoku). Whether it is low-class dramas (zokuakuna dorama), sword-fighting shows or crime shows, television, unlike the movies, outright enters the family living room, and so it is fitting to say that television is a poison for youth (seishōnen o doku suru koto wa sōtōna mono ga aru).

On that account, concerns had already cropped up about television being a tool of vulgarity that would change Japan’s children. On the plus side, television could also be a boon for the education as a teaching aid for youth. However, it does not have to be repeated that television also has constructive aspects. The so-called viewer education programs are representative of this. No matter how much an instructor enthusiastically explains to his students, he cannot make them understand the topic like having the students directly watch television.

The key to successful education lay in television’s potential to transmit vast amounts of information to the viewer.

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? It is also effective for the absorption of knowledge. In today’s Japan, the amount of information broadcast in one day of television exceeds that of three hundred pages of print, and corresponds with that of a general magazine. If you choose programs based on this idea, the yield of knowledge will be enormous.

For television to reach its educational potential, people would have to choose educational or cultural programs that were good for their intellects. The Shūkan Asahi mirrored NHK’s argument that TV should enable the mass spread of high culture to Japanese. Its concept of high culture was western culture, as exemplified by American TV, where the magazine alleged that 1 in 4 viewers watched a broadcast of Shakespeare’s Richard III (Interesting that Shakespeare’s peers considered him vulgar). Attendance at Shakespeare plays supposedly boomed, and the number of people reading Shakespeare increased. Although one may doubt the existence of a TVinduced Shakespeare boom, the main point is that a Japanese magazine perceived this to be the case and argued that TV could cultivate viewers by exposing them to western culture. TV also had high educational potential because it could spread the benefits of urban culture to rural parts of the nation. It is important to keep in context that during the 1950s, a gaping cultural divide still separated rural and urban Japan. Arguing that, “television is also effective for the spread of culture,” the Shūkan Asahi announced that there were plans to provide communal televisions to sixty-three community centers of farm and fishing villages. “TV will give urban culture and urban-oriented entertainment to country people. At the same time, once a week, there will be broadcasts of special programs for the farming and fishing villages.” The Shūkan Asahi’s concept of TV as a tool of culture rang throughout the Japanese press. Writing in Chijō magazine in 1958, the journalist Asano Shōichirō wrote about the rapid spread of televisions: “If the number of television sets is a barometer of a country’s culture, then there is a chance that impoverished Japan will become a cultured country.”17 In this manner, many Japanese placed high hopes in TV as an instrument of culture and enlightenment.

MEDIA REPORTS ON TV AND THE FAMILY The master of the home, whatever the case may be, does not like to come home right after work. He has a habit of floating about the town, entering a drinking establishment, and placing an order. His family is too familiar, and too peaceful, so it probably lacks novelty.


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Television at long last brings novelty into that kind of household. Due to his wife’s complaining, the master does not come home, but when there are sports broadcasts and westerns, the master holds his tongue and comes home early. For the housewife, this is the function of television, which truly creates good feelings. Television brings brightness into the Japanese family.18 Sunday Mainichi (28 February 1960), 33.

Writers such as this one in the Sunday Mainichi quickly grasped that televisions were transforming human relations both inside and outside the household. Some wrote about the industrial uses of television, as in making a fully automated hydroelectric plant, or in helping medical students watch operations via television.19 But television’s supposed effects inside the white-collar westernized and urbanized household attracted much of the attention of the popular press. The media portrayed television as a Janus-faced influence: bringing families together to enjoy the same program in the evening, but also disrupting domestic peace by bringing unwanted influences to women and children. Since the nuclear family of a working father, housewife-manager mother, and children was increasingly becoming the national ideal for Japan, television was both reassuring and threatening. Such concerns about family and TV also surfaced outside of Japan of course. Lynn Spigel, in her seminal study of TV in postwar America, demonstrates that Americans also had an ambivalent view of TV and the family. The media wrote of how TV would bring the family together, but also disrupt traditional patterns of family life. She writes of the importance of putting the spread of television in the family context. “If America’s response to television was highly contradictory, this should be seen in relation to tensions within the culture at large. . . . If television was believed to cause childhood maladies, might this not be in part symptomatic of the country’s larger concerns about problem children and juvenile delinquents?”20 The importance of Spigel’s work is that she locates the debate over television within the context of socio-historical changes in American society. By taking a similar approach, we can begin to understand the range of reactions to the new medium in Japan. We first need to locate reactions to Japanese television in the historical context of state-induced changes in the postwar family ideal. Merry White, in her study of Japanese families, points out that although families in Japan are, and always have been, characterized by a remarkable diversity of forms and practices, Japanese governments beginning in the late 19th century have attempted to use laws to promote a family ideal for the nation. Meiji reformers promoted the hierarchical samurai ideal of a stem family as most

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suitable for a modern nation-state. This ideal household consisted of an eldest son, his parents, wife, and children living in the same household. By being hierarchically organized and legally led in most cases by the authority of the oldest male, this type of family socialized Japanese to obey a national hierarchy based on the emperor as the leader of the nation.21 With the end of the war, Occupation reformers enshrined in law a different ideal of a democratic family through constitutional reform and the creation of a new civil code that ended the official power of the household head as legal representative of the family, and instead pushed for the equality of husband and wife within the family. Of course, in the context of postwar Japan, families did not necessarily accept these reforms, leading to debates over the new type of family. The ideal of equality between spouses underwent a transformation into the ideal of a gendered separation of spheres: the husband responsible for work outside the home (rather than inside the home as typical of many prewar craftsmen), and the wife responsible for maintaining the home. Families in Japan, like everywhere else in the world, took a variety of different forms, but they could still approximate the postwar ideal by acquiring a TV set and acting like the families on TV dramas by consuming the items advertised during broadcasts. In this manner, television helped legitimize a middle-class nuclear family based on consumerism. White points out that in the early 1950s, most people still belonged to families more typical of prewar families. Far from being widespread, the postwar family ideal in Japan in the 1950s was still the exception to the rule because the separation of work and family had only just begun to characterize people’s lives. Very few Japanese in the 1950s worked in large-scale corporations typical of the image of Japanese as white-collar “salarymen.”22 Television, however, helped to spread a new value system into homes throughout the nation. Marilyn Ivy points out that partly as a result of the media, Japanese came to equate the middle class with consumption. One could become a member of the middle class by purchasing the items that appeared on and were advertised in TV dramas and weekly magazines. Due to explosive economic growth in the 1960s, Japanese increasingly believed that the nation’s class distinctions were being erased, leading 90% of Japanese to think of themselves as “middle” class. Ivy also identities television as the “primary means for the codification and dissemination of this conception of the middle class as a consumption category.”23 We must set the spread of television against the backdrop of the spread of a postwar family ideal. Press reports in the 1950s and 1960s widely claimed a mutual interaction between TV and family: TV shaped families, and families shaped TV. It is important to remember that much


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of the media commentaries reported as evidence of the impact of TV on women’s roles and family relations pop sociology than actual factual reports. Therefore, these reports reveal more the commentators’ perceptions of these topics, and less about actual viewer behavior. Although the accuracy of these reports3 is debatable, one thing is certain: from the late 1950s, TV helped promote a white-collar middle-class ideal to be emulated by families throughout the nation. Even if television was not affecting families as the press claimed, the reports themselves helped to contribute to the spread of the middle-class ideal. These reports became part of a larger media culture that other commentators could invoke to justify the postwar family ideal.

EARLY TELEVISION AND WOMEN For middle-class housewives, television both reflected and contributed to the changes in their postwar social status. Magazines and newspapers published commentaries on the supposed effect of TV on women’s roles. To understand the popular fascination with housewives and television, one needs to understand the context of Japanese womanhood. It is extremely important to remember the diversity of women’s experiences in postwar Japan, and that contrary to the middle-class ideal of a stay-at-home housewife, many women worked, often out of economic necessity. However, motherhood became the dominant image of Japanese womanhood in the postwar, despite the fact that only a few elite women could afford to be full-time mothers.24 TV, as one of the new consumer appliances such as vacuum cleaners and washers that supposedly eased a wife’s burden of household chores, played an important role in reinforcing the housewife ideal. The Sunday Mainichi pointed out in a December 7, 1958 article that urban middle-class housewives were some of the heaviest users of television (an average of three hours a day in 1958). One could say that middle-class women became one of the prime consumers of TV, compared to their husbands, who spent much of their time away from home at the workplace. For Japanese housewives, television became the link between the public life of the outside and the private life of the home. Women learned their news from TV, which empowered them to become part of public life by informing them of political affairs, heightening their social concerns, and giving them a wider social outlook. Consequently, women, who in the postwar constitution had been granted the right to vote, could now act on their information through TV, with its emphasis on brief, easy to understand news. The Sunday Mainichi wrote of how TV revolutionized the lives of these homebound wives by exposing them to the wider world:

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? . . . [B]etween meals, while waiting for the husband to return home, the Eiffel Tower, Vatican City, and then the debates at the United Nations General Assembly clearly jumps before their eyes. “Seeing is believing” and about 80% of the housewives recognize that the blessing of television, which increases their knowledge, is a great revolution unprecedented in history.

Print media continued to play an important role in how women obtained information. Many women read print media such as newspapers, feminist intellectual journals like Fujin Kōron, or women’s magazines like Josei Jishin. However, one should not overlook the growing importance of television as a medium for women. Compared to men, women tended to receive most of their news through the television set. A Sunday Mainichi survey of 1958 indicated that over 40% of housewives got their news through television, while 65% of their husbands got the news through newspapers. One reason that housewives utilized TV is that it fit easily into their busy schedules. In the context of their busy daily lives, housewives had very little free time to read the newspaper, especially if they were under the surveillance of the mother-in-law. A 38-year-old housewife stated, “I want to read the newspaper from the morning, but I have to take care of my mother-in-law all day.” While TV may have empowered women by informing them of activity in the public sphere, it also reinforced their role at home by making it easier for them to function as housewives. As in prewar days, this discourse ignored the many women who were now working outside the household. Nevertheless, the press represented TV as rescuing women from the drudgery of their domestic lives. The Sunday Mainichi proclaimed: If you look for the corresponding word to the American “television child” in Japan, all things considered it is “television wives.” There is a theory that when television was invented, the ones whose lives changed most were the housewives of Japan. There is data that due to television, the power of the “television wives,” who became baseball fans during the rising pro baseball boom since last year has become huge.25

Television often influenced the relationships of mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law and mother and child. The 1957 Bungei Shunjū clamed that TV eased mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law tensions because the mother-in-law was too busy watching television to find fault with her son’s wife.26 A survey of 116 Tokyo housewives noted that the educational


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function of TV also eased the daughter-in-law’s tensions with the motherin-law by giving them a shared common culture and teaching them new lifestyles. As in the following example, TV taught both the mother-inlaw and the wife the acceptability of relaxing one’s busy housecleaning schedule. Because they watch the same home drama, there are many occasions for them to talk. There are also cases where the mother-in-law stocks up on all kinds of knowledge and begins to understand the feelings of young people. In addition, because television offers entertainment that can easily amuse, many wives say that it has become easier to take care of their mother in laws. Some say, “my mother-in-law has stopped working so much, and so it is a lifesaver.” On the other hand, there are also mother-in-laws who say “My daughter-in-law stopped working, and so I am also relaxed.” In other words, it’s not that the mother-in-law works but that the daughter-in-law silently watches, seeing no need to do useless things like sweeping one more time a freshly swept Japanese-style room. In this respect, television is probably playing a role not just in human relations, but also in the rationalization of lifestyles.27

Television especially helped to spread to the countryside new concepts of family relationships, such as that between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Compared to the urban areas, the prewar family ideal remained strong in rural Japan. Japanese rural families ran along much more patriarchal and hierarchical lines, and women played the roles of daughter-inlaws, mothers, and wives much more strictly than in the cities. Reflecting her subordinate position, the daughter-in-law had the lowest social status and was subject to the dictates of the mother-in-law. The daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law were often at odds in rural villages, a dynamic that TV helped to redefine. TV aided young wives by giving them easy access to entertainment and news. Television helped cut down on the bullying by the mother-in-law by portraying such behavior as unacceptable. As we have seen, the mother-in-law was often too absorbed in watching TV to complain about her daughter-in-law. The content of the programs themselves also introduced different family relationships to rural viewers. One observer at Kuriyama village noted in 1960, “It could be that they reflect on their situation after watching home dramas but the position of women have risen, and some people say that it is now the daughter-inlaws rather than the mother-in-law who throw their weight around.”28 We can see that the lifestyle reforms popularized through television provided

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fertile material for farmers to change their attitudes toward other family members such as the daughter-in-law. Of course, we could also interpret the wives’ watching of TV as a sign of weakness. Sugiura Minpei observed that in some areas, farm wives, unlike their husbands, did not have the social privilege of smoking and napping during breaks in the day, so they spent those breaks watching TV. But television also brought some relief for farmwives from verbal abuse from their husbands. Shimpo Mitsuru, in his study of a farm community, noted, “television has distracted some farmers from the long established evening pastime of criticizing young-wives. After television was introduced, the farmers tended to talk about the programs they watched, and the discussion of their young-wives became much less frequent.”29 We could safely say that television helped bring in new ideas concerning the position of wives in the Japanese family. Aside from being an instrument to teach new lifestyles, television represented a way to escape the tedium of being a homemaker. Tokyo University’s Newspaper Research Institute reported that young wives overwhelmingly preferred entertainment programs, but gave the good news that watching television did not cut into the time they spent on housework.30 Other than its effects on housewives, the media also portrayed television as the glue that brought the family together around the television set to watch evening programs. Judging from the discourse in the press, one can guess that there was a popular conception that urban white-collar families were often fatherless until the advent of television because dads did not return home early from work. In 1957, the Shūkan Yomiuri explained the merits of television under the sub-heading, “Even Dad comes home early.” Research showed that “television has become the center of the family. There are many more instances in which people can meet other family members, and so the family has become enjoyable. The father may come straight home after work.”31 Kato Hidetoshi, in his study on the effects of the introduction of television in provincial Kochi in 1958–1959, discovered that that in homes with televisions, 34% of husbands came home by 8 PM compared to 30% in those homes without a television. He elicited the following responses about TV and the home. ‘The family speaks to each other more,’ says the family of a bank employee. ‘We go out less,’ says a civil servant. ‘The family gets together more often,’ says a shopkeeper.32


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The media excitement over TV bringing white-collar families home rang so strongly that a miniscule difference of four percentage points in the above mentioned survey was cited as proof of TV’s power. Many Japanese also believed that TV could help subvert, as well as reinforce, the postwar Japanese family ideal depending on the time of day. In the evenings, with the husband present, television made for a happy family because everyone gathered together to watch and later discuss their favorite programs. In the daytime, when white-collar husbands were away from the home, this new technology could supposedly adversely influence the women and children alone at home and away from the watchful eye of the male household head. The Sunday Mainichi, for example, warned husbands about the way television would lure their wives into consumerism: When the husband is away from home the housewives are continuously stimulated by television commercials (about 77% also watch television in the afternoon). When they buy an electrical refrigerator, they then want an electrical vacuum, and so on. The consumer demand of women expands without limit.33

In addition, television could unknowingly contribute to undermining the postwar family ideal in the long run by pushing more women to enter the work force, blurring the ideal of gendered separation of labor within the family. Sandra Buckley writes of the gap between reality and ideals when it came to the discourse over postwar housewives. On the one hand, media like TV glorified the notion of housewives as happy consumers whose main duties were to manage the home and buy the electrical goods advertised on television in order to confirm their middle class status. On the other hand, the expense of purchasing these items and maintaining the trappings of what the media defined as a middleclass lifestyle meant that married women increasingly had to re-enter the salaried workforce.34 Television, which was supposed to reinforce women’s place in the domestic sphere, became one of the many dynamics in postwar Japan that were drawing Japanese women out of the home in the 1960s and 1970s. As the focal point for family gatherings, television solidified the nuclear family ideal as the national ideal for Japan. But the family gathered around the set also represented prime targets for Japanese advertisers. Just as viewers had to learn how to watch TV, advertisers had to learn how to best exploit the new medium.

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GROWING PAINS OF TELEVISION ADVERTISERS Television literally advertised the middle class consumer lifestyle into Japanese homes: by building their lives around television and consuming the items that appeared in advertisements and on TV dramas, all families could make themselves appear to be part of the middle class. In the early years of television in Japan, advertisers had to learn how to sell to viewers. For many companies, television commercials seemed a perfect way to sell more products: a tool to spread consumerism and a way to put a salesman in the living rooms of Japanese homes. Yet, TV broadcasting was still a largely uncharted medium. Advertisers would need to discover how to best exploit this medium through trial and error. With commercial radio having been launched only a little over a year earlier in 1951, Japanese advertisers were still struggling to grasp the art of broadcast commercials. In the early days of television, commercial broadcasters clumsily learned how to forge a national consumer culture, as seen in the pages of advertising agency magazines or in the popular press. It is important to keep in mind that even today, for all its sophisticated methods, most of what passes for market research or advertising research is far from an exact science. These writings are better treated as evidence about marketers’ perceptions and feelings than about actual consumer behavior or TV’s actual impact, and we can learn from the magazines how advertisers struggled with this new medium. From the very beginning, Dentsū, Japan’s largest advertising agency, conceived of television not so much as a medium to inform the public, but as a promising young medium to sell goods. A few months before the commencement of commercial TV broadcasting in Japan, Dentsū announced the effectiveness of television advertising on viewers. Based on the American experience, it somehow proclaimed television as an advertising medium eleven times more effective than radio because television combined the use of sound and sight, which until then had remained the province of movies. TV, argued Dentsū, had the potential to reach large audiences instantaneously. Although advertisers recognized the technological limitations of early television (as early sets often had an unstable picture, viewers found them relatively difficult to adjust, and program production involved a lot of trouble and money), they recognized nonetheless that television possessed advantages over other media that were too important to ignore. First among these was that viewers could see the product with their own eyes, and assess its uses, special qualities, and effectiveness. In other words, through television, a company could give a sales pitch to customers in the privacy of their own home. Arguing that television “monopolizes the consumer’s eyes and ears,” Dentsū claimed that:


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To the extent that the channel dial is not turned, that set hour (of broadcasting) completely monopolizes the eyes and ears of the viewer. This is a characteristic better than that of radio. While watching television, one cannot do something else.

From the very introduction of commercial television, advertisers were cognizant of theories that TV could also arouse in viewers a deep long-term desire to buy goods. Prophesying that television would become an integral part of one’s daily life, Dentsū held out a bigger reward for a sponsor willing to grind out weekly sponsorship of a program, namely a favorable brand image: Making a long-term advertising contract and using TV advertising at the same time each week during a set hour is the most ideal way to use the principle of continuity and scientific psychology. Therefore, the purpose of this advertising method is not to try to impatiently triple tomorrow’s sales, but to anticipate long-term effects. Sponsoring a program is a resource to elicit favorable opinion from the consumer. The goal that a soap company has in sponsoring a kid-oriented program is an example of anticipating long-term effects.35

Despite the circulation of advertising theories such as these, broadcasters experienced difficulty in convincing advertisers to sponsor commercial television programs. Shiga Nobuo writes that even though the early sponsors put out advertisements on television, they did not expect great results. One sponsor recalled, “At first . . . we felt like it was a kind of obligationor even a donation, and so we put out some kind of advertisement.”36 Aramata Hiroshi noted that in 1953 NTV managed to get sponsors for only two of the six hours they initially broadcast. Sponsors wanted to advertise to people relaxing in their homes, not to an individual lost among a crowd. Sponsors were convinced that TV as a medium was too stiff and formal. Radio, by contrast, had popular manzai and rakugo comedy broadcasts, which seemed to create a light-hearted mood among audiences, and which many sponsors found to be a preferable advertising environment. In order to counteract this stiff image, NTV focused on sports programs like sumo, and managed to turn a profit after only five months of operation.37 With the audience attracted to the program, the next step was to understand their psychology and find the best way to sell to them. How advertisers learned how to do this involved a rather difficult trial-and-error process. Although Dentsū realized the power of television to influence popular attitudes, they also paid close attention to the power of audiences to

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respond to these programs. The advertising agency knew that people could differ in their reactions to television, so they took great pains to study the type of people who watched it. Since mostly the rich bought television sets in 1953, commercial sponsors targeted this class of people. Dentsū claimed that television owners felt proud to own a set, so an advertiser could reap benefits merely by sponsoring a program. A sponsor did not have to worry about putting out quality programs, which were rather difficult to produce because of the lack of production facilities and capital. Despite the low quality of programs, television owners would feel gratitude towards an advertiser just for supporting television: Companies, just by sponsoring a TV program, become surrounded by favorable consumers and can gain a good impression regardless of whether people criticize the contents of the program. First, companies gain goodwill from viewers [grateful to have something on television]. Second, the feeling of trustworthiness toward a television sponsor, in turn leads to a favorable impression of one’s goods as first class goods.38

Despite the goodwill of TV watchers, Dentsū knew that there were limits to the number of commercials that viewers would tolerate. Advertisers and broadcasters feared the power of the audience to switch dials or turn off the volume control and mute a commercial. Television commercials, expensive compared to print and radio ads, became useless if the viewer did not watch them. Dentsū warned in 1953, “Just as in radio, if you miss the time in which [an advertisement] is broadcast, it is all over. Therefore, if you do not see the television ad when it is broadcast, it will be to no avail. There are occasions to see print and photos again, but there are none for television.”39 Dentsū in May 1954 reported an anecdote offered by an employee of Radio Tokyo. This radio station was preparing to commence television broadcasts in the near future under the rather confusing name, “Radio Tokyo Television,” the forerunner of TV station TBS. An incident in the company lounge brought to light the power of the viewer: That night was the Sharpe Brothers versus Rikidōzan and Kimura match and so a throng of people was in the lounge watching TV. In the middle of the exciting match, at the moment when Rikidōzan used his strength, and was about to hold down and wrench the arm of the younger Sharpe, NTV’s screen faded out and a whisky bottle appeared. This kind of intrusion happened two or three times. Suddenly, someone said, ‘All of this is so annoying!” and a young man stepped up directly


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to the television. Suddenly, he twisted the volume knob and shut off NTV’s sound. It was an incident that happened in the blink of an eye. Moreover, it was an incident that happened at the offices of Radio Tokyo’s television station, which will start broadcasting in the near future. I thought this was a big problem that cannot be overlooked. The opinions of the viewing public are scarier than the criticism of socalled intellectuals.40

Broadcasters recognized the need to take into account the audience reaction. Gauging audience preferences aside, broadcasters even lacked a clear method of measuring a program’s audience size. Audience research, which began in the mid- 1950s, was primitive by today’s standards. NHK and Dentsū merely polled viewers a few times a year, asking them for a week’s worth of information on programs watched. This rudimentary measurement continued until 1961, when mechanical aids were finally used to track a sample of viewers and their habits.41 Surprisingly, many early advertisers and sponsors did not even bother to focus on the ratings. According to Uemura Tadashi, who was a market researcher at TV station KRT beginning in 1958, “The prevailing idea was [that] programs were an art form and should not be measured by numbers. No one was listening to the market.’’42 In fact, many sponsors, conscious of their public image and the contemporary discourse on TV as a tool of culture, tried not to cater to the lowest common cultural denominator but rather wished to support low-rated “cultured” programs that they believed reflected the taste of their high-class customers. In 1958, Nippon Electric, also known as NEC, sponsored the NEC Concert Hall. Low ratings around the 5% level were not a problem, according to NEC’s business-affairs division manager: “In the long run, we want to broadcast even a few beneficial programs. We want our audience to listen to good quality, high-class music.” However, TV station KRTV did not wish to have low-rated programs in its line-up. In order to raise ratings, the panicky producers planned a performance of Beethoven’s “Pastorale” or Dvorak’s “From the New World,” which were particularly popular in Japan. Nippon Electric, however, opposed this strategy. The NEC manager argued, “That kind of popular stuff is too vulgar for our fans. Usually, we don’t like the push to raise ratings.”43 From these comments we can see a cultural snobbery on the part of the sponsors, who considered classical music performances by Beethoven and Dvorak as vulgar just because they were popular with the masses. Rather, sponsors like NEC tried to appeal to the educated elites and appear as if they were avoiding catering to the masses.

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The logic of commercialism and capitalism began to dominate broadcasting choices. Commercials, although very expensive to produce, could reach a mass audience if placed on a popular program. In an article titled, “Sanjū Ichi Nen Wa Terebi Jidai” (1956 is the Television Age), the February 26, 1956 Sunday Mainichi reported on Dentsū’s attempt to convince clients that the cost per person of advertising on television was a bargain. For example, if a commercial that cost 400,000 yen was broadcast during a drama with a 40% audience rating (high by today’s standards), this meant that 400,000 people watched that program, and so the average cost of advertising came out to only 1 yen per viewer. Compared to the cost of producing a single leaflet, one sponsor said, “In this sense, television advertising is by no means expensive.” The Sunday Mainichi also ran the following anecdote from a pharmaceutical company that testified to the power of television: The emcee only mentioned the name of our new hormone medicine once during the program. Nevertheless, 50% of the people still remembered the name of that product in a survey one month later. I was happy, and at the same time, also surprised by the power of television advertising. Anyway, I don’t know when, but I am certain that the bulk of advertising will shift from radio to television in the future. That time may come sooner than expected.

Radio, by comparison, required a year’s worth of ads before 40– 50% of people began to remember the name of the medicine. This faith in television’s power quickly caught on among advertisers, and as the Sunday Mainichi noted, companies competed to be on a rather lengthy waiting list for the limited amount of sponsorship slots available in prime time.44 As discussed above, advertisers learned how to advertise to consumers through hit-or-miss efforts. Despite the advantages of television in reaching potential customers, commercial advertisers experienced growing pains while trying to find out how to best utilize the medium. Notwithstanding the earlier warnings from Dentsū, commercial broadcasters often put too many commercials into a program, precipitating an angry reaction from popular magazines. During the 1958 Asian Games, one construction company managed to cram in three commercials in the brief one minute of the men’s 100 meter freestyle final, which was enough to generate a complaint of the “sponsor’s pushiness” in the Shūkan Asahi. Then, too, mishaps would often occur during live commercials, as when one announcer got his sponsors mixed up and said “Meiji Candies” during a


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broadcast sponsored by “Morinaga Candies.” In another instance in 1959, a fly landed on the food during a close-up shot for a live commercial for whale meat. The image of the fly landing on the food led to many viewer complaints and an irate sponsor.45 With the rising costs of commercials and sponsored programs, advertisers began to throw their weight around and demand control over television programming. They were the ones paying for these programs, and so the power of the sponsor began to affect program quality. The manager in charge of programming at one television station lamented sponsor control and micro-management of programming: We are not necessarily making works of art, but sponsors tell us that the program’s too lofty, or that their daughter thinks it’s boring. After we have completed a drama, they tell us to insert a live commercial. Any scene we cut out [to make room for a commercial] destroys the program and its quality deteriorates. . . . I’m envious of the people at NHK.”46

Many producers envied their counterparts at NHK, which did not operate according to the logic of commercialism. If commercial broadcasters and advertisers faced the pressure of pleasing their audiences, they also had the added burden of competing against NHK, which was free of immediate pressure for high ratings and had the luxury of viewer fees to make programs. In 1955, Dentsū warned in its magazine that commercial television faced a foe in NHK due to the ease of changing channels. No matter how you slice it, the clash between NTV and NHK programs is a bigger problem than the threat of radio. For example, when an interesting dramatic movie airs on NHK, it takes just seconds to change the channel from NTV. One must think about what NHK program is on at all costs.47

Not only did the commercial stations face a finicky audience and competition from each other, but they also had to worry about NHK taking away their audiences. By December of 1955, when Osaka Television (OTV), currently part of the Tokyo-based Asahi Broadcasting, began its broadcasts, viewers could choose between NHK and OTV. OTV appealed to television set owners to “turn the dial to channel 6!” from NHK’s channel 4. Until then, many people had developed a habit of watching NHK, the only station in town. Indeed, electronic stores often nailed down the fragile TV dials to NHK’s channel 4 so that they would not break from being turned too

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often. Recognizing the need to change viewer habits and preferences, and with NHK having a head start in broadcasting, OTV determined to persuade viewers to switch channels.48 Judging by ratings, viewers made their own preference known—by turning to entertainment, a strong suit of commercial TV, not education, which was NHK’s forte. In 1957, the Shūkan Yomiuri discovered that entertainment programs dominated the airwaves. During one week, 36% of NHK’s schedule was entertainment programs, with NTV at 40% and Radio Tokyo TV at 46%. Social, cultural, and informational programs made up only 20% of the schedule.49 A look at the top ten programs of the last week of January 1958 showed a disturbing trend for NHK. While three of the top ten programs were from NHK, all top ten programs, the three NHK programs included, were entertainment programs; and by official count, over half of the television programs aired at that time were of the entertainment variety. While women’s educational programs, such as cooking shows pulled in high ratings of about 20%, most educational programs languished in the 10% range.50 We can see that with the diffusion of television sets throughout the Japanese nation, the entertainment function of television began to dominate over the educational and cultural functions envisioned in the prewar and immediate postwar eras. As early as 1957, the Shūkan Yomiuri noted that in America, (the harbinger of change in Japan) television concentrated on entertainment, while radio took up the niche areas of music and culture: To begin with, television, which appeals to the eyes and ears, is crushing radio in sports broadcasts. On the other hand, due to the competition between television companies, large amounts of money are invested in entertainment programs. Radio, which only appeals to the ear, cannot put up a fight against this kind of competition. That is why radio is focusing on music and culture programs, while television is proud of its deluxe entertainment programs. In this manner, radio, characterized by culture, and television, characterized by entertainment, have, for the moment, entered into a state of “peaceful coexistence.”

Could the same happen in Japan? The Shūkan Yomiuri continued with an ominous quote from the findings of a Japanese television survey, “Radio stresses culture, while television stresses entertainment.”51 During few years of television, broadcasting—with significant exceptions such as NHK’s popular news—was gradually becoming synonymous with crowd-pleasing entertainment programs. Commercial stations would battle


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it out for ratings supremacy. With a survival of the fittest mindset behind virtually all advertising and broadcasting strategies. Because of this, advertisers eventually found it important to show programs that would entertain audiences and garner higher ratings.

THE TELEVISION-CENTERED FAMILY While statistics in this chapter indicate the extent of Japan’s love affair with TV, the Crown Prince’s wedding to a commoner in 1959 better symbolized to the people the rise of the television nation. It became fashionable to say afterwards in history books that interest in the royal wedding was so great that people rushed out to buy televisions in order to watch the live broadcast of the wedding parade in the privacy of their own home. A record number of about 15 million people watched the royal wedding on TV.52 However, one could also switch cause and effect: the presence of so many TV sets by 1959 transformed the wedding into a nationwide media event. The boom in TV purchases began in the mid-1950s years before, and by the year of the wedding the number of sets in the nation had reached a critical mass. If the wedding symbolized both the coming of age for the Crown Prince and the coming of age for television in Japan, then it also showed how television had centralized the nation on two levels. First, it worked on the individual level through the family members gathering around the home television set. Second, it did so on a national level by spreading Tokyo-based programming and events to all corners of Japan. TV, in a way, helped heal the nation after the devastating loss of the war. The more Japanese families bought their own sets, the more television viewing shifted from a public to a private activity. As televisions were becoming rooted in Japanese daily life, the earlier media predictions of television reinforcing family unity appeared to be coming true. But like the imperial culture of the prewar days, this was a surface, shallow unity. While early writings on TV praised its ability to bring families together, later writings from the late 1950s onward, when TV seemed to dominate people’s free time, criticized its tendency to isolate family members from each other. For the women, with the once-close neighborhood bonds taking on an isolated, impersonal character, television supposedly allowed housewives to imagine themselves neither as local community members nor as solitary individuals, but as part of a nation of housewives. By 1966, Takeda Taijun commented on how daytime television had been taken over by programs geared toward women. Television had turned into a virtual electronic community of housewives.

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? [T]he women who watch TV feel like friends with each other. The feelings of camaraderie have truly awakened among housewives . . . [T]heir husbands work during the afternoon, and cannot watch television! Children cannot watch television. Only housewives can watch television! That is why, cooking, or prices, or beauty exercises, they’re all programs for housewives! When I watch the programs, I feel like I am gradually becoming a housewife.53

Yet, TV could not disguise the fact that these middle-class housewives still lived increasingly isolated lives, excluded by social convention from public life. Of course, these women did not suffer complete social isolation, as they did have their housewives’ associations, friends, as well as relatives to keep them company. But to the extent that they remained in the home, they were becoming increasingly isolated in the urban environment with TV as their primary link to the outside world. TV made it easier for women to remain in their homes and live in isolation from the rest of society. As Muramatsu Go wrote in 1969: Urbanization makes humans isolated. For the women who live the middle of a concrete room in a housing complex, the television tube is becoming the biggest pipe that links them with the outside world. It is not rare for their husbands to leave the house early, and come home late at night. In that case, they feel more familiar with television tarento (celebrities) than with their husbands.54

Once her children came home from school and her husband from work, the urban housewife once again became a member of her family (assuming that her in-laws did not live with her). Housewives did notice that the family had become one ever more unified around the TV set, as the following quotes from housewives in the 1964 Asahi Shimbun indicate: “Television is bound to become always the center of enjoyment of family life, and this is sometimes quite trying to me since I prefer to read.” (Nakamura Meiko, Inba Gun, Chiba Prefecture). “Our supper usually ends at about 7:30. Then we begin to watch television programs, but the children get away from the screen when it gets 8 o’clock.” (Ito Yukie, Funabashi City)55

In 1965, Professor Satō Tomō noted that people in professions that took them away from homes after work, like editors and writers, often


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came home to watch programs on television. Baseball games on television also had the potential to make the family the foundation of national life. Television could bring families together and serve as topics of conversation to connect the members of the household: After the baseball program on the television screen is over, the family may enjoy talking together at home. This is more likely when the wife and children also like baseball. They can discuss the game they have just watched on the screen . . . 56

For some families, television dominated life after dinnertime. But this did not necessarily mean that the family spent quality time together. Families could often find that their togetherness rang hollow. A Tokyo housewife commented in 1958: Before TV, I used to talk after dinner with the children about the happenings at school, and I gave them guidance on all kinds of things. However, after we bought a television, they can only think about TV, and it became impossible to have a leisurely talk with them.

Another housewife complained that TV dominated the family because her husband was not necessarily talking to her while watching the television set: My husband often rambles on while watching television, and I have the feeling that I am talking less with him about family matters.57

Family evenings centered on two rituals: eating, and TV watching. Yet for some families, television was winning out even over the act of eating. Muramatsu Gō wrote in 1969 about the introduction of a new kind of food called “TV dinners.” “A truly a bland, unappetizing food,” he observed, they took the pleasure out of even simple acts like eating. Because of the introduction of these easy-to-make but insipid TV dinners, families were concentrating on watching television rather than eating, and so television had unfortunately taken over much of the function that family dinners used to perform: At the present time, the custom of watching while eating is gradually spreading. No, instead, we should call it the custom of eating while watching television. The existence of TV dinners is proof of this. . . . We have no statistics but isn’t this custom especially strong in Japan?

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Even the human and traditional enjoyment of gathering around the dinner table has been destroyed through the manufactured images [from the television].58

These TV dinners represented the ultimate victory of the advertisers: a new type of convenience food had been advertised into homes throughout the nation. Television did not necessarily create domestic peace between family members, but was often the cause of arguments. Kyōgoku Junichi, political science professor at Tokyo University, commented in 1966 that the television was a site of family battles, some hidden and some obvious: There are problems of people stabbing each other because of disputes over control of the television. They are usually those of parent and child. For example, the middle-aged father argues with his twentyyear-old son. There probably isn’t a channel war between husband and wife. There are two reasons for this: the first is that when the husband comes home, he becomes an absolute despot. The second is that when he comes home, he of course has no energy left over to be a despot, and meekly watches whatever the wife wants to watch and goes to bed. . . . 59

Kyōgoku noted that it was a different story when it came to sports viewing at night; the husband had to watch these broadcasts. In a similar fashion, the social psychologist Mita Munesuke cast TV as the site of domestic battles. He cited the example of a 35-year-old housewife from Iwate who wrote to the Yomiuri Shimbun in 1962 about her husband of 15 years: During our fifteen years of married life, I can only remember one time when I really felt happy. That was right after our first son was born. My husband came home from work, sat down beside me, and told me about everything that happened that day. Aside from this lone instance, he rarely opens his mouth except to say the most necessary things. The moment he comes home each night he usually switches on a favorite TV program, without paying any attention to my tastes in the matter, and entertains himself. . . . The years drag on and life is no fun at all. It’s a real bore. I keep feeling inside as though I’m lacking something, as thought there is a gaping hole in my heart.


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In his analysis of this letter, Mita argued that many white-collar workers, living a life of inauthenticity devoted only to the company, felt too much pressure at work, and so they came to seek refuge in the home. But the wife was also living an inauthentic life in trying to find happiness and security at home. The TV melodramas wives saw daily were the cause of their resentment, as they gave women ideals of a “happy family” and wedded bliss that her husband, coming home exhausted from work, could not fulfill. Mita wrote, “the more the man seeks a tranquil haven, the more his wife becomes disgruntled over his reticence.”60 Yet, watching television could be a source of great happiness for many families. One elderly man in 2003 recalled the happiness that owning a television set brought to his gravely ill and partially paralyzed mother, who died in 1960. His family wanted to keep her happy, and so they bought a 19-inch television, which cost 190,000 yen at that time. He fondly recalls how his mother reacted to the set: Whenever a program started, Mom would gaze at the TV and enjoy herself by talking and replying to the screen. A program that she especially liked was pro wrestling, which was very popular among adults at that time. . . . It was three and a half years after Mom got sick. The way television gave us pleasure is the happiest thought of my life. Even now, I can still see the time when Mom, while hitting her paralyzed left hand with her right hand, would happily watch television.61

Whether or not television drew families closer together, the more important point to keep in mind is that media reports proclaimed all this family togetherness was often centered on the television. Apparently, everyone was glued to the same screen in many families. The act of TV watching appeared to have replaced family conversation. We should ask if family members did converse with each other before the introduction of television. As one Japanese professor told David Riesman, “ . . . By watching together, two people are communicating. You will notice that couples in coffee shops don’t talk.”62 While we should question whether TV really did make members stop talking to each other, or just made the previous lack of communication more obvious, media reports gave an indication of the hollow family unity some Japanese experienced through TV. But it would be mistaken to believe that viewers passively accepted such changes in their lifestyles and families. Japanese housewives understood that television did not always

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mean a harmonious home and that it had the potential to overwhelm other meaningful family interactions. In a letter to the Asahi Shimbun in 1964, one woman dissented from the picture of a happy family enjoying a warm evening around the television: I find it very regrettable that our television receiver is kept turned on all the time during our mealtime, and thus no time is available for conversation between parents and children. The fact that communication between parents and children is largely confined to the fact of enjoying television programs together with the family appears to have formed a barrier of civilization that compels us to abandon discipline concerning the children in education at home. (Ishizuka Taeko, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo)63

As Satō Tomō noted, “some people have begun showing an attitude of resistance to the predominance of television.”64 According to Satō, because some Japanese opposed the way TV dominated the routine leisure activities of the family, they would end up doing other activities besides watching the set. Bearing out Satō’s prediction, some families did combat television by doing the obvious—banning its use: We keep away from the television screen on Saturday nights, when we carry on conversation by discussing political problems and other miscellaneous topics to make up for the whole week’s absence of talk together. (Takemura Kazuo, Kawaguchi City) 65

In the end, many families discovered that they were too busy concentrating on television to be a family. Could it be that TV had taken root too successfully in Japan and united much of the nation under television culture? As television became part of national life, so did the television industry take on a national dimension. Japanese were becoming united into a common culture centered on Tokyo-based media products. Early television broadcasting was built around mainly regional stations like Osaka’s OTV, not national broadcast networks, which did not exist at that time. Independent stations controlled early television broadcasting, giving early Japanese TV much more of a regional flavor than today. Ominously for local programming, the royal wedding in 1959 marked a year in which great strides were made toward the establishment of television networks centered on key stations in Tokyo. The necessity to operate according to economies of scale, especially when covering huge events such as the royal wedding or producing increasingly


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expensive television programs, dictated the need for local stations to band together in alliances centered on programs made in “key stations” in Tokyo.66 The government had built a microwave relay network that allowed stations to broadcast from one end of the Japanese archipelago to the other and had also begun issuing licenses to build stations in great numbers. The 1959 royal wedding spurred the establishment of JNN (Japan News Network), a national network of 16 stations with Tokyo-based KRT as the key station. NTV, with Yomiuri Giants baseball games as the main attraction, also formed their own network. These two great networks were formed to help cover the wedding specifically, and later utilized the advantages of the network system. After the royal wedding, people across the nation could watch the same event at the same time, but at the cost of local control. Local stations gradually became little more than outlets for Tokyo-produced programming. Minami Hiroshi lamented in 1959 how the spread of a national television culture was destroying local traditions and culture: The local stations tied together into the center by the networks are only broadcasting Tokyo-made culture and so the power to produce regional culture is lost. This kind of television centralization is a big minus for Japanese culture. It is desirable that the local stations hold on to the spirit of independent expansion.67

Despite such warnings from academics, the temptations of the economies of scale, namely the power to reach a national audience, meant that advertisers and stations would continue their drive toward the creation of national television networks in Japan. By 1964, with the broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics, television came to maturity as a part of everyday life. For most Japanese, the Olympics were experienced through television. In 1966, NNN (Nippon News Network) and FNN (Fuji News Network) joined their ranks, to be followed by ANN (All Nippon News Network, later known as the Asahi News Network) in 1970. Not only did television networks expand spatially, they also expanded temporally, with NTV and KRT offering all-day programming in 1960, and other broadcasters also expanding their broadcast schedules.68 Given the rise of mass consumerism, sponsors wanted to reach the widest possible market, spurring the rise of key stations providing programs to local stations across the nation. In spite of the intentions of government regulators, local stations had coalesced into national networks based on key stations in Tokyo, which now meant that broadcasters could offer national audiences to sell to national advertisers. Local culture still thrived despite these national networks.

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But, television culture, a new cultural influence from Tokyo and the major cities, contributed to the standardization of lifestyles throughout the nation. We will examine in a subsequent chapter the effects of Tokyo-based programming spilling to rural areas, but for now the formation of networks in the early 1960s enabled Japanese for the first time to take in a truly national media culture. Mita Munesuke, in his analysis of letters to the personal advice column of the 1962 Yomiuri Shimbun, wrote of how prewar imperial culture and postwar consumer culture shared some of the same values. While in prewar days, youth were exhorted to sacrifice their lives for the emperor if necessary, in the postwar the spirit of these values took the form of exhortation to youth to sacrifice their lives for status, prestige, and wealth. To Mita, the postwar set of values based on consumption felt no different from the prewar values centered on obedience to the emperor. Both continued the dominance of values he believed unessential to living authentically as a human being, and both sets of values alienated individual Japanese from society. Mita portrayed Japan as having a facade of affluence that hid the reality of millions of people struggling to make ends meet. Contrary to media images of a nation of middle-class consumer households, argued Mita, over half the population was still living hand to mouth. For these families, the pressure to “consume and conform” to the imagined middleclass lifestyle was a heavy burden. 69 While Mita may have exaggerated the extent of alienation among Japanese and failed to have foreseen the economic boom of the mid-1960s, he was onto something. His writings indicated an awareness in postwar Japan that TV had replaced the throne as a key source of common values that bound together the nation and families. Postwar Japanese television broadcasting performed a function similar to the prewar emperor system in promoting the integration of the family with the nation and creating a sense of national unity. Combined with the effect of many other postwar developments, such as urban migration and urbanization, political stability, economic development, and the growth of a mass consumer culture, the spread of television allowed Japanese across the nation to feel as one family, blurring regional differences and creating a national identity. Of course there were other major sources of common cultural values like companies and schools, and it would be far too simplistic to assign all postwar social change mainly to television. Television broadcasting, which did not exist prior to the war, turned into an important source of values that bound together the postwar nation. The writer Takeda Taijun spoke in 1966 of how television allowed him to speak to people across the nation:


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Usually if we suddenly went to a farm village in Yamanashi, we probably couldn’t talk to the locals. We wouldn’t know what would be good to talk about. Yet, if you conversed about, for example, whether the sumo wrestlers Kitanofuji or Fujinishiki would win or lose, you could communicate with them. For example, I can talk about how Kotozakura will probably win whenever I bet much money on the sumo match between Kitanofuji versus Kotozakura. Or I can talk about how Fujinishiki has a good face. When I do that, the other person will quickly understand me. That, in the end, is the extraordinary power of TV.

Takeda also suggested a simple test to demonstrate the power of television to create a common culture: For example, if I say Hiroshima, it quickly rings a bell, right? When I say Hiroshima, besides the dropping of the atomic bomb, you think of the baseball stadium, and the name of the pitchers and the catchers (of the Hiroshima Carp baseball team). It is an uncanny thing.70

As Okamoto Hiroshi and Fukuda Sadayoshi noticed in their 1966 Gendai tarentoroji (Modern Talentology), Japan had seen the rise of a new breed of television personalities called tarento, a Japanese reading of the word, “talent.” The tarento, a person who merely by appearing on TV on a regular basis became familiar to the viewer, dominated the world of TV media culture. This term meant more than just entertainers, because critics, announcers, or even scholars could be tarento.71 Okamoto and Fukuda argued that one of the reasons for the rise of tarento was the inability of people to adjust to their new postwar freedom to talk to anyone regardless of status, and from the corresponding ability of corporations to quickly adjust to their new freedom to communicate to anyone. Because they did not know how to use their freedom, Japanese were easily stimulated by the sight of amateurs on television, a fact exploited by the stations.72 Okamoto and Fukuda exaggerated the inability of Japanese to socialize after the war, but their argument must have applied to some Japanese in the cities who found it easier to relate to the stars on TV than with the people in their neighborhood. Perhaps the authors were describing what Mita Munesuke noticed about the postwar condition under which many Japanese found themselves living in large cities cut off from meaningful community and contact with others.73 Due to the unease that some Japanese felt while socializing with others, they fulfilled their social needs by interacting with the tarento on

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television. While many of these tarento were people of modest singing or acting skill, Okamoto and Fukuda pointed out that they had only one true talent—that is, seeming ordinary on television and thus connecting with the mass of viewers. “To put it more precisely, it is a talent that through the mass media, can charm the masses, convince us, and sometimes speak with us.”74 Interacting with tarento was in reality interacting with media companies through the image of the tarento. Millions of Japanese, cut off from their normal socializing patterns in the relatively anonymous large city, gravitated toward images of tarento broadcast from the center of the nation, Tokyo. This meant control from the center, namely the media organizations. [I]t is necessary to recall that tarento work in the mass media. The talent of the tarento is the ability to work with the mass media. People from the media organizations wield such ability. . . . We believe that the spirit of the so-called tarento is the ability to charm people, but in reality, it is the people from mass media organizations that are controlling and charming us.

By the mid-60s, these tarento not only dominated the entertainment world and the small screen, but also began to show their power as one of the focal points connecting home and nation, often in strange ways. They began to make their first inroads into politics when several tarento were elected to the Diet (Japanese parliament). Writing in the 1969 issue of Taiyō, Muramatsu Gō did not find this to be a strange development since wives watched television for an average of three and a half hours a day: “ For these housewives, after their husbands, the next men they are familiar with are television talents.” Because of their isolation and the fact that husbands were often absent from the home due to pressing work demands, it was natural for women to feel close to television tarento. Muramatsu saw television as the way to connect isolated families to public life. Public life ran through the television set, and became the one-way connector between the family and the outside: “ . . . the biggest meaning of the advance of television, to put it briefly, is that public things have entered into our private lives.”75 TV did not give viewers a complete, full-bodied understanding of the outside world. If Japanese after the war encountered what Maruyama Masao called “chopped up nationalism” (komagiri kokkashugi)—in which prewar imperial symbols such as the national anthem were fragmented and stripped of their original meaning, and could easily be combined with other contradictory cultural symbols such as jazz—then through television


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Japanese encountered “chopped up” images (komagiri no imēji) of places throughout the world, but stripped of their meaning and combined in strange ways. Muramatsu wrote: What TV has spread into the home is an image that goes beyond time and space. After a photograph of Mao Zedong, they show a penguin island in the South Pole. A pro baseball live broadcast or commercial for an electrical appliance is inserted into an ancient Greek play. . . . . . . However, the overflow of information instead makes unclear the contours of the images of the world. . . . Today, countless chopped-up images have entered [the household]. Cuba, the South Pole, the Ogasawara Islands, and even Los Angeles appear on the tube at the same time, and so they are equidistant from the television.

According to Muramatsu, instead of edifying the masses, television only confused them, and broke down the important barrier between public and private life. This was the biggest danger of television. The dignity of the individual until now is obvious, but the hidden house that protects the individual’s dignity is a house that is a place of a private life. There is a curtain that cannot be seen in between private live and public life. The tube pushes and breaks that kind of no-man’s land of the border between nations. The people watching think that they are only receiving information and knowledge from the outside world, but the convenient machine eventually sucks the individual into the middle of the masses.

Muramatsu acknowledged the arguments of the proponents of television that “You don’t have to doubt that the spread of television has given the people rich information and knowledge.” But although people could choose what they wanted to watch, Muramatsu doubted if they had the power to resist the media. Of course, the right to turn the television dial is entrusted to the individual. People have the freedom to watch or not watch. However, it is akin to the freedom to plug up one’s ears in front of the singing marine witches, the Sirens. People are weak. Television is perhaps still the only the beginning, and from now on more elaborate devices will appear one after another, and the Sirens

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? will probably sing in front of the individual. It will be a convenient and troublesome era. I wonder what will become of humankind?

In a less critical, but no less insightful comment, Kato Hidetoshi suggested in 1960 that people “think in terms of pre-television and post-television. To put it in the extreme, in the future, the pre-television lifestyle will enter the realm of the traditional . . .”76 Once Japanese were hooked up to the national TV network, they became part of a national viewing public, ranging from urban to rural Japan, and were able to watch the same national programming. What would be the ramifications of having programs developed for urban audiences spreading to the countryside?

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Figure 1. The pro wrestler Rikidōzan wrenching the head of Mike Sharpe during the epic tag-team title match of Rikidōzan and Kimura Masahiko versus the Sharpe Brothers in March 06, 1954. Pro wrestling reeled in large audiences and popularized early television. (Photo courtesy of The Mainichi Newspapers)

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Figure 2. A crowd watching gaito terebi (plaza television) in 1954. With the price of sets being so expensive, early TV watching took the form of huge crowds gathered around a single public television set. (Photo courtesy of The Mainichi Newspapers)

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Figure 3. At first an urban phenomenon, television quickly spread to the countryside by the early 1960s. This photograph from April 1960 issue of Chōsa Jōhō Magazine is titled “Going to a New Area” (“Shin Area wo Iku”) and shows a crowd of people in rural Itō Peninsula watching a television program. (Photo courtesy of TBS Chōsa Jōhō)

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Figure 4. The social critic Ōya Sōichi argued in 1957 that television was turning Japan into a “nation of a hundred million idiots.” He is posing for an interview in this June 2, 1956 photo. (Photo courtesy of Yomiuri Shimbun)

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Figure 5. The Royal Wedding of 1960 was Japan’s first media event, watched by millions across the nation on television. The Crown Prince and Princess Michiko are in a horse-drawn carriage during the wedding parade procession. (Photo courtesy of The Mainichi Newspapers)

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Figure 6. Televised images of the Anpo protest of 1960 brought politics into living rooms throughout Japan. Thousands of demonstrators with black umbrellas surrounded the Diet building on June 16, the morning after the death of student Kamba Michiko during a clash with police the previous night. (Photo courtesy of The Mainichi Newspapers)

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Figure 7. Most Japanese watched the 1964 Tokyo Olympics unfold in front of their eyes via the television. This event showed the power of television to unite the nation. In this photo, the women’s volleyball team, popularly known as the “Witches of the East,” celebrates its gold medal victory by tossing their coach into the air (Photo courtesy of Yomiuri Shimbun)

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Figure 8. Televised images of fighting between student radicals and riot police at Tokyo University’s Yasuda Auditorium gripped much of the nation in January 1969. In this photo, the riot police are shooting water hoses on the demonstrators who have occupied the building (Photo courtesy of Yomiuri Shimbun)

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Figure 9. In February 1972, much of Japan was glued to their television sets watching the real-life Asama-sansō hostage drama unfold on screen. Radicals of the Red Army holed up in the Asama-sansō inn and took the wife of the lodge caretaker as a hostage. On the final day of the crisis, when police stormed the inn, stations broadcast over nine hours of commercial-free coverage. (Photo courtesy of The Mainichi Newspapers)

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Figure 10. The visit of Robert Fuller, the star of the TV western Laramie, symbolized the popularity of American television programs in the early 1960s. Thousands of fans swarmed to see him live in person during his 1961 trip to Japan. In this photo, Robert Fuller is visiting children at an orphanage. Courtesy of The Asahi Shimbun, September 22th, 1961.

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Figure 11. The Destroyer a.k.a. Dick Beyer, one of Rikidōzan’s masked opponents from America in the 1960s, underwent a transformation from an evil villain into a cuddly television personality beloved by many Japanese. Photo courtesy of Baseball Magazine.

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‘

Figure 12. In November of 1973, the oil crisis helped to spark a toilet paper crisis. All across the nation, customers engaged in panic buying of toilet paper, as seen in this photo in which the store limited purchases to one roll per customer. Television helped spread rumors of a paper shortage, showing the power of this medium to confuse as well as enlighten (Photo courtesy of Yomiuri Shimbun)

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Figure 13. Kikaida and the actor Ban Daisuke, who played his alter-ego, Jiro (center, waving) at Shirokiya department store in Honolulu, Hawai’i for a Kikaida promotion in October, 2005. Broadcasts of Kikaida in 1974 showed the potential for Japanese television programs, with its references to Japanese culture largely intact, to make inroads in overseas markets. Photos courtesy of Generation Kikaida, JN Productions, Inc.

Part III

Japanese Interactions with Television

Chapter Five

Television Spreads to the Countryside

TELEVISION MEDIA CULTURE AS NATIONAL CULTURE Tokyo sits on the southern part of the Kantō Plain, a huge swath of lowland overlooking Tokyo Bay. The Tokyo metropolitan area itself, one of the busiest and most crowded in the world, represents home to roughly one in four Japanese. Aside from being the home of the Japanese emperor and the headquarters of the national government, it is also the center of Japan’s business, culture, and education. Of course, when we look at Tokyo’s size and power, we should keep in mind the diversity of the Japanese people that is often masked by the nation’s seeming homogeneity. Other large metropolises such as Osaka, Yokohama, Fukuoka, and Nagoya also wield much economic and cultural influence in Japan. This city’s significance lies in more than just its status as Japan’s political and economic center. All across the nation, in places hundreds of miles from Tokyo such as subtropical Okinawa or sub-arctic northern Hokkaido, Japanese come home from work or school each day and gather around the family television to watch programs produced in this mammoth metropolis. By the early 1960s, this Tokyo-centric television culture, after taking root in the cities, had begun its spread to the countryside. One team of researchers, writing in 1961, assessed the influence of TV on children and adults, as follows. The songs that children on outings sing on the bus are all television theme songs [of Japanese costumed crime fighters] like “Gekkō Kamen” (Moonlight Mask) and “Maboroshi Tantei” (The Phantom Detective). Even when they go out to buy candy, instead of saying, “could I have some Morinaga chocolate” like the kids of the past, they specifically ask for a brand name, as in “Could I have some Morinaga

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Paul Chocolates?” They hum the commercial jingles when they buy them. The adults are more forgetful, cannot remember the brand name, and they say, “I want the stuff I saw on television.” I have heard of humorous incidents that as a desperation measure, adults will sing the commercial jingle [in order to remember what brand they wanted], and find out that they wanted the Kishiro brand of cream.1

Although this sounds like a description of a major urban metropolis, the researchers were actually describing Shibukawa, a provincial city of almost 40,000 people in Gunma prefecture hours away from Tokyo by train, half of whom were engaged in agriculture. By the 1960s, this consumer culture of programs created in Tokyo had even reached as far as outlying regions as this. TV culture helped stimulate a transformation of the countryside, and to incorporate urban-rural differences into our portrait of a mass consumer culture largely centered on Tokyo. Japan had become a nation unified at least in the realm of consumer lifestyles, giving a surface appearance of cultural uniformity to a fractured, post-imperial nation. From the postwar vantage point, it is hard to believe that prewar Japan had a considerable rural-urban divide. This divide is still noticeable today, but is often masked by the ubiquitous presence of TV culture, which tends to standardize the differences between regions. Although television took a little more time to spread into the poorer countryside than the city, by 1960, this new medium had made serious inroads into rural Japan. Gradually, the rural provinces became bound to the cities through the power of television. If Japanese could not find a means to create national unity, then they could at least be held together in their common entertainments, consumptions, and rhythms of life. The mass culture of television helped to bind Japanese together through a lifestyle based on a common consumerism that glossed over very real urban versus rural, or even intra-rural differences. Fujitake Akira observed in 1985 the lack of diversity in clothing styles in TV audience participation programs despite the wide differences in class and regional background among the contestants: No matter what the program, the clothing of the amateur contestants is modern . . . [I]n the close up shot of them sitting down, they are wearing modern-style shirts, suits and blouses and cardigans. When I think about “the family singing contest,” the emcee in an interview introduces the name of the arena where they are filming, the hometown, and famous products from the area. As a result, we can feel the local color, but it is impossible to distinguish local color in the contestant’s clothing. Even on the program Zoom in! Morning!, no matter what city or


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town, the clothes are the same. Just from looking at the clothing, the differences between regions have disappeared.2

Fujitake used this example to show how much city lifestyles had spread to the countryside, and he attributed this to the spread of television. TV was not the only institution that helped in standardizing rural versus urban differences. The deluge of rural migrants to the city, along with a standardized education system, helped to accustom many rural Japanese to city life. An emergent rural affluence allowed farmers to participate in the national consumer culture. Still, TV played a crucial role in exposing rural Japanese to urban trends and also helping to define the very meanings of “rural” and “urban.” What passed as “urban Japan,” “rural Japan,” or “Tokyo” on the living-room screen often bore little resemblance to reality, but was rather a producer’s image of these places. TV, however, spread these ideas to all corners of the nation, laying the foundation for a national definition of rural and urban lifestyles. With the creation of a nationwide broadcast system, rural Japanese could catch television signals and receive information from a vast nationwide broadcast system. Alongside the nationwide spread of TV, urbaninfluenced programs became one of the major pillars of a common culture that bound rural areas to the cities. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine in detail the many programs that constituted of this new national culture because there other authors have studied specific programs and their meaning.3 Rather, the focus will be on impact on Japanese rural society of television spreading from the major urban areas to the countryside.

MEGALOPOLIS JAPAN: FOUNDATION OF CONSUMER TELEVISION CULTURE By 1964, almost all homes in Japan could access television, providing the foundations for a new culture that would unite most Japanese around a shared commitment to economic growth and consumerism. However, this spread of television throughout the nation did not occur in a vacuum. We will need to look at the rise of urban Japan to understand the role that the major cities, especially Tokyo, played in spreading a national consumer culture throughout the nation. The culture of consumerism sweeping the nation emanated from the major metropolitan areas of Tokyo and Osaka, but with a special emphasis on Tokyo. Although prewar consumer culture was mainly an urban phenomenon, there are reports that rural villagers eagerly took to media culture.4 True, media culture, with its unique dance of media seduction

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and audience appropriation, had gained a foothold even in remote farm villages of Imperial Japan. But the scale and pace of the media culture penetration was much greater after the war. Much of this commercialism developed against the backdrop of massive postwar urbanization and urban amalgamation on an unprecedented scale even in world history, as towns throughout the nation annexed outlying areas. Jeffrey Hanes has described how in the postwar years the area from Tokyo to Nagoya became a megalopolis, a dense super-urban area home to tens of millions of Japanese, and how Japanese intellectuals grappled with the idea that their nation was becoming a largely urban one.5 Strikingly, this process of urban amalgamation had already begun before the war. The first modern census in Japan was taken in 1920, and subsequent censuses up until 1940 indicated the constant growth of cities of 200,000 or more. Japan saw the rise of the “Big Six,” the major cities of Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, which only represented 9.1% of the total population in 1920, but about 20% of the total national population by 1940. By 1955, the majority of Japanese, 56.1 percent to be exact, were living in urban areas, compared to 37.7% in 1940 and 27.8% in 1945.6 Statistics could be deceptive in overstating the postwar migration of rural residents to the cities. Rather, an unprecedented wave of mergers of small towns and rural villages had taken place, resulting in the creation, at least on paper, of new cities. Many farmers stayed where they were and were counted as urban residents in the official reports, thus inflating the number of urban Japanese. The origins of this amalgamation came during the Occupation when the American Shoup mission on Taxation in 1949 recommended the merging of small towns to increase the administrative “efficiency of operations.” When these urban mergers were put into effect, the number of urban communities dropped by nearly 64%, from 9,622 to 3,475. On the other hand, reflecting the consolidation of small towns into larger cities, the number of officially classified cities increased from 254 in 1950 to 496 in 1955. The Japanese government defined “urban” as the population of settlements officially designated as cities (shi) and used a population cutoff of 30,000 people to distinguish cities from smaller towns.7 This apparent rise of Japan’s urban population actually camouflaged the agrarian nature of the population. Many of these officially designated “cities” were sometimes no more than farming or fishing villages merged with a nearby town or else agrarian hamlets that banded together to meet the Japanese government’s 30,000-person requirement to be defined as a city. These newly formed cities, strongly agrarian in nature and low in


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population density, stretched the very limit the definition of “urban.” In fact, over 50% of Japanese “city” residents in 1958 were engaged in agriculture.8 But these “cities” did take on the trappings of urban living, often through exposure to media culture. The major metropolitan areas also recorded relentless growth during the postwar as immense numbers of mostly young Japanese from the largely rural prefectures migrated to the core of major metropolitan urban and industrial prefectures. Some reasons for migration were economic, as young people sought employment and higher incomes, but some were also social, in that young people sought to enjoy urban amenities and excitements in great metropolises like Tokyo. Beginning in 1950 and continuing until 1975, Tokyo alone had an average annual migration of 832,000 people, while the surrounding prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba recorded an average migration of a total of about 202,500 people. We can see that the out-migration of Tokyo white-collar workers to the nearby suburbs balanced out the urban population growth of Tokyo through rural migration, reflecting the growth of both Tokyo and its surrounding suburbs. Other major metropolitan areas, such as Osaka and Aichi prefecture, home of the city of Nagoya, also experienced a huge influx of migrants, while Japan’s 38 other prefectures saw a net out-migration during this time period. The big six cities became the long-range focus of migration streams in postwar Japan, and of these cities Tokyo especially stood out.9

DEFINING THE REGIONS: TOKYO VS. OSAKA, CITY VS. COUNTRY City and countryside engaged in a curious exchange of people and ideas in the postwar. The countryside exported its people and products to the cities, while the cities exported their media culture and technologies to the countryside. While much has been written about the movement of people to the cities, we must also consider the movement of media culture to the countryside. In the postwar years, as television became the medium of entertainment in rural areas, and as Tokyo rose in national importance, the Tokyo television culture became the de facto national media culture of Japan. We must first realize the difference between the Tokyo of television culture and the physical Tokyo. By no means were all Tokyo residents affluent, middle class, and white collar—as they appeared on TV. Television helped construct Tokyo’s image as an oasis of modern living. Although Tokyo TV stations helped create the media culture, the media culture also helped create Tokyo. The attractive televised images of Tokyo culture brought many rural migrants into the city, and, importantly, these rural migrants took part

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in creating the “urban” culture of Tokyo. The “urban” nature of Tokyo was a work in progress (as are all cultures) since the city itself was made up of so many migrants. Yoshimi Shunya finds it useful to conceive of the urban spaces of Tokyo as a “stage,” in which its residents could become actors and play social roles consistent with the area they were visiting.10 One could say that if Tokyo was a stage, then migrants were playing out new roles and new lifestyles of the “bright life,” a scientific, technology-based westernized lifestyle as popularized by the media.11 Migrants spoke to each other in a common tongue of hyōjungo (standard language), the standardized Tokyo-based dialect popularized by television stations. Hyōjungo, a key part of television culture, bound these migrants together and served as a source of unity. Tessa Carroll writes that in the postwar period the Japanese language remained one of the few emblems of Japanese unity and culture and a bulwark against excessive foreign influences. The whole population had daily exposure to the standardized language and became familiar with it, at least on a passive level, through broadcasting.12 While we should recognize the power of centralized television stations, we should avoid overstating the influence of Tokyo. The diverse regional cultures of Japan still exercised much influence: although people spoke hyōjungo as their lingua franca, they used their local dialects as well. Television accentuated regional differences. Also, many viewers in the villages and major metropolitan areas such as the Osaka-centered Kansai region resisted being incorporated into Tokyo television culture. Programs featuring Kansai culture achieved great popularity on national television. Still, television standardized the differences between the regions. The glue that maintained postwar national unity partly came from a commercial culture that recognized, but did not completely homogenize, differences within the nation. The Tokyo-based television culture often held up Osaka, Japan’s other major metropolitan center, as an example of a nationally prominent regional culture. The Kansai region, in which Osaka was located, became the “other” to help define Tokyo, and Tokyo, through its television programs, helped to define Kansai. Tokyo television producers ascribed qualities of difference to the Kansai area. Kansai residents both rejected and embraced this “otherness,” criticizing the authenticity of the Tokyo station’s portrayal of them, but also embracing the sense of Kansai difference as a marker of local identity. Kansai culture heavily influenced the nation’s media culture. According to Suesugi Setsuko in “Osaka Ben Būmu” (The Osaka Dialect Boom) in the March 1961 issue of the intellectual journal Shisō no Kagaku, Osaka in the


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past was just another region with a different dialect. Suesugi writes that Osaka dialect first entered the Japanese entertainment world before the war when an Osaka traveling troupe toured the country, but had a hard time attracting customers. It was only with the advent of postwar radio that Osaka humor became popular nationwide when in 1953 an Osaka comic duo pulled in a stunning 75% audience rating. In 1961, Japanese television experienced an onslaught of Osaka dialect programs, movies, and songs, some of which garnered astonishingly high ratings, ranging from 29% to 50%. In this way, Osaka programs entered households and became part of the national mainstream.13 What lay behind the appeal of Osaka programming? Many Kansai residents and Tokyo producers thought that humor made Kansai different from Tokyo. During his visit to Japan in 1961, the American scholar David Riesman described an Osaka-flavored TV program: Another was an Osaka situation comedy which would have been incomprehensible to us without our interpreters and was nearly incomprehensible to them because of the Osaka dialect and the rapid-fire exchange of talk. There was a weak father who was being pushed around by the mother, who favored a particular suitor for her daughter’s hand and had as an ally the father’s ‘fighting friend’—a man with whom the father was constantly quarreling, the two enjoyed quarreling and made a kind game of it. This was a serial drama—a kind of combination of soap opera and Lucille Ball.”14

This description of an Osaka program shows the power of an alternative media culture centered on Osaka. And one can see how social values were turned upside down in a reversal of gender roles and power relationships into a comedy that probably delighted many audiences. We can see Osaka being used by the Tokyo producers as a signifier of difference, with Tokyo being the “mainstream.” Television stations incorporated these regional differences and presented them to the whole nation. Tokyo television culture, partly inadvertently and partly by design, made Kansai culture fashionable by making the Kansai region appear different from Tokyo. As one Osaka resident observed, “In the past, people made fun of me when I used Osaka dialect, but recently I can speak more confidently, because leading Tokyoites copy Osaka dialect, you know. This is all because of the mass media.” All this led to what Suesugi called the “new standardized Japanese” in which Osaka influences peppered speech across the nation. Fitting in with busy modern times, the Osaka characteristic of shortening words became a national trait, as words like nama komāsharu (live commercial) became “NamaKoma” and the journal Chūō Kōron became “ChūKō”

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While we should recognize the influence of Osaka-based media culture, we should also recognize that it was largely Tokyo television producers who set this definition of difference and had the power to define Osaka dialect. Suesugi complained that the dialect that she heard on television was not an honest representation of Osaka-ben but rather a simplified facsimile: I have said that through the new media of television and radio, Osaka dialect has become popular among the people of Japan. However, in recent years, the Osaka dialect that has entered the general mass media is by no means genuine. It has been considerably simplified, perhaps into a standardized Japanese, and the phrases have become easy to understand for people in other areas. If an Osaka tarento (TV celebrities) freely spoke in a native Osaka dialect from a script by a writer raised in Osaka, the audience would not understand at all.

In order for nationwide audiences to understand the programs, producers used a “Tokyoized” version of Osaka dialect on television, not the real thing. When television producers asked the Ministry of Education for financial assistance in creating a home drama with an Osaka setting, the Ministry ordered the simplification of Osaka dialect as a condition for its aid. They did so in order to assure that “viewers from Hokkaido to Kyushu could understand it.” What emerged was not the Osaka dialect, however, but standard Japanese with mere Osaka nuances, and as Suesugi writes, this provoked one Osaka resident to complain, “Television Osaka dialect ain’t no good at all!”15

THE SPREAD OF TELEVISION IN THE COUNTRYSIDE Other inter-regional differences besides those between the Kantō and the Kansai, such as intra-regional cultural divides between city and countryside, widened for years after the war. The huge inter-prefecture migration of young workers from the rural fields to urban factories meant that, by the 1970s, Japan had split into a fast-growing metropolitan core and a depopulated rural periphery. In one such rural area, Hikimi Town in the Chūgoku region, previously a prosperous region during Tokugawa rule, the population shrank from 7,500 people to only 3,500 by 1973, with very few people between the ages of 15 and 30 remaining.16 While the spread of TV helped cement the nation together, it also contributed to a demographic imbalance of overcrowded cities and deserted villages by helping to popularize the movement of young to the cities, turning many farms into lonely places populated mainly by the elderly.


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It is interesting to step back and take note of postwar views of the countryside. As pointed out by Thomas R. H. Havens, the prewar countryside began to be seen by intellectuals and government officials as the source of Japanese tradition, and hence something to be preserved. Nationalists linked the survival of farms to the survival of the Japanese nation.17 While this idealization of rural life did not die out in the postwar, a view of the countryside as backward, isolated from modernity, and in need of reform, became dominant among thinkers advocating the spread of television to rural areas in order to reform the countryside. This was not limited to Japan. In 1953–4, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) carried out experiments installing televisions in community centers in French rural areas as a means of social education. A few years later, UNESCO carried out a Japanese version of this experiment in Japan in 1956.18 One local Japanese village leader taking part in this project responded as follows, when asked how TV could serve as social education for the villagers: It may be possible to make village life brighter if fathers who can usually think of nothing but work have a chance to change their ideas through an exchange of views on family matters and problems. Those who have been slaves to the old customs of life and are completely blind of the outside world, will surely reflect on their way of life if given a wider vision of modern life outside.

By the time television was introduced to Japan in 1953, rural Japan had undergone a major upheaval. A land reform program was put into effect under the Occupation, turning the bulk of tenant farmers into miniature capitalists concerned with their own welfare. UNESCO reported a local leader of a village decrying the selfishness of farmers and their resistance to collective labor: Collectivization is not progressing well. It seems to me that what hinders it is the villager’s individual competitive striving for more work and better living conditions as means to their own ends, as there is not much financial difference between the villagers.”19

Social reformers like those at UNESCO regarded TV as a way to bring the village back together and restore a sense of community that many felt was missing from village life. One cannot help but be struck by the irony of this assertion, for an argument could be made that TV eventually helped accelerate the breakup of communal spirit in Japan.

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By 1960, against the backdrop of considerable rural changes, television was just beginning to reach a threshold in the countryside due to rising wages, falling prices of television sets, and an increase in the power of the broadcast signals of urban stations. Two in-depth studies, one by NHK and one by TBS, help reveal the process of the spread of television to the countryside. In 1964, NHK published a major study to look at the spread of television throughout the nation. Full of charts, tables, and statistics, it sorely lacked the viewpoints of the farmers themselves and details of change at the micro-level.20 Left unanswered in NHK’s survey was the question of how rural residents consumed television. However, earlier in 1960, Chōsa Jōhō magazine, the magazine of the TV station TBS, sent observers out to write about the changes in the Kantō-area countryside after Tokyo broadcasters doubled the power of their signals, allowing more rural inhabitants to access TV programming. They visited rural areas such as newly incorporated agricultural cities, the Ōshima Islands off Tokyo, and even the Kuriyama, the “Tibet of Japan,” a remote mountainous area where inhabitants reportedly had never even seen a truck until 1940. We do need to take into account that the Chōsa Jōhō studies, made for a television public relations magazine, probably overlooked the negative effects of television and exaggerated the television craze in the rural areas. And, by 1960, when these reports were written, the countryside had already experienced considerable social change within the past fifteen years. Many rural youth worked daytime in the cities as clerks or laborers, and often felt more familiar with city culture than the rural culture.21 Nonetheless, these reports provide a rich source of information on rural television on two levels. First, they paint a picture of the growth of a new common culture and its effects on villagers. As television became affordable, and as soon as the broadcast stations increased the power of their signals, all kinds of changes came in the countryside, some good, and some bad, but permanent nevertheless. We can extrapolate from these findings that in other parts of Japan, such as the Kansai region, rural areas also became entangled with the broadcast sphere and consumer culture of nearby major cities. Second, these articles constituted part of a larger media culture that helped to construct the discourse of national homogenization: rural areas increasingly resembling urban areas. These magazine articles and others like them contributed to the idea that Japan was being engulfed in a common culture through television. The reader could imagine a simultaneous process of the standardization of localities all over the nation and the formation of a common rural culture with urban aspects to it. Rural readers, upon seeing articles like these, could try to become more city-like, consequently creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.


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Some early observers believed that villagers had no interest in televisions. A Tokyo University professor, in surveying rural interest in political events in 1959, found not one person interested in politics. Suematsu Mitsuru went to a Yamagata prefecture village and reported in 1960 that In a rural village during the agricultural season, from the time they get up early in the morning, they pursue work, and in the evening return to their home, and follow a lifestyle that is not concerned with anything else besides eating and sleeping. In this kind of lifestyle, television and such are chronologically and economically, still unrelated.22

Yet, judging from other reports, the television craze had spread to the countryside. Such was the desire for TV that residents of a village whose fields were flooded during the construction of a dam used the government compensation money to buy television sets. NHK’s statistics, which calculated rural usage of television based on the number of subscribers, actually represented an undercount. Chōsa Jōhō noticed that in Kuriyama village, nearly 10% of the whole village of 600 households owned a television. Yet, according to official NHK statistics, there were only 12 television subscribers in the entire village. What was responsible for this severe undercount? The writers asked the postmaster, who served as both the manager of the government’s postal savings program and as NHK’s proxy in collecting subscriber fees.23 The postmaster explained that people do not think much of the picture quality in the mountain village and so one cannot force them to subscribe to NHK. For the post office, the problem is that if it concentrates on being a representative of NHK, people will not want to deposit their money at the post office.24

Residents did not want to pay for the right to subscribe to NHK because of the poor picture quality. Since the postmaster did not want to discourage people from depositing money into postal savings, he turned a blind eye to their non-payment of NHK fees. We can assume that many other village communities were in the same situation, and so NHK’s count of rural subscribers must be seen as an undercount in this light. Assuming that NHK had an accurate count and even if the villages lacked TV sets, residents could still watch TV, at neighbors’ houses. The reports from Chōsa Jōhō from 1960–61 make frequent mention of villagers watching programs at the home of a villager wealthy enough to buy a

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TV. Set owners could expect many coincidental “visits” by relatives during media events: On the day of the Crown Prince’s Wedding on April of 1959, people thronged to the homes with television from 6:00 in the morning. Some people said that “relatives went to the trouble of coming from afar and so we had to let them watch the television.” Homes with TVs were everywhere full of people.25

Savvy business owners often bought sets to attract customers to their stores. In one fishing village, a candy store owner purchased a television set, and let children who bought at least 10 yens worth of candy watch TV. Business soared as a result.26 Entrepreneurial villagers could buy a television and charge viewing fees. In Kiryū City, an electrical appliance store placed a TV on a building rooftop and charged people 10 yen (or the purchase of a 60 yen light bulb) to watch this television set.27 Despite their relative poverty, many farmers were willing to spend their money on a set because of a lack of other forms of entertainment in isolated farm areas that often lay several hours from town. Farm life must have offered so few diversions that even in areas where the reception was poor, people wanted TV. Rather than going to town, villagers throughout the nation brought the town to the village via TV. One villager spoke of no longer having to go to town to watch the movies: I used to really like movies. I used to go to Nishiwaki 3~4 times a month to watch them. However, after we got a television, I stopped going. Even in the village, if a traveling theater came two times a month to show movies, now even if we buy tickets, nobody in our house goes out to watch it.28

While the costs of sets mattered, mainly the lack of a broadcast infrastructure hindered the spread of TV in the countryside. Even an affluent rural family able to buy television sets could not watch programs if they could not catch a good TV signal, which until 1960, remained weak due to the lack of transmission infrastructure. A youth living in Higashi Itō grumbled about his family buying a useless set: “Until now, the family members complained. To buy a television that couldn’t get a picture is the height of stupidity!” Fortunately, the station amped its signal up from 10 kilowatts to 50 kilowatts and so the family managed to get a serviceable picture.29 Until the stations could increase the strength of their broadcasts, many areas remained without television. One way to catch these distant


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signals was for the village to apply its experience with communal organizations to the construction of expensive communal antennas powerful enough to pull in a passable picture. Chōsa Jōhō described the mining town of Ashio’s struggle to create a communal antenna. Without a communal antenna, the signal interference from the surrounding mountains and distance from Tokyo would destroy the picture quality. Skilled technicians who worked at a local refinery made the first plans for a communal-built facility. In the summer of 1956, acting in concert with an appliance shop in town, the workers measured the broadcast signal on top of a mountain and constructed an antenna for 700,000 yen. From there, the signal came down via cable, and television first came to ten households in the company dorms. Subscribers to the co-ops rapidly increased and other hamlets joined in until the co-op reached 200 households. At that time, governments gave little financial assistance to create facilities for the co-op viewing, and so 2,000,000 yen was needed just to build the infrastructure. Yet, communal labor allowed villagers to spread the cost among them. To save money, the subscribers would volunteer some of their labor in lieu of cash.30 For some villagers, the harnessing of cooperative organizations by the rural inhabitants helped garner Tokyo-based signals. Much as some villagers stole communal water, some others now stole television signals from the communal antennas. In Fujiyoshida City, a few people did not pay to join the group for a cooperative antenna, but instead erected a line close to the antenna and caught its signal.31 These examples of villagers using communal organizations demonstrate that rural Japanese were active participants in the spread of a television culture, rather than being the passive recipients of a Tokyo-based cultural imperialism. To make a communal viewing group, one needed a sufficient number of subscribers and funds. What about communities without enough people to make a communal organization? Not all villages had communal traditions or the money to implement them. For example, UNESCO complained that some villages, a joint purchase of even a communal television set was financially out of the question.32 For those villagers who could afford a TV but not an antenna, they still watched TV even though it had poor picture or sound quality. Chōsa Jōhō noted the poor picture quality in a farming area in Tochigi prefecture: On good days, one can see the picture comparatively well, but on rainy days . . . there are ghostly double or triple images. Furthermore, due to the influence of boosters . . . the picture becomes wild. Even so, there are roughly six farm households that spend 20,000 or 30,000 yen on facilities besides the television set.33

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The pattern of television diffusion in the countryside repeated itself in villages or small towns throughout the nation. Televisions first came to villages through places that could afford the infrastructure for TV, such as company dorms, the homes of wealthy villagers, or restaurants and inns. Although this may elicit chuckles in this day and age where TV is seen as a destroyer of children’s minds, schools also played an especially crucial role in the spread of television to the countryside. Schools, because of their association with education, capital to buy a TV set and the equipment to catch the signals, were often among the first places to get a public television. In Mihara in Gunma Prefecture, the PTA ardently supported a plan to install a television set in the local elementary school. Because this was only Mihara’s second television set, the school became a de facto community center during sumo broadcasts, when villagers would crowd into the school to watch. In the rural town of Itako, when TV first came to town, children would sleep over at the school just to watch the television that was installed there. There were only two TV sets in the mountain hamlet of Nokado in 1960, one at the home of the school principal and one at the elementary school. Whenever the principal saw a good program listed in the newspaper, he told the housewives’ association, and they came from all over the village to watch.34 Another surprising finding is that the use of communal sets, and in some cases, local technical expertise meant that as early as 1953 (the beginning of Japanese television broadcasting), some of the outlying rural areas were able to watch shows broadcast from Tokyo. On Ōshima Island, a television was installed in 1953 in the medical clinic for the entertainment of the patients. The picture came in unusually clear, since the signal came across the ocean from Tokyo with no interference. In Ibaraki prefecture, Shimodate City’s first TV was built in 1954 at a high school under the direction of the electronics teacher.35 We can assume that, like the Kantō region we have just examined, rural areas in other parts of the nation strove to catch TV signals emanating from nearby major metropolitan areas such as Osaka and Nagoya and so many Japanese villagers had a history of watching TV just as long as their urban counterparts.

THE CITY COMES TO THE VILLAGES: OUTPOSTS OF TOKYO CONSUMERISM Why was television so popular that people would go to the trouble of erecting expensive communal antennas, or would shell out so much money for


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a device whose picture and sound quality was sometimes marginal at best? The answer, to city writers, might be best described as culture. The writers of Chōsa Jōhō visited Kuriyama, called the “Tibet of Kantō,” the highest mountain village in the nation, in an isolated backwater of Tochigi prefecture—so isolated that Tochigi residents would often scold children by saying, “We send kids like you to Kuriyama!” But around 1950, as a result of court rulings, the village owned the nearby forests and its resources. With the money the government gave them for use of the forest, Kuriyama village built a school and a city hall government office, and installed plumbing and electrical systems. They also bought TVs as observed by Chōsa Jōhō: Already it is not a poor village. The culture level also, in a similar manner, is no longer the laughingstock of the province. Each hamlet within the village has television antennas lined up all in a row. It is a place where one house may have three to four antennas set up. If you measure a village’s culture level by the spread of television, (italics mine) then today’s Kuriyama Village has a higher level than the farming households of the plain.36

TV had clearly come to be considered an indicator of cultural progress. TV spread images of a lifestyle supposedly based on conditions in Tokyo. One old man in a hamlet near Itako commented, while feverishly keeping an eye on the TV set, “I want to let even my grandson watch a lot of television. He should not fall behind in the development of civilization.” Of course, the old man might have been merely justifying his love of television entertainment by invoking its cultural benefits. The writers end by describing TV as bringing culture to Itako: The small magical box called a television set is a source of new things, rare things, and interesting things that one could not possibly see in a farm village. . . . In the rural people’s lives, commercials also must be one of the new currents of the upcoming society. Television signals bring upon an all-encompassing cultural rain to the riverside area of Itako. News, culture and amusement spread out from these small TV sets and result in an improvement in the consciousness of the people.37

But we should also remember the main appeal of TV: it was an economic investment in a device that could bring entertainment into the home. As early as 1956, Farmers made clear during surveys in the UNESCO

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experiment in TV as a means of social education that they overwhelmingly preferred entertainment programs as compared to other types of cultural or educational programs. UNESCO wrote of the farmers: But whichever standpoint one adopts, the entertainment element that attracts the general public cannot be ignored. The television viewers want to find entertainment and recreation both in the content and the form of the programmes, or at least they want to have something pleasant and attractive to se and hear whether this pleasure is derived from the subject matter or the presentation of the programmes.38

TV also turned into a status symbol to show one’s wealth to other villagers. Because a television antenna marked a home as prosperous enough to afford a TV, some residents of the small city of Ōtawara put up fake antennas on their homes to give the appearance of wealth.39 Through television, regions throughout the country came into contact with a culture that emphasized consumerism. One writer born in the countryside, wrote in Chōsa Jōhō in May 1961 about the homogenization of rural life across the country as its residents began to purchase the same items they saw on TV: When you go to a village in Saitama prefecture, no matter which family, among the laundry lined up in front of the garden, a conspicuously bright colored negligee catches your eye. Even in a farm village in Shizuoka prefecture or even in a village in Nagano prefecture, you can see the same scene. If this were the laundry of the city public housing projects it wouldn’t be strange, but after all, it has become that the farm daughters or young wives of the nearby farm households wear a beautiful patterned negligee to bed.

The culture, trends and topics of rural areas took its cue increasingly from television. The Chōsa Jōhō writer commented on the influence of the mass media on consumer culture: Other than the rise in income levels, another big influence is the broad spread of advertisements throughout the nation through the mass media such as televisions, radio, and newspapers. Advertisements such as “How is your happiness? That is television and washing machines” (Shiawase wa ikaga? Sore wa terebi da, sentakuki da) arouse the consumer’s eagerness for purchases.41


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With TV only recently becoming a part of everyday life, writers noticed how this new technology rampantly spread consumerism to the countryside. One observer at a bus stop in Ito overheard a conversation between two elderly people that was peppered with brand names, “Did you drink Panbitan?” or “Do you use Minebitaru?”41 Researchers were surprised to discover that in the mountain village of Nīharu, program preferences were basically the same as those in the city, with mysteries and dramas being popular.42 TV could make people too familiar with large metropolises like Tokyo, taking away the mystique of the city and instead showing warped images of city life, as seen in the example from Jōshū Tomioka in Gunma prefecture: The influence of television is not limited to the children. In the past, when people returned from Tokyo, they would be invited to dinner [to talk about what they saw]. But recently, even Tokyo is no longer an unusual place. The towns of Tokyo and their families appear on the television screen. Even the showy mood of the big city is directly transmitted (to the countryside). Moreover, the impression is strong among the locals of Tokyo being a scary place seething with its pistols and knives. They also think that one’s life span is shortened because of its traffic hell. They end up thinking that in the long run, living in one’s familiar land leads to the most happiness.43

While it is true that the large cities broadcast these programs, the newly formed “cities” in the countryside played a key role in this spread of urban culture to the countryside. Many of the new cities created in the postwar amalgamation movement were merely towns that annexed the outlying farm areas or villages thrown together to meet the 30,000-person definition of a city. Much of their population consisted of farm households who lived in the former village area of these cities. On the other hand, many of these farm households had a wage earner who worked in the city. There were 6,040,000 rural households in the nation in 1961. 30% of these households got their income from whitecollar work, receiving monthly salaries. Some were rural households that had a husband who worked for a company, while their wives tended to the fields. Therefore, the husbands of these households were living an urban lifestyle during the daytime while at work.44 These families, caught between older, rural lifestyles and the newer ones coming in from the cities, symbolized the small city in the television age: caught between localism and a national standardization.

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Television contributed to the process of these small cities becoming more like outposts of the nearby large cities (and to a degree more like Tokyo) and confirmed their urban character. These cities became important links in the spread of urban culture from the metropolitan core to the rural provinces. In these cities, farmers could purchase and consume the urbanbased consumer culture that they saw everyday on TV. Commercial stations took notice of the potential market that the rural market represented. A Chōsa Jōhō article clarified the purpose of sending out researchers to study television in the countryside: Until now, television programs and commercials were for the urban centers, but now we cannot ignore rural audiences. Our special reports “Rural villages within the area” have taken up the consumer trends of rural villages and the purchasing psychology of farmers. . . . The consumer boom is not only in the cities, but has also pushed into the farm villages.45

Tokyo executives of the “key stations” that produced programming for local stations were well aware that TV had the power to bring rural areas into close contact with the urban centers, and that they thus needed to pay close attention to the rapid transformation of the countryside. Shibukawa City, a city of 39,851 formed from a merger with rural areas in 1954 and about 110 kilometers from Tokyo in Gunma Prefecture, experienced a consumer boom. The June 1961 issue of Chōsa Jōhō noted how consumerism followed once the broadcast signal became strong enough to reach Shibukawa: “. . . . just like it has received television signals, [Shibukawa] has directly received the purchasing mood signals of the city.46 Four major companies formed part of the economic backbone of the town and its employees played a key role in spreading urban culture into the annexed farm parts of the city. With the spread of industry to the small cities, company managers and their families moved from Tokyo and became part of the city’s elite. Television initially entered Shibukawa City through the large factory company dorms and apartments, which had a 100% television diffusion rate. Next, in the commercial district, almost all the shops set up antennas. 45% of households in the old Shibukawa City, which included the commercial district, had about a TV and the percentage of families was 20% in rural areas but recently had grown rapidly. TV spread outward from the Tokyo-influenced “cores” of the small city into the surrounding farming villages. Chōsa Jōhō noted the growing consumer influence of the company elites from Tokyo residing in Shibukawa


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City. The elites, who were used to an urban lifestyle, were going to spread media-influenced concepts of living to the rest of the small city. Many of the families of the section chiefs or higher at the big factories hail from Tokyo and are sensitive to the mass media, and so their lifestyle level is high. They are the “leaders” and bring the consumer trends of Shibukawa closer to that of the city.47

These “leaders” were residents of the company housing. Indeed, one of the main pioneers of television in small cities was danchi, or housing projects. These huge and impersonal apartment complexes, crammed with families, often were the places of heavy television use, as seen in the following example from Ōtawara City in Tochigi Prefecture: Also, Ōtawara City’s public housing apartments are at Nishihara Town. Even here television antennas have sprung up like mushrooms on the apartments. The mountainous remote areas along with the public housing projects are where televisions have spread outside of Ōtawara city’s center.48

With the spread of danchi living to the provincial cities, increasing numbers of Japanese lived crammed together into smaller spaces, and yet lacked the communal ties of the village or old-style town. During his study of leisure in Japan in 1964, researcher David Plath examined Matsumoto City (pop 80,000 in 1960) in the mountainous Japanese Alps. He noticed that despite their close proximity to each other, the families of the government-subsidized Hikari ga Oka apartments did not feel a sense of local identity: Most families complain of crowding and are putting money aside in hopes of building or buying a private residence in a few years. They regard the project as a way station, comfortable enough for all that but not permanent. They hesitate to firm up their local ties: for example, they have voted down an invitation to become official supporters of the neighborhood shrine, although some families contribute privately to its upkeep.”

Plath noted that social ties among these danchi dwellers became limited to a small circle of friends. Small groups of salarymen would gather by turns at each other’s homes each Saturday to eat, drink, and unleash

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their gripes while the wives would gather in a group of about six in each other’s apartments for social interaction. Danchi children, however, bonded through television. When Plath asked a white-collar housewife of a family living in Hikari ga Oka apartments about owning a television, she replied, “Not yet . . . The boys are allowed to watch two evenings a week, at the neighbor’s across the hall. We’ve promised them we will buy a set in a year or so if they continue to do well in school.”49 Children from homes without TV had an incentive to mix with the children from other apartments that had TV. As seen in the parents’ promise to eventually buy a set, for a family of relatively humble means, the expensive television set would inevitably become somewhat of a necessity, if not for the whole family’s enjoyment then at least to keep the kids happy. According to some reports, people in the provinces were especially attracted by commercial TV culture. Chōsa Jōhō ’s 1960 description of Kitakata City, (population 42,000 and established in 1954) in Tokushima prefecture, alleged NHK television at first was enough to capture the attention of the viewers but soon grew boring: For the people who were watching television for the first time in their lives, they were in any case, extremely moved. Now, that kind of simple emotion has disappeared. At first, broadcasting was so rare that they were glued to the TV set throughout all hours of broadcasting. But soon they got used to it, and now watching only NHK is boring. They definitely want to watch commercial broadcasting.

Some people did not buy television sets precisely because there was no commercial TV. Chōsa Jōhō described the tastes of women in Kitakata City, “Formal and stiff TV programs do not go over well with farm women after all. The most appealing programs are those that are entertaining with something that makes one think. NHK programs are not well liked because of this reason.”50 Over a decade later in another rural location in 1975, Robert J. Smith noted a TV set in a rural hotel lobby and the local preference for commercial TV: A color television set is kept on at all times. It was invariably turned to one of the commercial channels, never to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) channels whose programming the rural people generally dismiss as too dull.51

Just like their urban counterparts, rural dwellers allegedly preferred the entertaining flash of the commercial stations rather than the purposeful staidness


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of NHK, although it was also reported that people did change the channel back to NHK if there were too many commercials on the other stations.53 Consumerism spread in the rural areas through the influence of commercial TV so much that the merchants of the small rural cities found themselves having to deal with rural customers whose tastes increasingly reflected those of the Tokyo-produced programs broadcast to them via local stations. Despite the heavy Tokyo influence, regional identities and tastes remained strong and easily provoked. Ironically, the urban stations strengthened rural identities and economies by broadcasting scenes from rural areas on national television. Itako (population 18,768 in 1961 and formed through the merger of three villages in 1956) in Ibaraki prefecture, the selfproclaimed “Venice of the East” with its many canals, served as the location of many TV scenes. Unlike the movies, which took a considerable number of days after filming to arrive at the town’s theater, television broadcast scenes from the town instantaneously or with very little delay. In a curious back and forth exchange of television images, Itako provided the raw background for TV media culture, which was then produced in Tokyo, and exported back to the town. All this exposure in the movies and TV also meant more tourists coming to Itako. Unfortunately, while city officials projected a million people to visit each year, only 50,000 stayed over, due to the severe lack of lodging for tourists.53 Regional tastes in TV programs of some localities remained distinct from those of the city. People in rural areas like Fujiyoshida City also loved to listen to kayōkyoku music programs, which were going out of fashion in Tokyo. The women of the city’s Women’s Association also complained that while they liked the cooking shows, they wanted more shows with foods they could cook everyday in a provincial city rather than some expensive, showy food for affluent city dwellers that was inconvenient to prepare.”54 Viewers in these newly formed cities had a diversity of responses to national television culture. Kitakata City typified the contradictory nature of many provincial small cities: anti-Tokyo and yet strongly desiring Tokyo culture. Demonstrating the power of regional identity, the people of this city often harbored a strong anti-Tokyo sentiment in their program choices. Viewers would turn the dial if the programs were too educational or so urban that they offered nothing to rural viewers. Farm viewers wanted to see more programs about farm villages. Some of these viewers complained about too much Tokyo programming: “I want Japanese television, not Tokyo television.” “In the first place, the trends of today’s Japan have forgotten about the farm villages. But although farmers still make up much of the population,

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? we are not powerful, and so these programs are inevitable. Whenever they do show baseball or pro wrestling, it feels like they are broadcasting from a foreign country.”

On the other hand, there were those who desired Tokyo programming. The Chōsa Jōhō report about Kitakata also noted that although residents in the Aizu area of Japan could choose from a variety of stations, from Tokyo, Sendai, Niigata, or Yamagata, they inevitably chose to watch Tokyo stations. Allegedly, this was due to the fact that the trains connected them more closely to Tokyo than with other parts of their region and so many of the local youth worked or studied in Tokyo.55 One wonders if cities near Osaka showed a preference for Osaka stations rather than their local affiliates as well. As for producers and marketers, the more rural consumers behaved like their Tokyo counterparts, the more the market had to reflect their needs. The spread of a national consumer culture meant that the small city merchants had to be in touch with Tokyo-based trends if they were to survive in the economic marketplace. For example, Shibukawa City shopkeepers underestimated the extent to which rural dwellers had become savvy consumers. Chōsa Jōhō reported about rural people, “Some people have begun to say ‘The Shibukawa shopping district treats us as country bumpkins.’”56 Here, we can see the effects of commercials that came in through this television culture: farmers wanted national brands and goods. This changing consumer mood forced Shibukawa merchants to adapt or perish. Chōsa Jōhō wrote of the new consumer culture: The effects of TV are directly reflected in the shopping district. Everywhere one can buy the same goods advertised as “Brand new items” in the Shibukawa stores, or the “kaimawarihin” which keep up with the trends, pass by Shibukawa, and so people go as far as Maebashi or Takasaki to buy them. If you don’t have the merchandise advertised on television, the store’s reputation will noticeably be damaged.

Due to in part to television, the consumer tastes of Shibukawa farmers began to resemble those of their urban counterparts with an emphasis on leisure and enjoyment similar to that of an urban white-collar family. The shopping district’s lottery third place prize is a metal bucket. Every year it is the same prize and so the farming families want a plastic bucket rather than a metal item. They can crush ice and chill cocktails with it. When they come to buy vinegar, if you think they use it only for


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radishes or carrots, then you are making a big mistake. They use vinegar for salads. Farming families who have plumbing and tiled kitchens are no different in their sensibility from city dwellers. The shopkeepers are rather behind the times.

For those people who chose to stay in the countryside, the big city came to them. Farmers began to receive their consumer influences not from their immediate locality, but from the distant metropolis through television. Mr. Horie, the young master of a grocery store called “Ōtsuya” explained, “The reason that Shibukawa merchants are inferior compared to Takazaki and Maebashi merchants is not because of capital but because of their lack of research.” Horie managed to be successful by getting goods from Tokyo. Unlike many of the local merchants who stocked their stores from nearby wholesalers in Takasaki and Maebashi, Horie ordered goods like those seen on television directly from Tokyo or other big cities, such as Maeda’s Crackers direct from the maker in Osaka. Horie became entangled with the consumer trends of the major metropolitan center of Osaka. He kept a wide stock of other kinds of candies, and even sent out “Ōtsuya Food News” pamphlets with a slogan resembling those of television commercials in order to appeal to company dorm residents, teenagers, and customers in their twenties who were used to the TV style of sales.57 Television managed to bind together diverse parts of the smaller provincial cities by creating a common Tokyo-based culture. Chōsa Jōhō described this in Chōshi City, divided between the fishing village and soy sauce factory neighborhoods: “Anyway, the people of Chōshi really love television. If you peek into the town’s center, the signals from Tokyo can be received fairly cleanly and bind together the fishing and soy sauce town in the easternmost part of Honshu.”58 TV helped bind rural cities themselves to the metropolitan areas. Chōsa Jōhō noted how Kiryū City (population 123,000) in Gunma Prefecture had also become part of the rather distant Tokyo cultural sphere, as Tokyo companies could dictate the selling of products in the local market. The head of Kiryū City’s 66-member pharmaceutical association spoke of how Tokyo television commercials could be too effective when manufacturers in the major cities could set prices, often to the detriment of the local producer. Because of commercials, the national market, not the local market, became the deciding factor in the economic lives of the rural residents: The influence of television commercials is big, you know. There is a preconceived idea that the medicines that appear on commercials are good things and so a lot of customers who say ‘give me the stuff that

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? was on television’ come to our stores. So it’s because of television, we have to sell products such as ‘Shiron.’ Next, it could be that when you watch television your eyes get sore, and we are beginning to sell lots of eye medicines. It’s just that in the areas with competitive markets, we are troubled when the commercial gives the street price. For example, take Bando pills with 100 pills at 1200 yen. Although we advertise at a certain percentage off the manufacturer’s price, if the manufacturer cuts the price to 900 yen in the commercial, then even if our price is 900 yen, the customer still wants us to apply the same discount as before to the new manufacturer’s price.

Rural consumers, and especially children, also began to take their cues from the consumer culture of Tokyo, not their locality. A Kiryū grocery shop owner remarked: Recent customers have begun to ask for brand name goods for even curry powder, sausage, or canned goods. They ask for that product which appeared on television. Also, when the mothers bring their kids shopping, when the mother asks for sausage, the child knows the TV commercials and gives advice to the mothers about what brand is delicious and which brand of cheese is good. The sensitive child’s ability to new items is strong. Also, the reason that we sell a lot of seasonings like garlic, onions, and powdered cheese is all due to the influence of television cooking shows.

Kiryū, in turn, served as the object of longing for residents of the mining town of Ashio (population 17,000) mentioned earlier. “Kiryū and Ashio are tied together by the Ashio line of the national railway. The people of Ashio, a mountain town, dream about, and somehow want to go to, Kiryū.”59 Rural cities, at that point, had become the link between Tokyo and rural villages and towns. The spread of consumerism also played a part in the diminishing economic self-sufficiency of rural residents. Rather than make items themselves, rural residents had begun to rely on purchasing goods from the store. 45% of farmers made their own soy sauce in 1952, down to 29% in 1958. The analyst at Chōsa Jōhō wrote in 1961, “Opinion is split as to whether this kind of change is the beginning of a larger change, or simply a small change. After looking at overall trends, I think that we should look at it as the beginnings of a large change.60 Many farmers found it more attractive to buy these goods from the store and produce only the goods that they would sell.


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These examples show that rural people had come to resemble city people in taste and preferences, and trying to mimic the urban lifestyles they saw on television. Chōsa Jōhō concluded about their stay in Ōtawara City, “The town called Ōtawara is a strange town. In a sense, it is more city than the city. Or it can be said to be enjoyable, and so this, urban coating, has been poured over the hearts of the peaceful people of this old castle town.”61

TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL SOCIETY: SOCIETY AND FAMILY One did not have to look far to see the social effects of a national television culture spreading from the major cities to the countryside. During the late fifties and early sixties when the nation was supposedly homogenizing its culture, cliques based on those who had television versus those who did not have television began to appear. Social differences did not disappear during the period of high-speed growth, but took on new forms. In this case, it re-emerged as class-based divisions concerning who could or could not afford a TV set. If one did not have a television, one could not participate in this national television culture, and this affected one’s social life. One observer noticed a change in Shibukawa friendship patterns: At the elementary school, the children have formed into two groups, the children of families with television and the children of families without television. Even at the workplace, the people who cannot join in the conversations about boxing cannot be a member of the group. Because of these reasons, televisions have increased more and more.62

The young also took up these television-influenced changes. Observers noticed the obvious trend of rural youth acting more like their urban counterparts in terms of fashions, trends, and consumerism. In one instance, television encouraged rural children to speak out and express their opinions more like their city counterparts: [T]he children’s ability to express their opinions has become lively; the cause is the influence of the mass media. Before there was television, children could not voice their opinions and express themselves like today’s children. Today’s children gesture bravely, and say exactly what they want to say in front of people. In the past, whenever they met kids from Tokyo, they could not speak, but now thanks to television, what

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? they see and what they think are all the same and so the inferiority complex of the country kids has disappeared.

As a sign of the “Tokyo-ization” of rural children, they often became conscious that their speech patterns differed from those of people on television. Many children started to model their speech patterns after the hyōjungo Tokyo dialect on TV, as seen in Jōshū Tomioka: In the past, they used to say “Okkachan” and “Ottchan” in this locality but today’s children don’t say that. Today, instead of “Atai” and “watai” they say “atashi.” When their parents use Tomioka dialect that adds a “shi” as a suffix, the children laugh. This is probably also the influence of television. “Kids these days . . .” said an old person. “Everyone has become television-ish . . .”63

Observers also noted how TV weakened rural communal bonds, as rural individuals retreated from communal activities to watching shows in the privacy of their own homes. When Japanese retreated into their private lives of consumption, local ties, such as family or village associations, would lose some of their importance. For example, in the 1930s Wiswell noted how communal activities played a key role in the village of Suye Mura: There were parties given to mark the naming of a new baby, returning from a visit to a shrine or temple, celebrating a variety of festivals and holidays, sending off conscripts and welcoming them back, dedicating new buildings, and marking the end of rice transplanting and harvest, the completion of the silk-producing cycle, and almost every other enterprise involving more than two or three people. There were as well ad hoc party groups, got together on short notice for no other purpose than to have a good time.

These parties disappeared as the years went by. Robert J. Smith writes about Wiswell and her postwar return visits to Suye Mura, the first in 1951: She found that the parties that followed very much as they had been fifteen years before. The same abandoned gaiety, lively dancing, and heavy drinking were all there, just as she remembered. But when she returned for a second time in 1968, it had all changed. Many of the older women she had known were dead, and the entertainments were


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as decorous and as formal as any that one might meet with in a citified small town. She felt keenly that a way of life had passed.64

What had happened? In Wiswell’s first revisit to the village in 1951, TV had not yet come to the village and the nation was still recovering from war. In this sense, village life had not changed much from the prewar days. In her second revisit, with rural prosperity well established, urban-influenced lifestyles popularized, and a TV in each home, it is highly likely, as I have suggested implicitly, that television had replaced communal gatherings as a nighttime after-work activity. Notice the irony for some communities: communal activity built the antennas, which brought in television culture, and which in turn fragmented the community by reducing the number of communal activities. It is important to avoid exaggerating how collective farm life was before TV. But once television established a strong foothold in the villages, village organizations lost some of their power in promoting village solidarity. Village communal organizations, by the very cooperative nature of work, helped to level out inequalities of wealth during days in which many villagers barely eked out a living. In postwar Japan, these same organizations helped to highlight inequalities of wealth. Some families got more income than others through working their private land in cooperation with other families. The richer families would buy a television with their extra income, and whenever they worked at communal organizations with other families, they would talk of television. So came the emergence of cliques based on television ownership, and those who had no televisions were shut out of conversations.65 Class differences, rather than disappearing, again re-emerged in the guise of ownership of televisions. According to anecdotal reports, rapid diffusion of an urban-based television culture throughout the nation contributed to a weakening of local community solidarity by encouraging the privatization of village life. In Ronald Dore’s study of the village of Shinohata, community bonds weakened considerably after the introduction of television. To begin with, political and economic change, while beneficial in material affluence, had an adverse effect on the hamlet’s community spirit. Communal work activities declined precipitously once the township took over responsibility for the hamlet’s roads. Next, the government takeover of the functions of rural communal work accelerated the weakening of communal bonds by giving villagers less need to work together. On top of all this change, television exacerbated the situation by taking away communal group activities. While village men had once drunk together after communal work activities, they now began to return to their homes to spend the evening drinking in front

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of their own television sets. Dore noted how an amateur sumo wrestler lamented the decline in the villagers’ interest in local sumo tournaments due to the spread of TV: Country sumo used to be enormous fun, he explained, but nobody much appreciated the part-time amateur’s efforts these days when they could see the enormous 400-pound professionals on television. Tokyo sumo week is rather like Wimbledon week in Britain in terms of television coverage and the tendency to monopolize conversation.66

Although TV brought entertainment to rural areas, it was at the expense of ages-old entertainment traditions and even the more modern movie theaters, where the community could gather for entertainment. In Mihara, the only theater in one of the hamlets emptied of customers when TV was introduced, and closed a year later. In Nīharu Village, the three movie theaters also turned empty after the introduction of television. In mountainous Nokado hamlet, traveling entertainers, a pre-television source of entertainment, found their services no longer wanted with the advent of television. Before the introduction of television, one source of the village’s enjoyment was traveling entertainers for the shishimai (New Year’s Day dance of exorcism performed in a lion’s mask) festival. So starved were the villagers for entertainment that they would even carry the entertainers’ luggage to the hamlet. The Chōsa Jōhō researchers found out that “after television entered the school, the traveling entertainers were seen as nuisances and so the entertainers also stopped coming to Nokado.”67 To some observers, the locus of village life had shifted from the community to the family. Robert Smith, during a 1975 visit to Kurusu, a village he had studied in 1951, wrote of the loosening of communal bonds that he observed: To my 1951 eyes, it seemed very peculiar. . . . On weekdays there is little visiting between houses, many of which are empty all day in any event, and in the evening after dinner most people settle down to watch a favorite television program before retiring. With so little time devoted to visiting one’s neighbors, some people fear that Kurusu is on its way to becoming a settlement of nodding acquaintances.68

We should not romanticize the loss of communal village relationships due to the effects of affluence, consumerism, and TV. Some writers thought that this communal void often had a brighter side, the growth of family


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cohesion. In writing about Shibukawa City, Chōsa Jōhō noted the transformation of the family along the lines of the egalitarian postwar ideal: Adults and children speak on an equal level, and it has come about that fathers and sons drink sake together. The friendliness of human relations was developed through the family sitting as one in front of the television.69

A farmwoman did notice the way that the introduction of television had changed her family interactions for the better: Until now, even when it is night, the family gathering together and talking to each other does not happen much outside of mealtimes. However, after we got a television, everyone regularly gathers around the television. It feels as if the whole house has become cheerful (akaruku natta yōna ki ga shimasu).70

Nevertheless, we must also look at negative reports of TV’s effects on families and look at complaints of a darker change through television, that of growing isolation of the elderly within rural families. The reports on the elderly raise questions about the nature of media anecdotal evidence, and are better read as a heightened concern for the problems of the elderly in the postwar than as a scientific study on television’s effects. Mitsuru Shimpo, in his study of a farming community of Shiwa in Iwate prefecture in 1969, noted that in the prewar, the elderly were a good resource for the family—helping with farm operations in the busy season, and producing straw shoes and boots for other household members. Equally important, they maintained contact with the younger generations by looking after their grandchildren and recounting old legends to them. Yet, the elderly found themselves economically useless in the postwar when new farming techniques and mechanization made them unnecessary. The outside market meant that farmers could buy manufactured shoes instead of the shoes made by the elderly. Furthermore, TV helped marginalize the elderly by replacing them as the means for entertaining the children. Shimpo noticed that in Shiwa, old people, especially old women who lived longer than their husbands, had become very isolated from the family after dinner. Because they had become marginal to the production of their household, their status and their ability to control the television dial diminished. Shimpo paints a sad picture of the elderly marginalized within the home through television:

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? If they wish to watch television they are not permitted to choose the channel they like because ‘old people no longer contribute to the household economy.’ As a rule, children have the right to select programmes until suppertime, and the programmes they choose, such as baseball or boxing, do not interest the old women. All that remains for them is to retire to their own rooms, which are now enclosed by partition walls. While such privacy may be a benefit to young couples or students who have to study, it isolates old people. Unaccustomed to reading books, the old people have nothing to do. Some old Shiwa women felt as if they were imprisoned in solitary cells; the “warm and personal contact” between household members, they said, has disappeared.71

Shimpo may have underestimated the isolation the elderly faced in prewar days—as well as overestimated their isolation in the postwar. Television could have benefits for the elderly as well by serving as a source of enertainment for lonely elderly. We must keep in mind that television entered the rural villages at a time when, due to social change and rural-tourban migration, what to do with the elderly had become a pressing issue for many Japanese. A Chōsa Jōhō writer observed: Now, in the farming villages, how to deal with the elderly has become a very big problem. When you go to visit a farm village in which television has entered, the elderly sit transfixed in front of the television and do not move. When it came to be that the elderly were attracted to television, the happiest family member was the young daughter-in-law. Here, the “daughter-in-law and mother-in-law” problem has eased a great deal. The mother has stopped walking to the neighbor’s house to complain about the daughter-in-law. There are fewer grandfathers who find nitpick and fault with their son’s new farm methods. If this is the case, then investing in a 50,000-yen television is an act of filial piety and also, the elderly will stop complaining. So it is a cheap way of killing two birds with one stone.72

Regardless of the media ambivalence toward television’s effect on the elderly, some reports did mention television as an instrument of social change in the village. Among other things it was a means to spread the ideology of the urban white-collar middle class—such ideas as the dominant housewife/mother—into the rural homes throughout the nation. In this manner, national television culture helped to bridge regional differences and spread urban ideals throughout the country. Still, viewer reaction could


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be mixed. A rural woman spoke of her opinion about a show that criticized the poor treatment of farm wives: We think that the programme shows us only the dark aspect, the hard work and not the happy side, and there is a pleasant side for the farmer. Only the miserable points were shown and none of the good points. It is natural that after looking at this, girls do not like marrying farmers . . .

On the other hand, the same television program on suffering farm wives elicited support from another farmwoman: Although there are some difference in the type of work we do and life we lead, it is true that our life is not so very different from that seen on television. It is a way of life which has been handed down for hundreds of years from our grandmothers to our mothers and then to us, as resigned woman. There is no man, not even a husband, who understands the position of a woman, helps her in her work, or loves her. The telecast has shown us the real situation of wives or mothers in agricultural communities.73

While reactions to TV programming could have differed, at least TV broached this important subject. By seeing other villages and how they grappled with change, rural Japanese were beginning to imagine other possibilities and alternatives for their lives. TV presented urban-influenced ideals and even urban-influenced concepts of the countryside as the norm for Japan.

RHYTHMS OF DAILY LIFE FROM TOKYO While they are laughing, crying and getting angry watching television, new ways of thinking are being promoted. In the family living room, they see and hear Tokyo and are gradually “Tokyonized” (Tokyo-naizu sarete iku). In this way television plays a big role in the leveling (suiheika) of culture. 1961 Description of Shimodate City in Chōsa Jōhō74

The lifestyle, if not the values, of rural communities rapidly started to resemble those of the urban lifestyle portrayed on television, with both favorable and devastating consequences for village culture and traditions. Before the war, a resident of one village reportedly could tell by a person’s clothes if he or she was from the city or from the country, and even how far

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they lived from town. With the spread of urban consumerism, this became increasingly difficult.75 Ironically, Tokyo itself was partly a creation of the television. Vast numbers of young people, attracted by the glamour of Tokyo living and by economic opportunities, flooded the capital in a mass migration. The reverse could be said—that people in “Tokyo” looked more like people in the “countryside.” After all, the majority of Tokyoites (and people living in the major cities) were not native to the area but rather immigrants from the countryside. Rather than encountering a gleaming urban modern metropolis, these migrants often encountered a lifestyle worse than that back home. An influx of people from all over the country so crowded huge cities that basic amenities for urban living, such as parks, private rooms, basic sewage facilities, or places to meet were in short supply for young newcomers.76 Migrants often brought with them television-influenced ideas of Tokyo life, which differed dramatically from the lived reality of established Tokyo residents, who fiercely resisted urbanization and change. “City” and “country” residents, rather than looking like Tokyo people, more resembled the “virtual Tokyo” people of television culture. This community, which came to represent the nation in the eyes of TV producers, was then broadcast back to the rest of the nation, right into the living rooms of families. Ironically, television helped define and spread the idea of “rural” to villagers and teach them what it meant to be “villagers.” Villagers understood, through television, that they were living in a peripheral part of the nation, both economically and culturally. Portrayals of rural life and “traditions” were mediated through and shaped by television, which helped bring into villages scenes of the diversity of rural areas all over Japan. Villagers retained the ability to criticize television’s portrayal of them and often hoped that there were more programs that showed city people the lives of farmers. In Itako in the 1960s, one farmer wished aloud for a program that would show urban dwellers the hard process of growing and harvesting rice.77 In 1966, with TV well established in the villages, Sugiura Minpei commented on Aichi prefecture villagers: Sometimes a farm drama is broadcast on television. However, there haven’t been dramas that were so criticized in the villages until now. Because they exaggerate the very old parts or just one part of a very modern lifestyle when they portray rural lifestyles, it causes the rural viewer to feel like it is an insult to insult to farmers.78

For many youth, the portrayal of urban not rural lifestyles gained the most attention and many were fascinated by the glamour of city living


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they saw on TV. Chōsa Jōhō noted the extraordinary appeal of urban culture to youth in the small town of Ōtawara City (pop 43,000) in Tochigi Prefecture: Near the central part of the city, at a corner of a quiet hidden part of the city, a real coffeehouse called “Chanel” has recently been built. The coffee over here is 60 yen, and cream pastries are 60 yen each, the same price as a first class shop in the Ginza in Tokyo. When you consider the cheap price of land and cost of labor, the coffee is more expensive than that in city. Even so, Ōtawara City’s young men and women seek the urban atmosphere and romantic atmosphere that they are used to through television and they gather here. If you divide the average yearly wage of 85,000 yen by 365, it comes out to exactly the cost for one couple to come here. They spend one day’s wages to be in an urban atmosphere and Ōtawara young people leave the shop seemingly satisfied.79

For youths to spend a day’s worth of wages in this coffee house shows the overwhelming attraction of consumerism and urban lifestyles in this small city. The appeal of the urban lifestyle popularized through television could be seen in the provincial city of Shimodate, where over 90% of high school graduates and middle school graduates expressed a desire to go to Tokyo. This problem of the rural young moving to Tokyo even became the plot for an episode in the long-running series Shichinin no Keiji (Seven Detectives), a stylishly filmed detective show about seven detectives. In the episode, “Futari no Ginza” (Ginza for two), the detectives help a young rural fisherman search for his girlfriend, who was kidnapped by city ruffians and taken to Tokyo. They scour the city’s Ginza district, with its trendy buildings and fashions, and the viewer sees scenes of stylish living. When they finally find the girlfriend, she refuses to go home, as she has fallen in love with the big city. The young fisherman goes insane as a result, lashes out at a pedestrian with a knife in a random act of violence, and becomes a criminal himself.80 However, from the views of many of the farmers, the postwar prosperity represented a vast improvement over the poverty of the past. It is too easy for today’s Japanese to overlook the grinding poverty and isolation of prewar rural Japan and the often-oppressive social relationships that stifled women and the young. R.P. Dore noted that compared to city residents who were nostalgic about the natural smells of the countryside, rural villagers did not care to return to the days when the houses were full of flies or when farmers used dung for fertilizer.81 Thus, while city dwellers

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might have nostalgically decried the social costs of industrialization and modernization, and changes in “authentic” village culture, the villagers, being only recently removed from poverty and relative isolation, happily accepted these changes. One has a difficult time determining whether or not the changes induced by television in rural areas were overall positive or negative. The important point is that TV had become an important means to standardize regional differences. Much of the programming from the nation’s capital helped define the lifestyle of the nation. In other words, television broadcasts and Tokyo programming became part of the rhythms of daily life, giving it a sense of orderliness. Japanese began to run their lives according to that of television rhythms. One of the goals of social educators like UNESCO, which introduced televisions to Japanese villages, was to instill in farmers a sense of clock time and make them punctual in attending meetings.82 Chōsa Jōhō observed in 1960 that farmers and fishermen often began to follow the rhythms of television broadcasting, which encouraged staying up late, rather than following those of pre-television village life, which encouraged going to bed early to get a head start on work the next day. After television became part of the lives Higashi Itō, daily life underwent change: Even the farm families and fisherman families that leave for work in the early morning have begun to watch television and stay up late night. Here and there, cries of “I’m tired, I’m tired” spills out.83

Through television, urban centers wielded dominance over the nation. The personal rhythms of daily life were dictated by major urban centers, produced from the centers (and especially Tokyo), and due to population shifts and rural to urban migration, consumed from the centers. Nakano Kiyomi also discerned a larger process at work through TV, that of the standardization of society itself into something approaching homogenization, something that he dreaded: Television, reinforced with by mass production, paints over people’s lives the same color. A modern marvel is how, no matter where you go, people wear the same clothes and wear the same shoes. Even the Shimokita Peninsula or even Kagoshima are the same. In the past, the people (minzoku) in their respective villages had their respective ways. However, now their newly constructed homes are based on standards and colors from the center. In this manner, Japanese have truly become one race (onajī minzoku). Whether or not this is fortunate


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or unfortunate is a separate question. Mass production and mass communication are now almighty in society (ōrumaitei). There is no way to resist this.

Nakano’s words cut to the crux of what many considered to be the issue. From the viewpoint of a small city or village, television imposed a schedule of daily life dictated from the central cities. In the textile town of Kiryū City, three hours by train from Tokyo, TV shrank the cultural distance to Tokyo. This was either a blessing or a curse, depending on how one looked at it. For some Kiryū residents, textile producers could keep up to date with the latest fashions through TV: Their designs used to be prepared two seasons in advance, and but now the fashions they see on television are adapted to the textile designs exactly as it are. The news and trends from every nook and corner of the world rides the television signals and stimulate the textile town.84

A school principal in Itako also spoke in 1961 of the benefits of how TV exposed isolated rural children to the wider world: To the children who are living in the region that is a small, remote area, I want to expose them a wider social phenomenon, and so every day I make a class schedule, and let them watch television and listen to the radio. Although until now, there were no occasions to come into contact with society other than field trips, television has come, and it has really helped in the education in remote areas.85

But this exposure to the outside world through TV often estranged young kids from their local surroundings. Shimpo noted how in a rural area young farmers had caught some live crabs, put them in the lunchboxes to carry home and show to their children. Since the children had spent so much time watching television, they had no experience of fishing. Their rural children had not seen live crabs, and the young men wanted to show them what they looked like.86 This separation from local surroundings was not necessarily a bad development, as it could mean that children were leading a more affluent lifestyle in which they did not have to hunt or fish in order to survive (Obesity from lack of exercise because of watching too much TV may be another matter). In 1961, Chōsa Jōhō writers noted that the reason for rural children physically resembling their urban counterparts came from

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the mechanization of work, and exposure to urban eating habits such as city food like “ramen” and “curry rice.”87 In the end, a media culture helped fill the vacuum created by the loss of imperial ideology. As people were drawn into the television orbit and made it a part of their daily lives, they, or at least individuals and organizations that claimed to speak for them, became worried about what the nation was watching. The effort to manipulate and regulate this TV culture will be the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter Six

Intellectuals Debate TV: Ōya’s “Hundred Million Idiots” and Kato’s “Television Culture”

In 1962, a truly bloody pro wrestling program fanned the flames of a growing controversy over TV violence. On April 27, NTV-affiliated networks nationwide broadcast a three-man tag team wrestling match of Rikidōzan, Toyonobori, & Great Togo versus Lou Thesz, Freddie Blassie, & Mike Sharpe (Sr.). During the match, Freddie Blassie bit into the forehead of the Great Togo, sending blood all over him. Two elderly viewers collapsed while watching this gory broadcast, but pre-existing health conditions like chronic heart asthma and high blood pressure may have caused their untimely demise. These deaths caused pro wrestling, so wildly popular and instrumental in establishing the popularity of television as a medium, to become the poster child of a media culture gone awry. The Asahi linked the audience deaths directly to the gore of pro wrestling. The newspaper quoted the doctor of one of the victims: “I also saw that barbaric scene on television, and I warned the family that it would not be good to let a sick person watch this kind of scene.” Alongside the condemnations of pro wrestling violence, the Asahi quoted an NTV manager who defended the broadcast: It is the first time that someone has died from the shock of watching TV. Concerning the way pro wrestling is broadcast, already we take sufficient care as a station to avoid close ups of overly brutal scenes. However, in the end, the ratings of pro wrestling broadcasts are high. In Tokyo it is 50–60%, and when you go to the provinces, the ratings become higher, and there are also areas where they go over 80%. No other programs are popular like this.1

Thus, although the NTV manager conceded the possible danger of pro wrestling violence, he justified this program because the station only 157

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broadcast what huge numbers of viewers craved. Rather than end pro wrestling broadcasts, he advised families with sick members not to let them watch pro wrestling. Pro wrestling had become such a popular program that one shocked writer discovered even housewives in their fifties as enthusiastic fans of the sport.2 This represented the dilemma of the television reformers. How would they go about protecting the people of the nation from themselves? What would happen if the viewers of the nation wanted to watch programs that entertained but did not necessarily enlighten them? As people made television part of their daily lives, criticism of its supposed ability to vulgarize the entire nation began to overshadow praise of television’s educational potential. The next two chapters will trace the history of the anti-television movement and criticism of television, which began surprisingly soon after the introduction of this medium. We can trace the roots of the anti-TV movement to early concerns about its over-commercialization and the early debates over how TV was failing to live up to its cultural promise.

EARLY CONCERN ABOUT TELEVISION The Broadcast Law of 1950 specifically balanced free speech concerns with the need for broadcasters to use their power responsibly. The law contained provisions outlining what kinds of programs could and could not be broadcast: The Broadcaster shall, in compiling the broadcast programs for domestic broadcasting, follow what is laid down in the following items: i) Shall not disturb public security and good morals and manners ii) Shall be politically impartial iii) Shall broadcast news without distorting facts iv) As regards controversial issues, shall clarify the point of issue from a many angles as possible.

How would these regulations be enforced? The Broadcast Law also stated “Broadcast programs shall never be interfered with or regulated by any person, excepting in the case where it is done through invested powers provided by law.”3 With a vague enforcement mechanism in place, the draftees of the law expected public pressure and the broadcasters’ power to police themselves to suffice. However, this ethic of social responsibility clashed with the logic of capitalism. Stations and producers, dependent on sponsors for their survival, found it necessary to maximize their viewership, and attract the attention of advertisers. With the growing number of

Intellectuals Debate TV

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commercial stations in the late 1950s, ratings became one of the top priorities of stations. Television programming, however, lacked a consistent method of predicting what kind of programming would appeal to whom. Many stations found it easy to garner high ratings through programs that used sensational imagery to seize the attention of viewers. These programs not only insulted the sensibilities of the watchdogs of the nation’s culture, but also to many Japanese viewers, violated the 1950 Broadcast Law’s clause of “Shall not disturb public security and good morals and manners.”

ŌYA SŌICHI’S “100 MILLION IDIOTS” THEORY Early visionaries argued that television could expose viewers to the wider world outside of their national borders. In this sense, the promise of television lay in its potential as a tool for education and culture. By the mid1950s, critics all over the world argued that on the contrary, television had turned into a device for spreading what they considered to be vulgarity. Writers in the United States criticized the networks’ scheduling of only popular programming like quiz shows and filmed weekly series at the expense of cultural enrichment, such as live drama anthologies and the news. The famous broadcaster Edward Murrow’s denunciation of television in 1958 only added to the feeling that TV had abandoned its cultural duty to America.4 Japanese critics sharply debated the plusses and minuses of television. Part of the argument against television stemmed from the nature of early television viewing as a public act. To be successful, gaitō terebi (public television sets) had to grab the attention of many Japanese pedestrians and thus create a large audience for sponsors’ advertising. TV executives thought that programs needed to be flashy, sometimes grotesque, full of spectacle, and easy to understand. Long dramas or education programs failed to attract casual viewers. So television stations broadcast programs like pro wrestling, which drew huge crowds but also horrified intellectuals who saw the nation’s culture being debased. To these intellectuals, television had failed to live up to its potential to educate the nation and instead aided the vulgarization of the masses. In the early days of television broadcasting, many intellectuals held out hope for the educational and cultural power of television broadcasting. Hatano Kanji argued in the Mainichi of February 4, 1953 that intellectuals needed to give television a chance. In his article, Terebi o sodatteyō (“Let’s bring up television right!”), Hatano described the major characteristic of television: it could broadcast events live. The older media like newspapers, radio, and the movies could only report events after the fact, and so they

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had a great potential to distort their coverage. Television had less potential to spread misinformation due to its immediacy. Yet, Hatano believed that intellectuals unfairly criticized all new media. “Whenever a new means of expression appears, the intelligentsia feel that it is proper to ignore, scorn, or express negative feelings towards it.” Although the primitive quality of pictures on early television sets could not compare to that of the movies, Hatano argued that intellectuals and the people should avoid prejudging television and give it a chance to develop. 5 The intellectuals’ fear of television grew as television became an integral part of daily life and people began spending further time in front of the sets. As early as May 1957, those Japanese with a TV spent an average of three hours and forty-nine minutes a day watching television. By December of the same year, this had shot up to four hours and twenty-five minutes a day.6 As television became a device for use in the privacy of the home, intellectuals argued that programs designed to capture the attention of a large crowd through spectacle failed to provide intellectually stimulating fare for the family. Shows too commercial came under scrutiny from critics. In March of 1958, KRT began broadcasts of Terebi kekkonshiki (Television Wedding), in which they offered to pay for a couple’s wedding expenses in exchange for marrying them on television in the studio. Many Japanese felt that the TV station had crossed the line of good taste by using a sacred “traditional” wedding ceremony (ironically popularized in the early twentieth century) as commercial mass entertainment. Newspapers reported on the program’s plan to entice couples to marry during the summer slump in weddings by offering them a free honeymoon to Hokkaido. Such antics generated complaints and the show ended in December of that year. However, the logic of ratings won out over complaints, and the program reappeared on Fuji Television the following year in 1959 and continued until 1967.7 Once the novelty of TV wore off, many writers began to publicly complain that the programs on both commercial and public television were lowering the cultural level of the nation. The writer Ōya Sōichi (1900— 1970) stuck out as the most prominent of these critics. He argued in an influential series of articles that television was turning the Japanese into a nation of “100 million idiots” (ichioku sōhakuchi 一億総白痴). In their zealous pursuit of ratings, broadcasters pandered to the lowest common denominator and substituted flash and spectacle for quality and thought. That the Japanese audiences eagerly took a liking to such low-quality programming bothered Ōya even more, and his printed articles set off debate in the media and brought a response from defenders of TV such as Kato Hidetoshi.8


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Ōya’s articles received so much media attention that his famous phrase, “turning into a nation of a 100 million idiots” became part of the national vocabulary. When the term, “one hundred million idiots” first appeared, it touched a nerve with Japanese society. Ōya’s phrase made clever use of the famous wartime phrase, “100 million”—as in “100 million hearts beating as one,” or in “100 million people as one bullet.” The government used the “100 million” propaganda in order to instill in Japanese a sense of themselves as monolithic, loyal subjects to the emperor. Ōya’s quote, a play on this propaganda, found TV turning Japanese into a mindless mass of idiots (hakuchi) united as one.9 When Ōya Sōichi spoke, people listened, as he had developed a strong reputation as one of Japan’s leading social critics and an entertaining writer. His reputation as a social critic was well established, earning him the nickname, “Emperor of the mass media.”10 While in middle school, Ōya became acutely aware of social problems and converted to Marxism. In 1925, while in Tokyo University, he edited a best-selling series of lectures on “social problems.” He then quit the university and entered the world of journalism, becoming an influential member of the literary elite. After the war, he continued writing social criticisms with his trademark wit, for example, likening the poor mass-production quality of Japan’s universities to bento lunches found at train stations. He did not blindly criticize all aspects of television, however, but rather feared its hegemonic power to dominate popular thought. When Ōya participated in a 1951 roundtable discussion before television had been introduced into Japan, in fact, he did not register any objections to television itself but accurately predicted that it would become the dominant medium of Japanese society, surpassing the power of motion pictures: “ . . . At first movies, which could not compete with the theater, ended up dethroning the theater . . . However, in the future, television will take over from the movies, and the era of television hegemony will probably come.”11 While Ōya predicted the dominant position TV would eventually achieve in Japan, the more he watched television programs, the more he disliked the poor quality of the new medium. He found TV an insult to human intelligence, and the fact that people enjoyed what he considered to be sheer stupidity horrified him even more. Ōya told the Yomiuri newspaper in late 1963 that his anger towards television developed when “amongst the first TV programs, I saw a scene of people eating tofu with their fingers and throwing it at others. When I remembered the scarcity of goods in the wartime and immediate postwar eras, I was extremely angry.”12 These programs represented a far cry from the prewar predictions of TV serving

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as an instrument of culture spreading opera, plays, and classical music to the masses. In November 1956, NTV broadcast the infamous episode of “Nandemo Yarima-show” (“The Let’s Do Anything Show”—with a pun on the word shō meaning both “let’s do” and “show”), where the producers paid a person to wave a Keiō University flag in the Waseda cheering section. This program ended up making news because college baseball subsequently banned NTV from broadcasting the remaining games of the Keiō-Waseda baseball series. The Tokyo Shimbun editorialized: We saw the controversial third day program, “Nandemo Yarima-show” but that is a program whose nature makes people stupid, (italics mine) and so it is not very funny. The man who waved the three-color flag in the Waseda cheering section should be seen as comical and irresponsible and so you don’t have to be so serious. . . . But, isn’t it a problem that all three stations are broadcasting the same game?”13

Besides characterizing TV as a medium that would make people stupid, the article pointed out something more important: the lack of choice in television programming. Why were all three stations broadcasting the same game? This seems odd to viewers today, but one must consider the dearth of production facilities and programming in the early days of television. In effect, the Tokyo Shimbun glimpsed the beginnings of the power of television to forge a “consensus” through control over what programs people could see. In the context of seeing television as a means to raise the cultural level of the nation, those intellectuals who had earlier praised its potential for good must have regarded shows like Nandemo Yarima-show as a bitter disappointment. The commercial aspect, with its emphasis on ratings, had prevailed over the cultural aspect, with its emphasis on quality. Rather than making the nation smarter, television brought visual sensationalism into the living rooms of millions of Japanese. Ōya realized that a nation bred to crave stimulation through television would find “normal” programs boring, and would constantly desire more stimulation, becoming “idiots.” Ōya began his crusade against TV sensationalism in a January 21, 1957 Tokyo Shimbun article that predated his famous “100 million idiots” quotation. Writing under a pen name, he first described the joys of watching sporting events on television. Television allowed him the luxury of watching live sports broadcasts from the comfort of his home and avoiding the trouble of dealing with the crowd or the expense of tickets. So what did he find so offensive? He found television lacking in quality entertainment:


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However, entertainment programs devised for television, are sometimes—no always, frighteningly unbearable. First on the list are the various quizzes, then the various television dramas, and then the popular song programs that occupy the majority of prime time. No matter where you turn the dial, the programs are extremely cheap, coarse, and vulgar. A person said that this is a movement to turn the citizens into idiots (italics mine), and this may be bit of an exaggeration, but if people enjoy that kind of stuff every day at home, the only thing certain is that they will never become smart.

To a man of letters like Ōya, the vulgar entertainment of early “reality television,” such as Nandemo Yarima-show, only confirmed his fears that people would never become smart if they watched those kinds of television programs on a daily basis. Ōya identified what he considered the root cause of these bad programs, the logic of commercialism: The commercial television sponsors cannot stop themselves from pursuing the goal of a campaign to turn us into idiots (italics mine) while we are watching television. It is equivalent to the commercial television stations being impotent in front of the sponsors. To some degree, they compensate for low quality programs by paying special efforts to the service programs. But the programs are already stale and they become blurred with other current affairs programs. The way that the announcers act so stupid, you feel sorry for them.

Commercial stations, with their need to obtain revenue from sponsors, relied on flash and spectacle to attract their audiences. Stations ultimately catered to the needs of the sponsors rather than the viewer, resulting in programs designed not for lofty educational goals or the public good but solely for garnering as large an audience as possible. If Ōya’s writings sounded like NHK’s early criticism of private broadcasting commercialism, his criticisms of NHK sounded equally like NTV’s criticisms of public stations. Although NHK had escaped the tyranny of the sponsor, Ōya believed that they had failed to broadcast imaginative programming: Here NHK is inexcusable as a network. They are somewhat decent and cover a lot of topics but are somewhat unassertive. Therefore, they’ve become almost the same as the commercial stations. Although they are free from business-oriented sponsors, they try almost no new experimental attempts at programs. Sometimes they lack common sense and

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? are outdone by the commercial stations. Because of this, there is no reason that we have to pay our subscriptions to NHK.14

Ōya considered NHK a bland, unimaginative broadcaster that also contributed to the lowest common denominator television culture. His criticisms of NHK as too stale and non-controversial meant that television programming in general failed to live up to its promise of cultural enrichment for the masses. Soon after, Ōya launched his famous broadside at television. Ōya told an Asahi Shimbun journalist a story of how he came up with his phrase “a hundred million idiots.” I first used the phrase concerning the television program, “Nandemo Yarima-show” on NTV. The performer entered the Keiō cheering section from the Waseda section, and held a Waseda flag. And so a great commotion arose. The degree of visual stimulation equals the audience’s interest in watching. When the broadcasters just pursue sensationalism without thinking about quality, they pander to the people’s most vulgar interests. If this trend continues, then they must make the degree of excitement increasingly stronger, and then people will become thick-headed (dull) during the normal times when there is no excitement. That is what you call “becoming an idiot.”15

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, Ōya Sōichi made his famous quote of “turning into a 100 million idiots” in the evening edition of the Tokyo Shimbun on January 27, 1957, writing that “television could even end up trying to stimulate man’s meanest interests” if it continued to chase after powerful images. Other sources, however, have this famous phrase first appearing in the February 2, 1957 edition of Shūkan Tokyo.16 In this article, he is quoted as saying: When we look at the state of today’s mass media, we see that the masses will become happy devouring anything. [. . . . ] Everyday on television there is an array of vulgar programs worse than storyboard shows (kamishibai). A campaign to turn us into “a nation of a 100 million idiots” through the advanced mass media of radio and television has developed.17

His distrust of the masses becomes clear in this quote. The storyboard show referred to a postwar type of show for children. Kamishibai


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storytellers, in order to sell candy, would gather children in front of them, then tell their tales accompanied by drawings on cardboard storyboards. Ōya argued that television, because of its emphasis on attracting audiences through flash and spectacle, broadcast programs of even lower quality than even these one-man shows. Ōya continued his criticism of television in subsequent writings and made an important point: people would watch anything on television so long as it had lots of shock value. Stations tried to bait their audiences into watching their programs through visual stimulation or grotesqueness, not quality programming. He likened it to a phenomenon in which just the sight of dogs mating in public sufficed to grab the attention of most pedestrians and make them gawk in wonderment: For example, at a street corner, if dogs are mating, you have the feeling of wanting to stop and watch. After finishing watching it, you feel stupid, that although you had business to do, you somehow stopped to watch dogs mate. Then, if there is a fire, you also run off to [watch] it.18

Ōya’s writings set off a debate among writers that revealed the fears that many had over commercialization and mass culture taking root in Japan. For example, in July 1957, in an article titled, “Terebi Būmu No Rinshō Hōkoku-Jyūyon Inchi No Garasu No Sekai (a Clinical Account of the Television Boom: The World of the 14-Inch Glass),” the Bungei Shunjū continued Ōya’s line of attack and noted that Japan was in a “television boom” physically transforming the urban landscape. It also portrayed television as something that would spread commercialism into the home. Television, as an advertising medium able to reach into all homes, possessed a power equivalent to “sending a slick talking and efficient salesman to each house.” Time and money constraints led to the cheap quality of TV programming, and the level of control by the sponsors further degraded programs. The need to turn a profit by advertising to a mass audience guaranteed that all television programs with sponsors would sink to the lowest common denominator. The programs that even those working for television broadcasters call “idiot programs” (hakuchi bangumi 白痴番組) are probably those sponsored by the big sponsors. They are made to sing the popular songs all the time, and there are stupid and not funny comedies. These kinds of programs are gradually moving from radio to television.

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Commercialism in television did not just mean bad programming. The vicious way some of the audience participation programs attempted to get laughs from the audience violated people’s humanity. Audience participation programs started in the early days of the postwar as a means to democratize broadcasting by giving the average person on the street a voice on the airwaves. Shows like Nodo jiman (“Singing Contest,” literally translated as “Throat Pride”) gave amateur singers a chance to sing in front of a broadcast audience. By the mid-fifties, the Bungei Shunjū noted that some of these audience participation programs held up the participants for ridicule in order to attain laughs. These programs went out of their way to choose participants who could easily be made the butt of the jokes. Strangely enough, audience participants didn’t seem to care. What did people find so funny about a person being mocked publicly? This kind of rudeness by the emcee has been highly criticized, but I must say that the temperament that can enjoy this kind of program is one that lacks humanity. When people gaze and laugh at the sight of people’s faults being made fun of, if they do not have a bad aftertaste, then it is proof of a nihilistic (kyomutekina) feeling. . . . [T]he fact that the person being made fun of behaves as if nothing had happened is one of the sins of television.

Like Ōya Sōichi, the author of the Bungei Shunjū article above viewed TV as numbing the viewer’s ability to think and turning them into people trained to crave ever-increasing visual stimulation. In sum, the belief in an unthinking, uncritical audience that lapped up whatever TV had to offer underlay this negative view of TV: Well, television brings about the idiotization (emphasis mine) of the people. The fundamental reason is rooted in television’s nature. In other words, television does not inspire the workings of the intellect, and it appeals to the sudden senses. The viewer does not think and receive but rather reads into whatever the television gives rise to. In this manner, people are not “thinking reeds” (kangaeru ashi), but have become “pigs made to think”(kangaezaru buta).

What did the Bungei Shunjū author recommend as a solution to this problem? The audience needed to try harder to remain detached from the attention-grabbing powers of television. Unfortunately, the author also felt pessimistic about their ability to do so:


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The people can experience the same “social incident” at the same time through television. But now they must not unresistingly become involved in TV “incidents.” Rather, they should objectively look at those programs and hold on to their heart-felt freedom to be critical. This kind of [mental] separation will rescue us from the “idiotization” by television. However, TV does not teach us how to mentally separate ourselves.19

According to some like Yamada Ichirō, the special report section assistant general manager of Kyōdō News agency, intellectuals could only criticize TV. In a 1957 article, a dismayed Yamada wrote that when it came to television, all the scholars and writers he talked to only wanted to write critical articles with a predictable sameness to their laments about the medium. It’s not just reporters that are staggered by television. When I solicit manuscripts from authors and scholars, they all write about television. Even if I ask them to write about radio, they also comment on television and relate their recollections to me. The thing that troubles me the most is that each and every one of their writings resembled each other. For example, they write stuff like “the reason why I don’t buy TV is because it is stupid.” “There is nothing worse than a television drama,” “I only watch sports broadcasts,” “The victims of the television era are the children,” “I do not let my son watch television,” etc.20

Perhaps the intellectuals’ fear of television revealed more about their ambivalent views of audiences than of television. Andrew Barshay points out that postwar intellectuals participated in a popular campaign to enlighten the masses and thus bring out the democratic consciousness of Japan. Yet, while these Marxist and modernist intellectuals spoke in the name of the masses, they didn’t trust the masses to help themselves. With this in mind, the campaign against vulgar television takes on a different tone: television interfered with the intellectual’s campaign of popular enlightenment. Anti-television arguments cropped up during the late 1950s, a time William Kelly identifies as one of debates over the emergence of ‘mass society’ (taishū shakai) and the emergence of a mass “middlebrow” culture.21 Intellectuals deep down did not trust the masses who undoubtedly preferred the easy visual stimulation of popular culture over that produced by intellectuals and high culture artists. Similar arguments had appeared earlier in the United States. J. Fred MacDonald quotes the

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FCC commissioner Frieda B. Hennock as blaming educators in 1950 for creating minds that accepted lowest-common-denominator TV programming: Well, I am not altogether blaming the commercial broadcasters. I blame you educators tonight. They have to make a living. They turn to the lowest common denominator approach, because that is the intellectual level of the public mind, and that is the reason for the mediocre product you get on the air.22

Intellectuals had issued their challenge to the new electronic medium. Would there be any intellectuals in Japan who would defend this medium? One such person, Kato Hidetoshi, answered Ōya’s criticisms with a theory of the “Television Age” that showed more optimism over television’s potentials.

KATO HIDETOSHI AND THE “TELEVISION AGE” While Ōya Sōichi and other intellectuals took a dim view of television, Kato Hidetoshi (1930~), a young sociologist from the University of Kyoto, and later an eminent scholar of Japanese popular culture, saw the upcoming era as a forward-looking age of a new visual television culture filled with potential. Kato answered television critics in a February 1958 Chuō Kōron article entitled “Terebi bunmei no tenbō” (A View of Television Culture), which was later reprinted in 1958 in a book called The Television Age (Terebi Jidai). Kato claimed that critics had reacted too negatively to TV, and one of the reasons for their disdain toward this new medium was a lack of understanding. This puzzles me. It is very troubling that the intellectuals and in many cases, the progressives who ought to lead civilization revert to a conservatism especially when it comes to television. Of course I wish for television criticism to be livelier. However, the kind of criticism in which one watches television occasionally at a coffeehouse for ten minutes and then acts indignant and says that television is silly or vulgar, is useless in advancing anything at all.

Rather than carp about the deficiencies of television and tell people to avoid it, Kato believed intellectuals should study television for what it was, a new medium with pros and cons that would change lifestyles. If television has plusses and minuses, and in any case, if you think it is an important medium for humanity, then isn’t it important to offer


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opinions after watching television a lot, closely examining it from a variety of viewpoints, and probing into its’ different possibilities? Only that kind of work will result in television and television criticism mutually inspiring each other.

Television criticism had rapidly lost touch with actual television. Despite the mushrooming numbers of television sets in Japan, critics could not face up to this new reality and could offer only negative criticisms: Unfortunately, we can see in present situation that television and television criticism are backing away from each other and moving in opposite directions. The more television grows, the more we see the toughening of television criticism that, without considering television’s side of the story, labels it as useless. Already, television and television criticism are losing contact with each other.

Critics failed to understand television in part because they did not understand science and technology. Kato believed this misunderstanding stemmed from a cultural lag in which science and culture seemed to be talking past each other: It is often said that in the universal domain of culture, there is a huge gap between science/technology and ideas. When you compare it to the communication technology called television, ideas on communication (meta-communication) lag quite behind. This gap must somehow be closed. It is inexcusable to say that one should turn one’s eyes away from television.23

Kato proposed an objective study of television’s plusses and minuses. He argued that communications history was composed of a series of developments, each building upon the other. Humans had used visual communication throughout history to transmit ideas—for example, in the Greek tragedies or modern day movies and circuses. The main difference with television was its revolutionary potential to change lifestyles: Until now, there have been many visual communication media. Especially from the 1920s, visual medium like comics, color printing, photography, and movies have grown one after another. However, the quality and quantity of visual communication will now be completely changed by the appearance of TV.24

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The new medium of television was not necessarily good or bad as it only represented another new, potentially revolutionary form of visual communication. As Kato saw it, intellectuals needed to investigate its potential as a new medium. Kato drew upon the theories of American scholars of leisure such as David Riesman and Reuel Denney to convince his readers that television as a medium was not as negative as critics claimed. Kato based his essay on the premise of Horton and Wahl’s 1956 theory of parasocial interaction, which claimed that because media like television gave the viewer the illusion of a “face to face” relationship with the performer, the viewer interacted with the people on the television screens as real people.25 Kato argued that television was revolutionary because it reversed the relationship between the spectator and the performer. In conventional visual communication, spectators had to gather to see the performers at places like movie theaters and stadiums, which Kato likened to the audience visiting the house of a stranger. For ordinary people, television reversed these roles in a revolutionary way: “at the very least, for the commoners, this is the first medium in which they are given a new viewing seat that they had not experienced until now.” Streams of visitors came from the television set into the living room every day. Despite its groundbreaking potential to transform the relationship between audience and performer, this new medium carried the negative potential to stunt the viewer’s intellect. Nothing could be learned if all the TV performer did was to greet the audience like a friend: If every day and every night [television] visitors can only say, “How are you doing?” then nothing can be done about it. It is said that television changes the quality of the interaction between spectator and performer, but at the same time, narrows the workings of this interaction. These techniques of interaction and expression will be a big problem of television in the future.

Kato stressed the importance of understanding the workings of television and how it functioned within home life, a task that had growing importance with the rising dominance of visual culture and communication in modern society. Rather than avoid television, as some intellectuals were advocating, schools of the television age should educate students in learning how to watch it and enrich themselves through visual communication. Viewers, argued Kato, should also take up David Riesman’s idea of a “new literacy,” learning to be literate in the visual media. With proper education, television viewers could learn to become responsible viewers. The problem was that people at most learned how to receive visual communication,


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like viewing movies, but did not know the fundamentals of how to express themselves through film. Kato used the analogy of print, in which one learned to both read and write. In visual communication, audiences were only learning the equivalent of how to read. Accordingly. Kato maintained that photography should become a part of compulsory education. Viewers, once they learned visual literacy, could learn to watch television, learn to think for themselves, and unlock the full cultural potential, not just of television, but also of all media. If Ōya worried that broadcasters were conditioning viewers to crave visual stimulation, Kato believed that schools could train the same viewers to become discerning critics of visual television culture. Unlike many television critics, Kato had faith in the power of the audience. Television programs would only become as good as the audience demanded them to be, due to the need for media corporations to make money. Rather than lament how popular culture appealed the lowest common denominator, one should focus on raising the lowest common denominator in order to raise the quality of visual culture: Today’s television, movies, and photography, even if they are irresponsible, are still corporate entities. That may be the reason why visual culture has been called vulgar. However, the reason that irresponsible things are passable is because the majority of spectators are still illiterate when it comes to images. They are still completely ignorant about the construction of meaning in visual communication?26

Kato claimed that ultimate responsibility for bad programming lay in the hands of the viewer. TV, as an increasingly influential medium, was neither positive nor negative in and of itself. Unlike other critics, he called on people to embrace television, and to educate themselves in the principles of visual media while in the process of doing so. In 1961, the American media scholar David Riesman visited Japan and met with Kato. During his visit, Riesman had a conversation with a professor, who he identified by the pseudonym “Murata.” In the following passage, “Professor Murata” spoke to Riesman of how intellectuals had accepted television. Murata: Topics of television are often discussed in school in Japan. If the parents haven’t got television, the children are frustrated and feel deprived. But also the parents enjoy television. The Japanese, including the intellectuals, like anything new. They are delighted and assimilate new things very quickly.

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Riesman: Has NHK . . . helped legitimate television for intellectuals? Murata: Yes, intellectuals watch the news on television regularly. Also, the Japanese prefer seeing the real object to hearing words: the picture, we think, is nearer to reality than words.27

One wonders what Riesman would have heard had he discussed television with Ōya Sōichi. “Professor Murata” neglected to acknowledge that many Japanese intellectuals had issued scathing criticisms of the media. Nevertheless, his comments represented a positive view of television’s possibilities, including the idea that audiences could be taught to be sophisticated consumers of visual culture. Ironically, despite their criticisms of television, some intellectuals had been seduced by the visual appeal of the television media culture. Yamada Ichiro of the Kyōdō News agency, who had complained of the negativity of television critics, explained how a newspaper report on mental patients and television made him laugh: By the way, today there was an article in a regional newspaper that said a hospital let the mental patients watch television and that it had a remarkable effect on them. When I read that, I grimaced and laughed. The reason is that the tastes of the men of letters and the fellows who are around me are exactly the same as the tastes of the mental patients. The newspaper wrote: “Baseball was the most popular among almost all the patients, and next was sumo. Next was manzai comedy, popular songs, rōkyoku (traditional Japanese vaudeville) in that order but they were not that popular . . . Exciting thrillers and shows like wrestling were not included.”28

If Yamada’s article was true, then commercial broadcasting could even captivate intellectuals, meaning that TV broadcasting had improved in quality, or that intellectuals, being human, had been seduced by the mass television culture.

STUDENT DELINQUENTS, THE SUN TRIBE AND THE ROCKABILLY PANIC OF 1958 The uproar over television needs to be looked at within the social context of the years following the end of the Occupation. Observers worried over the moral degeneration of Japanese youth, who, confused by American reforms and the discrediting of the prewar value system, appeared to be channeling their dissatisfaction into acts of violence. One of these worries focused


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on the mid-fifties surge in juvenile delinquency. In 1954, there were four times more juvenile arrests than in any of the prewar years. The historian Masataka Kōsaka argues that juvenile crime, lower than in Western countries, actually decreased during the 1950s. Still, press reports of violent students shocked Japanese readers. In Osaka, graduates beat up a teacher and trashed their school after commencement ceremonies. Even more shocking, in 1956 of the 5,664 students arrested for major crimes, about one in five came from universities.29 The media seized on these incidents of Japanese youth gone amok. Ishihara Shintarō’s 1955 novel, Taiyō no Kisetsu (Season of the Sun), a sensational novel that dealt with the lives of amoral, violent, well-to-do high school students, both criticized and glorified the youth who, without any moral guidance in the new postwar Japan, could only express themselves through the mindless pursuit of pleasure and violence. Besides winning Ishihara the Akutagawa prize in Japanese literature, Taiyō no Kisetsu sparked much debate within the press and drew popular attention to the problems of youth. Movies, books, and magazines took their cue from this novel, commodifying and glorifying the very values that Ishihara intended to critique. Nikkatsu studios turned the work itself into a 1956 smash hit film starring Ishihara’s brother. Taiyō no Kisetsu spawned a whole genre of teen delinquency films known as Taiyōzoku-eiga (Sun-tribe movies). Although the vast majority of youth did not engage in the delinquent amoral behavior found in Ishihara’s work, reports emerged of many teenagers imitating the characters in the movies. Such teens were known as the Taiyōzoku (suntribe), and their standard uniform was the “Shintarō” crew cut and aloha sports shirt. 30 Taiyō no Kisetsu became a focal point for the debates surrounding the delinquency of postwar youth. Then, as suddenly as the Taiyōzoku appeared, they vanished from the Japanese social scene. The Taiyōzoku controversy revealed the wider concern over youth prevalent during the debate over vulgar television programs. In the postwar setting, prewar social institutions proved inadequate to properly channel the energies of youth. To many Japanese, postwar youth embodied a failure of these institutions. A fitting analogy might be the 1920s “Lost Generation” in the United States. The outcry over the “Lost generation,” like the outcry over the Taiyōzoku, did not arise from the actual threat of crime from the young, but the popular perception that the old institutions socialized them inadequately.31 The public attack on television made up part of a larger concern among reformers to regulate society so that the postwar youth, thought to be missing a moral compass, would have stable values. Reformers and

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authorities undertook anti-delinquency countermeasures in order to combat supposed spurs to delinquency. In Osaka, the police began to supervise places of vice like “nude tearooms” with their skimpily clad waitresses. Reformers called for stricter parental control of youth, and planned to reintroduce prewar morals courses into the curriculum. In February of 1957, a crackdown on radio vulgarity included a blacklist of what were considered to be vulgar popular songs.32 Government and reformers engaged in measures to regulate and control the public culture of the nation. Reformers, coming from the educated classes, wanted to impose stability upon the massive flood of changes sweeping Japan. What better place to start than with vulgar popular culture? In the United States, television demonstrated its power to spread musical trends. The managers of Elvis Presley, for example, put their client on twelve national telecasts between January 1956 and January 1957, helping to spread his popularity throughout America.33 Television performed the same function in Japan by spreading new forms of music. Like Elvis and rockabilly in America, rokabiri, as the Japanese called it, represented one of the earliest panics over the threat of television to the nation’s morals. To many postwar Japanese urban youth, America symbolized emancipation and resistance to the established order. With this underlying appeal, American rockabilly music spread from American military bases to the youth subculture of the urban entertainment districts. As this subculture spread, Japanese rockers adopted western dress such as leather jackets or pompadours, leading to the birth of the rokabiri zoku (rockabilly tribe). Much like Ishihara’s Taiyōzoku, rokabiri spread throughout the nation, but in this case into homes via television. In February 1958, the weeklong Western Carnival, Japan’s first rock festival, occurred at Tokyo’s Nichigeki Theatre, and television broadcasts of this event gave rokabiri its first major nationwide exposure. When Japan’s top rokabiri stars, Masaaki Hirao, Keijiro Yamashita and Mickey Curtis appeared, fans rushed the stage, and television audiences viewed the spectacle of crazed fans screaming at the singers. If Elvis seemed scandalous in America, one can imagine the problems that rokabiri caused in Japan. The unconventional appearance and actions of the singers, which appeared to come from the realm of the grotesque, startled Japanese observers. Kato Hidetoshi, in his article on rockabilly, quotes the Shūkan Asahi in describing one singer’s gestures in the following way: “[He] points both legs inward, lowers the back, and bends the legs. That angle is 35 degrees. And then he thrusts the guitar in the direction of tomorrow, and waddles like a child with polio.”34 Kato used this description to explain what he considered to be the reason for the appeal of rokabiri to young teens: it symbolized the


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oppression that teens felt from being treated as children by adults. Kato argued that television led to “adultized children” (otonaka shita kodomo). Television was exposing young teens to a level of knowledge usually reserved for adults. Yet, while television exposed them to what adults experienced, adults still treated them as children. This phenomenon is due to the mass media, especially television. The knowledge of children grows at a frightening speed through TV. Children enter the company of adults when they watch and listen to adult programs with adults. And then, by the time they are 17 and 18 years old, children have completely become adults. However, even if the children in their high teens have become exact replicas of adults in terms of knowledge, there is the illogic that they are not socially treated as grown-ups in terms of actions. . . .

Kato recognized that the awkward postures of singers symbolized the awkward social position of Japanese teens: To the children in their high teens, doesn’t the oppressed posture in rockabilly symbolize the sense of oppression they receive from adults? They can forcefully straighten their backs if they want to. In other words, they are capable of moving like grown adults. However, whenever they straighten their backs right up, adults firmly push them back down. This is the meaning of the rockabilly posture. They lower their backs a great deal to escape the being pushed down by adults. They are attempting to resist. However, when they are in this low posture, the energy that one normally vents by stretching out has nowhere to go. Their energy is released through waddling like a child with cerebral palsy. Because they cannot naturally release their voices, they end up doing strange screams.35

These awkward postures and voices, which Kato saw as a way to express feelings of being oppressed by adults, were assumed not just by the singers but also by the “sakura,” young teenage female fans in the audience who screamed from their seats at rockabilly concerts. The television stations believed they needed to show the reactions of the spectators in order to satisfy the television audience at home. TV historian Shiga Nobuo has cast television as a “reaction medium.” The television cameras filmed both the singers’ actions on stage and those of excited fans rushing the stage. Both the singers and their fans had to be broadcast on the TV screen. As a result, Shiga argues, television helped set

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a vicious cycle in motion. Some young girls, who had once watched rokabiri performances on the family or coffee shop television set, now caught rokabiri fever, and ended up joining the ranks of the sakura at on-location concerts. Television broadcast scenes of rokabiri concerts with increasing number of excited fans. This increased the visual spectacle of rockabilly broadcasts, which further increased the number of rockabilly fans. Television aided the growth of rokabiri subculture, turning it into a national phenomenon. Much to the consternation of parents, the power of television had created an alternative subculture. Many adults felt threatened by broadcasts of rokabiri concerts because of their effect on young women, and reformers like mothers’ groups and the PTA criticized the rokabiri boom. In 1958, after TBS television broadcast a concert at the Komageki Theater that attracted much criticism, the station had to halt broadcasting rockabilly performances.36 As early as 1958, Japanese clamored for media censorship in order to protect their youth from what they saw as the adverse effects of television. This censorship of rockabilly foreshadowed future debates on television’s effects on the nation’s culture and youth and marked a successful attempt to regulate media culture through outside pressure and self-censorship. The suspension of rockabilly broadcasts stunted the popularity of this music subculture. As it became more and more difficult to obtain permits from local authorities to stage performances, Japanese rokabiri slowly faded away. Singers were reduced to performing non-threatening pop music or even enka (Japanese ballads), if they were to survive. Aidoru kashū (idol singers), pop performers with a manufactured clean-cut image, often took the place of these singers on the TV.37 Even though the rokabiri threat had been contained, the debate over TV and its impact on Japanese youth had only just begun to warm up.

Chapter Seven

Protecting the Children and Cleaning Up TV

I am against the top down controls on speech by bureaucrats. If the people really think that there is a problem, then they should raise a reform movement by the power of all the people. I can’t stand the abstract opinions of so-called bureaucrats and experts leading the movement.1 Tezuka Osamu, Cartoonist, 1963

These words by Tezuka Osamu, the pioneering cartoonist of classics such as Testuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), revealed the ambivalence that many Japanese felt about efforts to regulate the sex, violence, and sensationalism that were supposedly polluting the airwaves. Tezuka, being an artist, wanted bureaucrats and self-appointed experts to steer clear of imposing controls on speech. After all, who would have the power to define the vague, loaded term, “vulgar”? On the other hand, Tezuka realized that people had a right to demand better programming and gone to the crux of the debate surrounding television in the 1960s. How should Japanese balance the right of free speech with the need to provide socially responsible programming? This debate reflected a wider concern: television culture and the commercialized capitalism that it embodied had permeated the nation’s homes. As with almost everything that people enjoy, efforts to regulate what could be watched accompanied the rise of TV from its inception. We will examine the efforts of the Japanese government, press, and reformers to deal with objectionable programs by establishing alternatives to them, regulating them, or banning them outright. Much of this debate focused on culture, with the realization that television was not necessarily the cultural tool that had been envisioned. Later, as television became a standard household appliance in the late 1950s, weekly magazines, intellectual journals, and industry journals wrote about a new generation of children socialized 177

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by TV. While activists debated the negative effects of television on children, television industry insiders researched how to sell products to children, the newest members of a national consumer culture. Looking back on this debate, one notices the ambiguity of the word “vulgar,” (teizoku) which often lumped together different issues, such as vulgarity, violence, and sex. By 1960, the debate on “vulgar programs” (commonly referred to as “teizoku bangumi” or “zokuaku bangumi”) heated up, and revealed its elitist strain in its targeting of programs popular among a wide audience. TV producers, under the constant pressure to produce an audience for advertisers, created programs that the ratings indicated viewers would watch in high numbers—those appealing to the lowest-common denominators of sex, violence, or plain stupidity. The press complained about these programs, and called for government regulation of “vulgar” programs. Caught between competing demands for high ratings versus wholesome programs, broadcasters publicly promised to engage in self-restraint. All the brouhaha over bad programming ignored the fact that the teizoku bangumi consistently pulled in high ratings. If audiences needed to be saved, they would need to be saved from themselves.

EARLY JAPANESE VIEWS OF TV AND CHILDREN Besides criticizing programs they considered detrimental to the audience’s cultural level, early television critics also feared TV was negatively changing the behavior of a new generation of Japanese. These critics used American reports of TV and its relationship to children to extrapolate what would happen to Japanese youth. Kamimura Shin’ichi had this to say after visiting America in the spring of 1950 and seeing how children were affected by television. The big social problem that has now developed since the beginning of television is the problem of children. When children watch television, they become completely engrossed in it. They do not study, and they only think of television heroes, and lose themselves in their imagination. At one time, it has been said that when it becomes time for the children who were raised on television to take over America, the national character of America will change completely. It has been pointed out that television has the power to change the national characteristics of a country. If we finally succeed in our efforts against each aspect, the children will return to being calm. Right now, the bad influence has already peaked and the good influence is increasingly being recognized.2

Protecting the Children and Cleaning up TV

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The press began to offer similar concerns about children as television took root in Japanese society. Given the growing popularity of the postwar child-centered nuclear family ideal, the press’ attention to television’s effects on children both reflected and shaped the ongoing discourse of Japanese families. If press reports were to be believed, this new medium was drawing children more tightly into the bosom of the family, making the home the center of their non-school lives. Many parents who noticed their children glued to the TV set would probably have agreed with this conclusion. And indeed, a 1957 report revealed that kids were the heaviest viewers of television: two to three hours of TV on the weekday, two hours on Saturdays, and three hours on holidays. Or else, a survey by the Home Economics Department of Japan’s Women’s University listed the harmful influences of this habit. Kids went to bed later, did not want to study, and did not want to read. Even their bodies suffered as they spend fewer hours playing outside, and their eyes worsened from too much TV.3 Yet, children were watching television. TV became so popular that some began to curry favor with friends who had TVs. One writer for the intellectual journal Bungei Shunjū wrote in 1957, “In any case, if there is a child from a house with a television, he or she is no longer bullied, and this is today’s social condition.” (The writer also noted that the same was true for adults because people made it a habit to “coincidentally” drop in on television-owning acquaintances during the days of sumo tournaments.) The Sunday Mainichi reported that when kids played sword-fighting, the child whose family owned the television reportedly played the role of the main swordsman, while the children who came over to watch the programs played the part of the villains.4 Surveys revealed the surprising extent to which urban children had made television a part of their daily lives. Even if children did not have TV sets at home, they were watching TV programs. The Sunday Mainichi of December 7, 1958 in an article titled “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” reported on a survey of Tokyo households. Half of all homes at the time with no television said the reason they did not have a set was that they did not want to hinder their children’s study habits. Now given how almost all homes eventually bought a television, one may wonder if this was a bit of media sensationalism and that presumably, lack of money was a bigger reason. But even if children did not have a set at home, they still found a way to watch television. According to this survey, they were able to watch it at the store, at a friend’s house, or in various other places. Asked to name their three favorite programs, over 60% of Tokyo kids from homes without a television responded with programs like “Superman.”

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Adults also noticed how their children had fallen for TV. One survey of Tokyo households asked fathers to list the good points of television. They came up with the following: TV enriched knowledge (28%), was good for entertainment (22%), was useful for education (14%), or that one could see the news with one’s own eyes (13%). Only a mere 4% listed TV as being useful for family togetherness, a surprising finding given the mountains of writings that touted TV’s ability to bring the family together. In this same survey, fathers noticed unfavorable changes in their children’s behaviors. They offered the following as the bad influences of television on children: they became more negligent with their studies (21%), stayed up late (14%), could not get up from their seats quickly and neglected their work (11%). Besides these physical changes, the fathers complained about their children talking like grownups (8%), copying vulgar words and actions from the programs (2%), and remembering popular songs (1%). Fathers worried most about TV hindering children’s education by making it hard for them to study. To a lesser degree, they were worried that TV brought in new influences to children, who were picking up new slang terms from comedians and mimicking the melodramatic ways of speaking on dramas.5 In these writings, we can see the worries about the impact of TV on younger children—passivity, lack of exercise, childhood fears. Whether or not TV truly had an impact can be debated, but this new medium became the focal point of all fears Japanese had about the new postwar generation. Despite these worries, advertisers plowed full speed ahead in finding ways to grab the attention of the most vulnerable viewer, the child. With television playing such a prominent role in Japanese life, advertisers now had a new weapon to spread their message of consumerism to the Japanese public. As early as the beginning of television broadcasting, advertisers began researching the effectiveness of television commercials on focus groups of children. They made a startling discovery: far from hating commercials, children apparently loved watching them. Soon, advertisers and broadcasters learned to target children as potential new consumers. Dentsū, Japan’s largest advertising agency, learned from American and domestic research that children would be among the main watchers of television. With this knowledge in mind, Dentsū told advertisers that they could not pass up this opportunity to influence one of the main consumer decision makers of the household. We can see many of Dentsū’s views toward children and television as early as 1954, in a January article in the Dentsū Geppō (Dentsū Monthly) titled “TV Kyōshitsu Kara Shōgyō Terebi E Nozomu (What Those in the TV Classroom Wish for in Commercial Television).” It noted that children at a Tokyo middle school already


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had high access to television less than a year after the start of broadcasting. About 10% of 989 students watched television regularly, either through a set at their house (12 students) or at a friend’s house (91 students). The article quoted Uchimura Naoya as saying, “The most enthusiastic watchers of television are children. Ultimately, to catch children is the most effective method of advertising.” While this probably wealthy middle school in Tokyo may not have been typical of all middle school children, these results indicated to canny Dentsū researchers the potential of the youth market and TV advertising. The article also pointed out that the youth market, though easily impressionable, could also be finicky. In studying the views of youngsters, Dentsū discovered that they could be unpredictable in their attitudes and even critical of television. Researchers tested commercials and programs on young school children to determine their reactions to this new advertising media. They found a first year middle school student who enjoyed watching commercials, but complained about the lack of variety of commercials. “I’m not tired of the commercials between the programs, but I’m tired of the seeing the same commercials over and over . . . Commercials are too long and persistent, and do not make the viewer feel too good.” Another first year middle school student gave surprisingly precocious advice on how to advertise: When you are airing a quiz show, there are too many advertisements. I end up not knowing if you are running a quiz or running an advertisement show. However, when you are doing a live broadcast of sports during the hot time of the year, I think it would be good to have commercials like ‘Those of you who are watching television, how about a glass of such and such beer or cider?”

This same article also used American experiences with television to extrapolate what would happen to Japanese children. In a short segment titled, “Kyōshi no tachiba kara” (From the viewpoint of a teacher), a teacher at that middle school mentioned above talked about how American children’s love of television made them stay up late, forget to do their homework, get insufficient sleep, sleep in late, and come late to school.6 On the surface, this article served as a warning to commercial broadcasters to exercise their social responsibility, but could be read by a sharp businessperson as evidence of the almost magical power that commercial television could hold over Japanese children. The November 1960 issue of Hōsō Asahi, the PR magazine for NET, contained opinions about television written by kids. Judging from

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their writings, TV had enchanted Japan’s children. A fourth grade girl in Kobe who wrote, “I always watch television,” noticed how her mother was mildly irritated and amused about her television habit: Even when I am eating a meal, there are things that I just have to watch. Before, the television faced the dining room, but now, it faces the family room. So Yuri-chan and I hold our rice bowls and stare to the other side of the room. When we do this, my older sister and my mommy laugh, get amazed, and complain like “[look at] that face,” “[look at] that posture,” “I can’t believe it.” When I turn off the TV, my mommy always says, “I really like it when it’s quiet.

A fourth grader in Nara wrote about how, despite his father forbidding him to watch television, he would always find ways to do so: “When I study, I sneak a peek at the television. When I do that, my Daddy gives me a very cross look.” He continued, “When we first got a television, I watched it until the station stopped broadcasting for the day and so my eyes were shot, and the whites of my eyes were the color of plums.”7 Advertisers and television executives held a strong belief that children ranked among the most voracious viewers of television and that TV affected their overall behavior. Other Japanese besides advertisers and television executives, such as concerned mothers and critics, also strongly believed that television induced changes in children. Given the general social concern over the direction of postwar youth, and the massive changes in children’s lifestyles due to television, it only took a matter of time before all of these concerns came to a boil in the movement to reform television in the early 1960s.

THE ANTI TV VIOLENCE MOVEMENT In an interesting twist to Ōya’s “100 million idiots” theory, the Shūkan Shinkō of Feb 15, 1958 reported on a competition between the Keiō and Waseda University debate teams over the topic, “Do today’s television programs turn people into idiots?” The Keiō University team drew the unenviable assignment of defending television, but won the debate through good research. While the Waseda team merely spoke about bad programs like the infamous Nandemo Yarima-show, the Keiō team used NHK reports like The Influence of Television Programs on Children to argue that “After regularly watching television, 20% of the children’s grades went up, 70%


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had no change, and 6% had lower grades.”8 Keiō won by using the great volume of surveys and writings generated by the debate over terebikko (television kids). This debate reveals the concern that people felt over television and children. By the 1960s television had become part of the daily lives of most Japanese families. But many parents and educators worried about a new generation of “terebikko” who were too comfortable with mass consumerism. One psychologist noted in 1960 that when small, the only songs children were on a bus going to camp knew how to sing were commercial jingles. He commented on the strong power the commercials had over children: “Those songs were made so that kids could sing them easily.” Other surveys showed that children were becoming hard to separate from their televisions. A 1961 Ministry of Education Survey found out that by the age of two, one out of ten children was watching TV on a regular basis. By the age of three, it was four out of ten children, and by the time they reached school age, all children were watching TV regularly.9 Parents and educators worried about the effects of children watching so much television. Sakurai Tetsuo refers to a sensational incident in 1960, in which a terebikko supposedly killed his father, causing a huge uproar among the Japanese press. A third year middle school student killed his father by lacing his father’s whisky with poison. Previously, the father had taken 10,000 yen that the son had saved from his part-time job and used it to buy a TV. The night before the incident, the father beat the son with a bamboo stick for arguing with his sister over what program to watch. The youth, angry at having his money used for a TV and angry at being beaten, put cat poison into his father’s whisky. Sakurai writes: “When you think about the background of the incident, television was no more than the trigger for the incident, and one can infer that the family environment, especially the father’s character, was a big problem.” Sakurai points out that the April 22nd edition of the Shūkan Terebi Jidai reported the incident as a terebikko gone wild: “He finally went as far as to kill his father: an out of control terebikko.”10 Thus, more fuel was added to the fire over the concern over television turning kids into violent creatures. The panic over terebikko gone wild is easier to understand when we set this incident within the social context of concerns over violence and television. Several violent events convinced many of the need for a movement to clean up Japanese television. Shiga Nobuo identifies the mass protests in the spring and summer of 1960 against U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, commonly known as Anpo, as being the start of NHK’s anti-violence campaign of the early 1960s. We will focus more on this event in the following chapter, but the key point here is that images of bloody clashes between

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protestors and police during these demonstrations brought violence into the living rooms via TV. These broadcasts helped increase popular interest in politics, but also sparked a campaign to purge violence from the airwaves. Shiga points out that NHK President Nomura Hideo, angered by a picture in the July 1960 issue of Network NHK, lamented the “tendency to treat life lightly” and so made it a policy of NHK to be more responsible in its broadcasts of violence.11 One could elaborate on Shiga’s account and say that the Anpo demonstrations were both a call for citizen empowerment and a catalyst for censorship of the media. In response to the growing violence of clashes between demonstrators and police, the seven major newspaper companies in Tokyo issued a famous joint declaration in June 17, 1960 titled “Wipe out violence, preserve parliamentary democracy,” In it, the newspapers expressed their revulsion against violence as a means to solve problems: In a democracy, differences should be contested with words. Whatever the causes and whatever the political difficulties may be, the use of violence to settle matters cannot be permitted under any circumstances. If a social trend permitting violence should once become general, we believe that democracy will die and a grave situation will arise which will endanger Japan’s national existence.12

With this anti-violence mood in mind, NHK instituted an anti-violence policy beginning July 4, 1960 that stripped television programs of scenes of gun fighting and sword fighting, immediately resulting in the cancellation of a few sword-fighting shows and American gun-toting programs. NHK stopped broadcasting American shows like Have Gun Will Travel, Arizona Tom, and Highway Patrol, and Japanese dramas and quiz programs underwent revisions to make sure that they did not contain violence.13 Nomura Hideo, the NHK head, announced in a subsequent interview, “Television is for the family. I want to clean up the violent scenes and dark programs as much as possible.” Nomura also moved to clean up television because of his personal encounter with violence. In 1960, his grandson’s playmate was kidnapped and murdered, an event that affected him deeply.14 Writers like Shiga and Sakurai Tetsuo also identified the broadcast assassination of Asanuma Inejirō, Chairman of Japan’s Socialist Party, on October 12, 1960 as another event that further fueled this anti-violence movement. A right-wing student stabbed and killed Asanuma while he was speaking during a political debate, and TV cameras caught the murder. Although most Japanese were watching the Japan Series professional baseball championship, stations replayed the event on videotape later the


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same night. The scene of the assassination was too real and shocking for many Japanese, leading to complaints from angry viewers flooding the NHK offices.15 If violent American programs helped to spur to this reform movement, then the American official, Newton Minow, Chairman of FCC, provided ammunition for calls for television reform. In 1961, Minow gave a famous speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, in which he challenged them to improve the poor state of television: When television is good, nothing-not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, or newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you, and keep your eyes glued to that set, until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.16

Minow’s speech generated much news in Japan. This “vast wasteland” speech gave Japanese government officials, activists, and newspapers anxious to upgrade their image an impetus to engage in a clean up of television, and made television criticism a key area of social concern. The press stepped up its attack on television. Takemura Ken’ichi, writing in the article “Kaijū terebijon (Monster Television),” in the June 1962 Bungei Shunjū, introduced people to the word that he claimed was fashionable in America, “televitis.” The sufferer of televitis was a person that had “eyes that are irritated like an old person, an awfully long right hand, and two legs that are atrophied.”17 Takemura’s attack on television made up only part of what Sakurai Tetsuo called “the wave of television bashing” of the 1950s and 1960s.18 From the outcry in the newspapers we can see the uneasy relationship between the older medium of print versus the newer medium of television. Newspapers wrote about TV programs and published daily TV schedules in order to attract readers. But the rise in TV meant the rise of a serious competitor to newspapers. While Japanese continued to read newspapers, executives were worried about an electronic medium that had enormous popularity in the nation. Much to the dismay of critics, a rise in commercialism invading the home accompanied the rise in television usage. The public broadcast entity NHK, free from the pressure of advertisers, although bound by political considerations to be impartial, could ignore the need to create attentiongrabbing programs. Commercial broadcasting, needed to attract audiences

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as a matter of economic survival. In order to please advertisers, commercial broadcasters focused on garnering as large an audience as possible for their national-level sponsors. Commercial TV stations faced the problem of appealing to a diverse group of viewers divided by lines such as gender, region, income, or ideology. What better programs to meet this demand than those that appealed to sex and violence? From a business viewpoint, so long as a program garnered strong ratings, a station could ignore voices calling for wholesome but low-rated programs. Criticism of some programs could stoke up publicity and thus viewer interest. On October 1960, Fuji Television, in an attempt to win housewives audiences, began broadcasting the pioneering yorokemi (steamy) drama Hibi no haishin (Days of Betrayal), about an affair between a company chairman and his married lover. Even some the commercial broadcasters believed that this program relied too much on appeals to violence and sex. The controversy over steamy scenes broadcast in the middle of the afternoon led to curious viewers tuning in, and led to good ratings of around 18%.19 An emboldened Fuji TV then, in a move calculated to appeal to men, broadcast the late-night erotic program Pink Mood Show on December of 1960, bringing even more criticism and publicity. The Pink Mood Show featured bare-breasted Nichigeki Music Hall dancers at 10:50 pm Sunday night, leading to calls pouring into the stations. A twenty-year old housewife complained: I am a woman who lives in a danchi (public housing apartment), and after seeing the show last night, the housewives in the complex met to talk about it. Let me tell you what we thought. That program was terrible. Lecherous. Please end it as soon as possible.

But so long as viewers watched this show, the station and sponsors could ignore criticism. A spokesperson for the sponsor Teikoku Electric, a manufacturer of car radios replied, “We are happy to be able to create a bedtime mood for the husband and wife who watches it. If it is done with class, then it is fine to have even more nudity.” Maruō Choken, the producer also defiantly replied, “Men do not complain that there are cooking shows on TV, you know. In other words, the person who watches the program has the right to change channels. If you hate it, turn off the TV.”20

THE PROMISE OF COMMERCIAL EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION Programs such as Hibi no haishin or Pink Mood Show would not disappear from the airwaves, despite protests from outraged Japanese, so long as


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they brought in high ratings. Given the freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution and in the Broadcast Laws, some Japanese believed the solution lay in having the government direct the stations to broadcast educational programming as part of their license requirements. With criticism of the vacuous nature of commercial programming as a central topic of social concern, the Japanese government embarked on an experiment to raise the level of commercial television through “commercial educational television,” in which capitalism met culture. According to this plan, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued large numbers of broadcast licenses in 1957, but on condition that a substantial percentage of programs be educational in nature. NHK had no problem creating a second channel devoted solely to education, but the commercial Nippon Educational Television (NET, “Nippon Kyōiku Terebi” in Japanese) obtained a license on the understanding that it was to run 50% educational and 30% cultural programs. Public reaction to this plan seemed positive, if a bit skeptical. Tokyo University Newspaper Research Chief Chiba Yujirō spoke about the problems of combining commercialism and education. Chiba believed that the effort to create commercial educational television would ultimately end in failure, citing the precedent of commercial education on radio. Even if educational television through commercial broadcasting is established, it will be difficult to maintain its fundamental nature. For example, in the case of radio and the educational broadcasting foundation the Japan Cultural Broadcasting Association, while their first programs had enough educational coloring, they later degenerated into pure and simple entertainment broadcasts.

According to Chiba, commercial educational broadcasts would eventually degenerate into entertainment because of the cutthroat competition between commercial stations. In this manner, even if commercial educational television is inaugurated, there will be companies and corporations that aim for commercialism. If business becomes poor and the commercial education network is in debt, it is easy to imagine a situation in which they will discard their primary aim of education. But at the present we cannot legally restrict them if this happens. That is troubling.

The solution, Chiba concluded, lay with entrusting educational broadcasts to NHK: “ . . . if there is a need to build educational television, stick

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to the principle of public broadcasting and keep the government from interfering. I think that it is better to broadcast these programs on NHK.”21 His words reflected the fears arising over the commercial nature of television, which seemed to be getting stronger with the rise in popularity of commercial broadcasts. The Sunday Mainichi in 1958 took a more positive view and proclaimed public and commercial educational television as the solution to the problem of television, children, and education: When television was developed, what would happen to children’s education? This was the common worry of families with children. Around now, kids who clearly believe that they can study during television intermissions are beginning to appear. The worries of mothers are also very deep. However, one way of solving this worry is just in sight. Educational television will make its debut immediately beginning with Tokyo and later on in all parts of the country.

Commercials on these TV stations posed a dilemma. The revised broadcast law allowed the broadcast of commercials on these new types of stations, but only those that did not harm education were permissible. Because of this, Sunday Mainichi foresaw that commercial education stations would have problems in attracting sponsors: If they use gaudy commercials just like those on today’s commercial TV, it is inevitable that there will be fierce opposition from teachers at the school because such commercials “violate the spirit of education.” Because sponsors do not like commercials that are too meek, this policy at present is causing headaches for broadcasters. However, we naturally hope for the creation of commercials that are totally different from those today.22

By 1959, both the public NHK and private NET were running educational channels. Later, the commercial stations Yomiuri and Mainichi also began operating as semi-educational channels; they were to broadcast a higher ratio of educational and cultural programs than usual commercial stations. In 1964, an even bolder experiment came about when Tokyo Channel 12, Japan’s second exclusively commercial educational broadcaster, made its debut in an effort to improve the standards of television programming. The Japan Science Foundation established this station for the purpose of teaching science, technology, and mid-career technician


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skills. Corporate funds and advertising revenues were to fund this station, and 25% of its broadcasts were to be devoted to news. Soon, Channel 12 began to broadcast programs like Machine Work I, Applied Dynamics, or Electricity Theory in the evenings.23 Would these programs attract an audience and sponsors? While they may have had noble intentions in listening to public sentiment by improving the quality of television programs, the commercial broadcasters soon faced a hard reality: judging by their rhetoric, viewers wanted more educational programs. But by their viewing patterns, they expected others to watch them. Despite all their complaints over television programs, viewers did not jump to the commercial educational stations, which garnered low ratings and struggled to attract sponsors. The fact was that NET’s name itself, which included the word “educational,” put off potential sponsors, and was part of reason for its poor performance. To make matters worse, the Ministry of Education had the right to determine what kind of commercials could run during school program time, and imposed many restrictions on where and how long commercials could run. By 1960, NET was in the red and bleeding money. The staff at NET desperately attempted to boost ratings and attract advertisers. Since private companies (Toei movie studios, publishing company Obunsha, and the Nippon Keizai newspaper) had formed NET, the station needed to turn a profit. With the handicap of half the programs needing to fit the educational category, ratings would not rise. NET resorted to broadcasting the popular westerns Rawhide and Laramie under the pretense that since westerns dealt with history, and as a result could be considered educational programs. It even broadcast a yoromeki show until public pressure forced them to take it off the air.24 NET managed to subvert the requirement that much of their programming be educational. These stopgap measures failed to compensate for the structural problems inherent in the commercial education paradigm. With the end of the western boom of the early 1960s, these stations could not compete with general commercial broadcasters like NTV. By 1965, one observer noted that during a three-week period in the summer, only one program on NET had a sponsor. The rest of the advertising was in the form of spot commercials between programs. But because of restrictions on the type of commercials that could be shown, commercials for adults like soap, chocolate, and expensive cars, were being advertised in between programs for elementary school children.25 Gradually, the commercial educational experiment petered out. When the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications reissued broadcasts licenses in 1967, they eliminated the semi-educational station category, and stations

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like Yomiuri, Mainichi, and Sapporo Television became general programming broadcasters. By 1973, even NET and Tokyo Channel 12 had become stock corporations and were reclassified as general programming broadcasters, and NET changed its name in 1977 to Asahi National Broadcasting (TV Asahi). Commercial educational broadcasting came to an end by 1973, leaving NHK Educational TV as the only exclusively educational station. NHK Educational TV, free from the worry over ratings, continued its educational broadcasts, bringing information into schools across the nation. The effectiveness of these NHK broadcasts should be taken up in future research, but suffice it to say for now these broadcasts enlightened many people. In a 1965 Shizuoka survey, middle school girls who watched educational broadcasts on cooking were better at cooking than those who did not watch them. One school principal said that his school had many children who had never seen the ocean or kids who only first saw a car on their school field trips. For that reason alone, he insisted television played an important role in social studies education.26 The commercial educational television experiment revealed the problem with television criticism: judging by their opinions, people wanted to have more educational programs, but judging by their actual viewing habits, the sensational programs easily beat out educational ones. Since viewers could not be trusted to choose good programming, some critics believed in the need for some sort of government intervention.

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION AND SELF-CENSORSHIP All the hoopla over television glossed over the airing of quality artistic programs. For example, on October 31, 1958, KRT broadcast the thoughtprovoking drama Watashi wa kai ni naritai (I want to be a Clam), a story about a Japanese army soldier who was executed as a war criminal for killing an American prisoner of war. This program, broadcast commercialfree and mostly live, received much critical and popular acclaim. Yet, even quality programs like these failed to stem the rising tide of criticism being leveled against TV and eventually the public brouhaha over television grew into an outcry that involved reform groups, academics, the government, and TV stations. All of the anxieties about television came to a head in the summer of 1963 when the government, in cooperation with mothers groups and academics, sponsored a series of official-sounding symposia that dealt with the effects of TV on youth. Helping to nudge the government into action against the problem of vulgar programs, the Olympics was coming to Japan the next year, and so the government did not want the vulgar programs on Japanese television to tarnish the nation’s image.27


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On August 1, 1963, the Central Conference on Youth Problems (chuō seishōnen mondai kyōgikai), which operated out of the Prime Minister’s Office, decided to establish a Committee for Measures against the Mass Media (masukomi taisaku iinkai). The purpose of this committee was to explore issues of mass media policy and find ways to get rid of vulgar programs and vulgar weekly magazines. In addition, the National Public Safety Commission established the “Round-table conference on juvenile delinquency measures” (hikōseishōnen taisaku kondankai). They would gather expert opinions of commercial broadcasting experts and construct drastic measures to stop juvenile crime.28 Nozaki Shigeru, in his defense of television broadcasters published in Chōsa Jōhō in 1963, argued that although Prime Minister Ikeda directed his officials to explore comprehensive measures toward juvenile delinquency, they carried out these measures from the beginning as “media policies.” The committee wished to avoid pinning the blame for juvenile delinquency solely on television. Instead they worked on purging television of violence and scenes that would teach youth methods of killing, stealing, and the like, and called for broadcasters to exercise self-censorship of such scenes on TV.29 According to Nozaki, the Committee for Measures against the Mass Media limited its mission to only to the purging of television programs that taught youth methods of crime, or the purging of erotic, grotesque, and violent programs. The newspapers took a more sensationalist approach and portrayed television as a dangerously out-of-control influence on children. The government and the press worked in a vicious cycle to demonize television. The newspapers portrayed television as inherently vulgar and violent, and pushed the government to take action against television. Whatever measure the government adopted against TV received much publicity and fueled even more anti-television articles in the press. As a result, the clamor for more government action grew, and the public perception of the link between juvenile delinquency and TV grew stronger. During August 1963, the Japanese press was waging a full-fledged war against vulgar programs (teizoku bangumi) on television. Nozaki lists some of these articles. The editorial of the August 3 Mainichi cried out, “The mass media should show restraint.” The August 5 Yomiuri preached, “We strongly seek the purging of sex and violence. We hope for guidance from the top along with enthusiasm from below.” Nozaki considered the newspaper’s attitude toward television to be one of hypocrisy: When you try to read it through, to make a long story short, the fundamental attitude that comes through is that all the mass media except for newspapers should show self-restraint. Newspapers are

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? exempt from responsibility concerning juvenile delinquency countermeasures. It is, so to speak, as if the papers are discussing other people’s problems.30

The newspapers exaggerated any report which they could use in their crusade against television. On August 10, the Ministry of Education released the results of the survey on the influence of television on children. Formally titled A Report on the Influence of Television on Children’s Lifestyles 1961–1962, it was a survey of 527 children in Tokyo metro area and Kagawa prefecture from 1961–1962. The headlines screamed, “40% of children have a frightful reaction,” or “Television’s cruel programs have a serious effect on children.” The lead-in of the Mainichi declared: “On the 10th, the Ministry of Education issued a warning that television thrillers and violent programs have a serious effect on children and that parents should pay more attention.”31 The Asahi noted that according to the report, 4–6 year olds had nightmares while sleeping, couldn’t go to sleep easily, or cried at night. Blaming television for these problems, the Asahi wrote that stations needed to pay attention to broadcast times, and that parents needed to pay attention to choice of programs.32 According to the report, the fearful reaction of kids would turn into neurosis when they became adults. The attractions of television robbed children of the time for physical activity. Activities like sleeping, going to bed, and mealtimes became irregular because of television viewing. Nozaki, however, pointed out a fundamental flaw with the methodology of the survey: it was unclear if TV was even the cause of all these behaviors. The parents who owned televisions were simply asked if their children exhibited any of the following behaviors (Summarized in Table 3 are some of the survey results). It is important to note that Nozaki wondered if TV even caused these behaviors, which he felt naturally occurred in most children. Obviously, the behavior categories were based on types of behaviors characteristic of children and often caused by very ordinary physical conditions other than television viewing. These behaviors should be called, so to speak, ‘natural behaviors’ of children.34

For many adults, anecdotal evidence of the behavior of their children sufficed to establish a link and justify the flimsy research findings. Even the Hōsō Asahi had, in 1960, published essays by children that showed these negative effects. For example, a fifth-grader from Osaka wrote:


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Table 3. Results of the 1961–1962 Survey33 Boys Question Item

Girls

All

Number

%

Number

%

Number

%

1. scared to go to the bathroom

23

12.9%

30

15.5%

53

14.3%

2. can’t go to sleep easily

12

6.7%

13

6.7%

25

6.7%

4

2.2%

5

2.6%

9

2.4%

10

5.6%

6

2.1%

16

4.3%

4

2.3%

3

1.5%

7

1.9%

13

7.3%

16

8.2%

29

7.8%

102

57.3%

103

53.1%

205

55.1%

10

5.6%

18

9.3%

28

7.5%

3. has nightmares 4. talks in one’s sleep 5. wets the bed 6. clings to the mother None No Response Total

178

194

372

Source: Nozaki, Shigeru. “Hitosore O Zokuaku to Yobu.” Chōsa Jōhō, September 1963.

I love dramas. After I watch dramas I cannot go to the bathroom by myself. Everybody always tells me, “Takashi, you only watch dramas even though you are so scared.” Even though I think that this time, I’m going to show them that I can sleep by myself, I’m still afraid to go to sleep.35

Regardless of whether or not TV was involved in causing these behaviors, ordinary citizens joined in the movement to regulate TV media culture. Alarmed by the dangers of television, mothers’ groups entered the act and wielded their tremendous moral authority as the guardians of children. The 3,900 member strong Tokyo branch of the Haha no kai (Association of Mothers) distributed television program report cards to its members and planned to distribute them to their three million members nationwide. They threatened an “organizational surveillance of television programs” and a boycott of sponsors of objectionable programming.36 Yet, there was an element of hypocrisy in the actions of these reformers. The dramatist Uchimura Naoya gave a lecture to a housewives association as part of the filming of a TV culture program. He wrote an article titled “Kōkyū to Goraku Ni Tesshita Bangumi O (Make All-out High Class

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Along with All-out Entertaining Programs),” in the September 11, 1963 Mainichi Shimbun, in which he remarked about the housewives: . . . [T]hey have almost no interest in cultural programs. Even when I asked, “what kind of cultural programs do you watch?” there were no people who could give me a clear answer. One of my remarks is that the people who appeared on cultural programs do not have an interest in cultural programs. Maybe this housewives association appeared on the show because it was a cultural program. Not everyone is like this, but if this was not a cultural program, and instead a completely entertainment program, then I think that not many people would have appeared on the show.

Uchimura cut to the heart of the matter: these women wanted to appear cultured to their peers. Once they were home, they threw off all pretensions to culture and indulged themselves in entertainment programs such as pro wrestling: The words “education” and “culture” can be interpreted in any manner and so it is very convenient for people [to appear cultured]. Any program, depending on how you look at it, can be called a cultural program. There is no mistaking that the housewives association who gathered here wanted to appear cultured. They intently listened to my boring speech as one of culture. However, when these women return to their homes, they do not watch culture programs but rather pro wrestling broadcasts.37

By the end of 1963, NHK, the key commercial stations and the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters had held a conference on TV programming. Groups like the Broadcast Criticism Meeting or New Lifestyle Movement Association threatened to use viewer organizations to apply more pressure to the broadcasters.38 Whether or not television promoted delinquency among youth, or caused kids to become neurotic, much evidence could be marshaled to support both sides of the argument. Clearly, though, pressure from citizens groups and the newspapers led to government intervention in the developing public sphere of television. This movement to regulate what people could watch on television resulted in the creation by broadcasters, in 1964, of the Broadcasters Council for Better Programming (Hōsō bangumi kōjō iinkai). This organization, an attempt by the commercial broadcasters at self-regulation in order to head off any government regulation, dealt with complaints over television


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programs. Lost among all the debate over television was the fact that most Japanese did not believe television was vulgar or that it killed the habit of thinking. When asked in a 1964 NHK poll if TV was vulgar, only 14% or so agreed. 50.7% replied that TV was said to be vulgar, but profitable programs could be found, with 33% saying that “at present TV is alright.” In all, 88% of respondents did not find television to be vulgar. When asked the question if television killed the habit of thinking, only 3.1% agreed. A little over 40% of viewers thought that there were good programs among the bad, and 28.1% even believed that TV developed in viewers the habit of thinking about concrete problems.39 How can we explain this gap between popular beliefs and the beliefs of the reformers and government? Although there were certainly legitimate worries over violence and sex being poured into homes throughout the nation, one cannot overlook the class nature of this panic. Commercial stations appealed to those with less education and presumably lower incomes, while NHK, with its emphasis on culture, appealed to the educated classes, and presumably the wealthier Japanese. For those with less than 9 years of education, 71% preferred to watch commercial programs rather than NHK, which only 29% of them preferred. For those with over 10 years of education, commercial and public stations were almost equal in popularity, with 48% preferring NHK and 52% preferring commercial television.40 NHK viewers tended to be educated, and so much of the criticism of commercial television and its vulgar programs came from the pro-NHK educated classes. Uchimura Naoya noticed this class division in TV watchers in 1963. The growing spread of television meant that programs no longer had to appeal to the interests of a select group of privileged families: The times have changed from ten years ago when television was only the province of a few families. It is good to understand the majority of today’s viewers as only wanting entertainment from television. From now on, the more television spreads, the more this tendency will become prominent. The audience surveys at the present moment are limited in that they only count heads. In the first place it is unmistakable that lowbrow programs and moreover those that titillate will result in high ratings.41

But the anti-TV movement among the elites was certainly not the first time Japanese were panicked about lower class culture. The phenomenon of a self-selected middle-class group of activists attempting to reform the habits of the masses also occurred in prewar Japan. Sheldon Garon

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had pointed out that one of the continuities between prewar and postwar Japan: middle-class reformers in both cases were the most enthusiastic proponents of the spread of state power. Women’s and middle class groups often worked hand-in-hand with the state because of their belief that society could use a good dose of government regulation.42 Alongside the view of the Anpo crisis as spawning citizen’s movements in opposition to the state, we can see in the movement to regulate television culture, the idea of citizen’s movements to once again use state power to regulate society. This movement to use the power of the state to control TV broadcasting resulted in a strategic compromise: broadcasters engaged in self-censorship and purged their programs of most violent images. But although the violence largely disappeared, programs featuring sex appeal remained on the airwaves, attracted high ratings and continued to cause controversy. As NHK’s own published history makes clear, self-regulation meant that stations became skittish about broadcasting politically sensitive programs that would incur the wrath of the government. Sometimes the stations interpreted the requirement for broadcasters to be impartial to mean no criticism of government policies. In a 1962 incident, the broadcast of Hitorikko, a drama with anti-war overtones, was cancelled due to pressure from the Defense Agency, LDP, right-wingers, sponsors with defense industry ties, and the Keidanren (Federation of Economic Organizations). NHK’s history also reveals that other programs, like Hanketsu, a social drama critical of the government, were finally terminated in 1966 due to government pressure. The rebroadcast of the documentary Betonamu kaihei daitai senki (Account of a Vietnamese Marine Battalion) in the program Nonfiction Theater was cancelled in 1965 because a scene of a severed head of a suspected guerilla killed by South Vietnamese forces was too graphic for many viewers, and generated complaints.43 Coverage of news events suffered as well. On January 17, 1968, protestors angry at the visit by the U.S. nuclear carrier Enterprise clashed with police. Television cameras caught scenes of policemen clubbing unarmed demonstrators.44 Broadcasts of this violent confrontation spread much sympathy for the anti-war and anti-government cause, leading to government action against the media. The Asahi Journal of 1969 wrote: The characteristics of television are speed, simultaneity, and the feeling of being on-location through live broadcasts. Trickery as seen on edited film news does not work. Only because of that, the government is a nervous wreck about television broadcasts. Beginning with last year’s Sasebo Incident on January 16, Kobayashi, who was the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications


197

at that time, complained about NHK’s live broadcasts and NHK’s broadcast policy changed completely. . . . Because of the government’s wishes, all stations’ coverage of demonstrations and protest movements underwent severe “self censorship” . . . 45

These examples show how political censorship and state control accompanied the television reformers’ well-intentioned efforts to protect children through the censorship of violent programs. Although they had good intentions in working to protect children from exposure to TV violence, it was very easy, once the stations established the precedent of selfcensorship, for politics to intrude into the regulation of TV.

STRIP TEASE CONTESTS AND FORCE-FEEDING: ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE MASSES Despite all these activities to regulate morality on the Japanese small screen, critics such as the PTA still complained about TV. This time, they took aim at what they considered lowest common denominator programs that appealed to sexual situations or plain lowbrow humor. Much to their chagrin, lowbrow shows like NTV’s Konto gojyūgo-go no urabangumi o buttobase! (Konto 55’s down with other programs!), which ran from April 1969 to March 1970, achieved high ratings. In this prime time show, which topped a media watchdog’s list of the worst vulgar programs of 1969 and also garnered an impressive 26.6% ratings, the comedy duo of Konto 55 (pronounced “konto gojū go-go”) battled against women in a games of “paper-scissors-stone” and the loser of each round had to remove an item of clothing, which would then be auctioned off to the audience (which included a considerable number of children). Women contestants often ended up nearly naked on stage, and in one broadcast, the hosts read on the air letters to the program which jokingly complained of having to see Konto 55 in their underwear. Konto gojyūgo-go managed to attract audience ratings even while competing against the popular NHK historical drama Ten to Chi to. (Rumor had it that the title of the program came from a direct order from NTV president Shōriki Matsutarō to demolish the competing programs in the time slot.) This program caused a stir as reports of young girls at school, or young kids at bathhouses mimicking the paper-scissors-stone game began to surface. After a year, the program went off the air.46 This program further reinforced to producers the power of lowestcommon denominator programs. Konto 55 remained on the air on their show Sekai wa warau, which still pulled in a remarkable 30% rating. In

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order to beat the humor of Konto 55, TBS used that reliable weapon, lowest-common denominator humor, when they unveiled their smash hit, Hachi-ji da yo! Zen-in Shūgō! (It’s 8:00! Let’s all gather!), which ran on Saturdays, at 8:00 pm during its long-lived run from 1969 to 1985. Shiga Nobuō writes of the producers thoroughly studying the appeal of Konto 55’s Sekai wa warau, and deciding that the solution was to outdo their competition by using the slapstick humor of the comedy team, the Drifters. Whenever Konto 55 came out, they were certainly funny. However, there were very few scenes with Konto 55 in them. The program featured rakugo (traditional Japanese humor) comedians and Konto 55 acted more like emcees. So we thought it would be good to have one hour where the entire program was funny. It was a simple thought.”47

The decision was made to appeal to as wide an audience as possible using live broadcast performances. One way to ensure that the show would generate mass appeal was to perform the show before a large live audience. As the producer said, “In the small room where we performed Zen-in Shūgō, when there were a lot of audience members, there were 3,000 people, and at the very least 500 people. If we did not make these audience members laugh, then we could not go home. If we couldn’t do that, then the TV show would not be interesting.” In one skit, a member force-fed another gallons of milk, and in another, a member was forced to gorge on bowl after bowl of soba noodles.48 One member became famous for his impromptu strip-tease dances. The producers spent lavishly on expensive sets to attain audience laughs, such as a giant 18-foot collapsing replica of Nagoya castle that took 40 staff members to build, and cost 4,500,000 yen. Much to the chagrin of media watchdog groups, who continually ranked this hilarious program as the most vulgar program because children copying the actors on the program, this highly entertaining show earned the title of “monster program” for how it demolished the competition with unbelievable 50% ratings.49 Even programs featuring children singing and dancing attracted a good deal of criticism for their content. One in particular drew much criticism: Odotte Uttatte Daigassen (The Dancing and Singing Big Contest), a show in which contestants danced and sang for prize money. In 1965, the Broadcasters Council for Better Programming recommended that Odotte Uttatte Daigassen stop the participation of grade school contestants, have the emcees watch their language, and stop giving away lots of prizes and awards to heighten interest in the show. The show’s director responded in the Mainichi Shimbun with:


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The idea that shaking their hips and dancing is vulgar, and that it is not good for children’s education is complete nonsense. Dancing is one kind of sport. If [baseball player] Oh [Sadaharu] of the Giants does not use his hips then he cannot hit home runs. Is that a problem? People with that kind of outlook are the vulgar ones.50

Other shows attracted criticism for appealing to the grotesque. The September 22, 1969 issue of the Shūkan Bunshū carried an article titled “‘Harenchi Bangumi”‘Besuto Ten (the Best Ten “Vulgar Programs.”),” in which they described some of these programs. On one such show, TBS’ Dekkaku Ikō (Let’s make it Big), listed as one of the most vulgar programs of 1969, contestants did not even need to answer a quiz, but merely choose their prizes such as an automobile, trip to Europe (a luxury back then in 1969), a mink coat, or a diamond ring. The station would receive 80,000 applicants each week for this show. The producer justified this saying, “This is not a quiz, but a game. I think this program gives the masses (taishū) a dream, and renders a service for them.” The show garnered a respectable 17.8% rating. Even the educational channel Tokyo Channel 12 attracted criticism for broadcasting in 1969 the grotesque Sekai bikkuri awa (World’s Surprising Hour) in order to gain ratings. An August episode featured a Filipino man, no more than skin and bones, who could swallow a white thread, stick a knife in his body, and pull out a blood-coated thread. The producer justified it by commenting, “From the beginning, we wanted to stress the “surprising” in the show. Is that bad?”51 Although by the mid-1960s, reformers, the press, broadcasters and the government had reached a consensus on eliminating vulgar programs, the problem lay in the definition: what constituted vulgar and who would get to decide? The stations had managed to stave off government regulation, but at the cost of a promise to self-regulate, a move that often ended in self-censorship of politically sensitive programs along with the truly vulgar ones. The audience went on complaining about vulgar programs, but also watched them in record numbers. This represented the dilemma of television reformers. Television undeniably spread commercialism and sensationalism into people’s lives, and children were exposed to sex and violence via TV. The problem of defining what was vulgar reflected a bigger, difficult problem: coming up with a consensus of what a “mass” audience that resembled a collection of diverse interests wanted to see. This debate over vulgarity on television reveals the illusory existence of the “mass” audience. As pointed out by Ien Ang, the concept of mass

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audiences is more a reflection of the ideas of advertisers and broadcasters than a description of a concrete uniform, mass entity. Although various groups such as advertisers, broadcasters, writers, government officials, and even the audience themselves, conceived of the Japanese as a homogenous mass audience, the audience for TV was more a collection of many diverse groups divided by factors such as age, class, region, or gender. Japanese audiences, like audiences worldwide, were characterized by their remarkable diversity. Even in Taishō-era Osaka, the media producers and entertainment industry openly acknowledged the diversity of its customers and actively catered to the different audiences and subgroups.52 Given the inherent diversity of the “mass” audience and fierce competition between stations, the only way to create a television culture that all subgroups could share seemed to be through programs based on lowestcommon denominator visual stimuli, such as the above-mentioned Hachi-ji da yo! Zen-in Shūgō! Television programmers spoke of offering cultural programming in theory while appealing to sensationalism in practice. Viewers wanted entertainment, but to keep intellectuals and highbrows happy, networks pretended that these programs were educational and cultural programming. Uchimura Naoya summed up this dilemma in 1963: If you are worried about ratings, then you must make lowbrow programs. To offer true amusement to the true masses (shomin no naka no shomin) is the big role of television at the present. It can be said that only television performs this important role. These kinds of programs are by no means vulgar. They also do not cater to the highbrows. I think that if you really want to entertain the masses in the true sense of the word, then there is no need to dress these programs up as education and culture. [ . . . . ] It goes without saying that there are many highbrows among the class of viewers. They are dissatisfied with the programs presently being broadcast. They call them vulgar. Surely from their viewpoint programs that can be thought of as vulgar are on the airwaves every day.53

One could view the national battles over teizoku bangumi (vulgar programs) as more like a giant version of the dial wars that happened in homes throughout the nation every night. If the prewar state represented a giant version of the prewar family, then the same could be said of the postwar nation when it came to who got to control the dial. In the prewar era, the government maintained its fiction of national cultural unity through regulations and mass mobilization movements. In the postwar, broadcasters maintained their fiction of a unified nation by attempting to attract the


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greatest number of viewers to a program. Who, however, would have the power to decide what the group as a whole could watch? On the local level, in homes throughout the nation, moms, dads, the in-laws, and the kids all battled over who could choose the programs that families would watch. On the national level, diverse groups such as intellectuals, workers, and mothers’ associations all fought for the right to determine who could choose the programs that the nation would watch. Given the diverse tastes of the audience and the limited outlets for broadcasting, it was inevitable that the sparring over control of the nation’s dials would spill over into the political arena. If the 1950s featured a culture war between cultural conservatives and reformers, then the 1960s featured one between those who sought commercialized pleasures through TV and those who sought to restrict them. The result of conceiving of the nation as “100 million” was that Japanese would be treated as “idiots.”

Chapter Eight

Politics As Spectacle: Parades, Pageantry and Protests

“What a pretty person she is” female students said as they gazed in rapture. “We must be living long lives if we’re able to see, in the middle of the mountains of Tanba, a ceremony happening in Tokyo!” a group of elderly cried, moved to tears. “Crown Princess Michiko is wonderful but the television that lets us see this person’s smile is more wonderful.” —A crowd of rural villagers watching the Royal Wedding on television in 1959.1

As the quote above shows, for the first time in history, Japanese viewers throughout the nation could watch major events like the Royal Wedding unfold on live. These major political and cultural events of early Japanese television culture, are what Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan, in their seminal work, call “media events,”—that is, occasions broadcast across and capable of transfixing a single nation. These events differ from everyday regular programs as they can integrate and reorganize societies by constituting a shared moment in time and thus becoming part of a shared culture and history.2 Here, we will examine the Royal Wedding of 1959, the Anpo protests of 1960, the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 as key examples. During the postwar television age in Japan, control of the media agenda became vital to control of the nation. Just as television stations produced visually stimulating programs to catch a fickle audience’s attention, media events on television worked by drawing in the audience’s attention through drama and visual spectacle. Those who wanted power, like student protestors or even the royal family, used the power of these events on television to draw attention to their causes. In the postwar Japanese television nation, then, the logic of television commercialism even permeated politics. 203

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EARLY CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE POWER OF JAPANESE TELEVISION Early broadcasters and advertising agencies recognized the viewer’s unpredictable interest in politics on television. Sometimes, plaza television viewers could be more captivated by politics than entertainment. The advertising agency Dentsū wrote in its magazine as early as 1955 about a surprising scene at a train station in Tokyo: There were two NHK television sets at a plaza at the Shinbashi station west exit. NHK televisions were set above and below the front of the stage. From there, an NTV television set was placed across the plaza (NHK) stage in the middle of the right hand side of the plaza. On that day, NTV broadcast a government debate session and NHK broadcast a wrestling match. I think that this wrestling match had a foreign wrestler but there were fewer people watching the wrestling. Masses of people stood and watched NTV’s political debate and programs and commented on current topics.3

Television had the potential, in its plaza form of public viewing, to serve as an unofficial public forum, in which people could congregate and comment on politicians. For politics to outdraw pro wrestling (at least for this particular audience) suggests that either most were interested in the political developments of the day, or that for some Japanese, pro wrestling had become passé by 1955. As television spread, there were more opportunities to see with one’s own eyes the events shaping Japan’s future. Television took its first baby steps in broadcasting news events into homes with the Sunagawa Incident of 1956. On October 4, the authorities attempted to conduct a land survey in the town of Sunagawa for future expansion of the runway at Tachikawa Air Force Base, an American military air transport center. However, they met with popular resistance, and on October 12 and 13, bloody clashes erupted between the police and a combination of locals and Zengakuren student activists. On October 15, the government gave in and announced its decision to cancel the surveys. TV played its part by broadcasting these visually stimulating scenes of fighting between students, unionists, and leftists against the police into homes with TVs across the nation.4 Shiga Nobuo writes of this incident: Television reports of this Sunagawa Incident gave an intense shock to many viewers and let them know the appeal of television news. It especially gave viewers the sense of being on-location and the television

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coverage of this Sunagawa Incident is worthy of special mention as the first full-fledged news report on television.5

This demonstration does not qualify as a full-fledged media event due to the small size of the viewing audience. In 1956, only 2.3% of homes had an NHK contract.6 Although, this number probably undercounted viewers by failing to take into account the people who watched TV through public television sets, it does suggest that only relatively small numbers of viewers could watch these events unfold via television. With so much of the nation unable to access TV on a regular basis, this demonstration did not unite the nation in a shared moment of simultaneity. For Japan’s first full-fledged media event, we must turn to the Royal Wedding of 1959 when enough people nationwide owned a set to be able to unite the nation around a single media event.

THE ROYAL WEDDING OF 1959: JAPAN’S FIRST MEDIA EVENT The royal wedding on April 10, 1959 between Crown Prince Akihito and the elite commoner Shōda Michiko represented one of the key media events in Japanese television history. The media hype over the wedding was such that Takashi Fujitani, in his analysis of the Emperor system, called the wedding Japan’s first “electronic pageant,” a made-for-television electronic national ceremony constructed for television.7 The imperial family and mass media enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, with the imperial family exploiting the mass media’s need for attention getting stories, and the mass media exploiting the imperial family’s need for a means to build popular support. In order to make the wedding successful, it was necessary to dress it up like any other successful television program—in other words, to catch and hold the audience’s visual and aural attention. The imperial institution had to adapt to the realities of television. This electronic pageantry, in some ways, represented a far cry from the 1920s Japanese media coverage of the emperor, in which the government felt that it was so important to preserve the divine aura of the emperor that they did not allow even his voice to be broadcast over the radio until the surrender announcement of 1945. Once the announcement was made in November 1958 that Shōda Michiko was to marry the crown prince the following year, the already brisk television sales skyrocketed. Whereas it took a little over five years from the start of TV broadcasting in February 1953 for the number of subscription contracts to NHK to break through the 1,000,000 mark in

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May 1958, it took less than a year to break through the 2,000,000 mark before the Imperial wedding in April 1959. Nevertheless, it is unclear is whether the wedding sparked interest in television purchases, or, conversely, whether the huge rise in television purchases added to interest in the wedding. Perhaps the answer is a little of both. NHK failed to discover a clear link between the event and increased TV subscriptions, interpreting TV sales after the imperial engagement as part of a larger increase in subscriptions from March to April of 1959. They attributed the rise in TV subscriptions to other causes, such as increased variety of TV programming and the announced opening up of more stations on April 1, which gave people more reason to buy TVs, and the salary bonuses, which allowed people to buy TVs during the November to April period before the wedding.8 On the other hand, in the great post-engagement media and sales frenzy, known as the “Michiko Boom” (otherwise known as the Mitchii Boom, a familiar way of saying “Michiko”), the television set turned into one of the prime objects of consumer desire. Anecdotal evidence does bear out the observation that the wedding sparked interest in television purchases. Chijō magazine in October 1959 noticed the spread of sets throughout one village. When asked the cause of all of this, the farm cooperative head attributed it to the royal wedding: It was the Mitchii boom, right? If there was no royal wedding, then TV probably wouldn’t have spread this quickly. The truth is that until summer of last year, the number of antennas had only increased spottily. Then the moment that the imperial engagement was announced, people thought “I want to see just the royal wedding on TV in my own home” and flooded the electrical appliance shop. It is amazing that from the end of last year to spring of this year, over a hundred televisions have entered the village.9

TV manufacturers also did their part to use the upcoming event to sell sets. One maker’s PR campaign used the slogan, “See the Royal Wedding of the Crown Prince on TV!” The wedding also sped up the opening of new television stations throughout the nation. According to the Sunday Mainichi, the broadcast of the wedding was such an important event that “[b]ecause to miss it would be a calamity, nine [new] stations have strove to speed up their scheduled opening, and will begin broadcasting on April 1. It is said that all of their eyes are aimed at Mitchii.”10 According to NHK’s study of the spread of television, the Asahi reported on the link between TV sales and the wedding:


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“The ‘wedding boom’ has occurred in the television world. The reason for the boom is that the wedding of the Crown Prince on the 10th is a once-in-a-lifetime major event, and at the very least, one should watch the live broadcast at least on television. Sales of television sets are soaring because people think ‘If you are going to buy one, then do it in time for April 10th.’ Even in many stores, there are ads that say ‘By all means see the Royal Wedding on television..’ . . .”11

The imperial family helped popularize a new media, but we could also reverse cause and effect and assert that the spread of televisions helped to spark interest in the Imperial Family. This may be one of the more interesting legacies of the wedding usually neglected in histories of TV. Matsushita Kei’ichi, in his influential 1959 article, “Taishū Tennōseiron” (Theory of the mass emperor system) noted how the future crown princess’ popularity raised support for the throne: The Crown Prince has become the symbol of the new constitution, and in a sense postwar democracy. . . . However, one cannot overlook the political implications of how the young generation, which until now, were indifferent to the Imperial Household, has, in one stroke, been engulfed in the middle of a [Michiko] boom.12

Television played a key role in rehabilitating the Imperial Family and bringing them back into the spotlight. Although the emperor system had the backing of most of the people, a significant minority of the nation only gave it passive support. In an August 1957 poll, 87% of the respondents agreed that it was better for Japan to retain the Emperor system. When the question was rephrased to indicate the degree of support for the emperor system, while 51% believed that “Japan without the Emperor is inconceivable,” the remaining 36% expressed only passive support, believing that it better, but not essential, to have the emperor.13 Because of the passivity of this support and the legal foundations of the emperor system having been weakened by constitutional reform and tainted by accusations of war responsibility, the Imperial Family had to rely on a new means of attracting popular support. Taking the desires of the Imperial Household Agency (the handlers of the Throne) one step further, the media presented the imperial couple as something more akin to tarento, television celebrities with the ability to connect with viewers. Of course, the imperial family was not just another tarento, but had a historical legacy and bore an onus of wartime responsibility. Despite the notorious uncooperativeness

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of the Imperial Household Agency, it realized the necessity of keeping the imperial family in the public eye.14 Television would allow viewers to feel psychologically close to the Imperial Couple, and especially Shōda Michiko, the focus of media coverage. With the absence of prewar government coercion, the imperial family realized that it would need to use celebrity and the ability to connect with the masses in order to build popular support. Herbert Bix points out that during the early days of postwar Japan, Emperor Hirohito mingled with the masses while touring the country in order to build a sense of intimacy between the people and the throne. The emperor, a camerashy figure raised in isolation from the general public, acted awkwardly in front of commoners.15 While the Crown Prince represented a new type of royalty, he too grew up in relative isolation from the rest of society, unable to provide the image of the “boy next door” that could connect with the viewer. The throne arguably needed a new figure that could appeal to the public. Michiko, as the newspapers called her, a pretty commoner from a wealthy family, perfectly bridged the gap between the throne and the masses.16 Her televised debut at the Imperial Household Agency’s official announcement of the engagement on November 27, 1959 made her popular among the people, especially as Michiko gracefully answered questions from the press about the engagement. After the engagement announcement, media organizations, which had adhered to a blanket news embargo (made at the strong suggestion of the Imperial Household Agency), let loose a flood of programs about the royal couple. NHK ran special programs like Kōtaishidenka no album (The Crown Prince’s Album) and Yorokobi no Shōda Michiko-san (The Happy Shōda Michiko), consisting of scenes of Michiko’s life from childhood to just before the engagement. These programs had earlier been prepared for use following the announcement of the wedding. Live on-thespot broadcasts followed, such as “Michiko leaving the Shōda Residence” or “Michiko’s Press Conference at the Imperial Household Agency.”17 Given the depths of official veneration for the emperor during the prewar, and the extent to which the imperial family had previously been sequestered from the people, to many postwar Japanese, having a commoner marry into the family was quite revolutionary. Michiko gained astonishing popularity among young Japanese women and helped to give a human touch to the otherwise staid throne. Consider the following interview with young factory girls in a small provincial city, and notice the sense of familiarity they felt with Michiko.


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Question: Until now, what is the most memorable thing you have seen on television? Girl A: Michiko-san. Girl B: During Michiko-san’s wedding ceremony. Girl E: On that day, from the morning I brought a bento and sat down without moving. Girl C: But the picture didn’t come in very well. [. . . .] Girl F: Michiko-san is good! (All together) Girl G: I collected all of the photo magazines that had Michiko-san’s photograph. I’ve been keeping them. 18

Michiko made a deep impression on these young rural women. Many Japanese, like the young woman who collected Michiko’s photographs, referred to her by her first name, “Michiko-san” rather than her official title of “Crown Princess” and identified with her emotionally, which helped to further fuel the Mitchii Boom. The media’s desire to sell products and the throne’s desire to be in the media spotlight converged during the days leading up to the wedding, fueled by the young women who identified with Michiko. One weekly magazine held a Michiko look-alike contest, while another sponsored a search for people with the same birthday as her. In the meantime, a nationwide copycat trend grew, as young women across the nation adopted her attire. Department stores displayed mannequins closely resembling the empress, and women’s weekly magazines displayed huge photos of the various clothes that she wore just before the wedding. In a similar manner, the crown prince’s v-necked tennis sweater inspired a fad among young men. Tour buses took an average of 5,000 tourists a day to her hometown in Gunma prefecture where they could see such sights as her childhood home, her elementary school, and the Shōda family soy sauce factory.19 The Michiko boom reflected the sentiment of many Japanese for the Princess-to-be. Part of her appeal, according to a January 1959 article in Shisō no Kagaku, was found in the contrast with America, where anybody can become a president. In Japan, by contrast, if one was a man, one had to be born into the imperial family. But if one was a woman, then one always had the chance of marrying into the imperial family like Michiko did.

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Ironically, in male-dominated Japan, women had move avenues to enter the imperial family than men. As a Japanese pointed out, “It’s no good being a man. If one is a woman, then anyone can become an empress.”20 With a woman becoming the center of the media hype, it is no wonder that young women across the nation felt engrossed in the wedding.

THE WEDDING DAY: A NATION “UNITED” THROUGH TELEVISION The national frenzy over the commoner Shōda Michiko came to a head in the royal wedding, the media event coronating the new Princess Michiko on April 10, 1959. Television coverage of the wedding helped create an intimate bond between Japanese viewers and Michiko. According to Horton and Wohl’s influential theory of para-social interaction, the mass media creates an illusion of face-to-face relationships with media performers, resulting in the illusion of the performers being the spectator’s peers.21 We can see this sort of para-social interaction in the wedding day coverage. Coverage of the wedding ceremony and parade capped off the monthslong Michiko Boom. On the day of the wedding, viewers could watch a staggering ten and a half hours of wedding coverage, with a special emphasis on the wedding parade after the couple was married. Having the stations carry the event live on television amplified the drama of the wedding for many Japanese. Although government officials expected at least one million people to show up in the streets for the wedding procession, only half that number actually showed up and those that did venture out to watch the procession were reportedly subdued. In the opinion of one observer, most people preferred to watch the proceedings on television.22 People across the nation were glued to their television sets. Here is the scene of the festive nature of the event in one rural Japanese village: And then it was April 10th. On this day, people throughout the village had gathered in front of televisions. At many places, 20–30 people had thronged to a house. Of course the people took a break from work. The women made candies for snacks and tea for drinks while the men drank from their cups and their eyes were captivated by the ceremony of the century.23

Hands down, Japanese television was the medium of choice for experiencing the wedding. When Takahashi Akira surveyed 598 households living along the procession route, he discovered that, despite their proximity to the event itself, no more than 17.1% actually went out to see the procession


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and more than 80% chose to stay at home and watch it on television. Asked their reasons for watching it on TV, 23.1% said that they expected a huge crowd of people. 38.0% said that if they went outside to watch, they could only see a part of the parade, but could see the whole thing if they watched TV. About 6% said that they watched TV so that the announcer could add to their overall experience. Takahashi concluded that the television viewers felt they could have a more direct experience watching the event through television than by seeing it in person. These viewers watched the event as a group in their own homes, as a “television party” in Takahashi’s words. In fact, 65.1% of the TV households reported having invited a person outside the family to watch with them. Takahashi’s findings only covered a small sample of people living in Tokyo, along the parade route, and may not have been representative of the nation as a whole. In the context of the development of the television nation, Takahashi’s finding revealed that for many Japanese, TV was becoming one of the main ways to take in and interpret the larger world around them. This extensive TV coverage also exploited the power of the close-up, which, according to surveys taken at the time, caused many viewers to feel emotionally close to Michiko. He found that many people who watched the live broadcasts of the wedding were more emotionally moved by images of the Royal Couple than by the pageantry of the parade. 48% of those surveyed rated the close-up of the prince and the princess as the most impressive scene in the entire broadcast, compared to 25.1% who said that the dignified appearance of the parade was the most impressive.24 It was the royal couple, not the pomp, that attracted viewers. Television producers knew that they needed to obtain close ups of the royal couple if they were to survive in the cutthroat world of television broadcasting. An NTV news director remarked about plans for coverage of the wedding parade: When the wedding ceremony is over, to the aim of the television cameras will be to broadcast the facial expressions of Michiko, who has entered the Imperial Family from the commoners . . . What will decide victory or defeat in the broadcasting war is how many minutes one is able to catch of a close up of the royal couple’s facial expressions.25

Producers went to great lengths to create an illusion of intimacy between the viewer and the royal couple. As Takahashi Akira put it, television helped make the event seem less like a “live broadcast on location” and more like a “dramatization.” Some producers used a little bit of trickery in the television broadcasts. Because of the use of zoom lenses, the cameras

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could not pick up sounds from the surroundings; one station resorted to dubbing in sound effects from a western to provide the sound of a horsedrawn carriage. Unfortunately, because the station used a sumo broadcast to provide the sound of the crowd, TV audiences could occasionally hear people shouting out a sumo wrestler’s name during the broadcast of the wedding parade.26 In addition, Takahashi discovered that the sheer volume of TV coverage helped to create a general feeling of goodwill toward the couple. In Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, and Signorielli’s famous study, TV absorbs different views of audience members into a cultural “mainstream.”27 As for the case of Japan, coverage of the wedding helped to “mainstream” the multiplicity of views concerning the Imperial Family. Takahashi noted a convergence of reactions to the royal couple on the day of the broadcast. During the broadcast of the wedding, the atmosphere was subdued in most homes. The majority (60.3%) of respondents described the mood of the viewers in their home in the following ways: “There was a quietness that was different than usual, and all of us were struck by a tenseness” or “All the viewers were glued to the screen and did not talk to other people.” “Only 26.6% watched the event as if they would a sports or entertainment program. It is instructive to compare this behavior to the emotional outlook of the viewers before the broadcast. While a sizeable minority of viewers surveyed felt emotionally involved and watched the broadcast to congratulate the royal couple (22.6%), most felt detached and watched only “to learn about the Imperial Family” (52.6%). Even those detached viewers felt extremely moved by the parade scene, and felt their feelings change. Most viewers reported watching the wedding in a very subdued mood compared to their normal viewing habits. 70.8% of viewers reported that they usually talked to other viewers in the room about what they just watched on TV. However, on the day of the wedding day broadcast, only 20.8% did talked to other viewers about what they saw on TV. Takahashi concluded viewers were rolling out the emotional red carpet and behaving as if they were in the presence of a state guest who had visited their home through the TV.28 In the end, televised images of a happy imperial family or a beautiful Michiko marrying into the Imperial family resonated loudly with many Japanese, and helped to cultivate a mainstream view of support for the Imperial family. Takahashi argues that while television boosted the Crown Prince’s charisma through Michiko’s human appeal, it also humanized the throne.29 Such extensive media coverage gave Japanese spectators a distorted view of the world by playing up the importance of the imperial family and making them prominent. This aspect of the mass media was very


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important to rehabilitating the imperial family, which, in the 1950s, was struggling to find a purpose in a supposedly democratic society. One of the results of the wedding was the emergence of a Japanese throne reliant on media publicity to gain support from the people. The reliance on publicity as an agent of power also subverted the emperor system by infusing it with crass, mass commercial qualities that made it lose its sacred aura. The imperial family, in a sense, became commodified, as news coverage sacrificed the sacred image of the royal family for intrusive details of down-to-earth yet glamorous celebrity in order to attract audiences. The media coverage did not die down after the wedding, but continued its intense focus on Michiko, who became Empress of Japan with the ascension of her husband to the throne after the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989. Because millions of Japanese grew up along with Princess Michiko, their attachment to the throne grew stronger.30 Television and other media effectively crafted a positive image of the royal couple that ensued a whole new generation of Japanese fascinated with the Imperial Household. So powerful were these images that some rural children played “make-believe” royal couple. They would play by making a mock wedding procession: the couple riding together in a wagon with children’s tricycles following them in the rear.31 The political implications of a publicity-based Imperial Family were profound. By becoming an institution increasingly based on attracting people through publicity, the imperial family both exploited and was exploited by the emerging consumer-based television culture. The media frenzy over the imperial family also helped to distract the public from political issues. In November 1958, the conservative Kishi cabinet, having failed in its attempts to erode civil liberties through a reform of the Police Officer’s Law, came under much public criticism. Five days later, the engagement of the crown price was announced, and the resulting “Michiko Boom” helped to deflect popular attention away from the government fiasco.32 Shisō no Kagaku commented in its January 1959 issue: The topic of the “commoner princess” will probably continue on and on through 1959. However, problems like performance ratings, the Police Law, and unemployment have also not been solved. If people are going after brightness then they will greet the New Year with a feeling of unease.33

Of course, the imperial family helped distract popular attention from government affairs in the prewar days, but in the media-dominated postwar, the imperial family (along with countless other celebrities), by being

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a magnet for media attention, served a powerful agenda-setting function.34 By drowning out other news stories, the imperial family, in conjunction with big business and conservative politicians, helped to reduce the number of key issues threatening elite rule. One writer, in a small provincial city in Ibaraki prefecture noted the following story when he was watching TV in a cafeteria: When Sekai no Tabi (World Journey) was finished, a female waiter approached this writer and asked, “Can I change the channel to something else?” When I replied, “Sure,” she changed it to Channel 10’s Kōshitsu Album (Imperial Family Album). She gazed with rapture at a smiling Crown Prince and Michiko-san who were looking at an exhibition sponsored by Takashimaya department store at Nihonbashi.

The previous day, the story of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space was big news. The writer pointed out the headline of Gagarin’s news to the young waitress. Her surprising response made him think about the way celebrities distracted people from other news. “What do you think about this?” I asked. The waitress gave me a blank look. “I don’t know very much about foreign movies.” She had confused Major Gagarin, who was wearing a space suit and on his craft with a foreign adventure movie. In other words, she did not know the news about Gagarin going into space on a manned craft. While she was in the middle of the city, she did not read newspapers, did not listen to news, and her friends did not talk about that topic. The success of a manned spacecraft is certainly wonderful. However, it is not that important to the waitresses, lowbrows, and young men in this small city. Rather, the televised image of Hashi Yukio’s dandy kimono figure or cool way of singing, or Moriya Hiroshi’s “Arigatayabushi” brings them to the point of thankful intoxication. People would rather think about celebrities and entertainment figures.35

While television could distract the masses, it could also help draw attention to problems the government preferred to ignore. When we look back at the wedding parade, one incident foreshadowed the potential threat that television posed to governments. In the middle of the parade, a young male approached the carriage and threw a stone at the carriage carrying the Royal Couple. Commercial television cameras caught this unscripted


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incident and broadcast it. Shiga Nobuo notes that after being arrested, the youth said, “My school was burned in a fire, but it still hasn’t been reopened. Yet, they are having this kind of showy parade.”36 Despite the government’s best preparations, a dissenter from the crowd could interrupt broadcasting plans and grab the public spotlight, if only for a brief moment. Real life could not be as easily scripted as a pageant, as the government would find out a year later in 1960.

THE ANPO PROTESTS OF 1960: DISSENT SPILLS INTO THE LIVING ROOM Dissidents against the government discovered that they too could use television to their advantage. With the royal wedding as a start, battles raged over who could grab the attention of the media, especially through television spectacles. The first half of the sixties saw two key events that demonstrated the power of television in helping to set the national agenda. First, in 1960, the televised spectacle of student unrest against the signing of the U.S. security treaty magnified the impact of Tokyo students, a small minority of the population, and helped to bring down the cabinet in power. Second, in 1964, the Tokyo Olympics symbolized the reemergence of Japan from the ashes of war, and helped to restore a sense of normalcy to the nation previously shaken by the Anpo protests. The Anpo protests, the first large-scale intrusion of politics into television culture, were led by a diverse coalition of students, workers, housewives, and intellectuals who used the power of television to bring into the open the contradictions between the ideal of pacifism and the reality of U.S. military bases in Japan. Media reports spoke of people who had usually shown little interest in politics, like housewives, becoming interested in politics due to the scenes of demonstrators surrounding the Parliament building. These protests over the ruling LDP’s forcible passage of a revised U.S.-Japan security treaty rocked the nation and led to the resignation of the Prime Minister. Alongside other media television played a crucial role in publicizing these protests. Pre-Anpo, we can see anecdotal evidence that the images on television helped to overturn long-held political attitudes of common people. A farm wife who got a television at the end of 1958 had the following to say on the subject: Until television came along, I would somehow be scared whenever one mentioned the Japan Teachers Union. However, I saw scenes of their Kōchi convention on the news and it is strange to say it, but these kinds

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? of people are also ordinary humans, and I now think of them as ordinary teachers. Despite that, why does the government see them as enemies? I want to know the real truth. This time, I have decided to read more newspapers and magazines.”37

While the Royal Wedding showed how TV had the power to depoliticize viewers, the Anpo protests displayed TV’s power to use visual imagery to interest people in the workings of the government and even change their political beliefs. As seen in the quote above, other mass media, such as magazines, worked with television in a symbiotic way. People would watch TV to gain information, and then read a newspaper or magazine to gain in-depth knowledge. Keeping in mind alluring power of television and its symbiotic relationship with other media, let us now return to the televised Anpo protests. The protests, ostensibly about a security treaty with America, developed into a focal point for the 1950s cultural war and aroused many national passions. On May 19, 1960, the Kishi cabinet rammed through the Diet the revision of the U.S-Japan Security treaty. Socialist party members staged a mass sit-in to prevent this vote from happening, and 15,000 demonstrators mobilized outside the Diet. Police were sent in to break up the sit-in, and with the LDP in control of the Parliament, the Diet approved the security treaty. The press criticized the arrogance of the Kishi cabinet in forcing approval of this bill, and many demonstrators gathered outside the Diet. As the number of protestors grew, the media increased coverage of their daily protests, until broadcasts of the demonstrations dominated programming. George Packard III, in his study of the Anpo demonstrations, writes of the extensive television coverage of the event: Radio and television carried the political events to all parts of the nation as never before in history. . . . Almost daily, live broadcasts or taped summaries of the turbulence around the Diet were seen and heard n private homes; the debates, comments, and analyses of the treaty and other issues took up many more hours of broadcast time. In this way, the facts, opinions, and immediate sense of tension were carried in an intimate way to millions of listeners and viewers. TV trucks, manned by helmeted cameramen, worked their way into the midst of excited demonstrators and gave vivid on-the-spot coverage.38

With so many of these events being broadcast into homes across the nation, people were engrossed in the demonstrations, and often became very passionate about them. Of course, we should not exaggerate popular


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interest in the demonstrations. One person reported that a friend from the countryside came to visit in Tokyo, and upon seeing the Anpo demonstrations in person in front of the Parliament building, had no clue what they were doing and said, “Those people, what are they doing? A festival!”39 Still, for most people, the protests had taken over as the main news story for the national media. The power of the televised image drew people into politics. For the first time, the whole nation got to see a protest unfold in “real time” as scenes of the demonstrators outside the Diet gripped the nation. To add fuel to the fire, in between the live on-location news reports of the demonstrations, TV stations broadcast for many days special news programs with titles such as “Remarks on the political situation” (Seikyoku e no hatsugen), “Violence from the right and the left and parliamentary government” (Sayū no bōryoku to gikaiseiji), “Concerning the student movement” (Gakuseiundō ni megutte), or “How shall we protect parliamentary government?” (Gikaiseiji o dō mamoruka)40 Such titles both reflected and helped to create the sense of crisis surrounding these protests. During the Anpo crisis period, TBS produced 53 specials on the Anpo demonstrations, while NTV produced 65, NET produced 24, and Fuji produced 42.41 So powerful and widespread were images of protestors marching and shouting in unison, “Anpo Hantai, Anpo Hantai” (“No to Anpo! No to Anpo!”), that one educational researcher saw school children copying these demonstrators. The children were in the narrow hallway chanting, “Anpo hantai! Anpo hantai!” even though they had no idea what the protests were about. Like children across the world, they applied their television knowledge to real-life. When they were to receive injections at school, they staged a demonstration and ran around the hallways chanting, “Chūsha hantai! Chūsha hantai!” (“No to injections! No to injections!”). Children mimicked the political moods they saw on television. One child wrote to the Asahi Shimbun to complain, “Nobody wants to be the Prime Minister when we play “make-believe-demonstration.”42 Police knew that television could turn the nation against them. Therefore, they made special efforts to keep TV crews away from the scene of the Anpo demonstrations, as seen in the following account from a Tokyo University student newspaper. [The police] aim especially at the television cameras. The television is more truthful than the photographers are. Therefore, when a television camera crew comes, two or three policemen say that it is dangerous and remove them from the scene.43

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Illustrating the double-faced nature of television, the scenes of the students demonstrating in front of the Diet and battling with police, also paralyzed the nation, and even alienated the protestors’ potential bases of support. Television offered the spectacle of student riots, but with little explanation of the events or why the students were so angry. Much like the protesting children mentioned earlier, adults also watched the spectacle but often struggled to understand its purpose. The medium, in short, overwhelmed the message. Packard explains: Radio and television could not give perspective to the events; concentrating on the dramatic and the detailed, they broadcast accounts of students and police slugging it out with each other without conveying how and why the battle had started.44

Viewers needed a way to emotionally connect with the demonstration if it was to succeed in arousing their anger. Just as Shōda Michiko represented the Royal Wedding, this Anpo spectacle needed a human face in order to personalize it. Tragically, a martyr was produced on June 15, when police clashed with 7,000 students who had burst into the Diet building. Live broadcasts of the scene riveted the nation. One shaken writer sent a letter to the Yomiuri Shimbun of June 16, 1960, which was then reprinted in the July 11, 1960 edition of the Tokyo Daigaku Shimbun, Tokyo University’s student newspaper: All the while I watched the situation on TV and it was really terrible. This is a spectacle similar to that of the eve of a revolution. Rather than debate why it has become like this, we must construct a way to somehow quickly save this situation. If we leave it like this, we will again have a huge scuffle. For now, the cabinet should also assume responsibility for this situation.

Kanba Michiko, a 22-year-old female student from Tokyo University, died during the melee, either as a result of police brutality or being trampled to death. News of her death gripped the nation, and in the same manner as it had focused on Shōda Michiko in 1959, the Japanese media now focused on a second Michiko, whose portrait was now carried by protestors. Women’s magazines like Josei Jishin published articles about the pain of her loss. TV stations broadcast news specials with titles like Shisha o dashita kokkai demo (Parliamentary Demonstration that Resulted in Death), which gathered a high 31.2% rating.45


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The public responded angrily. The newspaper for Tokyo University received letters from horrified viewers saying “I saw it with my own eyes,” or “I saw the violence of the police on television. It was truly hideous.” One young middle school girl wrote, On television I saw police hit people and kick them with their feet, and I was at a loss for words and cried. Although we are the same Japanese the thought never even crossed my mind that the police would hit people. On the night of the 15th, inside the parliament building, the person who killed Kanba-san . . . afterwards, the police using violence is too much.46

The Anpo protests now had a victim, Kanba Michiko, and a villain, Prime Minister Kishi, who represented the forces that killed her. The power of television transformed Anpo into a real-life drama watched by family members around the living room television and set off many heated family debates. Anecdotal accounts describe this living room struggle that often pitted family members and generations against each other. More importantly, for many women such as full-time housewives, the Anpo crisis became their first exposure to mainstream politics. TV coverage of the Anpo demonstrations whetted many female viewers’ appetite for more news, stimulating their newspaper and radio use in the process. In provincial Fujiyoshida City, for example, when women watched the Anpo on TV, many of them began to listen to political analysis on the radio and read the newspaper because of their newfound interest in politics.47 Takagi Takeo, the editorial office vice-chief and leader writer for the Yomiuri Shimbun, wrote about his mother’s and his wife’s increased interest in politics: Usually they decide to watch something like a kabuki broadcast, but this past month, whenever I came home from work, my mother and my wife are glued to the TV screen in the living room. When I say, “I’m home” instead of saying “Welcome back” my wife says, “Why hasn’t Kishi resigned yet?” My elderly mother also says, “Why in the world is Kishi so stubborn?” Afterwards they always bombard me with questions about the political situation. . . . The similarity of critical opinions against the government of my wife who is nearly 50 years old, and my mother who is nearly 80 years old, is due to television.

Takagi notes that scores of letters from women wanting more Anpo news coverage flooded television broadcast stations, such as “Could you

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stop broadcasting local news and show more of the demonstrations at the Parliament,” “Instead of broadcasting the news specials at night, broadcast them in the morning or in the afternoons,” or” I’d like you to by all means put in political commentary during the shows for women.” In fact, a woman felt so moved by the protests that after going shopping, she joined the parliamentary protests, still holding her shopping bag.48 The images of police beating students greatly moved women who watched the Anpo protests. But the death toll seemed extremely low compared to demonstrations elsewhere in the world. The Korean police killed 115 and wounded nearly 1,000 students when they fired into a crowd of student demonstrators who had surrounded the presidential palace during the student uprising of April 1960 that brought down the Rhee dictatorship. Rather, the way in which Kishi had broken an “unwritten” rule over protests in which no one was to be killed led to a firestorm of popular anger. In fact, some Japanese felt that the violence could easily spiral out of control, much like the situation in Korea just a few months earlier. The director Oshima Nagisa made this sentiment clear, putting in newsreel footage of the Korean student uprising then showing a scene of Japanese student protestors in his film Cruel Story of Youth.49 Kishi’s handling of the crisis brought much condemnation on him and the government. In following example, a woman noted that when she went to a meeting of wives, they all talked about Anpo, and the scene that had the biggest impact on them was the June 15 battle when Kanba Michiko died. Everyone [who had watched it] was angry. A couple of people were so angry that they were raising their voices and crying. I was also overflowing with tears. We all had sons and daughters, you know. We felt that it was bad to chase and hit students who were trying to run away. I thought that the biggest thing we had in common was our common feelings as Japanese mothers. The TV cameras clearly caught several police hitting a single student with their batons. . . . Many people have seen that scene. These days, women have also become interested in politics. Since Anpo happened, old women in their seventies who used to wave their hand and say that they are not interested whenever they hear about politics, are beginning to think more carefully about politics. Anpo has caused an uproar in the neighborhood, and some people are saying that they should start thinking about politics.50

Even rural areas were caught up in watching the violent events happening in Tokyo. Researchers noted that people in the provinces with children attending school in Tokyo showed a keen interest in the demonstrations. In


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Kuriyama village in Tochigi, anxious residents gathered to watch the demonstrations on TV. According to one report, “Even after the time of the demonstrations outside the parliament building, the parents whose sons were at the university worriedly watched television. They are conservative but their interest in politics is high.”51 The televised images of police beating students who could have been one’s own child moved these women to anger. Women’s magazines also gave extensive coverage to the government crisis. The women’s highbrow monthly Fujin Kōron published an article in its August edition by Morishige Hisaya that dramatized the fierce debates in the home among family members over Anpo. While this debate may have been at the very least embellished, it revealed the deep national divisions over Anpo that had spilled over into the family living room through television. Morishige wrote about how the televised violence of June 15 had moved Tatsuru, her high school son to say, “People who can sit still while watching this are not Japanese! I’m going to go out [and join the demonstrators]. Morishige recorded the following argument when she tried to calm her son down: Mom: That’s right, Tatsuru. We always differ with you on politics, but I’d still like you to be a little more cool-headed. Aren’t you a bit excited? Tatsuru: Of course I’m excited! People who can be calm during this kind of time are strange! Mom, when you see this [on TV] you watch it like it’s some other people’s problems, but I can’t watch it like that! That’s all I have to say! Mom: You’re still not an adult, and you don’t even know enough about Japan’s history or even about the situation in the world. You still aren’t qualified to make proper judgments.

Tatsuru became very angry at his mother’s speech, “Mom, you’re not a Japanese!” One can see in his references to being or not being Japanese how television coverage of the Anpo protests stimulated a certain Japanese nationalism. Anger at Japanese sovereignty being trampled by the U.S. combined with shame in his national government’s actions, and this national feeling came out as anti-Kishi emotions in the following outburst when Tatsuru scolded his mother: Tatsuru: You’re always thinking that way. When I ask you a serious question, you evade it and run the other way. Mom, you are really good at that. You are just like [Prime Minister] Kishi!

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Mom: Then call me Kishi! In return, listen to what the “Prime Minister” says. Oldest Son: Well, take your time. I’m going to sleep. Tatsuru: Brother, you’re an unpatriotic person! Oldest Son: Why are people who do not participate in demonstrations unpatriotic? Dad: Ah, fighting in the Assembly Hall.52

In the end, Morishige and her husband listened to their son talk about how Japan could end up becoming a U.S. colony, and realized that despite their son’s love of rockabilly music, he felt very angry at having American values forced onto him. The younger generation had not experienced the war and felt no responsibility for it, and they were skeptical of the older generation’s blind obedience to the United States. For them, the Anpo Protests were a way of creating a Japan willing to stand up to the U.S. Debates such as this one ran passionate and sometimes humorous, and revealed the power of the demonstrations: Anpo brought the public world into the realm of the private. If the family had been a microcosm of the nation in prewar times, then in the postwar period, the debate within Japanese families reflected the national divisions of the times. Morishige’s husband commented on his family’s arguments over Anpo: “We’re a disunited family, aren’t we? We are so out of step with each other that we’re like a miniature version of all of Japan. It’s like the start of a horse race.”53 Unlike many urban families, rural ones who watched the Anpo demonstrations on TV found it hard to sympathize with the rather well-off elite students in Tokyo. Danno Nobuo, the assistant editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun, noted the lack of interest that farmers had in Anpo: Looking back on the recent Anpo protests, you could sharply feel a sense of urgency in Tokyo, but when you go to the rural areas, you did not feel that sense of urgency. The city intelligentsia questions why the farm villages do not understand the problem of Anpo, but the farm villagers feel a different sense of crisis.54

In 1960, the rural standards of living and culture and living standards differed greatly from those of the city, and so the sight of well-dressed urban students protesting was something incomprehensible. One writer noted the comments of villagers in Iwate prefecture watching a communal TV:


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Even during the time of the Anpo Demonstrations, I frequently heard people say that demonstrations are just for people of leisure, and that it would be better if the students studied instead of protesting. There were sympathizers with the protestors who said, “Ok! I will also go and join them,” or revealed their attitudes toward the city students by saying “They’ve put much thought into this problem.” However, most of those supporters were mostly the youth. As for the typical rural person, the urbanite’s political senses did not strike a chord with them.55

Despite generational differences, public opinion concerning the Anpo protests arrived at one consensus: Prime Minister Kishi had to go. The media portrayed the problem as one of out-of-control police, not the problematic nature of the security treaty. In the long run, the media portraying the Anpo problem as one of an evil Prime Minister Kishi both helped and hurt the movement. By making this an anti-Kishi movement, the public could focus their energies and anger against a villainous figure. But this anti-Kishi stance did not mean opposition to the Anpo treaty itself. Too many Japanese had lived through the war to want to defy the U.S. like the younger generation wanted to do. Nonetheless, all could agree on Kishi’s poor handling of the crisis. Ironically, one of the reasons why Kishi was such an unlikable figure was because of his inability to be “natural” on camera. Even in a 1956 survey of housewives, Kishi topped the list of politicians who made a bad impression on television.56 Anti-Kishi sentiment did not translate into anti-LDP sentiment. Fukutake Tadashi, a Tokyo University professor, noted considerable antiKishi feeling in the otherwise placid countryside while doing a survey in Yamagata Prefecture. “ . . . Concerning the question of whether Kishi was bad, they felt that the way he personally did things was not good, but they did not believe at all that the LDP’s mechanisms were the cause of this.”57 With this kind of sentiment, it is no surprise that after the Anpo crisis had passed and Kishi had resigned to take responsibility, the LDP easily won control of government in the upcoming elections.

THE 1964 TOKYO OLYMPICS: A NATION UNIFIED THROUGH TELEVISION In response to the Anpo demonstrations, the ruling LDP, with Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato at the helm, shifted its focus from a nationally divisive constitutional revision to a program designed to raise the people’s standard of living. This “income-doubling plan” became part of an “unspoken

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agreement” between the government and the people. In exchange for obedience, the government would reward the people with economic prosperity. To a nation weary of the struggles of the 1950s and horrified by the possibility of Anpo tearing the nation apart, it seemed like a good bargain. By 1964, the time of the Tokyo Olympics, one could definitely see the outlines of a new social order, and social institutions like schools and companies managed to channel most of the energy of youth into non-threatening avenues. Except for the scattered remnants of the campus radicals and other youth groups on the fringes of society, the crisis appeared to have passed. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics, another key media event, cemented into place a nationalism to help fill in the void left by the loss of empire. The Tokyo Olympics was a moment of national simultaneity that the vast majority of Japanese did not experience in person, but only through their television sets. About 85% of households with televisions watched the goldmedal game where the Japanese women’s volleyball team, the “Witches of the East,” defeated the Soviet Union, showing that television had the potential to unite viewers around the country.58 Japanese could access the Olympics through other aspects of the mass media, such as magazines, newspapers, and radio, which still played an important role in popularizing the Olympics. However, Fujitake Akira of the NHK Theoretical Research Center argued that television broadcasts were the Olympics for most people. So powerful was the link between TV and the Olympics that Fujitake argued that the television version represented the “real” version of the Olympics for most Japanese: For most people, the newly synthesized drama on television represented the Tokyo Olympics. Was it not a fact that those who actually went to the grounds to see actual contests considered themselves as being present at a location for a movie production? Would it not be permissible to say that the Olympics projected on the television screen was the people’s real Olympics?59

One must realize how radical it seemed at that time for millions of people to simultaneously experience the sight and sounds of the Olympics not by being there in person, but through television. According to Fujitake’s surveys, only 7% of people in Tokyo (nevertheless a huge number considering the size of the metropolis) actually went to see the Olympic Games. The majority of people came into indirect contact with the Olympics through TV. Fujitake noted that the reactions of people in Tokyo and in local communities towards the Olympics did not differ, “the Olympics were an event on a national scale from the point of view of people’s reactions”—and indeed “a


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national event that could call forth reactions on a national scale only by the intermediary of mass media.”60 Since television had spread to most homes throughout the nation by 1964, the reach of the Olympics was huge. Showing this link between TV and the Olympics, Fujitake noted that the way the Olympic broadcasts were edited also helped to portray the Olympics as a television drama. Fujitake noted that if people had seen the events in person, they would have been able to see one or two events at the most. Through television, all nine events in a day, which often featured Japanese athletes, could be experienced. Through the use of videotape recordings, events that had already occurred could be intermingled with live events. To Fujitake, television did not merely broadcast the Olympics but turned them into a grand drama with Japanese athletes at the center. The overall impression of the Games reinforced the national pride that Japanese viewers felt when they watched coverage that focused mainly on Japanese athletes. Fujitake writes that “ . . . television gave the impression that contests between Japanese and foreign athletes were the sum total of the Olympics.”61 Other reports confirmed Fujitake’s claim of a Japan united through the broadcast of the Tokyo Olympics. CBC Report proudly claimed in December 1964 that: In just 15 days, eyes and hearts throughout Japan focused on one image, and people talked about these images in town workplaces. In the peacetime, this is truly unusual. To have a pseudo-experience through television, each one saw with their own eyes the competition and the athletes. It became possible for anyone to talk with others about their impressions of the event. Readers enjoyed the newspapers as an important place to compare the other’s impressions with one’s own opinions. To watch was to criticize, and to criticize was to participate. In this manner, most Japanese “participated” in the Tokyo Olympics through the broadcast Olympics, and gained satisfaction this way. When we evaluate the Tokyo Olympics from a historical viewpoint, the role of broadcasting cannot be ignored. The broadcasts have become inseparable from the merits and demerits of the Olympics.62

In the end, three key media events, the Royal Wedding of 1959, the Anpo demonstrations of 1960 and the Tokyo Olympics of 1964, demonstrated television’s power to create a national audience. Women played a central role in these media productions, helping to draw female viewers into national affairs. Seemingly male-dominated institutions needed a female

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center of attention because of the need to appeal to women viewers, who were among the heaviest users of television. The imperial throne, by law, was to be headed by a male, and yet the photogenic and intelligent Shōda Michiko, not the Crown Prince, captured the fancy of the mass media and the public. The 1960 Anpo protests took place in the male-dominated realm of politics, and yet the death of Kanba Michiko, a female university student, provided the media martyr for the cause. The 1964 Olympics focused on the male-dictated sense of nationalism, but the “Witches of the East,” the gold-medal winning women’s volleyball team, became the media darlings of the games. Although Japanese women were still excluded from official positions of power in society, they were gaining a fair amount of voice in the creation of the television culture.

Chapter Nine

Anpo Redux: University Riots and a Hostage Crisis

Anyway why are the people so immobile today compared with 10 years ago? . . . Ten years ago . . . an “Ampo” storm was raging in Japan, if I may use a bit of exaggeration. For instance, various individuals and organizations issued statements against Ampo, met in gatherings and demonstrated. Where are they now? What are they doing? I sometimes wonder . . . 1 —Oda Makoto, antiwar activist, 1970.

INTRODUCTION: THE 1970 ANPO PARADOX Oda’s lament is puzzling given the huge turnout for the 1970 demonstrations. The 1960 Anpo struggle (also written as Ampo), in which thousands protested the U.S.-Japan security treaty, turned into one of the largest mass demonstrations in Japan’s political history. Millions of viewers kept their eyes glued to their television sets watching these events unfold on live television. The media coverage caused such public concern that Prime Minister Kishi had to resign to take responsibility for the ruling party’s handling of the security treaty issue. At this juncture, TV seemed destined to become a force that would challenge the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s grip on power. Ten years later, the Anpo demonstrations of 1970 dwarfed the 1960 protests. In 1960, 505,000 people protested in the country as a whole and 130,000 for Tokyo alone. A decade later on June 23, 1969, there were 774,000 protestors throughout the country and 157,000 in Tokyo alone.2 As Thomas Havens points out, on June 23, 1970, the date of the automatic extension of the security treaty, a colossal turnout somewhere between 774,000—1.5 million people participated in the demonstrations. Despite 227

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the mass demonstrations and widespread media coverage, mass anti-government struggles could not generate the sense of crisis of that in 1960. Why had protests seemingly lost their effectiveness as a force for change even as the numbers of protestors had increased? Economic prosperity and political stability were among the many causes that contributed to the loss of effectiveness of the later protests. Thomas Havens notes that after the 1960 Anpo protests, many Japanese were convinced that the security treaty had saved the country billions of dollars in defense spending, and so did not mind acquiescing to the security treaty as part of the inevitable price of an alliance with the U.S. Ellis Kraus raises the intriguing argument that television helped to legitimate the state through NHK news coverage.3 But perhaps another reason lies in how television had become part of daily life. These televised protests, whose novelty shocked viewers in 1960, had worn out their ability to seize the media spotlight by 1970. Instead, media coverage focused on the attention-grabbing protests of a smaller minority of demonstrators who had resorted to violence. Television had routinized peaceful mass demonstrations to the point that they no longer provided enough visual stimulation to shock the viewer into anger.

MORE MEDIA SPECTACLES: STUDENT PROTESTS IN THE 1960S Popular protests did not end with the Anpo demonstrations of 1960. Rather, popular protests, often on a scale larger than the 1960 Anpo demonstrations, were sparked by Japan’s role in assisting the U.S. during the Vietnam War, and dominated the airwaves in the 1960s. These protests were part of a larger global phenomenon of youth protest from places ranging from France, to the United States, and even to the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution, and so the causes of youth protest are too complex to be attributed solely to television. Still, television served as a vehicle to spread these protests in Japan. By the mid-1960s, television had become a routine part of daily life and a means to transmit the spectacle of mid-60s student demonstrations into homes throughout the nation. However, this meant that the mass demonstrations also became routine. The mere fact of a new demonstration was no longer enough to arouse the interest of viewers. With viewers trained to crave stimulation, it would take bigger and flashier spectacles to attract their attention. As a result, the media spotlight focused more often on student protestors who resorted to violence than the numerous peaceful demonstrators, and scenes of student radical violence obscured the message that protestors intended to project.

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BACKGROUND: THE STABILITY OF THE 1960S AND THE VIETNAM WAR The United States during the sixties suffered national divisions due to the Vietnam War and the culture war between the political Left and the Right. In contrast, Japan during the sixties, national divisions receded into the background as citizens partook in the affluence resulting from LDP highspeed growth policies. During this time of growing economic prosperity, divisions caused by the rapid social change during the 1950s narrowed, due in part to the emergence of a national television culture. Although student-led conflicts dominated many a news program, the majority of Japanese often saw these actions as a phase of life in which student protestors would soon outgrow. For the most part, the sixties were a time of seeming national unity. In spite of economic prosperity, the traumas of the Vietnam War, broadcast into the homes of Japanese, would not let the contradictions of postwar Japan be easily covered over or forgotten. Few Japanese could forget the fact that Japan, despite its pacifist constitution, remained directly linked to the Vietnam War through the American bases in Japan. Some Japanese believed that in providing the staging ground for American troops from U.S. bases, Japan was complicit in the U.S. war against Vietnam. As an example of the Vietnam War leading to popular protest, in 1966 the anti-Vietnam war activist Oda Makoto established Beheiren (Citizen’s League for Peace in Vietnam), a vast, decentralized network of activists who worked to end Japanese involvement in the Vietnam War and fight the Security Treaty. The Vietnam War protests became a focal point for youth discontented with contemporary society. For many youth, economic prosperity came at the price of personal freedom. Many felt constrained by the social uniformity required of high-speed economic growth, especially symbolized by the mass universities where students felt their quality of life was often an afterthought. Fukashiro Junro explained the situation of the students: Society today has become extremely complicated. It has become a behemoth. It is specialized and departmentalized. Though every individual wants to think of himself as an integrated whole, he in fact feels only a deep sense of frustration; that, degraded into a mere cog in a vast machine he receives the inhuman treatment cogs normally receive.4

Despite unprecedented economic prosperity and peace (compared to the austerity measures, warfare, and struggle to survive from the mid-1930s to

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early 1950s), student radicalism became one of the key issues of national politics in the late 1960s. Their passions would build up and explode in the 1960s. In October 1968, 6,000 radical students clashed with police in bloody street battles in Tokyo and in all of 1968, nearly sixty universities and colleges in Japan were engaged in disputes of some kind, which often shut down campuses.5 Andrew Barshay notes that although the Anpo protests of 1970 were larger, they were overshadowed by the resurgence of the student Left at the end of the 1960s, which was often violent and lacked justification. Barshay identifies the universities as central sites of struggle.6 But television also served as a central site of struggle. The battles between students and police played out in the news and reached millions of Japanese viewers, yet they did not reflect the non-violent character of the overwhelming number of protestors. Much of the New Left centered on Beheiren, which staged huge but orderly demonstrations involving several tens of thousands of people from all walks of life and made it a point to avoid clashes with the police. Confined to the universities, violent protests probably would not have caught national attention given the much larger numbers of nonviolent protestors in groups like Beheiren. But on the small screen, these student radicals managed to capture the national agenda out of proportion to their actual numbers. Kazuko Tsurumi argued that Japanese radical students resorted to violence as a means to publicize their interests. In 1960, students largely refrained from violence, but in 1967, radical students began to wear helmets and wield staves against the police. According to Tsurumi, since the goal of the radical student movement shifted from “defending parliamentary democracy” to “debunking fake democracy,” radical students aimed to use clashes with police to publicly expose the brute force upon which the state based its power. They believed that the more violence they could provoke from the authorities, the greater their political success.7 Whether or not viewers would be sympathetic to the use of violence was another problem. Let us take a look at the most famous protest, that of prestigious Tokyo University, whose student riots in 1969 were among the highest rated TV spectacles of all time in Japan.

THE TOKYO UNIVERSITY RIOTS In 1968, radical students of Zenkyōtō (All-Campus Joint Struggle Committee), protesting reform of the university as well as the Vietnam War, occupied Tokyo University’s Yasuda Auditorium. Finally, on January 18 and 19 of 1969, about 8,000 riot police entered the campus to remove the

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radical students barricaded there. TV stations broadcast the ensuing melee live, with NHK and the four commercial broadcasters airing over a total of 34 hours of news broadcasts over the two days.8 High public interest in the 1969 protest manifested itself in unbelievably high ratings for the Tōdai (Tokyo University) Riots. Viewers were glued to the set for hours watching in real time as riot police took Yasuda Auditorium. According to the ratings, 97.4% of homes supposedly turned into the special programming on the day of the police action. For several hours, over 70% of households were watching the end of the Tōdai riot on TV. As for areas outside of the Kantō area, evidence is sketchy, but we can infer from the appearance of many special programs dealing with the Tōdai riots that this event attracted an unusually high level of interest.9 One author testified to the power of live broadcasts to grab his attention: That morning, when I was reading the paper in bed, my wife yelled from the floor below, “Honey! The riot police have entered Tōdai!” I hurriedly turned on the television. NHK’s regular 7:00 news broadcast, TBS’ special news, NHK’s Studio 102, TBS’ Saturday partner—I was busily turning the dial chasing these programs. . . . 9:35 a.m. NTV began a program about Tōdai. I called a friend. My friend was unmistakably sitting in front of the television. In this way, the stations through the live broadcasts of Tōdai opened a window one by one in front of the viewers.10

While the ratings for this spectacle were high, television coverage did not necessarily translate into support for the students. According to newspaper opinion polls, most people felt widespread sympathy for the goals of the student movement but did not support the use of violence. 71% of respondents in an Asahi survey in 1969 and 58.6% of those in a similar Yomiuri survey that same year, showed sympathy with the student’s point of view, but opposition to their methods. About 16% of respondents in both polls disapproved of their views and methods and even advocated repression.11 The above polls and anecdotal evidence indicate that radical violence could stir up angry feelings in viewing audiences. Sassa Atsuyuki, formerly of the national police agency, writes about some of the calls received from angry Japanese when the riot police faced off with the students occupying Yasuda Auditorium. Many TV viewers directed much of their anger at the students. A Yokohama man made a phone call of support and clearly gave his name and address.

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Now I’m watching the Tōdai situation on TV, and I can never forgive the actions of the students. The riot police also have families so I feel sorry for them. It’s outrageous that the media also does not criticize the violence of the students but criticize the police instead. You should mobilize the self-defense forces. You did a good job and keep it up.

Other calls from concerned Japanese, thirty-six in all, also suggested hard-line tactics against the students: “NHK calls them ‘students’ but they should call them ‘punks.’” “Advise Prime Minister Satō that he should mobilize the Self Defense forces.” “Why are you not shooting your guns?” “I also graduated from Tōdai, but how about destroying Yasuda Auditorium?”

There were telephone calls and telegrams of opposition as well. Nineteen of these were short calls that essentially stated opposition to the riot police attacking.12 While the number of calls is quite small, they do indicate the power of the TV image to turn viewers against the students. And one may speculate that viewers were too busy watching TV to make calls of opposition or support. The sense of intimacy and closeness imparted by television made viewers feel as if they had a personal stake in this event. Letters to station TBS revealed that many Japanese were glued to the set. A thirtyfour year old company employee wrote: That day, I was watching all day going back and forth between channels. Even when I looked at the television program guide in the newspaper, it didn’t say from what time programs about the Tōdai Incident would come on. When you cannot publish your schedule in the paper, I would like you to display your programming announcements on a teleprompter or something.

A twenty-nine year old factory worker even wrote about how he wanted to become personally involved in helping the students: I feel so sorry for the students to the point of unreasonableness. When I see the surrounding helicopter shooting tear gas at them, I think that if I had money, I would fly in a helicopter and toss some hot Chinese meat buns down to them. I really think this way.13

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The coverage of the Tokyo University demonstrations lacked analysis and could reduce the events of the day to mere violence stripped from its context. An editorial in the journal Chuō Kōron of April 1969 showed how television could play up the violent nature of the student demonstrators while ignoring their concerns. Today, torrents of radicalism gush out of the massive underground strata and flood the nation with numerous pamphlets: other publications and even theatrical groups swell that flood. On-the-spot reports of university disputes (whether for television, radio or other mass communication media) constantly emphasize the ‘wooden staves’ and ‘barricades’ that symbolize student violence, but they are reprehensibly reticent about the real reasons for the trouble. To the general public, student radicals, helmeted and armed with wooden staves, appear to be nothing but ‘nonsense,’ the very word used by students to jeer at the attitudes of university administrations during collective bargaining sessions. But an effort should be made to understand the various factors driving students to their acts of violence. We must have a firm grasp of those new historical upheavals and social contradictions that are expressed in the student movement.14

The Tōdai riots exposed the limits of television as a news medium. Given the need for ratings, and given the limited time for news coverage and so many events to cover, only violent images could get the station’s attention and make an item newsworthy. This could account for the public’s focus on the violence but not the concerns of the students. A writer for a TV station magazine recognized the reality that the media would only focus on violent protests and complained that the news programs lacked an analysis of the motivations of the main actors in the riots: What do the Revolutionary Party or Sōhyō (labor federation) headquarters think? What do the townspeople think and recognize about these horrible events? What were the other university students and other university Zenkyōtō groups doing? One by one, these ideas swished inside my head. At that time, a TV crew for a street battle in Ochanomizu area came in. However, if the protest did not become a battle, then the cameras would not film it. In the expansion of the “Tōdai problem” expanding to the whole “campus problem,” expanding to the meaning of “violence,” if we fail to give an analysis, aren’t we merely just giving sight and sound?15

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In this case, the lack of violence translated into a lack of coverage. It seemed as if the television stations only wanted to film as many scenes of violence as possible. TV was serving less as a “window on the world,” and more as a distorting lens. A sampling of letters to TBS Chōsa Jōhō magazine in March 1969 echoed these concerns. A middle-aged housewife complained to a station about their obsessive focus on violence. I do not understand very well why this kind of disturbance happens. I feel as if you broadcast many news reports, but they were bad from the beginning, and it would be better to give an explanation of the reasons for that kind of big disturbance. But even so, TV probably will not broadcast something if it is not a big riot.

A thirty-five year old designer noticed a discrepancy between the police’s account of the fighting and what was heard on the radio: Television is too superficial. That’s what I thought. After watching the news bulletin on television, I listened to the radio. When I did so, they played a recording of the sound from the scene but at the moment the riot police was attacking with the rear gas, a voice that seemed like an officer screamed, “Aim for the face! Aim for the face!” There must have also been students who shot directly at the face but that was unjustifiable. The police station announced that “We gave the order not to aim at the students” but listening to the radio, I knew that was a lie. Television is no more than a view through a telescope.

A twenty-six year old company employee felt that the reactions of the “man on the street” broadcast on television were not representative of Tokyo as a whole. The merchants of Hongō (where Tokyo University is located) say that they are the ones being troubled, or that the students are outrageous. When I hear the merchants, I think it is just natural that they would say these kinds of things. That kind of stuff, it is doubtful that you are broadcasting a neutral party’s voice. You should not just ask the people living around the university just because it is Tōdai. Wouldn’t asking people in the Shinjuku or Ikebukuro districts be just as good?

As the testimony above indicates, some viewers were aware that television could distort reality. For others, such as a twenty-year-old student, the televised violence felt too real:

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I was watching while playing mah-jongg with my friends but at first, we were half jokingly watching it saying “Sock it to ’em! Sock it to ’em!” but the battle got too intense, and we became ashamed. Someone said that we should end the game, we all agreed, and left for home.16

These reactions demonstrated that viewers often became personally entangled in the events unfolding in Tokyo. Judging from these reactions, viewers knew that the stations were short-changing them on analysis and only focusing on violent spectacles. Yet, people continued to watch such coverage, and the stations continued to produce attention-grabbing news reports. Violent protests like the Tōdai riots and the radical student rampages through cities in October and November of 1969 contributed to Japanese viewers associating all groups against the Vietnam War with the stigma of violence. Thomas Havens writes: “Now that Beheiren and other civic groups were tightly interwoven with the anti-treaty and reversion protest, the acrid odor of violence inevitably clung despite their insistence on peaceful dissent.”17 Given this marginalization of protestors, it is no wonder that the 1970 Anpo protests of June 1970 ended up as merely the ritualized tenthanniversary observance of that crucial crisis in the postwar Japanese political system. Although there were larger numbers of demonstrators in 1970 than 1960, the 1970 protests just could not keep the viewer occupied unless there was a sense of crisis, and to manufacture a crisis through protests only served to weaken public support for dissidents. Economic growth had also stripped the protests of any sense of urgency, as Prime Minister Ikeda’s “income doubling plan” had tripled per capita income, making Japan much more prosperous and comfortable than in 1960. With no crisis of the system, with many potential Japanese dissidents co-opted by economic growth, and with the public impatient with young student radicals, the Anpo protests could not force political change The students’ tactics of protest in 1969 only further marginalized them, as they were unable to use the television to clearly articulate their goals. Partly in response to their marginalization, and partly due to a lack of clear-cut goals, many students turned to more radical measures like terrorism and violence on other students. The terror incidents caused by radical fringe student groups provided more than enough drama and spectacle to make the news and capture public attention. In this sense, the terror groups got what they wanted. But what were these students protesting? By 1971, internal bickering had destroyed most student groups, and thus radical activism was left to student radicals, who engaged mainly in bombings and in violent battles with police, and adopted ideologies that

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were only remotely connected to previous causes such as the Anpo treaty or the Vietnam War. On March 1970, student radicals of the Red Army faction hijacked the Yodo, a Japan Airlines Boeing 727, and forced it to fly to Seoul, then onto Pyongyang. Six days later, the plane returned to Japan. Stations broadcast much footage and commentary on this, Japan’s first air hijacking. According to NHK’s history, NHK TV broadcast 30 hours and 51 minutes of footage, with the commercial stations like Fuji and TBS broadcasting a little over 14 hours.18 This was a preview of how televised terror would later grip the nation.

“IS YASUKO-SAN SAFE?” THE ASAMA-SANSŌ HOSTAGE DRAMA OF 1972 One of Japan’s most famous televised incidents began on February 19, 1972, at the Asama-sansō inn in the mountain resort of Karuizawa in Nagano prefecture. Five radicals of the Red Army, fleeing from police, holed up in the inn, and took Muta Yasuko, the 31-year-old wife of the lodge caretaker as a hostage. With so much media attention focused on this single crisis, the whole nation worried about her safety as the crisis dragged on. The police lay siege, and finally, ten days later on February 28, with TV cameras broadcasting live their every move, they stormed the inn. Hiroshi Hamota wrote in a March 2003 article in the Asahi Shimbun: “Over the next 10 days, the Asama-sansō standoff built to a dramatic climax-replete with ‘‘special effects’’ like water cannons and wrecking balls smashing the walls of the lodge-culminating, almost as if scripted, in a shootout.” 19 According to the Asahi’s retrospective on the event, the top news story in newspapers on February 28th was the breakthrough in U.S.-China relations, a momentous shift of power politics in East Asia. Boldface headlines screamed: ‘‘Joint U.S.-China communiqué signed!’’ NHK was planning to cover the Lower House Budget Committee session at 10:30 a.m. Yet, the television coverage of climax of Asama-sansō drowned out both stories. When, a little after 6:00 p.m., the hostage was rescued and the Red Army members apprehended (at the cost of two dead policeman, and many wounded), television history had been made. NHK’s history points out that the Asama-sansō incident represented the intensification of television news coverage. While television coverage of the rather long Yodo hijacking was intermittent, the final day of the Asama-sansō incident saw stations broadcast uninterrupted live news. According to NHK, the overall audience rating for NHK and the commercial stations combined during the final two hours of the hostage rescue was 87%, when the stations broadcast over nine hours of commercial-free

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coverage.20 Virtually all of Japan tuned into this live spectacle unfolding before their eyes. In Kyushu, the demand for electricity rose dramatically due to all the sets in use. A power company spokesperson said, “It was a bloody incident and so the demand for electricity rises . . .”21 According to the February 28, 1972 Yomiuri Shimbun, workers across the country could not work, as they were too busy watching the events unfold on the screen. At the Kawai musical instrument factory in Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, all 6,500 factory workers took the day off to watch the event. Many of them were glued to the tube in the factory control room and even phoned an employee who was at Karuizawa to ask, “Can we confirm if Yasuko-san is safe?” By 11:00 a.m., viewer ratings had exceeded even those of the Japan’s Sapporo Winter Olympics opening ceremony. The media focus on the hostage Muta Yasuko transfixed the nation. Yasuko-san, as the media called her, turned into the subject of much media attention during this ten-day hostage crisis. Japanese viewers expressed concern about her personal safety, and this helped to glue them to the screen. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that at 7:00 am in the morning, a greengrocer in Setagaya Ward remarked, “It seems that Yasuko-san will be rescued this afternoon, and so I want to get my work over with quickly and watch television . . .”22 One announcer said “If Muta Yasuko-san is not rescued, then there can never be a true spring in Karuizawa.”23 When it was announced that Yasuko-san was rescued unhurt, the politicians of both ruling and opposition parties in parliament broke out in applause and the Prime Minister blinked back tears.24 The critic Aoki Tadanobu could not believe the sheer stupidity of the television station’s obsession with Yasuko. The stations repeatedly asked for confirmation if she was safe . . . On the day of the police assault, the announcer, the newscaster, and even the reporter kept uniformly repeating during the TV broadcast, “Is Yasuko-san safe?” “Is Yasuko-san safe?” like a tape set on repeat. It was pure nonsense.25

From this obsession with Muta Yasuko, we can see the para-social interaction that characterized media events on Japanese television. Media events needed a human face if they were to connect with the viewing public, a fact made clear in previous media events. For the Royal Wedding of 1959, it was Shōda Michiko, the future Crown Princess. For the Anpo protests of 1960, it was Kanba Michiko, the student killed during the demonstration of June 15. For the 1964 Olympics, it was the Japanese women’s volleyball team. For the Asama-sansō incident, the figure of Yasuko-san provided the human draw that made this hostage incident one of national

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concern. But the public had no media personalities to sympathize with for the Tōdai riots of 1969 and Anpo protests of 1970, so they found it hard to sympathize with student protests. A TV producer noted how the dramatic elements of this hostage crisis made for a compelling story: The Asama-sansō incident certainly had its tragic share of victims, and from the point of view of a “television serial drama broadcast” truly gushed blood all over Japan, and it was an incident that displayed 100% the power of television as a medium. While it was on the air, to tell the truth, we didn’t have the luxury of saying, “Why don’t we make it into a drama” in order to just hold the viewer in suspense, but well, when we look back after it was finished, we had all sorts of selfish delusions. Despite that, as a drama producer, I am honestly amazed at the simplicity, childishness, and repulsiveness of the methods of the Red Army gang.26

Not all Japanese, of course, uncritically imbibed the media story about Asama-sansō. Some critics derided the public’s viewing of this event as something akin to a television drama. Rather than showing reality, they realized that television had transformed the incident into an “unscripted” media event. Even reporters who were at the scene criticized television’s coverage as distorting the event: Shimada: The actual location was really bitterly cold, and it wasn’t as pretty as what television suggested. Mitsune: Even the riot police are human beings. They were scared of the bullets [being fired at them]. But that didn’t come through on television. Akiyama: The people who saw it on television probably didn’t feel a sense of danger. That is why they seemed to seek excitement [from the broadcast] and have a strange expectation to want the riot police to act quickly. When television [events] come to an end, commercials and songs follow them! You really have no time to think about important things. [. . . . ] Shimada: Television should also show spots on how each individual policeman suffered. It should show the people the true atmosphere of the site. If they do that, then the public that looks at the incident as if it was a show-like spectacle and wants police to move quickly will have a better understanding.27

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To these reporters, the public was a used to shows being neatly wrapped up on TV and wanted the event to finish up as soon as possible. From their words, we can see that television news products were transforming this hostage situation into a hostage drama. Ironically, the hostage incident, although it contained the elements of a hostage drama, was incredibly slow moving, taking hours to wind down on the day of the rescue. Not much movement could be seen, and so to heighten interest in the event, broadcasters needed to focus on the plight of the hostage or add commentary. One writer compared such coverage to the Yodogo airplane hijacking: In the Yodogo Incident of fall 1970, television could only relay live broadcasts of the area around airports. So it showed only the scene around the airplane and the announcer made comments. In that sense, the Asama-sansō incident was the same. Television, even in the time of the Yodogo incident, while preaching respect for life, lost sight of the big picture and pursued only the smaller picture. Even in the Asama-sansō incident, they kept up a torrent of “Yasuko-san” and emphasized the emotional aspects of the incident, skillfully switched subjects about the nature of the incident, and lost their sense of responsibility.28

Itō Shin’ichi, however, recognized the fact that while the coverage was monotonous and often had no action, it was gripping nevertheless: On the day of the Asama-sansō battle, I could not move from the front of my TV set. However, what really surprised me the most was that the television screen did not have constantly changing images. When it was 12:00, they did not broadcast the regular news. It became 12:30 and then 1:00, and finally when it was past 2:00, the regular news was simply broadcast as a news flash. To tell the truth, that day’s battle was at a standstill, and had no changes, and I was not aware why I continually watched the TV. Probably, the people at the television station thought the same thing.29

Despite the slow movement of the real-life broadcasts, so powerful was this hostage drama that it drowned out other major news stories of the day, such as Nixon’s visit to China, which helped to cement détente between China and the United States. Some Japanese could not believe how a hostage drama could drown out news stories of national and international importance. An employee at a securities company said, “Muta Yasuko-san? Well . . . I’m more worried about how Nixon is recognizing

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the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and so Japan’s political situation will destabilize and stocks will fall.”30 Shiga Nobuo complained in the Shūkan Post about how the coverage drowned out other news stories: “Which do you think is more important: Asama-sansō coverage or broadcasts of the parliament?”31 Newspapers found out that they had to adopt television’s tactics of obsessive focus on small details if they were to survive. Itō Shin’ichi decried the spread of the television idiom of spectacle to the newspapers. He was shocked to discover the next day the newspapers focused too much coverage on Asama-sansō: The majority of Japan’s newspapers are delivered to families by subscription and so compared to newspapers of other countries; they do not need to compete in a battle for a day’s sales. So why is it like this? . . . . Although it is well recognized that television and newspapers are different media, when we point out that their coverage conforms to one another, I worry about what the dawn of the electronic newspaper will be like. Are newspapers becoming like television or are televisions becoming like newspapers?32

The spectacle of violence had completely “hijacked” the media agenda. Although they had successfully gained the nation’s attention through terror, any semblance of a message of these radical student terrorists had been drowned out. Arguably the radicals also had become caught up in the trap of trying to out-sensationalize the media organizations. Everyone else in the nation, mass media industry members included, had been caught up in the power of TV to seduce viewers. While earth-shaking political realignments took place in China, producers of both television and newspapers obsessed over a crisis involving a single hostage. It seemed as if newspapers, magazines, and TV had converged, and that all were now providing people with entertainment in the guise of news. Ōya Sōichi would have laughed had he seen the fulfillment of his prophecy of a nation trained to crave everincreasing amounts of stimulation.

Chapter Ten

America in Japanese Television: Family Dramas and Cowboys

INTRODUCTION: THE LARAMIE PHENOMENON Robert Fuller, the handsome star of the TV western series Laramie, could not grasp the gigantic size of the crowd that had come to greet his arrival in Japan on April 17, 1961. Fuller, who had no inkling of his tremendous popularity in Japan, had earlier received an invitation from Akira Shimizu, the Japanese entrepreneur who owned the Japanese copyright to Laramie. An on-board fire after takeoff delayed his arrival until well in the middle of the night, but still, the size of the crowd floored Fuller. Hundreds of mostly female junior high and high school Laramie fans thronged the airport, jostling to catch a glimpse of this TV star. Fuller recalls, “I thought, my God, the Emperor must be on this plane! What was going on? My heart started to beat so hard. I never saw anything like this before!”1 Only then he realized that while popular in America, he was a mega-star in Japan and that the crowd had come for him. The May 1961 issue of the Shūkan Asahi gave a glimpse of the pandemonium that accompanied Fuller’s arrival in Japan. On April 17, at 2:00 am, in the middle of the night when even plants were asleep, about a thousand teenagers gathered at Haneda airport. A frenzied atmosphere was created. Fans of NET television’s western program Laramie had gathered. A lone American youth in cowboy garb greeted them from a spot high above the crowd. Judging from his moist eyes, he was obviously moved to tears. Laramie’s young Robert Fuller, known as “Jess,” had been scheduled to arrive at Haneda airport on April 16 at 9:30 p.m. Around 7:00 p.m. that evening, suddenly about two thousand fans gathered, and that number grew by the hour. “His arrival was scheduled for 9:30 p.m., but will be at 12:30 a.m. The last

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? bus is at 12:00 a.m. Please go home,” was announced over and over again, but to no avail . . . 2

The popularity of this trans-Pacific cultural icon symbolized in a way, how from the early years of television, the Japanese small screen often seemed like an outpost of American culture with shows like Superman, Disneyland, I Love Lucy, Lassie, Father Knows Best, Gunsmoke, the Untouchables, and Laramie dominating the airwaves.3 American programs constituted a high percentage of television programs on the air and gained extraordinary popularity among viewers. This adoration of American culture was amazing considering the racial stereotyping that the wartime government had disseminated depicting Americans as beasts and devils. It is even more remarkable considering that during the 1950s, Japanese youth felt considerable anti-American sentiment, leading to massive protests in 1960 over the U.S.-Japan security treaty. How can we reconcile these differing views of America? Television media culture is an often-overlooked dimension of the Japanese-U.S. postwar relationship, for the power of television transformed an imported American culture into one of the building blocks of postwar Japanese nationalism. A good way to describe how Japan drifted into the U.S. cultural orbit is to look at the friendly American characters and American lifestyles that appeared on Japanese TV. This drift of Japan into the American sociopolitical orbit over a quarter-century period did not occur in a cultural vacuum. Rather, the spread of pro-American feeling was aided by the overwhelming percentage of American programs aired on early Japanese television, and it was fueled by the western (as in cowboy) boom of the early 1960s. Television became a gateway for American influences to enter directly into the household and out to remote, rural parts of the nation. Of course, audiences do enjoy some power to interpret whatever cultural products are put in front of them. Labels such as the “Americanization” of Japan can be quite deceptive because they mask audience agency. Joseph Tobin, in his book on Japanese popular culture, uses the concept of “domestication” to describe the historical process by which Japanese transformed aspects of the West, real or imagined, into part of their culture. Through domestication, Western goods, practices and ideas were (and are) changed in their encounter with Japan.4 This process can be seen at various points in Japanese history, and was especially pronounced during the Meiji Restoration, the Taishō era of urban growth, and the postwar Occupation era. Instead of asking how much postwar Japanese media culture is

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American and how much is Japanese, we should be asking how American television culture provided Japanese with symbols, images, and icons to help create a Japanese national identity and national culture.

MIXED MESSAGES VIEWS OF AMERICA Cultural Americanization did not begin in Japan under American military pressure following World War II, but started before the war in the late 1920s with a prewar craze with things American and American cultural influences in prewar urban Japan such as modern leisure and consumption. Even in this prewar era, Japanese adapted American media culture to fit into their own culture. Shunsuke Tsurumi notes the processes by which prewar Japanese domesticated the early flow of American movies. Benshi, the narrators at movie theaters, helped adapt and interpret silent movies from the West for Japanese audiences of the 1910s. At the same time, Japanese moviemakers took up Western-style manners and customs in their own movies. One prewar moviemaker even made a training center for actors and actresses headed by a former Russian countess to learn how to imitate Western actors: how to sit in Western chairs, how to walk in Western attires, how to use a knife and fork.5 In the 1930s, as the government’s geared up for war with the West for control of Asia, the government began to repress western influences. In a wartime atmosphere of official anti-Americanism, Japanese bureaucrats selectively used the power of radio to either promote those foreign influences they felt to be beneficial to the country, or to purge foreign influences that they felt could hurt Japanese national identity. The state eliminated foreign music (except for German and Italian songs) from the wartime radio waves and encouraged musical trends employing native styles and traditional instruments, infusing them with a nationalistic tone or content. Jazz was ostensibly taken off radio, but because of its huge popularity, managed to survive under the guise of “light music” or “salon music” that would satisfy state censors with a few tweaks in rhythm.6 In the postwar collapse of empire, the relaxation of political controls, and the start of commercial broadcasting, American influences would reawaken through Japanese media culture. The Occupation brought a large number of American troops into Japan, increasing the number of cultural contacts, but we should avoid exaggerating the extent of social contact Japanese had with American troops. Unlike their metropolis-dwelling counterparts, most Japanese who lived in the rural farmlands had little chance to meet Americans in person. Often, only a few Occupation officials were

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responsible for large rural areas and so wide swaths of Japan made little direct contact with Americans. Take the case of Carmen Johnson, the Women’s Affairs Adviser in the Shikoku Military Government Region. Johnson served as the sole official charged with informing the one million women scattered all over the island of Shikoku of their new rights.7 It was through television, not physical contact with Americans, that most Japanese eventually came into contact with American culture. The studies of Adachi Ken’ichi, a media scholar in the 1950s, revealed the growing interest in American culture as reflected in Japanese popular taste. Counting the ads in the Asahi Shimbun that used American prestige and appeal, he reported that in Dec 1947, at least one ad every 35 pages included a reference to America, but that by December 1955, it was one ad every 19 pages. In a sample of the yellow pages of the Osaka telephone directory, Adachi discovered that a quarter of the cabarets, bars, and coffee shops had English names. Cabarets had names like Metro, Hollywood, Capital, Queen, and Chicago, while coffee houses had names like American, Eden, Cadillac, Green, Columbia, Smart, and Swan.8 So even before the commencement of TV broadcasting, Japanese popular culture reflected heavy American influences. While we should take note of the American influence on postwar Japanese popular culture, we should not exaggerate the impact of American cultural influences in Japan. While wildly popular, American movies in Japan failed to mirror the dominance of American movies in other nations. Adachi noted that in 1951, American movies made up at least half of all movies shown in France, Britain, and Italy, 90 percent of all movies in Thailand and Ireland, but only 31 percent of the movies in Japan. However low compared to other nations, 31 percent still represented nearly one in three movies shown in Japan. American movies, with their larger budgets, could be made on a grander production scale than Japanese movies. The popularity of American movies apparently owed to their violent content. War movies made up 37.3% and westerns made up 25% of the 75 American movies shown in Tokyo during June 1951, meaning that over 60% of American movies in the Japanese market were action-style films.9 Love of American movies may have reflected love of the visual stimuli of violent films, not necessarily love of America. Besides spreading American images, postwar media culture could also harbor anti-American themes. During the Occupation, SCAP realized that media culture offered a forum of dissent from Occupation goals and so strove to control the Japanese media through censorship of anything contrary to their policies. Once the Occupation ended in April 1952, out came a flood of popular novels and magazines critical of American policy. When


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stripped of its Red Scare overtones, former SCAP official Richard Deverall’s 1953 warning to Americans, The Great Seduction: Red China’s drive to bring Free Japan behind the Iron Curtain becomes a valuable document in showing one American’s fears over the popularity of anti-American movies, books, and radio programs in Japan. Deverall, as an outsider to Japanese society, was perceptive enough to see that American military bases in Japan and American arrogance, coupled with negative portrayals of Americans in the Japanese popular media, only exacerbated anti-Americanism. Deverall writes about the popular novel the Chastity of Japan, which described lustcrazed American troops raping Japanese women: In [sic] want to repeat most emphatically that The Chastity of Japan has been one of the best sellers of 1953. It is now in its seventeenth printing! Many Japanese who had no direct contact with the GI find in Chastity in [sic] Japan an eye-witness account of the American and his sex mores. Or so they are told. The combination of powerful sex, luridness, pornography and anti-Americanism does the trick! . . . [E]verything these poor girls describe have so much basis in fact that even if much is exaggerated or even fiction, there is sufficient basis in truth to give the entire book a powerful punch—authentic and a “fact” of the Occupation. Author Mizuno will write no book on the Rape of Manila. Nor will he relate what happened in China or the Japanese-Occupied Areas during the long years from the 1931 Manchurian Incident until the Imperial forces surrendered on the 14th of August 1945. This book fires paper bullets. And the bullets are aimed one way: America. That is the real significance of The Chastity of Japan.

Even newsreels reinforced anti-Americanism or portray America as a militaristic nation. For example, Deverall quotes a reader complaining to the Chūbu Nippon Shimbun in 1953: “Why is it that the scenes (in newsreels) only show American jet planes bombing enemy territory or fierce firing of artillery, machine-gun, or anti-tank guns or the people fighting the war?” Deverall also complained, “One also notices that British newsreels shown in Japan invariably show the life of the Royal family, historic events of state, and both Rugby and cricket matches. It is all rather proper and politically harmless. But the American newsreel selections shown in Japanese theatres seem overheavy with Atom-Bomb tests, war games in America, and the horrors of the Korean War.”10

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Still, Deverall notices a contradiction among young Japanese views toward the United States: the love affair of anti-American students with American culture: And that is the contradiction we find in Japan today. The violently antiAmerican student sits in a Western style coffee house in Tokyo writing anti-American handbills as the electric phonograph brings him the latest jazz from the United States. He likes the coffee, he likes his antiAmerican propaganda, and he loves American music!”11

Deverall was onto something here, eliciting the postwar context of fractured nationalism in which symbols of Americanism, stripped of their meaning, co-existed next to many anti-American attitudes. Several years later in 1960, Don Adams also noticed the paradox of anti-Americanism coexisting with love of American items of consumption by looking at popular Japanese magazines and their advertisements: While both the population at large and government officials have been critical of American influences on the moral values of youth, American manufactures have maintained remarkable prestige. Newspaper and magazine advertisements inform the reader that this item was made in America or that another item is in daily use by Americans. . . . To wear American clothes, to use American-type appliance, and generally to enjoy the fruits of American technology indicate that one is both up to date and efficient. The image of America, then, is a nation to be emulated because of its great material strength and technical know-how but one whose ethical developments have little to offer Japan.12

In postwar Japan, one could see the remarkable power of American popular consumer culture taking root even amidst anti-American political attitudes. Of course, the phenomenon of anti-American youth in love with American popular culture was not limited to just Japan, but occurred throughout the world in places like Latin America and Europe.13 Japanese television made its debut within this charged social atmosphere of anti-Americanism mixed with pro-American consumerism. Early Japanese television relied heavily on American programming that a high percentage of the programs. The introduction of television served to accelerate the impact of American cultural influences that had already established a foothold in prewar Japan and in postwar Japanese media spaces. It


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allowed American cultural products to reach a mass audience and enter into homes on a scale unimaginable and unprecedented in imperial Japan.

DOMINATION OF JAPANESE TV BY AMERICAN PROGRAMS IN THE 1950S As discussed in an earlier chapter, it was the pro-wrestler Rikidōzan, mobilized anti-American sentiment in order to draw the mass crowds. The pro wrestling broadcasts whipped up Japanese nationalism by playing on the anti-American sentiment of the crowds, portraying American wrestlers as the treacherous villains, and using Japanese karate chops to win his victories. Japanese regained their national confidence watching Rikidōzan thrash the evil foreigners in the wrestling ring. Pro-Japanese nationalism and antiAmerican sentiment worked hand-in-hand in the wrestling broadcasts to lure Japanese audiences. Although Rikidōzan became a symbol of Japanese nationalism, early pro wrestling culture bore pronounced transnational influences. Rikidōzan was actually an ethnic Korean born in North Korea when it was a Japanese colony, and he took great pains to conceal his roots from the Japanese public. After quitting sumo in 1950, he learned pro wrestling showmanship and skills while wrestling in Hawaii and the American West Coast as “Riki Dozan.” While in America, he befriended JapaneseAmerican and American wrestlers and lured the Canadian-born Sharpes to Japan, where they agreed to lose to him for money. Consider how television as a medium often relies on illusions: a Korean who passed himself off as Japanese battling Canadians who passed themselves off as Americans to the TV audience. Despite his use of anti-American imagery to whip up Japanese nationalism, Rikidōzan kept his friendships with American wrestlers. The Destroyer, a famous pro-wrestler, reminisced about how Rikidōzan, whose command of English consisted of little more than simple curse words, always made sure that the American wrestlers were treated with respect outside the ring, sponsoring lavish feasts and having other wrestlers carry their luggage.14 What would Japanese think if they found that their national hero turned out to be a Korean who associated with Americans? With the spread of television, TV broadcasting shifted from a public theater to a private theater centered in the home. Japanese stations demanded cheaply made programming to fill their time slots, and American TV fit the bill. Although early Japanese TV featured wrestling programs that played on anti-American sentiment, within a few years, many of the

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shows on television were imported from America. Cheap imports of American programming helped tide over the Japanese TV industry until sufficient domestic production facilities were established. As early as October 1955, the first foreign programs were broadcast on Japanese TV. NTV broadcast the cartoon Jim and Judy in Teleland, known as Terebi Bōya no Bōken in Japanese, and TBS (KRT) showed Manga Superman, animated short films of Superman made for the theaters. NHK showed scenes from abroad in its program “Madison Square Garden.” Many early Japanese programs were closely modeled after American programs as well. One could consider the period from 1953 to 1965 as the golden age of foreign television in Japan, with the peak of foreign TV coming in the early 1960s. Consider the following numbers: in 1956, there were 9 American programs on Japanese TV. By 1957, the number had grown to 22 programs, and by 1959, there were 22 programs. During 1961–1964, there were 50 different American programs on Japanese TV each year.15 Why did American programming dominate the airwaves during the early years of Japanese television? Japanese studios were unprepared for the growth of television and suffered from a lack of production facilities. Despite a crash course in building facilities, studios just could not crank out enough programming for five competing stations by 1959. Exacerbating the problem, the Japanese film studios, in an attempt to squelch the popularity of TV and protect their box office receipts, imposed a ban in 1955 on showing their movies on TV, and refused to let their top stars appear on TV. The stations had no choice but to rely on imports of foreign programs.16 According to Shiozawa Shigeru, America’s CBS television network’s The Whistling Man, which aired in 1956, was the first foreign-made television movie introduced by the broadcast association. Then, commercial television stations such as Nippon Television and Radio Tokyo Television imported many foreign television movies, much to the chagrin of critics, who believed that the stations had abandoned the production of major domestic programs. Shiozawa writes of how the dominance of American programs represented a national shame to the president of Senkōsha advertising agency, Kobayashi Toshio, who was traveling in the U.S. on business. He watched television in a hotel by chance and felt surprised that many of the same programs in the U.S. were broadcast in Japan. Asking, “What the hell is this? Isn’t it almost the same as the programs broadcast in Japan? Of course, the exporting country is America. Economically and ideologically, that wasn’t a good thing,” he then vowed to build up Japan’s domestic television production.17


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What reasons accounted for popularity of American TV programs? For one, American programs, while not necessarily critically acclaimed, appealed to a wide range of people in order to survive the cutthroat American market, where 68% of network shows during the period 1953–1956 suffered cancellation.18 Those surviving programs, when exported, were proven winners that promised to appeal to a global audience. Lassie, the American TV program about a collie, achieved high popularity in Japan with 40% ratings in the Kantō area (which meant that about 420,000 households watched the show). When the station had a quiz with a prize of a purebred collie of Lassie’s lineage, they received 65,800 entries from the Tokyo region alone. Chōsa Jōhō described the reason for the Lassie’s popularity: By nature, this program is oriented toward families, and even children, adults, and the elderly are fans of this program, so it pulls in high ratings. Even if the ratings are high, unlike thrillers and gangster shows, the commercials are effective and strongly appealing on this kind of home drama.19

Judging from the ratings, both audiences and advertisers were pleased with American programs like Lassie. Still, we cannot attribute the overwhelming presence of American programs on early Japanese TV solely to cultural factors such as audience preference for American programs. Japanese-made programs like the costumed crime fighter Gekkō Kamen, produced by Senkōsha, were also popular among Japanese viewers. Thus we must take to other reasons including economic ones, to explain the preponderance of American programs. Early cash-strapped Japanese production studios suffered from a lack of adequate domestic production facilities. American programs, by contrast were made in the U.S., in studios with streamlined production techniques, large budgets, and splendid facilities. Made primarily for the American market, these programs were simply imported by Japanese stations.20 U.S. television distributors often “dumped” American programs at artificially low rates in order to gain a foothold in the Japanese market. Because the Japanese government had imposed strict foreign-exchange restrictions on television film imports, American television distributors sold their products at cut-rate prices to Japanese television broadcasters.21 As a result, it was often cheaper for Japanese stations to buy the rights to high productionvalue American programs rather than to produce low-quality Japanese ones. Shiozawa writes of how running American programs made good business sense.

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? January 1957 saw the start of the first domestic television movie, Bonboko monogatari. However, its reviews were not very favorable compared to foreign-made television movies. Even the sponsor’s logic did not bode well for the show. The reason was very simple. In the case of foreign-made television movies, it cost the American studios from 7,000,000 yen to 10,000,000 yen to produce a thirtyminute episode. Yet, for the Japanese television stations, the cost of importing and broadcasting the program, even after adding in the cost of dubbing the program into Japanese, was only about 150,000 yen. On the other hand, the set at which they filmed the poor-quality Bonboko monogatari cost at least 20,000 to 30,000 yen, and the set was re-used in the third, sixth, or even seventh episodes. Even if they cut down on production expenses, it still cost three to four times more to show Japanese-made programs than showing American programs. Therefore, it was clear from the beginning that domestic television movies could hardly compete with foreign-made television movies.22

It is important to note the dominance of American shows on domestic TV throughout most of the world outside of Japan. After the devastation of war, and given America’s emergence as an economic superpower, American shows were used in TV in many nations as cheap entertainment. Wilson Dizard notes that by the early 1960s, overseas sales accounted for 60% of all U.S. television film syndication activities and often made the difference between profit and loss for the entire industry. U.S. distributors, eager to gain market share in the newly developing nations in Asia and Africa, sold their TV films at cut-rate prices. When one looks at the worldwide television scene, one sees the same phenomenon of imported U.S. films being much cheaper than locally produced programming. In Italy, 82% of shows on private stations were imported, and the same reliance on U.S programming appeared across the world.23 Regardless of the cause, some contemporary journalists attributed the dominance of American programs to the growing Americanization of postwar Japan. The social psychologist Miyagi Otoya noted that: In Japan, one talks about sword fights if one talks about the fiction a generation ago. . . . However, in the postwar era, American influence has been strongly received, and in Japan, which has become westernized even in manners and customs, the appeal of sword fights has weakened somewhat. Westerns, to an extent incomparable to prewar days, have begun to stir the imaginations of the people. Pistol or gun-wielding


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characters have even appeared in Japanese period dramas, as seen in the movie Yojimbo.24

For Japanese samurai to wield guns in the dramas reveals the powerful effect of American influences. The effect of American programs coexisting with anti-American programs like Rikidōzan Pro Wrestling (Americans usually appeared only as villains) can be seen in a commentary by Notoji Masako. She writes of the American TV program Disneyland, which started broadcasting in Japan in 1958 and strengthened the viewers’ image of America as a land of plenty: When children saw this program on a black-and-white television in a tiny Japanese living room, it was bright, sparkling, and wonderful. Interestingly enough, this program was coupled with live broadcasts of professional wrestling. One week it was the dazzling world of Disney and overwhelmingly rich America, and the following week, at the same time on the same channel, the kids watched Rikidōzan beating monstrous American wrestlers. For these Japanese children, it was inferiority and superiority alternating each week.25

Not all Japanese felt happy with such American domination of Japanese television. Leftist groups saw American programs as counter-revolutionary. In 1958, the authors of Terebi sono kōzai (Television: Its Merits and Demerits) criticized the heavy preponderance of American programs on Japanese television, calling it American colonization of the Japanese airwaves: “Shouldn’t we be surprised that our country’s television programs have become an American colony?” They singled out I Love Lucy, in particular, as a destructive program, criticizing the consumerism of the “Wedding anniversary episode.” In this episode, Lucy wants her husband Ricky to buy her a present, but does not say anything to him. Meanwhile, Ricky wants to buy Lucy a present of jewelry, but wants to keep it a surprise and does not tell her about it. Misunderstanding occurs when Lucy mistakes Ricky’s visit to the jewelry saleswoman’s place as an affair in progress. Here is what the authors of Terebi sono kōzai had to say about this episode and the capitalist consumerism it supported: A socialist in America once said, “Electric laundry machines, television, and electric kitchens bind American workers to the family.” Sure enough, this “Wedding Anniversary Episode” does not point out social concerns, but focuses on a family lifestyle centered on a narrow husband-wife relationship, especially on gifts of jewelry. Can

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? we read between the lines and see the intellectual intentions hidden within this program? In this manner, we can understand that antisocial themes are always central to the top ten-rated American popular programs, like how the family happiness is found in a consumer lifestyle. Generally speaking, it doesn’t take much thought to figure out the anti-worker ideological theme that underlies imported American programs.26

Whether or not one agrees with the ideology of such authors, they grasped an important point: that American programs were popularizing a way of life centered on the family and consumerism. American shows like I Love Lucy supposedly diverted popular attention from revolutionary class activities into private lives of consumption. To make matters worse, elites could use this consumerism to strengthen their grip on power. On this matter, the U.S. Government, commercial advertisers, and Japanese revolutionaries all seemed to be in agreement that such programs were powerful tools to spread a way of life and its ideological underpinnings.

ROBERT FULLER, LARAMIE, AND THE JAPANESE DOMESTICATION OF AMERICA A 1961 article in Shūkan Asahi reported on the western boom that had swept across Japan like a blazing prairie fire: Westerns have entered town! Girls adorn their chests with pistol accessories, sing to themselves “Rollin,’ Rollin,’ Rollin’ . . .” and look happy. Boys go to picnics wearing wide-brimmed ten-gallon hats and jean pants. Babies toddle around saying Indian words they have remembered like “How, How.” Their parents are playing cowboys and Indians as a couple inside a department store. As soon as they are at the department store entrance, they split up and play hide and seek, running around in their own way from the basement to the roof. They cry out when they get their shoulder tapped from the rear because according to the rules they have lost. This is a strange way to play.27

The king of the western boom was Laramie, and Robert Fuller, who played Jess, was its star. Fuller consistently scored among the most popular of television stars in Japanese fan polls. This stands in stark contrast to the evil American image that we saw in Rikidōzan’s pro


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wrestling matches. A closer look at Robert Fuller and his appeal will show the interplay between American influences, Japanese domestication, and how the Robert Fuller helped to spread pro-American goodwill among Japanese fans. The New York Times noted the western boom in Japan as early as 1953, long before the appearance of westerns on TV, in the popularity of cowboy comics, radio shows, magazines, nightclubs, and music.28 Laramie ran from 1957 to 1962 on NBC in the U.S. In Japan, it ran on NET (today known as TV Asahi) as a Japanese-dubbed series called Raramībokujō (Laramie Ranch). Laramie was about the adventures of a family of three plus a friend living on a ranch in the American west: the tough man Slim, his kid brother Andy, an elder parent, and finally Jess, a hooligan who was emotionally connected to Andy, and decided to stay on the ranch. Adding to the appeal of Laramie was a segment called Koborebanashi (Tidbits), hosted by Yodogawa Nagaharu after each show. The middle-aged Yodogawa would give a very humorous talk while pouring a beer, and because of the popularity of Laramie, became a star in his own right. Robert Fuller, with his good looks, became the center of attention among Laramie’s fans. Children cited the actors, not the western itself, as their reason for watching the programs. One young boy said, “ If Jess doesn’t come out, I get sleepy.” A young girl explained, “No matter how good the story is, if Jess, Slim, Andy, or gramps doesn’t come out, I don’t want to watch it.” It is not surprising that Robert Fuller’s visit to Japan became a huge media event. To say that Fuller was very popular in Japan would be an understatement. During his whirlwind tour of Japan, crowds numbering in the thousands flocked to the hotels where Fuller stayed, and thronged to his public appearances. In Osaka, a massive hoard of overzealous fans flooded the streets and swarmed a motorcade carrying Fuller, and the overwhelmed police had to place him in a jail cell for his personal safety until the fans dispersed. Fuller later recalled, “I thought they were going to love me to death.”29 Demonstrating the unbelievable depths of his popularity, Fuller met with Prime Minister Ikeda (who allowed Fuller the privilege of carrying a pistol, which was strictly controlled in Japan, so that he could remain in television character and keep Japanese children happy), was awarded the Golden Order of Merit (the highest award ever offered to an American at that time), and even got to “coincidentally” encounter the Emperor and Empress after being allowed to view the garden of the Imperial Palace. Later in 1961, he won the Japanese equivalent of an Emmy for with a Best Actor award.

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A few examples will show the intensity of devotion that fans felt toward the character Jess. Take, for example, the following fan letter published in the Shūkan Asahi: I am a housewife married for nine years. Robert Fuller of television’s Laramie has just arrived in Japan and this person’s popularity, among people like the elderly to kids is great. Middle-aged housewives like me do not openly confess it but I know that there are many of us who eagerly await his Thursday arrival. My husband thinks it is so strange to be into westerns, but among all the numerous westerns on television, there is something about Laramie that I can’t ignore. Even I myself think it’s strange that a mother such as me with two children . . . Because he took the time out of his busy schedule to come all the way here, I’m not pushing you to write a special feature on him, but could you please write some article on this person?30

Another student, interviewed among a group of Laramie fans, testified to how the program brought her family closer together: I’ve watched it since the first episode (everyone oohs). I watch it with my whole family. My mom, when it’s Thursdays, somehow always finishes her kitchen work earlier and sits in front of the television. Father also comes home at a set time on Friday. So my mom thinks that if they had Laramie every day, my father would come home early every day. (Laughs).31

What lay behind the popularity of Laramie and Fuller? The Shūkan Asahi offered two possible reasons: how much the foreigner Robert Fuller resembled a Japanese person, and the power of television to create a sense of intimacy between viewer and actor. We can see these reasons implied in a quote from a manager of the sponsor, Asahi beverages: It is precious that the sponsor, television station, import distributor made efforts to work as a team to create a product with that something extra. The techniques of the Japanese dubbing was good, “Koborebanashi” was also good. Of course the original product was good. It fits the Japanese sensibilities.32

The power and reach of television played a key role in promoting Robert Fuller’s popularity. Despite all his repackaging as a foreigner with


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Japanese sensibilities, Fuller never would have attained such phenomenal popularity if TV had not brought him into the homes and hearts of millions of Japanese. Television, by 1961, had penetrated urban Japan and had spread rapidly through the countryside to the extent that half of all households in the nation owned a television set.33 We can see how fans used Jess as a topic of common conversation in the following published interview with Yodogawa and Akagi and Aikyo, two young schoolgirls: Akagi: At school, you know, we talk a lot about Jess.” Aikyo: We start talking from the train station. Yodogawa: And when you are going to school? Aikyo: Even in the train, we continuously talk about him. Akagi: I wonder if they’ll let us have a Laramie hour at school?

Fans imagined themselves as being part of a nation of Laramie viewers. In the following interview with young fans, Yodogawa responds to the national visions of youth by speaking of the television as a meeting place for all viewers: Takano (young girl): Right now, the places that broadcast Laramie are Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyushu. I want to show it to all my friends. Yodogawa: Actually, you know, we’re going to start broadcasting in Tokyo. Umeda (young boy): Wow, Laramie’s going to be all over Japan! Yodogawa: Speaking of which, it’s soon going to be Laramie time. So, let’s meet again on television. Sayonara sayonara sayonara (Yodogawa’s signature farewell).34

Young fans like Takano and Umeda above could easily imagine themselves in a moment of national simultaneity, being part of the same public body watching TV. In the case of Laramie, it must have been a national, “western”-influenced public (no pun intended). Indeed, the extreme devotion to Laramie caused one devout fan from Tokyo to envision other fans across the nation as seen in this letter in the May 1961 edition of Television Age magazine: I am a diehard fan of Laramie. Since Jess came to Japan, I have started to like the program. However, It is not enough for me just to watch a

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Laramie episode. I want to meet with other Laramie fans like me, and talk about all kinds of things with them. I wrote all kinds of letters to [the sponsor] Asahi beer but to no avail. And so I write to you at Television Age magazine. Please make a Laramie fan club. I beg you. I beg you. I beg you.35

Westerns like Laramie provided viewers with common cultural symbols to imagine a national culture, linking distant places like Tokyo and Tohoku. But why did westerns strike such a resonant chord with Japanese? They had been exposed to many American movies since the prewar and so why didn’t some movie star generate the same type of craze as Robert Fuller? Perhaps the nature of television viewing provides a clue. The Shūkan Asahi noted that Fuller was virtually unknown in Japan as a movie actor, yet no popular foreign movie star had ever received such a fanatical welcome. The vice-chief of the TV editing bureau invoked the power of television as an explanation for Fuller’s popularity: Movies are ‘going to another place’ while television is ‘in the living room.’ The meaning of this is that you dress up formally and leave the house to see a movie, and watch a movie at a theater together with many other people. On the other hand, you watch television in the family living room with a small group of people, or sometimes alone. There, you probably feel rather close to the person on the television screen. From that point, Jess’ fans, feel closer to Jess than they do to movie stars. In their hearts, they probably feel that Jess is a member of their family. That person has at last actually come to Japan. And then, when he is right in front of their eyes, it can’t be helped that their feelings of “my Jess” are unusually heightened.36

Fuller himself understood the power of television, when he recalled, “I came once a week into their (Japanese) homes as Jess Harper.”37 Accordingly, when Robert Fuller came to Japan, it was important that he keep to the character of Jess by dressing in his cowboy costume. This way, he helped maintain the illusionary intimacy created by television. It was not that Japanese viewers thought his name was actually Jess. They knew he was Robert Fuller, because magazines like Television Age had detailed his biography and his previous stay in Japan while he was a soldier in the Korean War.38 However, viewers and fans alike wanted to participate in the creation of the illusion of a late-nineteenth century cowboy coming to Japan. Almost all the fan articles in Television Age


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then referred to Fuller as “Jess,” and fans themselves agreed, as in the following interview: M.C.: If you look at the Magnificent Seven or look at Seven Cent Fight, the heroes on television end up appearing in the movies. Irabu (junior high schoolgirl): However, I don’t want them to appear in too many movies! Robert Fuller, the actor who plays Jess, will destroy his Laramie image if he appears in movies. M.C.: So Robert Fuller will always be tied to Laramie, right?

We should not think of the “Jess” phenomenon as just another example of American cultural imperialism. Rather, part of the appeal of Robert Fuller was that he was recast in a Japanese mold in order to fit the sensibilities of the Japanese audience. The domestication of Jess took place in many ways. First, a physical domestication took place when dubbers enabled Jess to speak Japanese. Although some viewers wanted to hear his real voice, the Japanese audience preferred to hear a dubbed voice in their native language over the real voice in a foreign one. Yodogawa, when he encountered fans who wanted to hear Jess’ real voice, explained the dubbing as an act of consideration for viewers who could not read the subtitles quickly: Do you want to see the raw footage? Jess and Slim speak quickly in English. However, I can’t understand at all what they are saying. My seventy-one year-old grandma gets tired listening to them in English. Because of that Jess and Slim are made to speak in Japanese by the dubbers Hisamatsu-san and Murase-san. . . . Hey, we have cute kids and a grandma over seventy-one among our viewers. It’s better for them that we keep it dubbed in Japanese.39

This explanation was enough to convince at least some of the Laramie audience that it was for the better that the program be dubbed. What we also see is that Jess had to be domesticated in order to succeed in Japan, as the very young and very old viewers probably would not have put up with subtitles. Even more important, and left unsaid, was that by physically speaking Japanese, Jess’ American origin was somewhat shrouded, making him seem more “Japanese.” Viewers of Laramie did not hear Robert Fuller’s voice, but that of Hisamatsu Yasuo, his Japanese dubber. Ultimately, Jess became a transnational hybrid, with the physical body of a white American actor and the voice of a Japanese dubber.

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Next, in the process of domestication, Yodogawa became the unofficial spokesman for Jess, explaining and interpreting the actor’s actions to Japanese readers in various magazine interviews in much the same way as benshi narrators interpreted Western silent movies for Japanese audiences in the 1920s. By casting Fuller in the mode of a lover of Japan, Yodogawa was able to “domesticate” Jess. Yodogawa once read a letter from Fuller to the fans, I am happy to receive so many letters from my Japanese fans. Actually, in the army, when I was at the front lines in the Korean War, on my free time, I stopped by Japan. There I strolled the Ginza. I also went to the theater. . . . I want to enter a Japanese bath one more time. I also went to the great statue of the Buddha (the Daibutsu in Nara). I’m weak for Japanese women. Everyone, I really liked the Japanese people.

To emphasize Jess’ fondness for Japanese culture, Yodogawa added that Jess “knew much about the splendor of Japan” and that “Jess was studying Japanese from a Japanese teacher.”40 The irony of a cowboy enraptured by Japanese culture may seem strange at first glance, but Yodogawa’s commentary made such a belief plausible for millions of audience members. Yodogawa also grew close to Fuller during their travels together in Japan, allowing him to better understand and explain Jess to the Japanese fans. Also, Robert Fuller the actor had already familiarized himself with Japanese culture very well, having visited Japan as a Korean War soldier for R&R. Also, in late 1955, his unit transferred to Japan, and during this time he learned to love Japanese food (his eating habits served as a constant source of curiosity for the Japanese reporters) and to pick up the nuances of Japanese culture from his social interactions with the locals.41 In a sense, the cowboy Jess resulted from transnational activity in the U.S. Cold War sphere, and so came to Japan with a good knowledge of Japanese society. Last of all, in the domestication process, the media had to reinterpret the character of Jess or Robert Fuller himself in Japanese terms. The cowboy from Laramie became the embodiment of Japanese values. The Shūkan Asahi quotes Yodogawa in casting Fuller as a foreigner with “Japanese” values, mentality, and even a Japanese physique: I have been all the time with Fuller but never at any time have I thought him to be a nasty person. I understood that he never had the slightest


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idea of mistreating his fans. He is extremely sorry that he has to always run from them. There is nothing perfunctory about him. He is a kind person. That part of him is in his character Jess, and the fans are sensitive to this and pick it up. Next, he is very close to Japanese in the shape of his body and in his mental structure. He also has a very sentimental side to him. When he served in the Korean War, he took a break at a Hakata town. In the early morning he took a walk by himself. When he had to leave by airplane, he looked out the window and started to cry.

The magazine then explained Yodogawa’s comment with a sentence that revealed more about the writer’s than Robert Fuller’s personality, “The gentle Western-eyed boy with many Japanese qualities and the power of television joined together to give birth to this explosive popularity.”42 Television Age magazine also had another article by Yodogawa that explained how Jess’ eating habits were Japanese: What about the way Americans eat sukiyaki in America! Using less sugar, putting the beef and vegetables from the pot in separate dishes, and then putting it on rice and eating it. Even stranger, they drench their rice with soy sauce and then on this sauced up rice they eat the beef. Although there are many Americans who eat that way, Jess uses his chopsticks, and after dipping the meat in raw eggs, puts the heavily sugared beef into his mouth, and then puts white rice into his mouth like a Japanese. Jess, is not only in spirit, but also in his eating habits, for example, is like a Japanese person. His emotions as well as his actions . . . (pauses) . . . Jess is very much like a Japanese.43

Media producers took an American cultural TV icon and made him embody Japanese values. It was a way to appropriate American culture and use it to tie Japan’s culture to that of the United States. While cowboys might not have cried in America, in Japan, Jess was used to define sentimentality as a value that postwar Japanese should cherish (and had cherished in writings such as the medieval-era classic Tale of Genji). Thus, Jess became part of Japanese national culture. It was not just producers reinterpreting the character of “Jess” in Japanese terms, however, but fans and audience members too. One schoolgirl fan wondered aloud, “He has a few parts that are like a yakuza (Japanese gangster), right? Really attractive.”44 Reinterpreting Jess as a stock figure in

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Japanese popular culture, the violent but honorable Yakuza gangster, this fan and others participated in the active domestication of Jess. Commenting on Fuller’s very busy itinerary and how mobs of fans kept him from sightseeing, one fan pleaded: I want Jess to enjoy more of Japan’s goodness. For that reason, we fans will be a bit more polite in greeting him . . . When he went to places like Kyoto or Nara, for the sake of the fans he couldn’t visit many temples such as Ginkakuji. If the fans could obey the regulations, then Jess would know more of the goodness of Japan.45

The ultimate domestication of Jess happened with his “chance” encounter with the Emperor. Fuller was told that the Empress was a Laramie fan and that he should go to the Imperial palace dressed in a Western tuxedo, follow a path to certain location, and be there at a fixed time. When the time came, the Emperor and Empress drove up in a limousine 30 yards away, with their window open. They bowed to Fuller and Fuller bowed back.46 Television Age’s magazine also gave a detailed account of Jess’ visit to the imperial palace. Jess was reported to be extremely excited about meeting the Emperor and empress and reportedly said the following: This has been the most beautiful of all places I have visited. The peaceful and quiet imperial palace grounds are as if a fairyland. As a bonus, I could enter the imperial palace, and was able to meet the emperor and empress, and it is like I am in a dream. When I paid my respects to the Emperor and Empress, I was nervous, and rather excited.”47

As described earlier, in postwar Japan, one’s proximity to the emperor defined one’s place in society, as seen by the national hype surrounding Shōda Michiko when she became a member of the imperial family through marriage. The media used Fuller’s visit to the imperial palace to reinforce the legitimacy of the throne and to help create the “consensus” that even American cowboys paid respect to the imperial family. It was earlier reported, for example, that Fuller put up a picture of the crown prince and princess in his hotel room (Robert Fuller recalled later in a 2005 interview that he really did put up a picture and did so out of respect). The Shūkan Asahi noted his respect for the imperial family:


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His feelings toward hanging a photo of the imperial crown prince and wife in his hotel room do not seem to be those of playing up to his Japanese fans. It is because he felt that the imperial couple, when they came to America, seemed to be good people. It may be the longing of an American towards nobility, but we must recognize his frankness in gently expressing his feelings.48

By showing reverence to the imperial family, Jess had become more “Japanese.” Yodogawa told a group of school kids that Jess’ reverence for the emperor was a sign that he was Japanese in thought. “His personality, and his features resemble James Dean. However, Jess is more like a Japanese. He knows the customs of the Japanese people very well. I was also surprised when we went to the imperial palace. Most foreigners would just repeatedly say, ‘Oh wonderful.’ However, Jess just quietly bowed.”49 Through this media account, one can see that the definition of being Japanese was respect for the emperor. If Jess bowed to the emperor, then it meant that he had a Japanese heart. Although these reports could be interpreted as the symbolic subjugation of America to Japan, one could also reverse the perspective and say that this visit demonstrated the power of American culture. Perhaps Jess’ visit also gave popular legitimacy to the throne. While the media could portray this visit as an American Jess subjugating himself to the Japanese emperor’s authority, it could also be read as the Emperor shedding his lofty authority by meeting an actor, historically a member of the lowest class of Tokugawa society. Jess’ amazing popularity in Japan resulted from his domestication by the Japanese media. We can see the two ingredients of Jess’ success, television and domestication. When Jess first arrived on his goodwill tour of Japan, Robert Fuller, his physical body, came dressed in character in his cowboy garb. One of the first photos Jess posed for was with his Japanese domesticators, Hisamatsu his voice, and Yodogawa, his Japanese stand-in. Without these two, the character of Jess in Japan would not be complete. Robert Fuller represented Jess’ physical form, Hisamatsu represented his physical voice, and Yogodawa represented his mindset to the Japanese audience.

DOMESTICATION OF AMERICAN MEDIA CULTURE AND THE SELLING OF AMERICA Rather than a simple case of American cultural imperialism, the Japanese airing and eager reception of American shows like Laramie was part of

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the creation of hegemony, or domination, in which American cultural icons served as one of the central foci of a postwar commercial culture produced by the dominant business, bureaucratic, and political elites. Japanese producers bowed to the economic logic of airing cheaper ready-made American programs rather than expensive poor-quality domestic programs when they allowed American television programs like Laramie to dominate early Japanese television. The predominance of American programs brought American culture directly into homes across the nation, with many Japanese developing a sense of familiarity with America from watching these shows in the privacy of their homes. However, American media products still had to be adapted to Japanese tastes. Jess needed to be recast in a Japanese mode for his persona to succeed with Japanese, yet also retain its exotic foreign appeal. Producers took great pains to show Jess’ compatibility with Japanese culture, and recast him as a cowboy with Japanese qualities. Since this media culture ultimately aimed to sell products, the actor Robert Fuller, was careful to be seen using only his sponsor’s products during his public appearances. Yodogawa recast Fuller’s actions as a virtuous loyalty, protecting one’s sponsor at all costs, even in a foreign land. No matter where he went, he always ordered Asahi Beer. And moreover, when the beer came, he always faced the beer bottle label away from him. That way no matter what time, somebody could take a picture of him and would know that he drank Asahi beer . . . Not only that but his cigarettes must be Salems . . . When asked, “you must really like that cigarette” he smiles and replies, “In America this is Laramie’s sponsor” . . . Jess is extremely honest and protects Asahi and Salem50

Decades later, when informed about this Japanese report, Fuller maintains that he was under no coercion to show his sponsors’ products and that he did so out of his own free will due to a sense of loyalty. In this sense, his values certainly resonated with those of many Japanese, helping to explain his right fit with Japanese media culture.51 In the same manner that Jess’ appeal rubbed off on his sponsor’s products, some also went over to Yodogawa, who was famous not just for his jokes, but for his proximity to Jess. Yodogawa’s popularity also soared as a result of his affiliation with Laramie. Fluent in English and a good friend of Fuller, Yodogawa became the Japanese link with that western. He noted how all kinds of people came up to him on the street because of his association with Laramie, joking:


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I meet all kinds of people, you know. . . . From lowly people to classy people, to people who own their own cars, I’ve been approached by all sorts of people and I’m very pleased. (Laughs) Everyone from kids to gentlemen enjoys Laramie.52

Yodogawa found out the hard way that fans could shift their adoration for Jess towards him, as seen in the following description of what happened when he was waiting for Robert Fuller to arrive at Haneda airport: At that time, Yodogawa, who was thinking of going to the waiting room, went through the lobby, and was all of a sudden held up by the fans. Fans asking him to autograph and fanatical fans that thought they could be close to Jess through him soon nailed a stunned Yodogawa to one spot.53

Yodogawa further recalled a visit to an elementary school for a talk to 200 PTA mothers that led to a scene as the women mobbed him for his autograph. The principal and teachers had to organize a line to get the mothers to approach him in an orderly fashion.54 Yodogawa himself recognized that his enormous popularity stemmed from his association with Jess. The most enthusiastic fans that cheer me are from fifteen to seventeen year-old. There are some thirteen year-olds as well. They become overly familiar with me and cry, “Hey, Uncle!” But actually, I am only used as a go-between to be close to Laramie’s Jess. Their fanatical energy to grab and know things like Jess’s photo, Jess’ address, or everything about Jess, is why they call me “Uncle!”55

Whoever was associated with Jess, be it Yodogawa or the sponsors, could partake of his appeal. Because of the process of negotiation with the fans, this appeal became stronger, as fans felt that it was not something imposed on them. With this in mind, we can explain how American programs strengthened and expanded an America-centric feeling among the Japanese public. We can see that the celebrity surrounding Robert Fuller (or more precisely, the character of Jess as interpreted through Robert Fuller) rubbed off on the attitudes toward America in the way it rubbed off on Yodogawa or Asahi Beer. Consequently, the early glut of American TV programs and especially personalities such as Robert Fuller became a powerful way to spread elements of a pro-American ideology among many Japanese. For example, let us contrast the anti-American student demonstrations of 1960 with the

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adoration of Jess by his young fans in 1961. The article, “Raramī kara kita otoko” (The Man from Laramie) from Television Age, May 1961, described the airport welcome for Robert Fuller’s midnight arrival in Japan. The atmosphere contrasted with the arrival of Eisenhower’s press secretary Hagerty the previous year on June 10 1960, when hostile student Zengakuren protestors at the airport surrounded his car, and rocked it up and down, forcing the authorities to take him to Tokyo by military helicopter.56 For Robert Fuller, the welcome took place in a different atmosphere. A writer noticed the difference between Fuller and Hagerty’s arrivals: I remember last year in this lobby, when Hagerty came to Japan, instead of a welcome, there were too many placards in English, which read “Go Home.” Of course, even if you have accounted for the differences between actors and politicians, it was such a different atmosphere. Anyway, Haneda airport was filled with a festive mood. Even Zengakuren fellows were probably among all the fans.57

Television celebrities could be useful in legitimizing power not only for the American government, but also for domestic elites. Companies, politicians and the throne consciously realized the fans’ intense devotion to the character Jess and conveniently tied themselves to him in photo opportunities and visits. Television Age noted Fuller’s visit to the parliament building, for example, where he met with various politicians and with Prime Minister Ikeda. The article made mention of the fact that Ikeda, a Laramie fan, felt very happy to meet Jess and invited him for tea. Television Age commented, “Visiting the Imperial palace, National Diet Building, and accepting Prime Minister Ikeda’s invitation, Jess was like a State Guest.”58 Much as advertisers sought the aura of stars to sell more products, politicians sought celebrities to legitimize their hold on power. Both throne and politicians professed that they were Laramie fans. Through Jess, all Japanese were tied together in shared devotion to a cultural icon. Ironically, in these postimperial times a cultural television icon from America served as a Japanese cultural symbol. In short, although Japanese viewers had the power to “Occidentalize” American programs and to resist cultural influences from the U.S., a deeper process was at work in which television pulled Japan into the U.S. cultural orbit by making the United States one of the main sources of Japanese values. Viewers and producers had the power to interpret American cultural symbols, but these symbols were provided in the first place by the massive media power of the United States. Television helped spread an urban Tokyobased cultural power over the rest of Japan, and created a common cultural vocabulary to fill the cultural vacuum of the immediate postwar years. It


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is significant that much of this cultural vocabulary derived from the language of the American television production system. Because of its heavy American influence, Japanese TV legitimized and spread American culture through the Japanese nation by making it part of the cultural vocabulary of postwar Japan.

Chapter Eleven

After the American Boom: Japanese TV Gains Its Independence

By 1964, one could say that Japanese television had gained its independence from America. Not only had it developed the ability to produce its own domestic programs, but also, as a sign of its growing power, Japanese television began to export anime (Japanese animation) to the United States. With these humble beginnings, the Japanese animation industry developed into a powerhouse, so that by the end of the 20th century, it was producing most of the world’s animation. The shift from Japan as a net importer of television programming into one of the world’s top exporters of television programming began in the 1960s. But when Japanese television was becoming a formidable competitor to the U.S. television media, curiously, the United States still occupied much of the attention of the Japanese media.

END OF THE AMERICAN BOOM AND CONTINUED AMERICAN-CENTRISM The boom in American programming died down only a few years after the Laramie phenomenon. In the first half of the 1960s, American/foreign TV shows made up a third of shows in prime time. In 1961, 72 foreign (and overwhelmingly American) television series ran each week. Roughly a third of television programs at night were foreign. But, by 1964, for the first time, not a single foreign show occupied the top twenty ratings slot. Foreign TV programs mainly took up children’s viewing hours or the wasteland of late night and midnight slots.1 What caused the sudden decline in popularity of American programs on Japanese TV? For one, some influential Japanese criticized American shows as being too violent, leading to NHK’s purging of violent American shows such as Have Gun Will Travel, Arizona Tom, and Highway Patrol from its broadcast lineup.2 But many parents considered some American 267

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programs to be of high quality. In 1960, a survey was taken in Osaka of what programs parents wanted their children to see. Topping the list was Father Knows Best, followed by Disneyland at number two, Lassie at number five, and Rawhide at number seven. At number three was Mama chotto kite (Mama, come here), a Japanese show modeled after Father Knows Best that depicted an idealized Japanese family. Also, in 1963, the Tokyo Mother’s Association recognized Mr. Novak, a show about a young English teacher, as a superior program with educational excellence.3 Japanese programming also came under criticism for violence. Consider Japan’s first domestically produced superhero show, Gekkō Kamen (Moonlight Mask), which made its debut in 1958. In this show, Gekkō Kamen, a lunar envoy dressed in a white costume and white turban, rode his motorcycle and battled to protect the world from evil. Although cheaply produced (in one episode, a scene of Gekkō Kamen fighting a giant King Kong-like monster named “Mammoth Kong” looked suspiciously like a doll attached to the head of a gorilla costume), this show gained an astonishing 60.8% rating. By 1958, the show came under attack from the media, which reported complaints from parents about children imitating its dangerous stunts and fight sequences. This led eventually to the demise of this wildly popular domestic program, and alerts us to the fact that the purge of violence from Japanese TV was not necessarily anti-American.4 While American shows like westerns mostly disappeared from the air by the mid-1960s partly due to the anti-violence policies of the networks, a larger reason also accounted for this decline: the improvement in Japanese production capabilities. With rising economic affluence, Japanese domestic production facilities had improved to the point that they could produce programs that rivaled the American-made ones in technical and production quality. The economic advantage of using American programs disappeared when heavy U.S. pressure forced the Japanese government to ease foreign exchange restrictions in 1962. Subsequently, the American television distributors, in a bewildering business strategy, promptly priced themselves out of the Japanese market by raising the price of American programs from several hundred dollars for an hour-long show in the 1950s to $4,000— $5,000 in 1964. And due to the 1964 liberalization in movie imports, the Japanese movie industry feared a large increase in foreign movies, and so they reversed their anti-television position and allowed the TV studios to purchase their old movies.5 Japanese television now had access to domesticmade programs and old studio movies, and with the rising cost of American programs, it made more economic sense to use domestic programs. With these developments, the stations’ economic logic for using American programs disappeared.

After the American Boom

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Also, the audience preferred domestic programs. In the realm of 30minute programs, Japanese-made animated programs and action shows gained popularity, while epic period dramas on NHK and home dramas dominated the 60-minute slots.6 Although interest in American programs rapidly dropped both among Japanese stations and Japanese audiences, American TV left a legacy for TV in Japan: US programs aided the rapid spread of the Japanese TV industry, helping to provide programming until local production facilities developed the capacity to meet viewer demand. Along with westerns, pro wrestling, the other purveyor of American images, also took a hit in popularity in the mid-1960s. Although many Japanese fans even still today love to watch these events, they declined in popularity and no longer functioned as a nationwide celebration of Japanese power. Both Rikidōzan’s pro wrestling and American westerns, although diametrical opposites in their portrayals of America, fell victim to the same hysteria surrounding anti-violence policies. The Asahi Shimbun called for a ban on harmful programs like pro wrestling and ran articles accusing pro wrestling of being staged fakery. Rikidōzan’s murder at the hands of a small-time hoodlum in December 1963 deprived pro wrestling of its charismatic leader, as ratings dipped from 40~50% to 36.9% after his passing. Still, pro wrestling managed to hold onto some of its popularity, and in a telling sign of which image of America many Japanese preferred, pro wrestling took the place of the slumping Disneyland, which had experienced a sudden decline in ratings, for the 8—9 pm time slot in February 1968.7 Kawatake Kazuo notes that with rising prosperity came a new attitude toward America and the western world. Due to rising prosperity, a modern western-influenced lifestyle became a part of everyday life, and so audiences began to seek Japanese things on TV. With the growing national confidence and prosperity in the 1960s, the Japanese envy toward the rich American lifestyle gradually decreased, which would lead one to believe that the days of American influence on Japanese television were numbered. By 1975, only six foreign shows appeared in Japanese prime time, and by 1983, foreign programs had completely disappeared from prime time. In the 1980s, the American hit soap opera series Dallas, so popular throughout the world, garnered such low ratings in Japan that it was cancelled midway through the season.8

VIETNAM AND THE MOON LANDING: AMERICA AS CENTER STAGE IN THE NEWS The effects of American television on Japanese national ideology during the formative years of Japanese television have continued to this day. The

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process of domestication and internationalization on Japanese television persisted through the 1960s and 1970s, but this time America appeared on Japanese airwaves through news events. When it came to international coverage, the television stations focused mainly on American events such as the 1963 Kennedy assassination. The first live satellite relays connecting Japan and America covered live broadcasts of news events. In 1963, the first satellite relay of news in Japan came when a Japanese announcer, working on a television test, broadcast the news of Kennedy’s assassination. The first broadcast from Japan to the U.S. was made in 1964, when Ambassador Reischauer was stabbed, and Prime Minister Ikeda apologized to the American people. By 1964, the opening ceremony and competition of the Tokyo Olympics was broadcast by satellite to the U.S., and from America to Canada and Europe, marking Japan’s satellite connection to the developed world.9 As we have seen in a previous chapter, in the mid-60s, Vietnam War news dominated the Japanese airwaves. Much like Rikidōzan’s pro wrestling matches, Vietnam War news coverage often fanned anti-American feeling. Still, American culture remained the focus of the news, whether it was good or bad. While this may seem one-sided, it did guarantee that America, not the Soviet Union or China, would be the prime referent for most Japanese (except for leftist intellectuals) when referring to nations abroad. Mita Munesuke argues that until the 1960s, Japanese looked abroad to America for their ideals, and hoped to realize them in the context of modern Japan. The America that most Japanese desired as well as criticized was external to them, a place that was separate from Japan. After the 1970s, this ‘America’ had been internalized within the Japanese psyche to the point that Japanese arguably felt more familiar with postwar “American” culture than with prewar Japanese culture. Rather than seeing cultural imperialism or domestication, Mita attempted to identify the process by which Japanese had internalized American culture.10 Perhaps the relentless use of American TV cultural icons, especially in the context of the Vietnam War, had something to do with the “internalization” of American culture and the “externalization” of Japanese culture. Nakano Kiyomi noted how the American program Combat, which was about American soldiers fighting Germans in WWII, made viewers fall into the trap of psychologically identifying with America: When people watch war dramas, their interest makes them fall into the psychological trap of allying themselves with the main character. When they watch that program, people fall for the illusion that Germans are all villains, and that Americans are all brave and the champions of


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justice and humanism. It’s just like their relationship with whites against American Indians in Westerns. But when they are in this condition, they are made to imagine that America is righteous, even in the Vietnam War. That is why it is very dangerous and unjust to broadcast onesided programs made by Americans. When we think of the effects of television, the editors of programs have a huge responsibility.11

Shows like Combat created a psychological familiarity with Americans and American culture at a time when many Japanese were questioning American policies related to the Vietnam War. What were the larger implications of such a phenomenon of television-induced closeness between two distant cultures? If coverage of the Vietnam War seemed analogous to coverage of evil pro wrestling Americans, then the coverage of the Apollo lunar landing of 1969 was analogous to the intense devotion to Laramie’s Robert Fuller. The broadcast of the lunar landing began at midnight, and starting from 2:00 am, the ratings gradually rose until 5:17 in the morning, when 26.7% of Japanese households were watching the broadcasts. On a normal Monday, only 8% of Tokyo’s population would be up at 5:00 am, and almost none of them would be watching television. By 11:56 am, the moment of the first step on the moon, 62% of homes were tuned in. According to the editors of TBS Chōsa Jōhō, this audience size paled in comparison to the ratings of other TV media events, such as the opening ceremony of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (83%) or the Red and White New Year’s festival for 1968 (81%). But these other media events occurred during prime time, when over 70% of TV sets were in use.12 What was the appeal of this broadcast? First, it was a live, unscripted event. As one male Tokyo office worker noted: I watched TV until 2 in the middle of the night. Perhaps they might have been stranded in space, or they might have caught on fire. Pro wrestling is called somewhat barbarous but the wrestlers are pulling their punches. With that point in mind, nobody could predict course of events for the Apollo mission, right? I really felt it had enough thrills and suspense.13

As reported in the September 1969 issue of TBS Chōsa Jōhō in the article “Shichi Gatsu Nijūichi Nichi: Ningen Ga Tsuki Ni Tatta Hi (July 21: The Day Humans Stood on the Moon),” the cartoonist Tezuka Osamu, who had expected to be unimpressed by the event, noted his surprisingly joyful reactions as well:

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? I’ve drawn the surface of the moon countless times so I was not surprised because it was not unusual. However, at the moment they landed on the moon, I started clapping my hands without thinking about it. I was impressed.14

TBS Chōsa Jōhō went into an in-depth study of national reactions to the moon landing. The volume of calls to Tokyo’s telephone information line dipped by 16% during the moon landing times of 11:00 am to 12:00 pm, and the amount of traffic on the streets declined by a third. Still, it is possible that the media exaggerated the reports of popular interest in the moon landing. As previously pointed out, the audience for the moon landing, while huge, was quite small compared to other media events. The Kanto Branch office of Japan National Railways claimed that nothing out of the ordinary happened in their affairs, and that regardless of the moonwalk, business went on as usual: There was no late rush hour due to people watching the moon landing in the middle of the night. Wasn’t it that people hate being late? Then, even when the first step was taken on the moon, the movements of the customers did not suddenly come to a complete halt. It was the same on the long-distance trains. There weren’t any customers who postponed their plans or business because of the moon landing. I heard about it a lot, but the so-called “Apollo phenomenon” did not occur to the national railways. On the bullet trains that were running and at the main stations, the announcer merely said, ‘the first step on the moon was a success.’ This was a departure from our usual practice, so please do not forget to write about this.

According to TBS Chōsa Jōhō, people did not view this moon landing as an American venture, but rather as an achievement for humankind. One actress commented, “Humans can do anything. How wonderful, but that’s why I also felt scared.” The owner of an inn at the top of Mount Fuji recalled, “I was screaming out Banzai, banzai!” Others saw the event as an achievement for computers. As one writer expressed it, “The TV romantically expresses the moon landing as the advent of a new space age, but I rather took it to mean the beginning of a full-scale computer age. The humans were filmed expressionlessly, and I hated it.” These reactions showed that many Japanese had identified with America, or these viewers were able to transcend nationality in their interpretation of this event. Rather than being a symbol of American pride, this was a symbol of human pride and human achievement. Indeed, in answer to the survey question,


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“Is it significant that humans have landed on the moon?” 64.3% said it had great meaning, 19.4% said it had some meaning, while only 14.6% doubted its significance.15 Interestingly, some Japanese had a difficult time separating the moon landing from their views of America. The office worker quoted above also noted the peculiarly American reception given to the returning astronauts. “When the astronauts came home, they laid out a red carpet for them. I felt like America as expected, is a country of showmanship!”16 The Japanese cartoonist Tō Sanpei lampooned the Japanese fascination toward America. In a cartoon that appeared in the July 21 issue of the Mainichi Shimbun, the Europeans cried “Yankee go home,” the Asians also cried, “Yankee go home,” but the Japanese just clapped their hands to the success of the American astronauts. Showing the unpredictability of audience reaction to media culture, the display of American nationalism during the moon walk angered younger Japanese viewers. According to a national survey of large city residents, 21% of respondents in Fukuoka and nearly 40% of respondents in Tokyo and Osaka expressed varying degrees of displeasure when the Apollo 11 astronauts unfurled the American flag on the moon as a symbol of American power. Teenagers especially expressed this sentiment: 45% indicated displeasure at the blatant flaunting of American power.17 The new generation of Japanese had internalized American values, and saw this moon landing as a human venture, but they did not wish to be reminded of how much America had become part of their life. So, their anger boiled over when they were reminded that this was an American venture. Finally, for a significant minority of youth, the moon landing just lacked the spectacle factor to catch their interest. Among teenagers, 21.9% of boys and 25% of girls said that if given the chance, they would rather watch shows like hit music programs or the Giants-Tigers baseball game than the Apollo lunar landing (the overall survey showed 14% of people felt this way).18 Perhaps even a moon landing lacked the visual stimuli to compete with other television programs for their attention. Ōya Sōichi’s idea of the degree of stimulation equaling the degree of interest was applicable to even a dangerous journey to the moon.

“DON’T DISNEY AND POPEYE MAKE ONE EPISODE PER WEEK?”: GROWING PAINS OF THE ANIME INDUSTRY By the early 21st century, Japanese media culture, especially in the form of anime, had established a firm grip on international markets and made deep inroads into international and American culture. Douglas McGray,

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in an article in Foreign Policy magazine, coined the term “Japan’s Gross National Cool” to describe how Japan, with its ability to synthesize foreign influences into media products both global and locally Japanese, had become a cultural superpower in fields such as pop music, animation, consumer electronics, architecture, and fashion.19 If Japanese television was the disciple of American TV in the beginning, the disciple now threatened to overtake the master. By the early 21st century, 60% of the world’s animated cartoon series were made in Japan; and in the 1990s, Japanese animation and superhero programs like the Power Rangers, Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z, while unknown to most adults, were fast becoming the basis for childhood memories for the next generation of Americans. The rise of this Japanese anime powerhouse bore unmistakable American influences. In fact, the first foreign television programs aired on Japanese TV were American cartoons. In October 1955, NTV broadcast episodes of Jim and Judy in Teleland (Terebi Bōya no Bōken) and KRT broadcast Manga Superman, a compilation of old Superman animated movie shorts.20 Jim and Judy represented a milestone in Japanese television on two other ways: it was the first American TV show on Japanese airwaves, and the first foreign program to be dubbed in Japanese (as opposed to using subtitles). While this opened up a new audience to foreign films, namely those older Japanese who had a hard time reading the Japanese subtitles on a small TV screen, or those younger viewers who had limited knowledge of written Japanese, the producers experienced considerable difficulty in synchronizing the Japanese voices to the movements of the English-speaking characters.21 Japanese TV animation developed relatively late compared to television. One of the key difficulties lay in establishing production facilities and training domestic animators. This task was accomplished in 1958 with Toei’s theatrical release of Hakujaden (The Legend of the White Snake, released in the U.S. in 1961 as Panda and the Magic Serpent), a story based on a Chinese fable, and also Japan’s first full-length color animation film.22 In order to produce this, a large animation facility employing hundreds of animators similar to Disney’s Burbank studios needed to be built. Two hundred and fifty animators were trained for the production of this movie, enough to make two full-length movies a year. In fact, Hakujaden took only 8 months to produce, a testament to the industrialization of animation in Japan. Imamura Taihei, writing in the December 1958 edition of Chuō Kōron, wrote of his pride in this film and how Japanese animation finally developed a system of large-scale production:


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With Toei’s release of Hakujaden, Japan has somehow become a firstclass movie nation . . . We can completely stand favorably to Disney, Soviet, and French animation. It was made in a mere eight months, and during that time, I was impressed by how we organized inexperienced animators and composed this long movie.23

The stage was now set for Japan’s rise to exporter of animation, and other studios were established to produce cartoons. Tezuka Osamu established his Mushi Pro studios, and in 1963 produced Tetsuwan Atomu (known in the U.S. as Astro Boy), the first domestically produced television animation (based on his 1951 comic book series of the same name), a decade after the birth of the Japanese TV industry. The lag in the development of Japanese television movies compared to the TV industry led to an imbalance in the power relationship between animators and television stations, a fact lamented in 1970 by Yamanashi Minoru, a Toei movie executive: The birth of television movie productions lagging behind the birth of television had a bad influence that still affects us. If both TV and TV movies had come about at the same time, it would have been possible to have a more balanced financial responsibility and a more reasonable calculation of production money. But, with the one-sided buyer’s market of TV, which became a giant medium first, created an unbalance in the negotiations over the price. Concerning the problem of the cost of producing TV programs, it’s the key stations versus sponsors, versus local stations. Today we’ve finally reached the turning point, and we’ve entered the period where the balanced price of the production of TV programs is decided in talks among three players: sponsors, station, and production.24

Reflecting the limited budgets of TV studios in the early 1960s, when cash-strapped stations relied on cheaper American programming, the conventional wisdom had it that a 30-minute television animated series on a weekly basis was an economic impossibility. Tezuka’s Mushi Productions thus needed to institute cost-saving measures to bring Atomu to the television set. All movements on the screen were kept to a minimum, and the animators avoided complex movements by having only one part of the image, such as a character’s mouth, moving at one time. Also, the animators reused certain scenes, such as Atomu flying through the air, in different episodes. Tezuka also sacrificed the fluidity of movement of animation, long a trademark of quality Disney films, for a jerkier look to the character’s

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movements in order to cut down on costs. So in this way, the animators reduced the number of animation cels for a half-hour show from 6,000 to only 3,000.25 Tezuka, being an artist, embarked upon these cost-cutting measures with a considerable amount of ambivalence. He understood that the quality of animation would suffer as a result and tried his best to plead with the TV executives for a more reasonable production schedule. Tezuka recalled in the June 1963 issue of CBC Report: . . . [It] was concluded that Tetsuwan Atomu, at 30 minutes (actually 26 minutes and 30 seconds) would be made with 3,000 cels, and be finished in six days (because one day of the week was Sunday). Of course the filming would take place within these six days. At 3,000 cels, there would of course be no movement in the animation. Even the problem of how to do the camera work remained: still picture cels would of course be no more than still picture cels. Just when we were beginning [the show], the children would be disappointed. Even the adults (who I assume to be intellectuals) would say, “So Japanese produced animation can’t compare to Disney and Popeye after all! First of all, their movement is bad.” Then, I angrily asked, “So, tell me, what kind of thing do you want me to produce at one episode per week? I am already working very hard at this rate.” When I said that, they told me, “Don’t Disney and Popeye make one episode per week?” I was downcast. Well, I sighed, amateurs could not listen to reason. “But Disney and Popeye’s animation are made for movie theaters, and just adapted to TV 16 mm! Those animations were made for movie theaters; even Disney and Popeye took several months to make one episode. And you’re telling me to make one episode per week? Isn’t it strange to compare us to them?” I explained to them while losing my cheerfulness. At any rate, even Popeye and Bugs Bunny were cheap five-minute cartoons, and yet Atomu and Space Family also were mixed up with them in the ratings surveys. One episode a week, or 3,000 cels were not going to be a good excuse [for poor ratings]. With this point in mind, I entrusted our fortunes to the strength of Atomu being a 30-minute drama.26

It is easy to sympathize with Tezuka’s dilemma. After all, television executives expected him to compete with older American cartoons made


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for movie theaters, which enjoyed the luxury of longer production times and larger budgets. Tezuka’s gamble that the 30-minute plotline would make up for the relatively primitive quality of Atomu paid off. This domestically produced series captured the attention of Japanese child audiences and garnered praise from adults. The debut of the TV animation Tetsuwan Atomu became a source of national pride. One critic wrote: Right now, my oldest daughter was raised on Disney picture books, and is a huge Disney fan was raised on Disney comics. However, after Atomu came out, she said, “American cartoons are so boring” and then on became a big Tezuka convert. . . . I believe that the appearance of a Japanese cartoon for Japanese children has the greatest meaning.27

One could, in a classic chicken-and-egg scenario, say that the success of Tetsuwan Atomu stemmed from and helped stimulate a resurgent Japanese nationalism and growing national self-confidence. When given the chance, Japanese children preferred a domestic hero to an imported one. And Japanese could look with pride to the creation of a uniquely Japanese superhero. But, beyond the obvious factor of national pride, rich plotlines and the appeal to themes such as justice, peace, and science, more than made up for the limits in Atomu’s animation quality. While American cartoons on Japanese TV, such as Popeye, relied on movement and gags for their appeal, Tezuka decided to rely on an extended story line, much like those found in the Japanese manga comic books so popular after the war.28 Also, Atomu was more than just a show; it was part of a shrewd marketing campaign, as a merchandising campaign sprung up around the show, leading to toys based on the main character. This show proved a huge hit with Japanese audiences, attaining ratings of 30–40%, huge numbers by any measure, and stimulating a flood of TV animations in the years to come. By 1967, Atomu’s ratings had dropped to below 20%, but according to a surveyor at NTV, this reflected the fact that audiences would no longer just watch a show because it was a cartoon, and that on the heels of Atomu’s success, more cartoons had come out, giving children a choice of what to watch. Even Atomu, this source of Japanese pride, bore American influences. Tezuka, besides pioneering the emergence of anime cartoons on TV, also pioneered the look of Japanese animation in his use of huge eyes for the characters. These were his tribute to the Walt Disney films he so loved, and other animators copied this look popularized by Tezuka. Looking back, Dave Kehr argues this look, “a specific, strictly dated form of 1920’s-30’s graphic design,” became one of the characteristics of Japanese

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animation.29 Indeed, Japanese anime had turned into a domesticated version of Disney films: a Japanese adaptation of a foreign medium that over the years, evolved into something uniquely Japanese. Japanese animation symbolized the cultural influence of America. Although Japanese animation helped to break Hollywood’s stranglehold on Japanese TV, it also reflected the influence of America. And just as American TV shows conquered world markets, Japanese animation would begin its conquest of world animation markets as well.

FIRST EXPORTS OF ANIME As we have seen, Japanese television and even Japanese TV animation bore heavy American influences, but it would be a mistake to look at this flow of TV culture as unidirectional, emanating from an American core to a Japanese periphery. The Japanese television industry had become an important node in the production of an East Asian media culture. During the 1960s, a common American-influenced media culture developed in South Korea and in Japan, in which viewers, often isolated from each other due to political constraints such as the South Korean ban on Japanese television programs, would watch the same American programming, such as the popular WWII drama Combat. As we shall see, with this common cultural base, it did not take long before American-influenced Japanese television programs, especially animation, were exported to the rest of East Asia and even back to the United States. Japanese television culture thus joined cars and electronics as one of Japan’s most prominent cultural exports. Unlike other commodities, however, Japanese television programs diffuse into the television cultures of other nations, and in doing so, becomes part of other national cultures. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Japanese television companies began to export programs to America, such as Tetsuwan Atomu, repackaged to the U.S. as Astro Boy in 1963. In fact, many of the Japanese anime produced in the 1960s and 1970s were exported abroad years later. In the seventeen years from 1963 to 1980, some 335 animated series came out of Japanese studios, representing an output of about 20 series per year. Again, economic necessity drove animators to look overseas for money, as the size of the Japanese market just was not large enough for them to make ends meet. Production executives lamented in a 1970 roundtable discussion that while Japanese animation was top-notch, the same could not be said about Japanese funds for animation. One animation executive remarked on the impossibility of recovering production costs by relying only on the domestic market and the need for animation production


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studios either to export overseas, or to garner money by merchandising anime character goods.30 The same economic logic that explained why American programs became so popular in Japan in the early 1960s also partly explained the success of Japanese anime outside of Japan. Relatively old anime programs could be sold overseas as they were with just a little editing, costing Japanese producers little and providing overseas TV stations with, a cheap product. In 1980, ten percent of Japanese exports of television programs were already ten years old, such as the animated series Ribon no Kishi (Princess Knight).31 Most of these shows were made for domestic production, but were easily adapted for overseas use. Some, such as Tezuka Osamu’s Jungle Taitei, gained popularity overseas when repackaged as Kimba the White Lion. The auto racing anime Mach Go Go Go, which debuted in 1966 in Japan, was adapted for American audiences and debuted in America in 1967 as the syndicated series, Speed Racer. What happened to the early Japanese efforts to sell anime overseas? With a favorable yen exchange rate, trained animators, and production facilities in place, the economic logic of using Japanese animation products appealed to American television executives. In a reversal of the previous trend of cheap American TV programs flooding Japanese airwaves, Japanese animated shows began to make their appearance on the U.S airwaves, but with all traces of their Japanese origin erased. Michael Arnold notes that Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the 1964 animated program that has now become a Christmas TV classic, was actually made in Japan.32 But the success of such programs revealed a larger barrier that served to hinder the spread of Japanese animation overseas. One of the appeals of shows like Tetsuwan Atomu was that they could be stripped of their references to Japanese culture and easily adapted to foreign audiences. As Tezuka Osamu wrote, Fortunately, NBC has signed a contract for 52 episodes of Atomu. The reaction over there (in America) also, appears to be good. Before everything, they bought it because the show “had no nationality” (mukokusekiteki). I think it is a very nuanced word. From now on, the advance of Japanese TV animation into the overseas will be a word with heavy meaning. Already, haven’t we gone past the point when we are just selling an eastern flavor?33

Atomu, a source of national pride in Japan, could only be successful if all traces of its Japanese origins were erased. The cartoon gained a new title for export, Astro Boy, and the names of the characters were changed

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as well. Japanese animation studios seemed to be merely doing outsourced work for American studios so long as anime were stripped of reference to Japanese culture or produced mainly for the American market. Other Japanese animated programs, such as Sazae-san, a wildly popular animated series about a housewife named Sazae and her large extended family, could gather much domestic popularity, but because of their references to Japanese life and culture, remain relatively unnoticed overseas. Such shows gained their popularity precisely because of their references to Japanese culture. After the success of Tetsuwan Atomu, the next big cartoon hit on Japanese TV was Obake no Q-taro, about a cuddly ghost named Q-taro who lived with the family of a Japanese boy named Sho-chan. This cartoon garnered an average rating of 30% each week, and 90% of children surveyed in the Kanto and Kansai regions had seen an episode. 34 One research group wrote that the reason for Q-taro’s popularity was the grounding of this cartoon in everyday Japanese life, and Q-taro’s questioning of the structure of Japanese society, such as “why do you have to study so much?” or “what is a good child supposed to be?”35 The appeal of Q-taro, however, would be limited overseas by the source of the show’s humor, the references to Japanese culture. To thrive in foreign markets, some argued that animation programs would have to be of “no nationality” like Tetsuwan Atomu. Events in Hawai’i in the early 1970s would prove this assumption wrong.

JAPANESE CULTURE AS A SELLING POINT: THE KIKAIDA BOOM If Japanese animation struggled to build on the successes of Astro Boy, another phenomenon would demonstrate the latent potential of Japanese TV programs to win popularity overseas without the need to strip it of references to Japanese culture. Overseas Japanese-language stations helped to establish the popularity of Japanese TV programs in the U.S. Of course, Japanese programs with references to Japanese culture did make limited inroads into foreign markets as early as 1964, when Senkōsha productions Onmitsu Kenshi (known abroad as The Samurai), a children’s swordfighting show featuring ninja warriors, became one of the most popular programs in Australia, sparking a boom in The Samurai trading cards, toy samurai swords and ninja costumes. As Nikki White has written, Ose Koichi, the star of the show (and coincidentally the star of the Japanese superhero show Gekkō Kamen) came to Australia in 1965, and was greeted by 600 cheering fans, many of them in ninja suits, who had waited outside the airport for more than an hour. But with the war having ended only twenty years earlier, the Japaneseness of this show


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offended some Australians, such as a school headmaster who banned “any association with that cult.” As reported in the December 14, 1965 Daily Mirror, he said, “I question the mental health of a nation which permits its schoolchildren to be exposed to the current cult of Japanese sadism and cruelty in the guise of a TV hero.” Letters of support and opposition to the headmaster’s actions were published in the newspapers, showing the depths of passion that a show with references to Japanese culture could have overseas. The popularity of Japanese shows in Australia faded away for the time being after The Samurai when American spy shows became popular.36 Hawai’i, by contrast, with its large Japanese-American population, served as a natural conduit for a constant stream of relatively unadapted Japanese programs to America. In the 1960s, Japanese stations begun springing up in American metropolises with large Japanese populations, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Hawai’i. The first Japanese-language station to broadcast on a regular basis outside of Japan, Honolulu’s KIKU TV, started in October 1967 showing, on a limited scale, the same programs broadcast on NET TV (now TV Asahi) in Japan. Beginning in the early 1970s, some programs were subtitled for viewers who did not speak Japanese.37 We must consider the role of these Japanese-language TV stations aimed primarily at Japanese language speakers when looking at Japanese exports of television programs, While the percentage of the overall American population that watched these programs was extremely small, a large volume of Japanese programming did get exported to these stations. Sometimes, these programs would become popular even among non-Japanese, demonstrating the potential appeal of Japanese media culture abroad. In fact, the frenzied local reception given to the live-action superhero program Kikaider, popularly known in Hawai’i as “Kikaida,” in 1974 would foreshadow Japanese media culture’s future popularity in America. Although the scope of this study extends only to 1973, the year commonly considered as the end of Japan’s postwar high-speed growth, a study of the popularity of shows like Kikaida in 1974 reveals the future rise of Japanese TV exports and the shift of Japan from an importer of television culture into one of the world’s largest exporters of media culture. Hawai’i served as a logical place for Japanese media culture to gain a foothold in America. The large numbers of Japanese-speaking viewers meant that KIKU-TV could broadcast Japanese programs unedited without erasing references to Japanese culture (In fact, KIKU was prohibited from editing anything in the programs except for bare breasts).38 Kikaida, which originally aired on prime time on NET a few years earlier, ran on

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KIKU-TV and quickly gained popularity among non-Japanese viewers. The robot Kikaida traveled about on a motorcycle as the human-looking Jiro, his guitar-strumming alter ego. When confronted by villainous robots and androids from his archenemy, the Dark Demolition Corps, Jiro would transform into the gaudy mechanical-looking Kikaida and proceed to thrash his enemies with martial arts moves like “Double Chop” or “Giant Swing Throw.” This children’s show, wildly violent by American standards at the time (with Kikaida literally pulverizing his screaming robot opponents into a heap of metal), gained such popularity that other Japanese live-action superhero shows followed: Kikaida 01, the sequel to Kikaida featuring his robot older brother; Rainbowman, a mild-mannered Japanese collegestudent trained by an Indian guru who could change into seven different superhero forms; and Kamen Rider V-3, a motorcycle-riding cyborg who battled Destron, the evil organization that murdered his father, mother, and younger sister. Media observers puzzled over how this Japanese program caught the attention of children. Some thought that the appeal of the program came from Hawaii’s large Japanese population and that its appeal might be limited on other parts of America. Joanne Ninomiya, general manager of KIKU speculated that shows like Kikaida might not be popular elsewhere: “It’s debatable. The Oriental hero might be hard to digest in the Midwest or New York.” Also, NET’s Miyakawa Yasushi hinted that Asian characters were vital to the success of Kikaida due to the local Asian population. Others disagreed, noting that Kikaida’s popularity went beyond Japanese American children. Ralph Yempuku, promoter of the live action Kikaida01 shows in Hawai’i stated, “This is being received by 35 per cent haole [local slang for white], 30 per cent Japanese and the rest Hawaiian, Chinese and every other race here.”39 At the height of Kikaida’s popularity in 1974, the Saturday night episodes drew a 26% rating in Hawai’i, beating out American shows such as Cannon, Mission: Impossible, or Chico and the Man. In the same fashion that fans thronged to Robert Fuller during his visit to Japan, an autograph session with Kikaida at a local shopping center had to be cancelled when a massive crowd of 10,000 overflowed the facilities. Naturally, a commercial culture accompanied Kikaida to the shores of Hawai’i. While Kikaida items were sold in the state as early as 1970, sales did not take off until the broadcast of the show. Yoshimi Endo, then advertising manager at Shirokiya, a Japanese department store in Hawai’i, was stunned by the sales of Kikaida toys. Over 4,000 Kikaida records sold for $9.95 each, and 48,000 Kikaida children’s T-shirts were sold in just six months. Kikaida and Rainbow Man dolls shot up in price due to the increased demand, and


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one store reported lines of shoppers waiting each morning for airfreighted goods to arrive. 40 Kikaida mania became so entrenched among children that some adults began to complain of its bad influence. The director of a pre-school complained, “We had a lot of behavior problems with kids unrealistically transferring the violent aspects of Kikaida to their playing. They were karate chopping one another and batting each other over the head with the dolls.” As a result, several pre-schools banned the wearing of Kikaida t-shirts at school.41 Beyond this, some observers noted that the Japanese portrayal of Western culture in these shows could often be jarring. One Christian minister noted the theological symbolism he saw in “Mr. K,” the arch-villain of Rainbow Man, who would make the sign of a cross and say an “Amen” before killing a subordinate who failed to carry out an assignment. “[The] bad guys are the Christians. They wear the Texas hats; their girls are made up in Western style; their leader uses a Christian liturgy to accompany his executions.” Realizing that these were images of Christians portrayed in “[a] kids’ show made on a low budget in a Japanese TV studio,” he took these shows as a personal challenge to live life according to Christian values. “Are Christians really the defenders of the underdog, the supporters of righteousness, and the advocates of virtue? Or are we protectors of the status quo, purveyors of hypocrisy, and validators of the politics of power.”42 The Kikaida boom died out by the late 1970s, but a precedent had been established: rather than trying to sell Japanese animation and superhero programs as a universal medium with no nationality stripped of their Japanese-ness, Japanese media products could thrive among non-Japanese audiences precisely because their references to Japanese culture made them different. Rather than take the path of Tetsuwan Atomu and try to pass off the anime as an Americanized Astro Boy, Japanese shows like Kikaida, made exclusively for the Japanese market, could become popular overseas with minimal editing. With Japanese anime entering the American mainstream in the late th 20 century, Susan Napier points out that one of the major attractions of Japanese anime among some American fans was its difference from Western products, and its rejection or resistance to American cultural and production values—although anime’s appeal was more about its “Otherness” rather than its “Japanese-ness.” Michael Arnold has noted “With the vague odor of culture as a selling point, the tables have turned; a Japanese origin is now emphasized while Western intervention is hidden in the shadows.”43 The popularity of programs like Kikaida foreshadowed the future boom in Japanese anime.

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GAIJIN TARENTO BOOM AND THE DESTROYER John Lie notes that the entire nation-building project during the era of economic growth during the 1960s and 70s was one of concealing Asian ethnic minorities like Koreans in Japanese popular culture under the banner of Japaneseness.44 Not all celebrities succeeded by concealing their foreign roots or by celebrating their ethnic roots. Other celebrities gained popularity by openly being a hybrid of Japan and America. These celebrities represented the new type of foreign celebrity: from abroad, but so tinged with Japanese influences that they had become icons of Japanese media culture. We have already noted in a previous chapter the role that tarento played in inducing a sense of viewer familiarity with the television. Now viewers were to become familiar with foreign, usually American tarento as well, known as gaijin tarento (foreigner tarento). As early as 1958, Linda Beech, a blue-eyed blonde from Hawaii, became the star of a Japanese TV show, Blue Eyes’ Tokyo Diary, in which she played the wife of a fictitious American magazine correspondent in Japan. This semi-slapstick comedy (Beech’s role was based on Lucille Ball’s TV character) examined the cross-cultural misunderstandings between the two cultures, and much to the delight of its sponsor, Snow Brand Dairy Products, gained the attention of 21% of the TV audience. Beech, who learned Japanese as a child from a Japanese-American maid in Hawaii, gained popularity for being an American blonde who could speak Japanese. Before retiring for a career in psychology in 1965, she starred in a few more TV series, five Japanese movies, sang on a few Japanese records, and ended up penning numerous articles for Japanese magazines ranging from humorous writings to longer pieces on psychology.45 By the mid-1970s, Japanese television was beginning to openly display foreign celebrities like Sammy Davis Jr. on Japanese commercials pitching products like liquor. The Destroyer a.k.a. Dick Beyer, one of Rikidōzan’s masked opponents from America, became popular in Japan and was quickly domesticated from an evil heel into a cuddly television personality who appeared from 1973 to 1977 as a star on Japan’s number one musical-comedy series, Uwasa No Channel.46 It all started when The Destroyer, who played a ferocious villain, agreed to join forces with the Japanese pro-wrestler Giant Baba in 1972 to help establish the wrestling league called All Japan Pro wrestling. In 1963, Beyer had wrestled against Baba and struck up a friendship with the Japanese wrestler. He reminisced that Baba, although huge, had very little athletic ability, and so he agreed to work with him as a personal favor. The Destroyer hit upon using the gimmick that if he could not beat Baba in a wrestling match, then he would


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join him. After failing to defeat Baba in a match, the Destroyer made his debut as a bad American turned teammate of Japan’s preeminent wrestler. The crowd went wild upon seeing Baba and the Destroyer join forces, and the Destroyer now gained much popularity as a Japanese wrestler.47 One could say that if Rikidōzan’s thrashing of Sharpe Brothers symbolized the Japanese desire for revenge, then the new tag-team tandem of Giant Baba and the Destroyer symbolized the Japanese desire to be treated as equals by the ferocious Americans. The stage was thus set for the domestication of the Destroyer into a uniquely Japanese icon. Key to the Destroyer’s success was the maintenance of his foreign image. He joined Uwasa no Channel as a ferocious but clueless foreigner, who cowered in fear of the main actress, Wada Akiko. Producers went to great pains to make sure that the Destroyer seemed culturally lost on the show as many of the jokes revolved around his inability to understand what others were saying around him. Mr. Beyer, who played the Destroyer, spoke of how he began to pick up Japanese from living in Japan so long, and so the producers told him to stop learning the language. Like Ms. Linda Beech, the Destroyer became a marketable commodity. Throughout the years, he had established his own Destroyer merchandise store in Tokyo, appeared on Japanese TV programs authored a book, and even recorded an album of Christmas songs in a mixture of English and Japanese. Now if the Sharpe Brothers represented the early postwar image of the threatening American, then the Destroyer represented the image of America at the end of the period of high-speed growth: ferocious but easily controlled by a Japanese woman. Indeed, he did not represent a threat to a newly confident and prosperous Japan, but rather a representation of a friendly American ally. In Kolker and Alvarez’s film The Japanese Version, Dave Spector, a gaijin tarento himself, explained the logic behind foreigners as tarento, “Making foreigners cuter takes away the threat of foreigners being more powerful, or having more know-how, or more sophistication. So definitely, they use that in a way to make themselves more comfortable.”48 But much like Robert Fuller, the Destroyer also appealed to Japanese audiences because of his genuinely friendly personality and importantly, familiarity with Japanese culture. He had lived in Hawai’i, with its large Japanese population, and spent a considerable time in Japan as a wrestler. Just like Fuller, Beyer had developed close friendships with Japanese and so he understood the mores of society. In fact, Beyer was so thoroughly assimilated into Japanese society during his stay there that some of his children became fluent in Japanese and worked for Japanese companies.

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Although the Destroyer was inducted into the pro wrestling hall of fame in America, his fame in Japan reached epic proportions, with his mask becoming an icon of Japanese culture. Even in his seventies, the Destroyer could attract attention from Japanese. One night in 2005, while being interviewed by this author, Dick Beyer put on his Destroyer mask in a Japanese restaurant in Waikiki, attracting the attention of star-struck Japanese tourists and Japanese waiters both old and young. As we left the restaurant, a middle-aged tourist even yelled out, “Goodbye Mr. Destroyer!” With his mask off, Mr. Beyer seemed like a rather ordinary but cheerful elderly gentleman, albeit one quite muscular and in good health. With his mask on, he had transformed into the Destroyer and become a symbol of Japanese popular culture and symbol of Japan-America friendship. In a telling sign of his fame in Japan, Mr. Beyer commented that in the U.S., he could not walk around in public with his mask as people would be frightened of a masked stranger. Yet, in Japan, he always walked around in his mask while in public, and even airport customs inspectors, would recognize him as the Destroyer. Even though retired from show business, he still displayed much power as a recognizable icon of Japanese popular culture.

CONCLUSION: NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION AND WORLD INTEGRATION By the end of the high-speed growth era, Japanese television had begun to export its media products, setting the stage for the future takeoff of the popularity of Japanese media products worldwide. In much the same way as Japanese had appropriated elements of American TV culture to build nationalism, viewers in Hawai’i and the government in socialist North Korea appropriated elements of Japanese media culture to build markers of their own identities. In the case of Kikaida, a new generation of Hawai’i youth used their experiences growing up with this television show as a marker of local identity. In a 2002 Kikaida revival, reruns of this program gained high ratings by pulling in adult viewers who had grown up with the show, as well as their children, and Kikaida made appearances throughout the Islands to enthusiastic crowds. In the case of North Korea, the government appropriated Rikidōzan, a symbol of Japanese nationalism, as a national hero in North Korea, because of his ethnic background and exploits fighting the evil Americans. A North Korean children’s comic book, 15-cassette video series, and a full-length novel on Rikidōzan’s life has made him part of North Korean media culture. Rikidōzan, the symbol of Japanese nationalism, has become a means to build the hegemony of the ruling class in North Korea. The comic book


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closes with the moral that people will have “eternal life only after they are clasped to the bosom” of the North’s two great leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il.”49 These unanticipated transformations remind us of the fluid, changing nature of nationalism based on television culture. Electronic borders and national borders overlap, and while media culture can be a truly global culture, it can also serve to reinforce national identity.

Part IV

The Meaning of the Japanese Television Nation

Epilogue

Fractured Television Nation

THE GREAT TOILET PAPER CRISIS OF 1973 In 1973, a toilet paper crisis panicked the nation. In response to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the price of oil quadrupled in three months battering the Japanese economy, which was heavily reliant on Middle East oil imports. Nakasone Yasuhiro, the Minister of International Trade and Industry, appeared on television on October 31 to ask the public to use paper sparingly. A few hundred housewives and other shoppers queued up to a supermarket in a residential district of Osaka the next morning, and within hours, had completely bought up the store’s stocks of toilet paper. Television broadcast news of this isolated incident, further panicking consumers around the country worried that their neighborhood would also run out of toilet paper. And the next day, a few more incidents of toilet paper panic buying broke out. On November 2, a government official broadcast a statement telling the public that there was plenty of toilet paper and not to engage in panic buying. However, this announcement only fueled consumer fears even further, causing the whole nation to start hoarding toilet paper. As NHK later assessed the event, “By simply conveying the facts, the news media had in effect fanned the embers of alarm.”1 This episode reveals the power that television had amassed by 1973, the year that many historians date as the end of the high-speed growth. Many Japanese felt anxious about the economic recession that had taken hold of Japan, and television seemed to spread this panic through attentiongrabbing images of toilet paper shortages. Television no longer had just the power to depict reality, as early visionaries had predicted, but rather had the power to create its own reality. One interesting aspect of this toilet paper panic was that it happened in Amagasaki City, an Osaka suburb close to the Kobe city limits. Miyamoto 291

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Tadao describes why this city, which had a population of 554,000 people in 1970, and other cities like it were susceptible to rumors: These are not mere provincial towns; all are in close proximity to large cities. They are direct recipients of social and cultural currents emanating from the larger cities, currents whose flow and influence are decidedly one-way. The winds of change rush into these pockets, are trapped and swirl about, but they find no outlet from which to blow out again. [. . . . ] 2

TV had caused a vicious cycle that created a national crisis. Media reports of a few women hoarding toilet paper triggered panic buying, which triggered even more media reports that both united and confused the nation. Television has the power to unite the nation, or it would be more accurate to say that it can unite the nation around confusion? This power to bring people together sometimes resulted in a fractured national unity.

THE YEAR 1973: THE END OF HIGH-SPEED GROWTH Both the high-speed growth period and the national television culture lost steam by the mid-1970s, although both continued to grow at a slower pace well into the early 1990s. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, the government had focused on economic growth as a goal of postwar Japan and managed to co-opt opposition groups in the process. By the 1970s, Japan had closed the economic gap with the rest of the developed world and was undoubtedly a world economic superpower. Yet having attained affluence, Japanese felt uncertain and insecure. 1973 represented a key date for Japanese, as the nation experienced a series of “shocks” that would impart a sense of insecurity despite the attainment of overwhelming economic affluence. Suddenly, the days of high-speed growth seemed like the good old days of stability, never mind the student protests that rocked the nation back then. With Japan’s rising economy, the U.S. treated it more as an economic competitor than an East Asian ally. In the “yen shock,” the U.S. devalued the dollar versus the yen, making Japanese exports more expensive. To rub salt in the wounds, the American government did not even bother to consult with the Japanese on this. In the “Oil Shock” of 1973, the OPEC oil embargo of 1973–4 sent the Japanese economy into a recession, which marked the end of highspeed growth and the beginning of a period of slow, but stable economic growth. Politically, 1973 represented a brave new world for the Japanese. A year earlier, again without bothering to consult their Japanese allies, the


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American government reestablished relations with China, thus changing the balance of power in Asia. Looking back, Laura E. Hein writes that one of the ironies of the legacy of high-speed growth was that the changes wrought by high-speed growth had loosened the government’s grip on economic activities of Japanese firms. Japanese companies had become too powerful and had moved too much of their production offshore for simple government control to work effectively.3 Even the euphoria of the “bubble years” of the 1980s was not enough to overcome this sense of uncertainty, which reappeared with Japan’s economic depression and the gradual erosion of the 1955 Japanese economic and political system in the early 1990s. The year 1973 also represented the 20th anniversary of television broadcasting, and a time for Japanese to look back on what this new medium had wrought. As the period of high-speed growth was succeeded by a period of slower growth, the concept of TV as the prime cultural unifier of the nation was replaced with the realization that this unity was a fractured, transient unity based more on attracting the audience through visual stimuli or well-worn television clichés such as dramas than an actual common culture. As seen in the toilet paper panic, TV’s emphasis on attracting attention through visual sensationalism could provoke the Japanese masses, like all people in the world, into group panic. Indeed, Japan’s media culture could also spawn greater public anxiety. This chapter will briefly tie up loose ends and look at television in the years following 1973.

TELEVISION, FRACTURED FAMILIES, AND THE FRACTURED NATION By the end of March 1972, NHK’s contracts for color television outnumbered their contracts for black and white television.4 While TV technology such as color televisions was improving, TV programs were losing their effectiveness as a common culture to hold families together. With the falling price of sets, it was now possible for families to buy multiple television sets. The idea of a “golden hour” of the whole family gathered around a single set, had fallen out of favor. Instead, the family had been divided into sub-groups, each with their program preferences and increasingly even their own TV set. As early as October 1960, eight cities within the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas boasted TV diffusion rates of over 100%, in other words with more television sets than families.5 These cities foreshadowed later TV programming trends. Nakano Kiyomi wrote in 1966, about the wars for control of the television dial, and predicted that the only way to solve this problem would be for everyone to have their own set.

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? At the present moment, a single day is separated into hours, and this point should be taken into account. However, children and adults, women and men, do not live completely separate from each other. They live in the same world during certain times of the day. And, they differ in what they want to watch. It is impossible to satisfy all the family members’ viewing desires with only one television set. This conflict between the viewers will follow the path like radio did, and probably be resolved by each family member possessing their own television set. If the broadcast stations do not respond to this and specialize their programs, they will fail to solve the problem. Specialization is only a method of social development.6

Surveys bore out this growing trend toward “individual viewing” as opposed to “group viewing.” In 1970, 21% of respondents said that they generally watched TV alone. By 1982, this figure had almost doubled to 39%.7 Ironically, much as TV had broken up village communalism, it had broken up family unity. Just as unified families had divided into subgroups with their own program preferences, the supposedly mass audience conceived of by advertisers had also broken up. TV ratings reflected this trend. While in the early 1960s many programs had high ratings of 40%, in the 1970s, only a few had ratings over 30%. Shows were just not attracting large audiences as they had in the past.8 There were more programs with low ratings, meaning any one program found it increasingly difficult to monopolize viewers. In response, advertisers began to cater to smaller audiences. As early as the mid-1960s, producers and advertisers strove to make sure that they were reaching their target audiences, and they recognized the diversity of the so-called “mass” audience. Nakano Kiyomi wrote of how television stations and advertisers were having a hard time attracting specialized audience suitable for their product: At the present moment, stations broadcast within a limited time to all segments of society: old and young, male and female. Moreover, countless companies broadcast the same thing. Because of that, old people who like alcohol are made to listen to commercials for chocolate. Children who want to watch cartoons are have the names of medicines for elderly thrust upon them. Also, all the companies make the same kind of programs, and so because their program times overlap, the programs that people want to see are overlooked. The programs of all of the stations are similar to a general interest magazine. However, in the case of magazines, they are divided into magazines for adults and magazines


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for children and also magazines for men and magazines for women. Besides, there are countless specialty magazines. The road that television stations must take is also going to be in this direction.9

Just as Nakano had predicted, advertisers focused more on segmented audiences rather than the idea of a “golden hour” with a rather large mass audience watching programs meant for all to enjoy. This led to a further fracturing of national television culture after 1973 with the development of more specialized programs targeting increasingly narrow audiences. On a national scale, the profound changes wrought during the postwar lifestyle standardization process in homes throughout the nation meant that by the 1970s, as Marilyn Ivy points out, the Japan National Railways tourism campaign, “Discover Japan” attempted to lure Japanese female consumers into discovering remote parts of Japan that had “vanished” during the high-speed growth process.” Ivy also shows the irony of the situation: that Dentsū’s research discovered that the mass media had already popularized the regions to which women most wanted to travel.10 The nation as a whole further retreated from community life as Japanese withdrew into their private lives. The decline in rural village populations continued, with younger adults leaving for the cities and the elderly remaining behind. The center of Tokyo also experienced population decline as families moved away to homes in the surrounding suburbs. According to V. Dixon Morris writing in 1972, Japanese were withdrawing to their homes to take up a life of maihōmushugi (My-home-ism), an orientation toward the individual and family values. Morris believed that by doing so, they were unable to conceive of issues on a larger national scale: Maihomushugi, on the other hand, retards the solution of many of Japan’s most pressing problems. Tokyo and the other large metropolitan areas are more than an urban planner’s nightmare, they are his hell, the result of totally uncoordinated and uncontrolled growth; in a sense, they are maihomushugi run rampant. Urban problems require joint action, if they are to be dealt with effectively, and pollution, too, on the scale that it has reached today, is equally beyond help by individual effort. Perhaps maihomushugi has outlived its usefulness.11

This individualistic philosophy of life prevented many Japanese from reaching a solution to many of the nation’s pressing problems that required action as a group. Miyamoto Tadao writes of how too much information caused social confusion, as seen in the toilet paper panic:

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“A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots”? Is it possible that the abundance of unfounded rumor that washes around us today is the symptom of bankruptcy in the information society? The flood of information that the mass media brings us enlarges infinitely the spurious environment of modern man, and people are all too likely to mistake impression for reality. What is reality? That question may take some work, but to lose touch with what is actually going on around us will mean being overwhelmed by the pseudo-reality of the “information environment.”12

Too much information overwhelmed and confused people. Japanese found themselves physically isolated in a sea of people and intellectually isolated in a sea of information.

PROTECTING THE CHILDREN Beginning in the 1970s, key changes occurred in the debate over television and children, stimulated by the media, NHK, the TV audience, and the terebikko (television children) generation themselves. The media underwent a process of further consolidation and concentration. Newspapers, which had so relentlessly attacked television in the early 1960s, became some of the broadcast industry’s biggest supporters by the 1970s, when they began to form economic tie-ups with the TV networks. During the high-growth era, several newspapers would often own shares of a single television station, but by 1974, each station was soon tied up to a major newspaper: NTV with the Yomiuri, TBS with the Mainichi, NET with the Asahi, and Tokyo Channel 12 with the Nihon Keizai newspaper.13 Thus emerged huge and dominant media conglomerates centered on newspapers and news networks. NHK began to emulate their commercial counterparts by attempting to add the element of entertainment to its educational programming in the 1970s. In 1978, NHK began broadcasting Ultra Eye, an entertaining science show that garnered unprecedented ratings for an educational program of over 20% during its third season. The station also added programs on lifelong learning to its education channel, with shows on fishing or even ballroom dancing.14 In some ways, NHK was only mirroring changes in the audience. By 1969, when people were surveyed about what they wanted to see, a large number of respondents listed programs such as customs and scenery and overseas coverage. These types of programs had previously never appeared on a top ten list of desired programs. People were demanding more from TV as a medium. Beginning in 1974, increasing numbers of people (37% in 1974, 49% in 1982) were saying that they had lost interest


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or had no interest in television. 43% of those who took less interest in TV said they felt the programs were all the same. In 1982, those who lost interest in TV cited dramas and entertainment shows as the types of programs that had become most boring.15 These results revealed a greater selectivity on the part of the audience and decline in the importance of entertainment programs for many viewers. As for the terebikko, they had come of age by 1973: those people born in 1953, when TV was introduced, had turned twenty, the legal threshold of adulthood in Japan. For these kids, television was a part of life, and they could not imagine a life without the television set. Assuming that most urbanites (who made up the majority of the country) had bought a set by 1960, then the terebikko were at least seven years old when they had a set to watch at home. To this generation, watching TV must have seemed as natural and ordinary as breathing air. How did the TV generation feel about TV as a medium? In March 1973, NHK commissioned a survey of 2,000 youths between the ages of 15 and 24 about their views toward television. This terebikko generation felt surprisingly “cool” toward their television sets, seeing them as just another source of information. In other words, they could put a psychological distance between television and themselves and objectify the medium. Youth were more likely than adults to believe that TV did not address social problems and contradictions, but rather only reaffirmed the present situation. Given their low expectations of the medium, youth wanted nothing more than to enjoy the programs superficially.16 Perhaps they felt too familiar with broadcasting, and they were more able than adults to distance themselves from what was going on the TV screen. After all, TV did not train people to think, but merely how to react to stimuli.

POLITICS AND SPECTACLES The years after the era of high-speed growth saw television continue to both attract attention to government abuses and to deflect attention from key national issues. Television played a key role in one of the major political scandals of the 1970s, the 1976 bribery case involving the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Much as it did in America’s Watergate scandal, television played a key role in broadcasting the government hearings and testimony, recording a 33.5% rating. But TV also became involved in other ways. On July 27, 1976, former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei, the former Minister of Posts and Telecommunications in 1957, was arrested after being implicated in of this scandal, setting off a stream of television news flashes. The

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scandal also forced NHK president Ono Kichiro, who had once worked under Tanaka, to resign when it was revealed that he had visited his residence after Tanaka posted bail. Angry about the idea of the head of a major news organization visiting a suspect during an ongoing criminal trial, viewers made over 1,200 phone calls to NHK, and even NHK journalists themselves joined in this criticism.17 On the other hand, television also managed to force conformity upon the people and distract attention from other issues, as seen in the 1989 funeral of Emperor Hirohito, posthumously known as the Shōwa Emperor. As pointed out by Takashi Fujitani and Norma Field, television coverage of the emperor’s bout with cancer and his subsequent funeral created the illusion of a nation engaged in simultaneous mourning, but left uncovered the more problematic aspects of the late emperor’s rule, such as war responsibility.18 The entire nation underwent a period of forced “self-restraint,” as announcements on public transport were minimized, neon signs turned off, and amusement programs taken off the air. Violence by right wing groups would force compliance from those who did not adhere to the “norm” of self-restraint. The news coverage of the funeral blanketed the nation. Nevertheless, given the need for television programs to be flashy, have a storyline with well defined heroes and villains, or at least be visually stimulating to catch viewer attention, by the end of the weeklong period of mourning, prime time ratings for television were lower than the year before. The problem, according to NHK’s broadcast history, was that with regular programming cancelled, all the programs aired were strikingly similar. Most of the phone calls to stations were complaints about seeing too many programs about the emperor and most called for stations to resume normal programming.19 Any dissatisfaction over the way people were forced into self-restraint dissipated with the announcement and broadcast of another royal wedding: the marriage of the Crown Prince to a commoner in 1993. Once again, there was an intense public spotlight on the Imperial Family, this time led by Emperor Akihito, but overshadowed in the media by Empress Michiko, and Japanese women were giddy with excitement over the cosmopolitan, Harvard-educated crown princess to be, Owada Masako. In the 1990s, cracks finally appeared in the media-government relationship. Ono’s visit to Tanaka Kakuei only hinted at the close association between television and government. As Elliot Krauss points out, NHK had always served to legitimate the rule of the government. By the mid-1990s, the systemic corruption of politicians and bureaucrats led to the debut of a new type of news program—flashy, entertaining, easy to understand, and muckraking. Unlike NHK, TV Asahi’s News Station broadcast news reports


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critical of the government and launched a relentless attack on government corruption. NHK’s reluctance to probe government corruption any further damaged its credibility. By the 1990s, Japanese audiences had diversified, with NHK news monopoly on audience attention gone.20

AMERICA IN JAPANESE TELEVISION By the 1980s, the rise of Japan to the status of economic superpower put an end to the sense of national inferiority that many Japanese felt after the war. With Japan’s growing trade relations with China and other Asian countries, Japanese television networks also began to pay more attention to developments in Asia and lost their myopic focus on the United States. Following the U.S. lead in reestablishing diplomatic relations with China in 1972, NHK managed to get Chinese permission to film a documentary on the fabled Silk Road connecting ancient China with Europe via Central Asia. In 1980 the resulting NHK documentary series, The Silk Road, received high ratings of 20% for each segment, and spawned two sequels.21 The Japanese TV industry continued its rise as a powerful exporter of television programs. By the 1980s, exports of animation to East Asia also began to increase. Through imports of both anime and non-anime Japanese media products, East Asia had become part of Japanese cultural sphere. In 1983, the NHK serial drama Oshin achieved astonishingly high ratings when broadcast overseas. For example, in Singapore, the program achieved ratings of 80%, and in Beijing 76%. Even when Japan fell into a recession in the 1990s, exports of anime cartoons and video games remained wildly popular among children throughout the world. Douglas McGray has pointed out: “In fact, from pop music to consumer electronics, architecture to fashion, and food to art, Japan has far greater cultural influence now than it did in the 1980s, when it was an economic superpower.”22 Although American media culture continued to exert worldwide influence, Japanese media culture proved itself an equally powerful competitor. To make matters more complex, television exports in Asia no longer involved the two cultural powerhouses of America and Japan, as other nations have also achieved prominence in television exports. South Korea has risen to the ranks of TV program exporter, and outperformed even American TV programs in the Japanese TV market. Korean dramas began to attain much popularity in Japan in 2003 and the women who were of schoolgirl age during Robert Fuller’s visit to Japan now gathered as a screaming crowd of thousands of middle-aged women at the airport to greet the Korean actor Bae Yong-joon, star of the Korean series Winter Sonata, during his visit to Japan.23

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THE TELEVISION GENERATION GROWS UP: THE NATION OF A 100 MILLION IDIOTS REALIZED? The development of the remote control further accelerated Japanese TV’s reliance on attention-grabbing visual images. With audiences easily able to change channels, television stations produced programs with even greater visual impact and attention-grabbing scenes, and producers often inserted smaller climaxes within programs to maintain viewer interest.24 Since Japanese television continued to bring a mixture of entertainment and enlightenment to many viewers, it may be a bit of a stretch to label the nation one of “idiots.” Nevertheless, Japan had become a nation united around a common television culture. The televised Red and White Song Festival (Kōhaku Utagassen), broadcast at the end of the each year, shows how much Japanese had become part of this media culture. Up through the 1990s, watching this live broadcast of a lavish competition between Japan’s top musicians had become an important way to celebrate the New Year with friends and family. On New Year’s Eve of 1997 and New Year’s Day of 1998, NHK senior Researcher Makita Tetsuo surveyed 3,600 Japanese about their activities over the new years holiday. He came to the conclusion that not only did the total minutes spent watching TV increase, but also that “TV seems to be the only dominant mass media with which Japanese people come in contact at this time of the year.” And all they usually did on the New Years holiday season was watch TV, especially the year-end Red and White Song Festival. In Makita’s words, This annual program is so powerful that it overwhelms daily activities and also other programs aired by commercial broadcasters. This program has come to bear a ceremonial meaning for ringing out the old year and ringing in the new. NHK’s Year-End Red & White Song Contest is more than just a popular program. It’s a custom.25

The first year-end festival, begun as a radio broadcast in 1951, had evolved into a national “tradition” on New Year’s Day. In 1987 Tsurumi Shunsuke wrote, “Many people still visit the Meiji Shrine for the New Year ceremony, but the overwhelming majority spend the last hours of the year watching the NHK Song Contest on television with their families. This forms the final impression of the year that they have experienced, and the star singers of Japan are their chosen champions.”26 The year would always end with most of the nation glued to TV sets in a moment of national simultaneity.


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Even this year-end spectacle eventually fell victim to the power of other programs with more visual stimulation. As if to prove Ōya Sōichi prophetic, in 2003, the K-1 kickboxing match between the ex-Yokozuna grand champion sumo wrestler Akebono and the former NFL pro football player-turned kickboxer Bob “The Beast” Sapp managed to outdraw even the NHK Red and White Song Festival in terms of ratings, with 43% of viewers nationwide watching the fight.27 In a curious return to its roots with Rikidōzan fighting the Sharpe Brothers, once again the televised spectacle of a Japanese of non-Japanese background (Akebono is a HawaiianAmerican) fighting a beastly foreigner managed to unite much of the nation in a moment of national simultaneity. As Ōya would remind us, the degree of stimulation equaled the degree of interest. As seen by the toilet paper panic, TV demonstrated the power to disunite as well as unite. People received only fragmentary information from their television sets. Invoking the philosopher Max Picard, Morimoto Tetsuo in 1983 claimed that Japanese minds were becoming fragmented from too much TV. Picard argued that radio had fragmented people’s minds, and as a consequence, allowed Hitler to rise to power. Using Picard’s logic, Morimoto argued that Japanese minds were also being fragmented by TV, and to a greater degree than with radio—because TV employed visual images and so was even more effective at fragmenting human minds. Morimoto wrote: Fragmentation involves the loss of the integral self, focuslessness and the collapse of internal continuity. Deprived of memories and internal integration, people live for the moment. They show an interest in everything and yet can sustain a genuine interest in nothing. It’s like viewing the world through a pan-focus wide lens. [. . . . ] Of all the countries in the world, I believe Japan most closely resembles the world of 1984 . . . We have a pacifist constitution, and enjoy freedom of speech and material affluence. But given the way we live, the transformation Picard warned of and Orwell feared seems well under way. In what may be considered a parallel to Orwell’s omnipresent telescreens, virtually all Japanese households now possess televisions. It is no overstatement to say that Japan is ruled by television. In no other country does it have so strong an influence.28

Morimoto may, however, have exaggerated the effects of television. As I have taken great pains to point out, although Japanese engaged in an extraordinary amount of television watching by world standards at that time, their lives were not necessarily ruled by TV. Many Japanese still spent

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many of their waking hours in other pursuits, like work, or socializing with friends. Moreover, many splendid television programs on both NHK and the commercial stations were crafted with much thought, and showed respect for the intellectual abilities of the audience. Also, as demonstrated in this book, audience members have an uncanny ability to filter out television messages or even be highly critical of TV programs. As we have seen from the critical comments of television made by intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike, many people were able to resist the fragmenting powers of TV. With these limitations in mind, in some ways, Morimoto did point out a disturbing trend for some, if not all, Japanese audience members. Public opinion surveys on attitudes toward TV seemed to bear out the idea that, although TV gave people much more information, it did not necessarily give them the bigger picture of what to do with the information. Two surveys in 1969 and in 1975 showed that public attitudes toward television had crystallized into a belief that acknowledged both the breadth and the fragmentary nature of TV information. While a majority of respondents believed that TV helped keep one up to date on world trends (54% in 1975), and widened one’s view of the world (50%), only a minority believed that TV helped them to understand important political or social problems (35%) or deepened understanding of family relations such as parent-child problems (32%).29 The paradigm of watching TV had been established: so much information, so little knowledge of what to do with it. Viewers kept very much up to date on trends and recent events due to the immediacy of TV broadcasting. Yet, they did not know what to do with this information and as a result, many chose to passively watch TV as just another source of entertainment in their daily lives.

JAPANESE TELEVISION AS A THREE-RING CIRCUS Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. . . . In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. —Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death30

There have been all sorts of metaphors used to describe television’s relationship to society. Some have described it as a window that allows


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viewers to extend their range of vision. Others have described it as a mirror of events in society and the world, while others see it more as a filter that selects some topics for social attention and excludes other views. Some have seen it as a forum for the presentation of information, while others portray TV as a screen that cuts people off from reality. Denis McQuail’s concept of a “publicity model” of the media in which the goal is neither to transmit particular information nor to unite a public in some expression of culture, belief or values, but simply to catch and hold visual or aural attention, has been the focus of the various chapters, and meshes nicely with Ōya Sōichi’s views.31 I wish to take this model and view it through the metaphor of a “three-ring circus.” In this kind of circus, several acts go on simultaneously. The flashiest act, whether it be dancing elephants or circus clowns, would probably draw the spectator’s attention. That which occurred in the other rings would probably be ignored unless they had an equally flashy act. If we use this circus analogy, competing TV programs were like competing circus acts. Viewers would ignore programs that did not contain enough flash or visual stimulation and change stations to find a program that did. With this in mind, one could, with a bit of exaggeration, characterize Japanese news as “entertainment.” As we have seen, there were limits to politically sensitive speech on television. However, news could make its way to the television agenda, so long as it contained dramatic elements and a storyline that could hook the viewer. If we consider that the television is mainly a device for entertainment, then we can understand that people watched the news for entertainment as well. After all, why did a hostage incident at Asama-sansō drown out the much more important story of Nixon’s visit to China? Relying on stimulation and spectacle to attract attention ultimately strips meaning from the images and turns them into commodities. As Dick Hebdige argues, individuals and groups use their own subculture to produce their oppositional identity. The media then works to incorporate and commodify this subculture, bringing it into the mainstream culture and stripping it of oppositional meanings. In the case of Japan, student protestors in the late 1960s were characterized by different styles of helmets advertising the factional affiliation of the wearer and the geba (fighting stick). Constant television exposure transformed student protest uniforms into a sort of student chic known as geba style—the helmet, geba, and the cloth mask—all devoid of true meaning. Protester slang became commodified into mainstream TV culture as a comedy program titled “Geba Geba.”32 We saw this effect at work when the announcement of the Crown Prince’s engagement in 1958 drowned out the controversy over Prime

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Minister Kishi’s attempts to pass the Police Bill. We also saw this in the 1960s when media attention on the drama of violent student radicals drowned out and marginalized the anti-war agenda of the much larger nonviolent protestors of Beheiren. As seen from this example, the free market of television culture does not necessarily produce a politically aware citizenry. On the positive side, the development of publicity-centered television media culture allowed Japanese audiences to be free of the prewar mode of government coercion. Stripped of most legal means to control popular thought, the state needed to attract viewers if they wished to mobilize them. Viewers, however, were free to follow individual lives of consumption and ignore the pronouncements of the state by changing channels. In this way, the postwar state’s power to enter into people’s private lives was severely constrained. The government, after all, often found itself unable to compete against the appeal of visually stimulating or sensational television programs. The question, then, was not whether television itself was bad, but whether Japanese viewers had the knowledge to be able to deal with its effects. One could argue that elements of this entertainment sphere model could be applied to other nations. In the case of modern China, Jianying Zha has traced the impact of popular media culture on post-Tiananmen China. She discovered that popular culture was eroding the government’s authority, but at the same time, was causing intellectuals to lament their own marginalization by popular media.33 More research needs to be done on this issue, but one could draw analogies between the Japanese Anpo protests of 1960 and Tiananmen in China in 1989. While we should be wary of forcing too much of an analogy or over-simplifying the issues involved, we can see a striking similarity between these cases: government repression was followed by attempts to placate popular dissent through the spread of consumerism and television culture. Today, Anpo, and especially its main martyr, Kanba Michiko, have largely faded from public memory. Will the same be true for the Tiananmen Massacre? When one looks at the political implications of this sort of television culture, one is struck by its ability to shape historical memory. The very appealing entertainment culture, by being a magnet for viewer attention, functions to drown out other potential news stories. Yet these same stories are easily erased from the public memory once a flashier story comes around. Norma Field writes of how the public memory of a 1990 assassination attempt on Mayor Motoshima Hitoshi, who criticized the Emperor Hirohito’s war responsibility, ended up being drowned out by the media


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hype surrounding the wedding of Emperor Akihito’s second son Prince Akishino to a commoner.34 Indeed, many Japanese minds, like minds in other nations exposed to TV, had become so fragmented that the very concept of history was one of visually stimulating events outflashing one another. It was as if the terebikko’s short attention span had transferred to the entire nation as a whole and that even historical memory was subject to the whims and dictates of the fickle audience. By making a consumer-oriented lifestyle seem so “natural” to its viewers, TV managed to obscure alternate paths that the Japanese nation could have taken. As we have seen in this book, there was nothing inevitable about the television nation that Japan had become. The triumph of television and its consumer culture was by no means preordained by technology, but rather mediated through prewar and wartime legacies, government policies, economic growth, and the actions of millions of individual Japanese who chose to sit down in front of their television sets for entertainment. Consider the alternate path to consumerism that Japanese could have taken. Masataka Kōsaka describes the postwar German approach that focused on developing a basic infrastructure for its citizens: The rehabilitation of West Germany was far sounder than that of Japan. For example, in Japan a flashy, superficial consumer culture was fostered after the war while the housing shortage and public facilities were hardly improved at all. Japanese homes, road and schools remained inadequate, but the West Germans began their recovery from these points, thus firmly reestablishing the foundation of their country. 35

The direction that television culture took in Japan was made possible by visionaries, government policies on high economic growth, and of course, the viewers themselves. Visionaries saw television as a way to show Japan’s status as an advanced, cultured nation, or simply a way to advertise products and spread a message of consumerism. In the two decades since its introduction in 1953, TV and government policies based on economic growth mutually reinforced each other, setting into motion profound changes in Japanese society. Broadcasters also played their part in shaping the television nation. From choosing to broadcast programs that featured shocking, grotesque, or sensual visual stimuli, or by warding off government regulations by selective use of “self-censorship,” Japanese broadcast corporations worked hard to take a largely unproven and expensive new medium and turn it into an ordinary but vital component of the Japanese social landscape by 1973. Most importantly, television viewers also played

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their part in the creation of the television nation by deciding to become part of the new Japan based on affluence and consumerism.

FINAL THOUGHTS Japanese television culture grew so successfully that by the beginning of the 21st century, it stood poised as one of the main challengers to America’s dominance in global media culture. Japanese television, in this sense, had succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in helping to rebuild the prestige of a war-shattered nation. But behind this success story, we must remind ourselves of the social cost of being part of the television nation. As we have seen, television is only a tool, albeit a very useful one. Far more important than the tool itself is what people choose to create with it. With the end of the war, Japanese used the television to reaffirm their commitment to build a postwar Japan different from the prewar empire. They rejected heavyhanded top-down controls that put the individual at the service of the state. By retreating to their homes and watching television, Japanese helped put into motion a shift to the postwar-style family as the central unit of society, and the consumerist television culture as the common culture for the nation. In this sense, by focusing on personal affluence throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, Japanese have rejected the state control of private life typical of the wartime days. Now the pendulum has swung in the other direction. In the twentyfirst century, Japanese will probably work to undo the excesses of rapid growth and consumerism, an ideology that the television industry played a powerful part in propagating. Perhaps it is time to realize that just as the affluence of high-speed growth proved to be empty for some people, so too did much of Japan’s television culture.36 Looking back, we can see the Japanese television system as a relic of 1950s Japanese ideas: a television culture that promised its viewers enlightenment had too often become a means of denying it, substituting mere entertainment for substance. TV embodied a faith in family consumerism as a way to happiness, centralizing the nation’s culture by spreading Tokyo culture as national culture, “protecting” the public through self-censorship while opening up the doors to commercialism, and attracting Japanese attention through media tarento and sensationalized news events. The Japanese will face the great challenge of how to retain the good aspects of this television culture while fashioning a suitably new one suitable for the 21st century. In order to meet this challenge, they will need to balance social responsibility against free speech, and at the same time consider the need for the television broadcasters to attract audiences. Part


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of the problem of television programming stemmed from the necessity to attract mass ratings from a diverse audience. Therefore the national television culture needed to be one of a visually stimulating lowest common denominator culture. From its earliest days of pro wrestling on plaza televisions to the Asama-sansō hostage incident at the end of the era of highspeed growth, programs that could quickly grab and hold the public interest became part of the national television memory. Only when one stops conceiving of the mass audience and looks at local needs will reform truly come about. Advertisers and broadcasters already seem to have recognized this, giving them a head start over consumers. They are only holding up their end of the bargain: paying for the programs in return for audiences watching their commercials. But the same problem that faced reformers in the 1960s remains: TV programming will only become as good as its viewers demand it to be. The challenge for reformers of overcoming the power of national broadcast corporations may seem daunting, but is nothing compared to the challenge of overcoming viewer inertia. Perhaps Japan is doomed to remain a land of “a hundred million idiots.” We should remember that Kato Hidetoshi envisioned television as being a medium of great promise as well. Key to his vision of the Television Age was the education of the viewer in visual literacy. Japanese audiences have already proven themselves to be a feisty and sometimes rebellious lot, refusing to conform to the dictates of advertisers and protesting if pushed too far. One should admire those Japanese who devoted much time and effort toward breaking out of the advertiser-imposed version of consumer conformity. Perhaps their behaviors are positive signs of the diversity that could be unleashed should more of the audiences learn how to watch TV. With so much of the media writings on television being anecdotal, it is fitting to end with a final anecdote that illustrates the power of this medium. Every year, Dick Beyer, a.k.a. the Destroyer, brought school wrestlers from America to wrestle in a tournament as part of a cultural exchange. Suddenly, during his trip in 2004, wrestling officials invited him to a reception for Japan’s Olympic wrestling team, which had racked up an impressive count of medals. Despite the fact that he was informally clad in a polo shirt, shorts, and his trademark mask, he was welcomed, given a seat in the front row in the midst of suited guests, and made a part of the festivities. The Destroyer wondered about the irony of it all. In the U.S., he was just a retired pro wrester (although a member of the pro wrestling hall of fame) who would probably not be asked to attend an Olympic reception, especially dressed so informally. In Japan he was larger than life celebrity, allowed to hobnob with elites. On a larger level, the Destroyer represented the odyssey of Japanese

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television. He achieved his popularity when his face was beamed into living rooms throughout the nation in the 1960s and 1970s. Even Japanese in the countryside recognized him during his travels with his mask on. Formerly an American heel brought in to demonstrate the ferocity of Americans, he had become a cuddly gaijin tarento, the “gaijin next door.” Through weekly exposure on TV, Japanese learned to treat the Destroyer as more an honorary Japanese than American heel. And in adopting the Destroyer, Japanese viewers were globalizing their own TV culture. Because Japanese TV culture has become so globally influenced, it has become globally influential, being seen in countries throughout the world. Although the physical landscape of Japan has been transformed, the way of watching television established in the late 1950s and early 1960s has remained since 1953 virtually the same. Viewers are still largely attracted by programs reliant upon sensationalism, as evidenced by scandal shows, the constantly changing parade of new tarento, and lightweight news on some stations. Still, there is, and probably always was, a glimmer of hope. So many more viewers are demanding less empty flash and more programs with local color and substantive thought, as evidenced in the entertaining but educational quiz programs, news specials, and dramas appearing on both public and commercial TV. Despite decades of social change, the ŌyaKato debate in the late 1950s interestingly still applies even to Japanese television audiences today.

Notes

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. Shūkan Tokyo, 2 Feb 1957; quoted in Yasuhiro Iyoda, ed., Terebishi Handbook (Tokyo: Jiyūkokuminsha, 1998), 26. 2. Sōichi Ōya, “Hōshasen,” Tokyo Shimbun, 21 January 1957, Sōichi Ōya, “Ichiokusōhakuchika Meimeishimatsuki,” CBC Report, April 1958, 10. 3. Shunsuke Tsurumi, A Cultural History of Postwar Japan: 1945–1980 (New York: KPI, 1987), 63. 4. Tetsuo Makita, “Japanese Time Use in 1995,” NHK Broadcasting and Culture Research (Autumn 1997), “Research in Japan—1965–1966,” Studies of Broadcasting 5 (1967): 144–149. 5. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking, 1985), 79. 6. Laura Hein, “Growth Versus Success: Japan’s Economic Policy in Historical Perspective,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 112–115, Marilyn Ivy, “Formations of Mass Culture,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 7. William W. Kelly, “Finding a Place in Metropolitan Japan: Ideologies, Institutions, and Everyday Life,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 216. 8. Harold Adams Innis and Mary Innis, Empire and Communications (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media; the Extensions of Man, 1st ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 332. 9. Denis McQuail and Swen Windahl, Communication Models for the Study of Mass Communications, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1993), 51–53. 10. William W. Kelly, “Tractors, Television, and Telephones: Reach out and Touch Someone in Rural Japan,” in Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, ed. Joseph Jay Tobin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 86.

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Notes to Chapter One

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 1. Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 282. 2. Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 105–154. 3. Robert John Smith and Ella Lury Wiswell, The Women of Suyemura (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 12–13. 4. Jeffrey E. Hanes, “From Megalopolis to Megaroporisu,” Journal of Urban History 19, no. 2 (1993): 62–62. 5. Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern (New York: Routledge, 1995), 1–3, 59. 6. Jeffrey E. Hanes, “Media Culture in Taisho Osaka,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 1900–1930, ed. Sharon Minichiello (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 269–270. 7. Shunya Yoshimi, “Consuming ‘America’: From Symbol to System,” in Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities, ed. Beng Huat Chua (New York: Routledge, 2000), 203–206. 8. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 25–31.Tokyo Broadcasting Station, however, had commenced broadcasting a few weeks earlier on a “test” basis on March 1, 1925. 9. Shin Mizukoshi, “From Active Enthusiasts to Passive Listeners: Radio, the State, and the Transformation of the Wireless Imagination,” Senri Ethnological Studies, no. 52 (2000): 71–72. 10. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 29—36. Krauss points out that the acronym “NHK” was used for station identification only after the war. Ellis S. Krauss, “Portraying the State: NHK Television News and Politics,” in Media and Politics in Japan, ed. Susan J. Pharr and Ellis S. Krauss (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996), 89–90. 11. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 30, Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, The Evolution of TV [Internet] (2002, accessed July 12 2003); available from http://www.nhk.or.jp/ strl/aboutstrl/evolution-of-tv-en/p04/column/index2.html. 12. Akiko Takeyama, Rajio No Jidai (Tokyo: Sekai Shishosha, 2002), 91. 13. Fujitani, 236, Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 37, Takeyama, 91, 112, 136. In fact, as Fujitani points out, these supposedly “live” broadcasts were scripted and approved in advance by the Imperial Household Ministry. According to a former announcer, there was a goal more important than an accurate reporting of what went on, and that was to produce the belief that everyone throughout the nation was hearing the reports at the precise moment when the activities occurred. 14. Takeyama, 91. 15. John F. Embree, Suye Mura, a Japanese Village (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 83.

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16. Nobuō Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1990), 56–63. 17. Gregory James Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 76, 96. 18. Makoto Yamaguchi, Eigo Kōza No Tanjô: Media to Kyōyō Ga Deau Kindai Nihon (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2001). 19. Dan Cooper, Amy Startt, and Julie Boucher, Talking Motion Pictures [Internet] (accessed 1 January 2004); available from http://xroads.virginia. edu/~ug00/3on1/movies/talkies.html, Tom Genova, Early Television Experiments—Baird [Internet] (2003, accessed 1 January 2004); available from www.tvhistory.tv/EarlyTVBaird.htm, Jeff Kisseloff, The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920–1961 (New York: Viking, 1995), 9, Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 59. 20. “Odorokubeki Musenenshi No Hatsumei (the Surprising Invention of Musenenshi (Television)),” King, October 1927, 202. 21. Toshimasa Yokō, “Sūhakuri Hanaretemo, Kao Miawasete Hanashi Ga Dekiru (Even Separated Several Hundred Ri, One Can Talk Face to Face),” Shūkan Asahi, 11 March 1928. 22. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 59. 23. “Odorokubeki Terevijyon No Hatsumei (the Surprising Invention of Television),” Bungakujidai, April 1932, 112. 24. “Odorokubeki Musenenshi No Hatsumei (the Surprising Invention of Musenenshi (Television)),” 202–203. 25. J. Fred MacDonald, One Nation under Television: The Rise and Decline of Network TV, Nelson-Hall Quality Pbk. ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1994), 6–11. 26. Isamu Yamamoto, “Ōshu No Terebijon Hosō (Television Broadcasts in the West),” Hosō, April 1939, 25. 27. Sayoshi Ryo, “Terebijon No Gaitō Shinshutsu,” Chūō Kōron (1939): 498. 28. Kingyo Nakanishi, “Terebijyon No Ima Ashita (Television Today and Tomorrow),” Hōsō, January 1937, 62. 29. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 59–60. 30. Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 145. 31. E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 126–132. 32. Shillony, 144. Shillony also notes that Japanese officials found it difficult to eradicate jazz completely. One kamikaze pilot even described how he listened to jazz on the night before going out to kill Americans. Atkins also notes a similar situation of Japanese military men listening to jazz during the wartime. Atkins, 155–159. 33. Michitaro Tada, “The Glory and Misery of ‘My Home,’” Japan Interpreter (Spring 1974): 109–110.

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Notes to Chapter Two

34. Kasza, 253–265. 35. Ryo, 494. 36. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 60. 37. Kenjirō Takayanagi, “Naigai Terebijyon No Shinkyō (Great Progress in Domestic and Foreign Television),” Hōsō, January 1939, 21. 38. Nakanishi, 62. 39. “Odorokubeki Terevijyon No Hatsumei (the Surprising Invention of Television),” 112. 40. Takayanagi, 21–24. 41. Shiga, 102.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 1. Arif Dirlik, “Reversals, Ironies, Hegemonies: Notes on the Contemporary Historiography of Modern China,” Modern China 23, no. 3 (1996): 255– 256. 2. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War Ii, 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co./New Press, 1999), 88–89, 105. 3. For examples of postwar thought, look at Masao Maruyama, “Nationalism in Japan: Its Theoretical Background and Prospects.,” in Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Ivan Morris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963). For a sampling of international views, look at Peter Schmid, “Japan’s ‘Lost Generation’: Postwar Moral Crisis,” Commentary, May 1957. and Robert J. Lifton, “Youth and History: Individual Change in Postwar Japan,” Daedalus 91 (Winter 1962). 4. Ivan I. Morris, Nationalism and the Right Wing in Japan; a Study of Postwar Trends (New York,: Oxford University Press, 1960), 149. 5. Masanori Nakamura, The Japanese Monarchy: Ambassador Joseph Grew and the Making of The “Symbol Emperor System,” 1931–1991, trans. Herbert P. Bix (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 111. Nakamura argues that the actual intent of the emperor’s speech was to argue the legitimacy of the prewar constitution and monarchy. 6. “Gaitō Terebi Ni Moeta Yoru (the Nights Filled with Plaza TV),” Yomiuri Shimbun, 20 September 2000. 7. Joji Watanuki, “Patterns of Politics in Present-Day Japan,” in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives., ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1967), 447–466. 8. Junnosuke Masumi, Contemporary Politics in Japan, trans. Lonny E. Carlile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 9. John W. Dower, “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 16–17. 10. Andrew Barshay, “Postwar Social and Political Thought,” in Modern Japanese Thought, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 311–312. The laws at issue were the Anti-Subversive Activities Law, passed by the Diet in 1952; the series of

Notes to Chapter Two

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

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legislative attempts to recentralize control over education (aimed specifically at the highly ideological teachers’ union); and the Police Duties Law of 1958. Don Adams, “Rebirth of Moral Education in Japan,” Comparative Education Review (June 1960): 62–63. Morris, 148–149. Maruyama, 151. Ezra F. Vogel, Japan’s New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 71–81. Merry I. White, Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 194–195. Jeffrey E. Hanes, “From Megalopolis to Megaroporisu,” Journal of Urban History 19, no. 2 (1993): 63—65. Herbert Passin, “Preface,” in Japanese Popular Culture; Studies in Mass Communication and Cultural Change Made at the Institute of Science of Thought, Japan, ed. Hidetoshi Kato (Tokyo, Rutland, Vt.,: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1959), 19–21. Hidetoshi Kato, “Middle-Brow Culture,” Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan (April 1964). Trans. from Chūō Kōron (Mar 1957), 252–261. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 111. Ibid., 80–111. Ibid., 96. Ibid., 103–104. Tsutomu Ono, “An Analysis of “Kimi No Na Wa” (What Is Your Name?),” in Japanese Popular Culture; Studies in Mass Communication and Cultural Change Made at the Institute of Science of Thought, Japan, ed. Hidetoshi Kato (Tokyo and Rutland, Vt.,: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1959), 151–163. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 113. Ono, 151–164. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 98. Ibid. 125. Simon Partner, Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 78–87. Shin’ichi Kamimura, Terebi to Bunka Kakumei (Television and the Culture Revolution) (Tokyo: Kagaku shinkôsha, 1952), 62. Ibid., 9–10. Ibid., 8, 64. Ibid., 65–66. The playwrights he refers to are William Shakespeare (1564– 1616), Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) famous for Cyrano De Bergerac (1897), and Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian playwright famous for Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921). “Engeki Eiga Terevi (Sic): Goraku (Entertainment: Theater, Movies, Television),” Maru, 25 January 1951, 83—84, Isamu Yamamoto, “Ōshu No Terebijon Hosō (Television Broadcasts in the West),” Hosō, April 1939.

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Notes to Chapter Three

34. “Terebi Nihon Kokoroechō (Do’s and Don’ts of Japanese Television),” Sunday Mainichi, 1 February 1953, 10.

NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 1. “Gaitō Terebi Ni Moeta Yoru (The Nights Filled with Plaza TV),” Yomiuri Shimbun, 20 September 2000, 17. 2. Nobuō Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobô, 1990), 181. 3. Simon Partner, Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 98, Shiga, 182. As Shiga points out, the word used is “baikoku terebi” (売国テレビ) which literally means television that betrays one’s country, but I chose to translate it as “sell-out of television” because the character for bai (売) means to sell and so the nuance fits better in this case. 4. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 127–128. 5. “Terebi Nihon Kokoroechō (Do’s and Don’ts of Japanese Television),” Sunday Mainichi, 1 February 1953, 6–7. 6. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 50’s Full Scale TV Broadcasting [Internet] (20 march 2005 2003, accessed March 20 2005); available from http://www.nhk. or.jp/digitalmuseum/nhk50years_en/history/p06/index.html. 7. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 127, Partner, 165. 8. “Terebi Jidai,” Yomiuri Shimbun, 12 February 1953. 9. Shiga, 182. 10. “Terebi Nihon Kokoroechō (Do’s and Don’ts of Japanese Television).”7. 11. Shiga, 145. 12. Ibid., 145–146. 13. “NHK Ga Honkakuhōsō: Terebi Kyō Kara (NHK Begins Full-Fledged Television Broadcasting from Today),” Mainichi Shimbun, 1 Feb 1953, E3. 14. “Terebi Hōsō Nishūkan (Two Weeks of TV Broadcasts),” Mainichi Shimbun, 14 Feb 1953, E4. 15. “Hotondo Ga Shachōzoku,” Mainichi Shimbun, 12 Feb 1953, E4. 16. “Terebi Hōkokusho: Nedan O Kîte (Report on Television: Ask the Price),” Mainichi Shimbun, 6 February 1953, E4. 17. “NHK Ga Honkakuhōsō: Terebi Kyō Kara (NHK Begins Full-Fledged Television Broadcasting from Today),” E3. 18. “Terebi Hōkokusho: Namae Ga Urerudake,” Mainichi Shimbun, 11 Feb 1953, E4. 19. J. Fred MacDonald, One Nation under Television: The Rise and Decline of Network TV, Nelson-Hall Quality Pbk. ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1994), 32. 20. Aoi Fukamachi, Boxing Match Cemented the Public’s Love Affair with TV [Asahi Shimbun English Edition -Internet] (12 February 2003, accessed 13 February 2003); available from http://www.asahi.com/english/national/ K2003021200420.html.

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21. Shiga, 194.; Fukamachi, (accessed). 22. Yasuhiro Iyoda, ed., Terebishi Handbook (Tokyo: Jiyūkokuminsha, 1998), 16. 23. Hidehiko Ushijima, Rikidōzan: Ōzumō, Puroresu, Urashakai (Tokyo: Daisanshokan, 1995), 125–126. 24. “Gaitō Terebi Ni Moeta Yoru (the Nights Filled with Plaza TV),” 17. 25. “Puroresu Shinseppu,” Sunday Mainichi, 10 July 1955, 6. 26. Fukamachi, (accessed). 27. Akira Hayazaka, Terebi Ga Yatte Kita (Tokyo: NHK Shuppan, 2000), 120. 28. Ushijima, 126. 29. Ibid., 127. 30. Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern (New York: Routledge, 1995). 31. “Puroresu Shinseppu,” 6. 32. Hiroshi Aramata, Terebi Hakubutsushi (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1997), 118. 33. “Gaitō Terebi Ni Moeta Yoru (the Nights Filled with Plaza TV),” 17. 34. Hayazaka, 121. 35. Ibid., 121—123. 36. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 128. 37. Aramata, 117. 38. “Sanjū Ichi Nen Wa Terebi Jidai (1956 Is the Television Age),” Sunday Mainichi, 26 Feb 1956, 6. 39. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia, 127, “Terebi Jidai: Kyakuyosō No Fuku No Kami (Television Age: The God That Brings in Prospective Customers),” 14. This number, however, was still quite miniscule compared to the number of television sets in America, which had roughly twice the population of Japan. In 1955, 26 million households (55.7% of all U.S. households) had a television set. MacDonald, 59. 40. Ibid. 41. “Puroresu Shinseppu,” 6–7. 42. Nobu Takayama, “Defure O Yosoni Terebi Bûmu (Television Boom Unaffected by Deflation),” Keizai Jurai, October 1955, 142. 43. Ibid. 44. “Puroresu Shinseppu,” 6.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR 1. “Terebi Būmu No Rinshō Hōkoku-Jyūyon Inchi No Garasu No Sekai(a Clinical Account of the Television Boom: The World of the 14-Inch Glass),” Bungei Shunjū, July 1957, 58. 2. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 136–137. 3. J. Fred MacDonald, One Nation under Television: The Rise and Decline of Network TV, Nelson-Hall Quality Pbk. ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1994), 59, Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 127, “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu

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4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

(Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” Hōsōgaku kenkyû (Studies of Broadcasting) 8 (1964): 37. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 137. “Terebi to iu kaiju,” Shūkan Yomiuri, 30 June 1957, 4. U.S. dollar equivalents are my personal calculations based on the rate of 360 yen per dollar. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” 38,50. Adapted from “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” Hōsōgaku kenkyû (Studies of Broadcasting) 8 (1964): 37, 38, 58, map 2–5. Ibid., 48. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” Hōsōgaku kenkyû (Studies of Broadcasting) 8 (1964): 37, 38, 58, map 2–5. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 137. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” 37. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” 50. Ibid., 25–26, 37, 39. Laura Hein, “Growth Versus Success: Japan’s Economic Policy in Historical Perspective,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 114–116. David Riesman and Evelyn Thompson Riesman, Conversations in Japan: Modernization, Politics, and Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1967), 170. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 137. Iwao Nakajima, “The Broadcasting Industry in Japan,” in International Studies of Broadcasting, with Special Reference to the Japanese Studies, ed. Hirosuke Eguchi and H. Ichinohe (Tokyo: NHK Radio & TV Culture Research Institute, 1971), 52–53. “Iyo Iyo Terebi Jidai: Shufu No Tame No Goannai (Finally the Television Age: A Guide for Housewives),” Shūkan Asahi, 25 November 1956, 6–10. Shōichirō Asano, “Ninen Ato Wa Terebi Ōkoku (Two Years Later a Television Kingdom),” Chijō, November 1958, 52. Asanō uses the phrases “binbōkoku” ( 貧乏国 ) and “bunka koku” ( 文化国 ) to respectively refer to an “impoverished country” and a “country of culture.” “Terebi Nangoku Tosa Dayori (Television in the South—News from Tosa),” Sunday Mainichi, 28 February 1960, 33. “Terebi to Iu Kaijū (The Monster Called Television),” Shūkan Yomiuri, 30 June 1957, 9–10. Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 4,9. Merry I. White, Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 42–56. Ibid., 73. Marilyn Ivy, “Formations of Mass Culture,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 241, 249.


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24. Kathleen S. Uno, “The Death Of “Good Wife, Good Mother”?,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 303–306. 25. “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” Sunday Mainichi, 7 December 1958, 88–91. 26. “Terebi Būmu No Rinshō Hōkoku-Jyūyon Inchi No Garasu No Sekai(a Clinical Account of the Television Boom: The World of the 14-Inch Glass),” 57. 27. “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” 88. 28. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Gunma Ken, Tone Gun, Nīharu Mura,” Chōsa Jōhō, July 1960, 53, “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Tochigi Ken, Shiotani Gun, Kuriyama Mura,” Chōsa Jōhō, August 1960, 33. 29. Mitsuru Shinpo, Three Decades in Shiwa: Economic Development and Social Change in a Japanese Farming Community (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976), 93, Minpei Sugiura, “Niwatori to Kiuri to Terebi To,” TBS Chōsa Jōhō, August 1966, 6. 30. “Terebi to Iu Kaijū (The Monster Called Television),” 10. 31. Ibid., 3–11. 32. “Terebi Nangoku Tosa Dayori (Television in the South—News from Tosa),” 33. 33. “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” 91. 34. Sandra Buckley, “Altered States: The Body Politics of “Being-Woman,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 347–372. 35. “Shōgyō Terebi No Riyō (How to Use Commercial Television),” Dentsū Geppō, April 1953, 4–5. 36. Nobuō Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1990), 191–192. 37. Hiroshi Aramata, Terebi Hakubutsushi (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1997), 115. 38. “Shōgyō Terebi No Riyō (How to Use Commercial Television),” 5. 39. Ibid., 2. 40. “Honban No Terebi Komāsharu (Live Television Commercials),” Dentsū Geppō, May 1954, 26–27. 41. Harunori Maruyama, Advertising, TV Executives Live in Fear of the Ratings ‘Monster’ [Internet newspaper article] (07 April 2003, accessed November 29 2003); available from http://www.asahi.com/english/culture/ K2003040700238.html.; Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 172. 42. Maruyama, (accessed). 43. “Sono Na Wa Suponsā (That Name Is the Sponsor),” Shūkan Asahi, 15 June 1958, 5. 44. “Sanjū Ichi Nen Wa Terebi Jidai (1956 Is the Television Age),” Sunday Mainichi, 26 Feb 1956, 4–5. 45. Aramata, 114–115, “Sono Na Wa Suponsā (That Name Is the Sponsor),” 4, “Terebi Būmu No Ura Omote (the Two Faces of the Television Boom),”

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46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Notes to Chapter Four Jinbutsu Jûrai, September 1959, 114–115. I translated (suponsa no murioshi) as “Sponsor’s pushiness.” “Sono Na Wa Suponsā (That Name Is the Sponsor),” 4–5. Nagatani Kawamotoji, “Ippuku Jōtai O Nukezu,” Dentsū kōkoku ronshi, February 1955, 74–79. “Iyo Iyo Terebi Jidai: Shufu No Tame No Goannai (Finally the Television Age: A Guide for Housewives),” 4. “Terebi to Iu Kaijū (The Monster Called Television),” 11. “Sono Na Wa Suponsā (That Name Is the Sponsor),” 9. “Terebi to Iu Kaijū (The Monster Called Television),” 8. Please note that the article used the word, “kyōyō” (教養) which could be translated as both “culture” and “education.” I chose to translate it as “culture,” given the background of the debates over television, and that fact that there is another word for education, “kyōiku” (教育) which was commonly used to refer to education. Shiga, 223. Taijun Takeda and Junichi Kyōgoku, “Terebi Jidai No Jitai (the Circumstances of the Television Age),” Chūō Kōron, September 1966, 101. Gō Muramatsu, “Terebi, Kono Shiseikatsu E No Shinryakusha (Television, the Invader into Private Life),” Taiyō, September 1969, 126. Tomō Satō, “Sociological Structure of ‘Mass Leisure,’” Studies of Broadcasting 3 (1965): 134. Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo) 10 April 1964; quoted in Ibid.: 134–135. “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” 90. Muramatsu, 126. Takeda and Kyōgoku, 101. Munesuke Mita, “Patterns of Alienation in Contemporary Japan,” Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan 5, no. 2/3 (December 1967): 162. “Terebi to Watashi (Television and Me),” Yomiuri Shimbun, 26 January 2003. Riesman and Riesman, 114. Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo) 27 April 1964, quoted in Satō: 135. Asahi Shimbun, 2 April 1959, 135. Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo), 27 April 1964, quoted in Satō: 135. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 138. “Terebi No Tameiki (the Sighs of Television),” Sunday Mainichi, 15 May 1959, 11. NHK Hōsō Bunka Kenkyūjo, ed., The History of Broadcasting in Japan (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, 1967), 350, Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 139. Mita: 148, 170. Takeda and Kyōgoku, 102. Sadayoshi Fukuda and Hiroshi Okamoto, Gendai Tarentorojī (Tokyo: Seifu Daigaku Shuppan, 1966), 2. Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

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73. Munesuke Mita, Social Psychology of Modern Japan, trans. Stephen Suloway (London and New York: Kegan Paul International; distributed by Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1992), 426–458. 74. Fukuda and Okamoto, 4. 75. Muramatsu, 126–127. 76. “Terebi Nangoku Tosa Dayori (Television in the South—News from Tosa),” 34.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 1. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shibukawa Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, June 1961, 36. 2. Akira Fujitake, Terebi Media No Shakairyoku (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1985), 196. 3. For an excellent example of a book that focuses on specific programs, look at Jonathan Clements and Motoko Tamamuro, The Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese TV Drama since 1953 (Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2003). 4. Robert John Smith and Ella Lury Wiswell, The Women of Suyemura (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 15. 5. Jeffrey E. Hanes, “From Megalopolis to Megaroporisu,” Journal of Urban History 19, no. 2 (1993): 56–94. 6. David Henry Kornhauser, Japan, Geographical Background to UrbanIndustrial Development, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Longman, 1982), 276- 277. 1975 Population Census Summary, quoted in Chauncy D. Harris, “The Urban and Industrial Transformation of Japan,” Geographical Review 72, no. 1 (1982): 52. 7. Harris: 51–4, Kornhauser, 279. 8. Kornhauser, 280. 9. From 1920 to 1935, there was a net migration of 1.7 million people to Tokyo prefecture. From 1950 to 1965, there was a net migration of 3 million people. However, during 1965 to 1980, as Tokyo filled up, there was an out-migration of residents from Tokyo to the adjacent suburbs in the adjacent prefectures. This did not mean the depopulation of Tokyo prefecture, but rather that Tokyo workers had begun to live farther away and commute to work in Tokyo. Harris: 68—73. 10. Shunya Yoshimi, Toshi No Doramaturugī: Tokyo Sakariba No Shakaishi, Shohan. ed. (Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1987). 11. Simon Partner, “Brightening Country Lives: Selling Electrical Goods in the Japanese Countryside, 1950–1970,” Enterprise and Society 1 (December 2000), Shunya Yoshimi, “‘Made in Japan’: The Cultural Politics of ‘Home Electrification’ in Postwar Japan,” Media, Culture, & Society 21 (1999): 149–171. 12. Tessa Carroll, From Script to Speech: Language Policy in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (Oxford: Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, 1997), 27, Takehiro Shioda, “Television and Dialects: Viewers’ Feelings About Dialect in

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13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Notes to Chapter Five Broadcasts,” Broadcasting Culture and Research (No. 11, 2000) [Internet] (accessed November 30 2003); available from http://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/ bcri-fr/h11-r1.html. These days, the less Tokyo-biased word kyōtsūgo meaning “common language” is often used in place of hyōjungo. Setsuko Suesugi, “Osaka Ben Būmu (The Osaka Dialect Boom),” Shisō no Kagaku 27 (1961): 54. David Riesman and Evelyn Thompson Riesman, Conversations in Japan: Modernization, Politics, and Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1967), 72. Suesugi: 54–57. Yoshirō Kunimoto, “Deserted Mountain Villages of Japan,” Japan Quarterly 20, no. 1 (1973): 89–90. Thomas R. H. Havens, Farm and Nation in Modern Japan: Agrarian Nationalism, 1870–1940 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974). UNESCO, Rural Television in Japan; a Report on an Experiment in Adult Education (Paris: UNESCO, 1960). Ibid., 36, 108. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” Hōsōgaku kenkyû (Studies of Broadcasting) 8 (1964). UNESCO, 32. Mitsuru Suematsu, “Masumedia No Atarashii Kao (New Face of the Mass Media),” Hōsō Asahi, September 1960, 13. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Gunma Ken, Tone Gun, Nīharu Mura,” Chōsa Jōhō, July 1960, 52. For those unfamiliar with the postal system, the government encouraged Japanese to deposit their savings in postal savings accounts. The government could then lend money from these accounts at long-term, low-interest rates to select businesses, thus furthering their goals of industrial development of key industries and technologies. For more information, see Chalmers A. Johnson, Miti and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982). “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Tochigi Ken, Shiotani Gun, Kuriyama Mura,” Chōsa Jōhō, August 1960, 31. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Chōshi Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, March 1961, 35. Ibid. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Kiryū-Ashio,” Chōsa Jōhō, August 1960, 50. “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” Chijō, October 1959, 90. ““Shineria O Iku: Itō Hantō,” Chōsa Jōhō, April 1960, 29. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Kiryū-Ashio,” 52. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Fujiyoshida Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, January 1961, 30. UNESCO, 168. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Ōtawara Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, February 1961, 43.

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34. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Gunma Ken, Mihara,” Chōsa Jōhō, June 1960, 27, “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Itako,” Chōsa Jōhō, July 1961, 41, “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Tochigi Ken, Shiotani Gun, Kuriyama Mura,” 33. 35. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Ōshima, Hachijōjima,” Chōsa Jōhō, September 1960, 46, “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shimodate Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, May 1961, 42. 36. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Tochigi Ken, Shiotani Gun, Kuriyama Mura,” 30. 37. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Itako,” 40–41. 38. Around 60% chose entertainment programs as the type they liked the most. UNESCO, 58, 170. 39. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Ōtawara Shi,” 44. 40. “Erianai No Nōson,” Chōsa Jōhō, May 1961, 33, 36. Granted, television was but one of the many carriers of this national consumer culture. Print media, like weekly magazines, still had a large readership, and taught urban trends to rural residents, who had rising incomes to engage in spending. As mentioned, institutions like schools and workplaces also played major role in standardizing culture throughout Japan. 41. “Shineria O Iku: Itō Hantō,” 30. 42. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Gunma Ken, Tone Gun, Nīharu Mura,” 50. 43. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Jōshū Tomioka,” Chōsa Johô, April 1961, 30. 44. “Erianai No Nōson,” 37. 45. Ibid., 32–33. 46. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shibukawa Shi,” 35. 47. Ibid., 35–36. 48. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Ōtawara Shi,” 45–46. 49. David W. Plath, The After Hours: Modern Japan and the Search for Enjoyment, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 41–47. 50. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Fukushima Ken, Kitakata-Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, November 1960, 30–32. 51. Robert John Smith, Kurusu: The Price of Progress in a Japanese Village, 1951–1975 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1978), 36. 52. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Fujiyoshida Shi,” 31. 53. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Itako,” 39. 54. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Fujiyoshida Shi,” 30, 32. 55. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Fukushima Ken, Kitakata-Shi,” 30–33. 56. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shibukawa Shi,” 36. 57. Ibid., 37. 58. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Chōshi Shi,” 37. 59. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Kiryū-Ashio,” 51–52. 60. “Erianai No Nōson,” 38. 61. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Ōtawara Shi,” 46. 62. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shibukawa Shi,” 36. 63. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Jōshū Tomioka,” 30. 64. Smith and Wiswell, The Women of Suyemura, 73–281. 65. “Erianai No Nōson,” 37.

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66. Ronald Philip Dore, Shinohata, a Portrait of a Japanese Village, 1st American ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 209, 221. 67. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Gunma Ken, Mihara,” 27. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Gunma Ken, Tone Gun, Nīharu Mura,” 51. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Tochigi Ken, Shiotani Gun, Kuriyama Mura,” 33. 68. Smith, Kurusu: The Price of Progress in a Japanese Village, 1951–1975, 130. 69. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shibukawa Shi,” 36. 70. “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” 91. 71. Mitsuru Shinpo, Three Decades in Shiwa: Economic Development and Social Change in a Japanese Farming Community (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1976), 93–95. 72. “Erianai No Nōson,” 37. 73. UNESCO, 138. 74. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shimodate Shi,” 46. 75. “Erianai No Nōson,” 38. 76. Kunimoto: 87. Kazuyuki Hibino, “Tokyo: The Overpopulated Megalopolis,” Japan Quarterly 20 (1973): 208. 77. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Itako,” 40. 78. Minpei Sugiura, “Niwatori to Kiuri to Terebi To,” TBS Chōsa Jōhō, August 1966, 8. 79. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Ōtawara Shi,” 46. 80. Ibid. “Futari Dake No Ginza,” in Shichinin no Keiji (Japan: TBS, 1967). 81. Dore, 75–76. 82. UNESCO, 144. 83. “Shineria O Iku: Mihara,” Chōsa Jōhō, June 1960, 30. 84. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Kiryū-Ashio,” 52. 85. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Itako,” 41. 86. Shinpo, 94. 87. “Erianai No Nōson,” 38.

NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX 1. “Puroresu De Shokkushi? (Death from Shock by Pro Wrestling?),” Asahi Shimbun, 28 April 1962, E7. 2. Naoya Uchimura, “Kōkyū to Goraku Ni Tesshita Bangumi O (Make Allout High Class Along with All-out Entertaining Programs),” Mainichi Shimbun, 11 September 1963, E3. 3. The Broadcast Law, [Internet] (2003, accessed 9 October); available from http://www.soumu.go.jp/joho_tsusin/eng/Resources/Legislation/BroadcastLaw/BroadcastLaw.pdf. 4. James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941, 2nd ed., The American Moment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 93–94. 5. Kanji Hatano, “Terebi O Sodatteyō,” Mainichi Shimbun, 4 Feb 1953, E2.

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6. Michiko Kawanami Hiramatsu, “Post-War Radio and Television in Japan” (Thesis for Master of Arts, Stanford University, March 1960), 106. 7. Kaichi Iwasaki, “‘Terebi Kekkonshiki’ No Ni-Nenkan (Two Years of “Television Wedding”),” CBC Report, February 1959, 39, Yasuhiro Iyoda, ed., Terebishi Handbook (Tokyo: Jiyūkokuminsha, 1998), 27. 8. Sakurai Testuo has written about some of this TV controversy, giving historians a valuable tool in reconstructing the debate. Tetsuo Sakurai, TV Mahō No Media (Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho, 1994), 97–141. 9. John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 30, 323. One should note that the term “hakuchi” has fallen out of popular usage and is considered derogatory by some Japanese. 10. Hiroyoshi Ishikawa, ed., Taishū Bunka Jiten (Encyclopedia of Popular Culture), Shohan. ed. (Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1991), 97. 11. “Engeki Eiga Terevi (Sic): Goraku (Entertainment: Theater, Movies, Television),” Maru, 25 January 1951, 85. 12. Ano Kotoba: Sengo 50-Nen, 30nendai Ichiokusōhakuchika, [Internet] (2003, accessed 20 February 2004); available from http://www.yomiuri. co.jp/yomidas/konojune/aw/awr0418.htm. 13. “Ntv No Hōsō Kotowaru,” Tokyo Shimbun, 5 November 1956, M7. 14. Sōichi Ōya, “Hōshasen,” Tokyo Shimbun, 21 January 1957. 15. Nobuō Shiga, “Shiryō: Nippon Teizokubangumi Ronsōshi (the History of the Debate over Japanese Vulgar Programs),” YTV Report, September 1972, 113. 16. “TV Should Rethink Its Functions,” Yomiuri Shimbun, [Internet newspaper] (4 December 2002, accessed 28 November 2003); available from http://www. yomiuri.co.jp/education/editorial/ed012_04.htm. Shūkan Tokyo, 2 Feb 1957; quoted in Shin Sekiguchi, ed., Terebibunka (Tokyo: Gakubunsha, 1996), 1. I was unable to obtain a copy of this issue, as even Oya Soichi’s private collection does not have this magazine. 17. Shūkan Tokyo, 2 Feb 1957; quoted in Iyoda, ed., 26. 18. Sōichi Ōya, “Ichiokusōhakuchika Meimeishimatsuki,” in Ōya Sōichi Zennshu (April 1958), 342. 19. “Terebi Būmu No Rinshō Hōkoku-Jyūyon Inchi No Garasu No Sekai(a Clinical Account of the Television Boom: The World of the 14-Inch Glass),” Bungei Shunjū, July 1957, 66—72. 20. Ichirō Yamada, “Seishinbyōkanjya to Terebi (Mental Patients and Television),” CBC Report, December 1957, 16. 21. Andrew Barshay, “Postwar Social and Political Thought,” in Modern Japanese Thought, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 301. William W. Kelly, “Finding a Place in Metropolitan Japan: Ideologies, Institutions, and Everyday Life,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 195. 22. J. Fred MacDonald, One Nation under Television: The Rise and Decline of Network TV, Nelson-Hall Quality Pbk. ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1994), 55.

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23. Kato uses the Japanese phonetic “meta•komyunikeishon.’ 24. Hidetoshi Kato, “Terebi Bunmei No Tenbō,” Chūō Kōrōn (February 1958): 208–214. 25. Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, “Mass Communication and ParaSocial Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance,” Psychiatry 19 (1956): 215–229. 26. Kato: 211–215. 27. David Riesman and Evelyn Thompson Riesman, Conversations in Japan: Modernization, Politics, and Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1967).169. 28. Yamada, 16. 29. Masataka Kōsaka, A History of Postwar Japan, 1st ed. (Tokyo and Palo Alto, Calif.: Kodansha International, 1972), 235–236. “Black Cloud in Japan,” Time, 9 April 1956, 102–104.; “Learned Criminals,” Time, 8 July 1957, 34. 30. “The Rising Sun Tribe,” Time, 17 December 1956, 37. Ishihara, Time reported, said “As an author, I’ve got to sleep with my generation like a prostitute, but I’ve also got to climb out of bed occasionally and try to get one step ahead of it.” 31. Paula S. Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920’s (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 57, 290. 32. “Black Cloud in Japan,” 104, Shiga. 33. MacDonald, 130. 34. Shūkan Asahi , 17 March 1953 quoted in Hidetoshi Kato, Rokabiri No Imi Suru Mono (the Meaning of Rockabilly) [Hōsō Asahi (April 1958), Internet] (April 1958, accessed 25 February 2006); available from http:// homepage3.nifty.com/katodb/doc/text/2369.html. 35. Ibid.(accessed). 36. Nobuō Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobô, 1990), 208–211. 37. Ibid., 209.

NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN 1. Tezuka Osamu, quoted in Shigeru Nozaki, “Hitosore O Zokuaku to Yobu,” Chōsa Jōhō, September 1963, 22. 2. Shin’ichi Kamimura, Terebi to Bunka Kakumei (Television and the Culture Revolution) (Tokyo: Kagaku shinkōsha, 1952), 8–9. 3. “Terebi to Iu Kaijū (The Monster Called Television),” Shūkan Yomiuri, 30 June 1957, 10. 4. “Terebi Būmu No Rinshō Hōkoku-Jyūyon Inchi No Garasu No Sekai (a Clinical Account of the Television Boom: The World of the 14-Inch Glass),” Bungei Shunjū, July 1957, 57, “Terebi Nangoku Tosa Dayori (Television in the South—News from Tosa),” Sunday Mainichi, 28 February 1960, 33. 5. “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” Sunday Mainichi, 7 December 1958, 87–88.


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6. “TV Kyōshitsu Kara Shōgyō Terebi E Nozomu (What Those in the TV Classroom Wish for in Commercial Television),” Dentsū Geppō, January 1954, 29–30. 7. “Kodomo Wa Terebi O Dō Mi, Rajio O Dō Kīte Iru No Deshō” (How Do Kids Watch Television and Listen to the Radio?),” Hōsō Asahi, November 1960, 11. 8. “Terebi Hakuchikaron No Waseda-Keiō Sen (The Waseda-Keio Battle over Television Idiotization),” Shūkan Shinkō, 15 Feb 1957, 17. Their conclusion contained a brilliant pun on the word “hakuchi-ka,”: “We believe that the “theory of television’s idiotization” (hakuchi-ka 白痴化) is no different from the “theory of gaining specialized knowledge” (hakuchi-ka 博知化).” 9. “Kodomo to Terebi Rajio (Children and Television and Radio),” Hōsō Asahi, November 1960, 40. 10. Tetsuo Sakurai, TV Mahō No Media (Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho, 1994), 112–113. 11. Nobuō Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobô, 1990), 244–246. 12. Translation from the Asahi Evening News, June 17, 1960 in George Packard III, Protest in Tokyo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 380. 13. Nobuō Shiga, “Shiryō: Nippon Teizokubangumi Ronsōshi (The History of the Debate over Japanese Vulgar Programs),” YTV Report, September 1972, 113. 14. Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), 240–243. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 173. 15. Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), 240–244.; Sakurai, 114. 16. Jeff Kisseloff, The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920–1961 (New York: Viking, 1995), 506–507. 17. Takemura Kenichi, “Kaiju Terebijon,” Bungei Shunju (June 1962), quoted in Sakurai, 97. 18. Nozaki, 15–30. 19. Shiga, “Shiryō: Nippon Teizokubangumi Ronsōshi (the History of the Debate over Japanese Vulgar Programs),” 113. Jonathan Clements and Motoko Tamamuro, The Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese TV Drama since 1953 (Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2003), xviii. 20. “Cha No Ma Ni Maki Okotta Oiroke Nūdo No Hamon (Sexy Nudes Causing a Stir in the Living Room),” Shūkan Heibon, 19 October 1960, 87. 21. “Terebi Būmu No Rinshō Hōkoku-Jyūyon Inchi No Garasu No Sekai(a Clinical Account of the Television Boom: The World of the 14-Inch Glass),” 64. 22. “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” 86–87. 23. José María De Vera, Educational Television in Japan (Tokyo and Rutland, Vt.,: Sophia University; C. E. Tuttle Co., 1968), 54, 125.; Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 140. 24. Hiroshi Aramata, Terebi Hakubutsushi (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1997), 335, De Vera, 19–20.

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25. De Vera, 61. 26. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 141.; Aramata, 326.; “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” Chijō, October 1959, 93. 27. Nozaki, 16. 28. Sakurai, 116–117. Nozaki, 17. 29. Jishuku translates as “self-restraint” or “self-regulation” but as made clear in Norma Field’s work on the media coverage of the Showa emperor’s funeral, “self-censorship” might be a better word. Norma Field, In the Realm of a Dying Emperor (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991). 30. Nozaki, 18. 31. Sakurai, 114–115. 32. Nozaki, 19. 33. Shigeru Nozaki, “Hitosore O Zokuaku to Yobu,” Chōsa Jōhō, September 1963, 19. 34. Nozaki, 19. 35. “Kodomo Wa Terebi O Dō Mi, Rajio O Dō Kīte Iru No Deshō” (How Do Kids Watch Television and Listen to the Radio?).” 36. “Zokuaku Terebi Bangumi No Tsuihō E (toward the Elimination of Vulgar Programs),” Mainichi Shimbun, 28 November 1963, E7. 37. Naoya Uchimura, “Kōkyū to Goraku Ni Tesshita Bangumi O (Make Allout High Class Along with All-out Entertaining Programs),” Mainichi Shimbun, 11 September 1963, E3. 38. “Zokuaku Terebi Bangumi No Tsuihō E (toward the Elimination of Vulgar Programs),” E7. 39. Michiko Kawanami Hiramatsu, “Post-War Radio and Television in Japan” (Thesis for Master of Arts, Stanford University, March 1960), 108. 40. Shiga, “Shiryō: Nippon Teizokubangumi Ronsōshi (the History of the Debate over Japanese Vulgar Programs),” 115. 41. Uchimura, E3. 42. Sheldon M. Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). 43. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 177–178, 187–188. 44. Thomas R. H. Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan, 1965–1975 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 147– 150. 45. “Tōdai Ni Miru Terebi No Katsuyaku,” Asahi Journal, 20 February 1969, 54. 46. “‘Harenchi Bangumi”‘Besuto Ten (the Best Ten “Vulgar Programs.”),” Shūkan Bunshū, 22 September 1969, 42, Yasuhiro Iyoda, ed., Terebishi Handbook (Tokyo: Jiyūkokuminsha, 1998), 62, Nobuō Shiga, ed., Terebi Wo Tsukutta Hitobito (the People Who Made TV) (Tokyo: Nihon Kōgyō Shimbun, 1979), 359. 47. Shiga, ed., Terebi Wo Tsukutta Hitobito (the People Who Made TV), 338. 48. Hachi-Ji Da Yo! Zen-in Shūgō Vol 1 (Tokyo: Pony Canyon/TBS DVD). 49. Shiga, ed., Terebi Wo Tsukutta Hitobito (the People Who Made TV), 337—346. “Hachi-Ji Da Yo! Zen-in Shūgō,” Josei Jishin, 13 March 1980,

Notes to Chapter Eight

50. 51. 52.

53.

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84, Mark Schilling, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (New York: Weatherhill, 1997), 51–55. Shiga, “Shiryō: Nippon Teizokubangumi Ronsōshi (the History of the Debate over Japanese Vulgar Programs),” 115. “‘Harenchi Bangumi”‘Besuto Ten (the Best Ten “Vulgar Programs.”),” 41. Ien Ang, Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World (New York: Routledge, 1996); Jeffrey E. Hanes, “Media Culture in Taisho Osaka,” in Japan’s Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 1900–1930, ed. Sharon Minichiello (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 267–287. Uchimura, E3.

NOTES TO CHAPTER EIGHT 1. “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” Chijō, October 1959, 90. 2. Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). Katz and Dayan define media events as scripted, and the Anpo protests do not neatly fit this category. Nevertheless, they had a strangely scripted, ritualistic quality about them. The death of a single student in 1960 sufficed to turn public opinion against the Prime Minister for not “abiding by the rules” in battling the students. 3. Nagatani Kawamotoji, “Ippuku Jōtai O Nukezu,” Dentsū kōkoku ronshi, February 1955, 74–79. 4. Kenji Hasegawa, “In Search of a New Radical Left: The Rise and Fall of the Anpo Bund, 1955–1960,” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs (Spring 2003): 79. 5. Nobuō Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1990), 202. 6. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” Hōsōgaku kenkyu¯ (Studies of Broadcasting) 8 (1964): 37. 7. Takashi Fujitani, “Electronic Pageantry and Japan’s ‘Symbolic Emperor,’” Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 4 (1992): 825. 8. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu (Characteristics of the Spread of Broadcasting in Japan),” 34–45. 9. “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” 89. 10. The phrase in question read「皇太子の御成婚パレードをテレビで見よう！」 Shiga, 223.; “Terebi No Tameiki (The Sighs of Television),” Sunday Mainichi, 15 May 1959, 4. 11. Asahi Shinbun (April 2, 1959) quoted in “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu Pt. 2 (Characteristics of the Spread of Television in Japan, Part 2),” Hōsōgaku kenkyū 9 (1964): 163. 12. Kei’ichi Matsushita, “Taishū Tennōseiron,” Chūō Kōron (April 1959): 36.

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13. Takeshi Ishida, “Popular Attitudes toward the Japanese Emperor,” Asian Survey 11, no. 2 (April 1962): 35. 14. For example, the Imperial Household Agency originally wanted to ban television cameras filming inside Kashikodokoro Shrine, site of the wedding, but allowed two cameras only after intense negotiations. Shiga, 215. 15. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 1st ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 619–645. 16. News accounts and editorials commonly stressed Michiko’s potential as a bridge between the throne and the people. See Jayson Chun, “A New Kind of Royalty: The Imperial Family and the Media in Postwar Japan,” in Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Timothy J. Craig (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), 222–244. 17. Shiga, 215. 18. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Jōshū Tomioka,” Chōsa Johô, April 1961, 31. 19. Shunya Yoshimi, “The Cultural Politics of the Mass-Mediated Emperor System in Japan,” in Dialogue with Cultural Studies (Tokyo, Japan: 1996), 1–19.; Robert Trumbull, “Festive Air Transforms Tokyo as Marriage of Akihito Nears,” New York Times, 6 April 1959.; Shiga, 219. 20. “Heimin Purinsesu,” Shisō no Kagaku (January 1959): 2. The quote reads, “Otoko wa dame da. Onna nara dare demo kougo ni nareru.” 21. Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, “Mass Communication and ParaSocial Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance,” Psychiatry 19 (1956): 216. 22. “The Prince Takes a Bride,” Time, 20 April 1959, 36. Charlie May Simon, The Sun and the Birch: The Story of Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1960), 184–185. 23. “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” 89. 24. Akira Takahashi, “Terebi to Kodokuna Gunshū (TV and the Lonely Crowd),” CBC Report, June 1959, 5–8. 25. “Terebi No Tameiki (The Sighs of Television),” 4. 26. Takahashi, 4.; Shiga, 215. 27. George Gerbner and others, “The ‘Mainstreaming’ of America: Violence Profile No. 11,” Journal of Communication 30, no. 3 (Summer 1980): 25. 28. Takahashi, 6–7. 29. Takahashi’s conclusion reads: In conclusion, the live television broadcast that day promoted the union of the “feelings toward emperor system” for the institutions of the past, which have been stored up within people, with the feelings toward the crown prince, whose human appeal has been doubled through marriage to Michiko. Ibid., 12. 30. The marriage of Owada Masako, another commoner to Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993 also attracted intense media coverage. 31. “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” 92. 32. Masanori Nakamura, The Japanese Monarchy: Ambassador Joseph Grew and the Making of The “Symbol Emperor System,” 1931–1991, trans. Herbert P. Bix (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 125–127.


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33. “Heimin Purinsesu,” 3. 34. Shaw and Martin point out that public issues compete for limited numbers of possible public attention slots. Donald Shaw and Shannon Martin, “The Function of Mass Media Agenda Setting,” Journalism Quarterly 69 (1992): 902–920. 35. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Shimodate Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, May 1961, 43. 36. Shiga, 225. 37. “Terebimura Wa Seikatsu Ihen (Unusual Lifestyles in the Television Village),” 92. 38. George Packard III, Protest in Tokyo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 279. 39. Shūkan Bunshū (20 June 1960) quoted in Tokyo Daigaku Shimbun (July 11, 1960), 43. 40. “Nihon Ni Okeru Terebi Fukyū No Tokushitsu Pt. 2 (Characteristics of the Spread of Television in Japan, Part 2),” 169. 41. Midori Watanabe, Gendai Terebi Hōsō Bunkaron (Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1997), 16–17. 42. “Kodomo to Terebi Rajio (Children and Television and Radio),” Hōsō Asahi, November 1960, 40. Asahi Shinbun (23 June 1960) quoted in Tokyo Daigaku Shimbun, 11 July 1960, 40. 43. “Kizutsukeau Nihon No Musukotachi,” Tokyo Daigaku Shimbun, 15 June 1960, 8. 44. Packard III, 279. 45. Sakuichi Nakagawa and Masaki Takizawa, “Seijikiken No Ikkagetsu to Denpa Hōdō,” CBC Report, August 1960, 4. 46. “Dokusha Wa Uttaeru (the Readers Speak),” Tokyo Daigaku Shimbun, 29 June 1960, 2. 47. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Fujiyoshida Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, January 1961, 30. 48. Takeo Takagi, “Seiji Kanshin to Terebi (Television and Interest in Politics),” Hōsō Asahi, September 1969, 15–16. 49. Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun : A Modern History, Updated ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 349.; Nagisa Ōshima, Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (Cruel Story of Youth) (New York, N.Y.: New Yorker Video,), Film. 50. “Nyūsu to Ukete No Yokan,” Hōsō Asahi, September 1960, 43. 51. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Tochigi Ken, Shiotani Gun, Kuriyama Mura,” Chōsa Jōhō, August 1960, 33. 52. Hisaya Morishige, “Gakusei No Enerugī E No Kitai (Expectations About the Energy of the Students),” Fujin Kōron, August 1960, 83. 53. Ibid., 84. 54. “Nōson Wa Dō Ugokuka? (How Do the Farming Villages Move?),” Fujin Kōron, September 1960, 66. 55. “Waga Machi Waga Mura: Fukushima Ken, Kitakata-Shi,” Chōsa Jōhō, November 1960, 30–31. 56. “Terebi Wa Anata No Seikatsu O Kaeruka? (Will Television Change Your Life?),” Sunday Mainichi, 7 December 1958, 91.

330

Notes to Chapter Nine

57. “Nōson Wa Dō Ugokuka? (How Do the Farming Villages Move?),” 66. 58. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 182. 59. Akira Fujitake, “Tokyo Olympics and the Japanese Public,” Studies of Broadcasting (March 1967): 93. 60. Ibid.: 105, 109. 61. Ibid.: 91–93. 62. “TV Orinpikku Sō Kessan,” CBC Report, December 1964, 26.

NOTES TO CHAPTER NINE 1. Oda Makoto, quoted in Ellis S. Krauss, Japanese Radicals Revisited: Student Protest in Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). 2. Kazuko Tsurumi, “Student Movements in 1960 and 1969,” in Postwar Trends in Japan: Studies in Commemoration of Rev. Aloysius Miller, S. J, ed. Aloysius Miller, Shun’ichi Takayanagi, and Kimitada Miwa (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1975), 222. 3. Thomas R. H. Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan, 1965–1975 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), 206–208.; Ellis S. Krauss, Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000). 4. Fukashiro Junro, “The New Left,” Japan Quarterly (January–March 1970): 32. 5. Toyomasa Fuse, “Student Radicalism in Japan: A ‘Cultural Revolution’?,” Comparative Education Review (October 1969): 325–330. 6. Andrew Barshay, “Postwar Social and Political Thought,” in Modern Japanese Thought, ed. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 345–346. 7. Tsurumi, 207–210. 8. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 195. 9. For a description of the ratings in the Kantō area look at “Shichōsha Kara Mita Yasuda Kōdō Kōbōsen (the Yasuda Auditorium Battle from the View of Ratings),” Chōsa Jōhō, March 1969, 34–35. 10. “Opinion,” TBS Chōsa Jôho, March 1969, 70. 11. Tsurumi, 219. 12. Atsuyuki Sassa, Tōdai Rakujō (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1993), 214. 13. “Bichōsei,” TBS Chōsa Jōhō, March 1969, 3. 14. “‘Chiteki Radikarizumu E No Sōsaku’ Ni Yosete,” Chūō Kōron (April 1969): 37.; quoted and translated in Obata Misao, “In the Magazines,” Japan Quarterly (July-Sept 1969): 349–350. 15. “Opinion,” 70. 16. “Bichōsei,” 3. 17. Havens, 198. 18. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 209. 19. Hiroshi Hamota, “Asama-Sanso: The Crisis That Changed TV Journalism,” in Asahi Shimbun (English edition)-Internet (Tokyo: 2003).

Notes to Chapter Ten

331

20. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 209. 21. “Akumu No Yōna Ichinichi (a Day That Was Like a Nightmare),” Asahi Shimbun, 29 February 1972, 23. 22. “Tsuini Saiaku Jitai (Eventually the Worst Case Scenario),” Yomiuri Shimbun, 28 February 1972, E8. 23. “Plaza,” Chōsa Jōhō, April 1972, 2. 24. “Akumu No Yōna Ichinichi (a Day That Was Like a Nightmare),” 23. 25. Aoki Sadanobu, “Terebi-Jack No Hannin Wa Dareka? (Who Is the Criminal in Television-Jacking?),” YTV Report, September 1972, 9. 26. “Plaza,” 3. 27. “Kowai Terebi Chūkei (Frightening Television Broadcast),” Yomiuri Shimbun, 28 February 1972, E4. 28. Sadanobu, 7–8. 29. Shin’ichi Itō, “Kadai Hodō E No Gimon (Doubts About Excessive Coverage),” Masukomi Bunka, May 1972, 20. 30. “Tsuini Saiaku Jitai (Eventually the Worst Case Scenario),” E8. The Five Principles he refers to was contained in the Shanghai Communiqué of February 28, 1972, which was overshadowed by Asama-sansō. 31. Sadanobu, 7. 32. Itō, 20.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TEN 1. Robert Fuller, (2005). 2. “Raramî Kara Kita Otoko (the Man from Laramie),” Shūkan Asahi, 5 May 1961, 102. 3. Akira Fujitake, Terebi to No Taiwa (Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1974), 52. 4. Joseph Jay Tobin, “Introduction: Domesticating the West,” in Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, ed. Joseph Jay Tobin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 4. 5. Jeffrey E. Hanes, “Taishū Bunka/Ka’i Bunka: Senkanki No Nihon No Toshi Ni Okeru Kindai Seikatsu” (Mass Culture/Popular Culture: Modern Life in Intewar Japan). ,” in Toshi No Kūkan/Toshi No Shintai (Urban Space/ Urban Body), ed. Yoshimi Shunya (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1996), Shunsuke Tsurumi, A Cultural History of Postwar Japan: 1945–1980 (New York: KPI, 1987), 67. 6. Nihon Hoso Shi, 1:395, cited in Gregory James Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 260.; E. Taylor Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 127–163. 7. Carmen Johnson, “Women’s Rightful Equality: An Objective of Shikoku Military Government Region,” in The Occupation of Japan—the Grass Roots : The Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium., ed. William F. Nimmo (Norfolk, Va.: The Foundation, 1992), 12. 8. Kenichi Adachi, “The Image of America in Contemporary Japanese Fiction,” in Japanese Popular Culture; Studies in Mass Communication and

332

Notes to Chapter Ten

9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

Cultural Change Made at the Institute of Science of Thought, Japan, ed. Shisō no Kagaku Kenkyūkai and Hidetoshi Kato (Tokyo, Rutland, Vt.: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1959), 47–48. Hiroshi Minami, “A Survey of Postwar Japanese Movies,” in Japanese Popular Culture; Studies in Mass Communication and Cultural Change Made at the Institute of Science of Thought, Japan, ed. Shisô no Kagaku Kenkyûkai and Hidetoshi Kato (Tokyo, Rutland, Vt.: C. E. Tuttle Co., 1959), 129–130. Richard Lawrence-Grace Deverall, The Great Seduction; Red China’s Drive to Bring Free Japan Behind the Iron Curtain (Tokyo: Printed by International Literature Print. Co., 1953), 91. Ibid., iii. Don Adams, “Rebirth of Moral Education in Japan,” Comparative Education Review (June 1960): 64. For brief examples of the love-hate relationship with America in TV culture throughout the world, look at J. Fred MacDonald, One Nation under Television: The Rise and Decline of Network TV, Nelson-Hall (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1994), 174–179. Dick Beyer (a.k.a. The Destroyer), Honolulu: 2005. Naoaki Inui, Gaikoku Terebi Firumu Seisuishi (Rise and Fall of Foreign TV Films) (Tokyo: Shôbunsha, 1990), 54.; Kazuo Kawatake, ed., Terebi No Naka No Gaikoku Bunka (Foreign Culture in Television) (Tokyo: Nihon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1983), 26–28. Inui, 57. Shigeru Shiozawa, Hōsō O Tsukutta Hitotachi (Tokyo: Orion, 1967), 189. Furthermore, 660 of the 763 prime-time network series scheduled between 1950–1964 were cancelled and 42 of these survivors were on the air for less than four months. MacDonald, 120. “Rasshī Ni Nanaman-Nin No Mōshikomi,” Chōsa Jōhō, May 1960, 10. MacDonald, 106–129. Wilson P. Dizard, “American Television’s Foreign Markets,” Television Quarterly 3, no. 3 (Summer 1964): 62. Shiozawa, 189–190. Dizard: 58, 63, Kawatake, ed., 29. “Nihon O Ōu Seibugeki (the Westerns That Are Carrying Japan),” Shūkan Asahi, 12 May 1961, 19. Notoji, in Shunya Yoshimi, “Consuming ‘America’: From Symbol to System,” in Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities, ed. Beng Huat Chua (New York: Routledge, 2000), 207. Masaji Mizuno, ed., Terebi No Kōzai (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobō, 1958), 29–33. “Nihon O Ōu Seibugeki (the Westerns That Are Carrying Japan),” 12. “Howdy! Pardner-San,” New York Times, 3 May 1952, 79. “Waga Ie Wa Raramī-Bokujō De Gokigensa,” Television Age, April 1961, 29.; Fuller. As a historian, I felt very skeptical of reports of his popularity until Mr. Fuller sent me a videorecording of his visit and the enormous crowds that he encountered. “Raramî Kara Kita Otoko (the Man from Laramie),” 102.

Notes to Chapter Eleven

333

31. “Waga Ie Wa Raramī-Bokujō De Gokigensa,” 27. 32. “Raramî Kara Kita Otoko (the Man from Laramie),” 105. 33. NHK Hōsō Bunka Kenkyūjo, ed., The History of Broadcasting in Japan (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, 1967), 326. 34. “Waga Ie Wa Raramī-Bokujō De Gokigensa,” 30–31. 35. Please note that the use of the word “I beg you” (onegai shimasu) three times is imitating Yodogawa’s speaking style of repeating “sayonara” several times. 36. “Raramî Kara Kita Otoko (the Man from Laramie),” 105. 37. Fuller. 38. Akira Shimizu, “Jess Monogatari,” Television Age, June 1961, 23–27. 39. “Waga Ie Wa Raramī-Bokujō De Gokigensa,” 27. 40. Ibid., 29. 41. Fuller. 42. “Raramî Kara Kita Otoko (the Man from Laramie),” 105. 43. “Jess No Ningenmi,” Television Age, June 1961, 29–30. 44. “Waga Ie Wa Raramī-Bokujō De Gokigensa,” 28. 45. “Bobu to Wa Konna Hito Deshita,” Television Age, June 1961, 41. 46. Fuller. 47. “Holiday in Japan,” Television Age, June 1961, 42. 48. “Raramî Kara Kita Otoko (the Man from Laramie),” 104. Fuller told me that this report was true, as he did hear that the imperial crown prince and princess were good people. 49. “Bobu to Wa Konna Hito Deshita,” 41. 50. “Jess No Ningenmi,” 31. 51. Fuller. 52. “Waga Ie Wa Raramī-Bokujō De Gokigensa,” 31. 53. “Raramī Kara Kita Otoko: Jesu Nihon Hōmon Kinkyū Tokushū,” Television Age, May 1961, 32. 54. Nagaharu Yodogawa, “Seibukoborebanashi Itomakuri,” Television Age, April 1961, 14. 55. Ibid., 13–14. 56. Robert A. Scalapino and Junnosuke Masumi, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 139–140. Scalapino and Masumi did notice that no physical violence accompanied this incident or any incident until that point. Also, the crowds were not necessarily anti-American. Americans mingled freely in the crowds and a holiday mood seemed to prevail. 57. “Raramī Kara Kita Otoko: Jesu Nihon Hōmon Kinkyū Tokushū,” 31–32.It is interesting to note that in the beginning of the article, the actor is referred to as “Robert Fuller” but becomes “Jess” by the end. 58. “Holiday in Japan,” 44.

NOTES TO CHAPTER ELEVEN 1. Naoaki Inui, Gaikoku Terebi Firumu Seisuishi (Rise and Fall of Foreign TV Films) (Tokyo: Shôbunsha, 1990), 118–134.; Jonathan Clements and

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2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

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335

23. Taihei Imamura, “Nihon No Manga Eiga (Japanese Animated Films),” Chuô Kōron, December 1958, 239–241. 24. “Zadankai: Anime to Anime Buumu Wo Kataru (Roundtable: Speaking About Anime and the Anime Boom),” YTV Report, July 1970, 28. 25. Yasuhiro Iyoda, ed., Terebishi Handbook (Tokyo: Jiyūkokuminsha, 1998), 44–45, Mark Schilling, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (New York: Weatherhill, 1997), 266. 26. Osamu Tezuka, “Nakigoto,” CBC Report, June 1963. 27. Tatsumi Nakajima, “Terebi Manga to No Taiwa,” Gekkan nihon terebi 97 1967, 20. 28. “Yomu Manga Kara Miru Manga E (from Reading Comics to Watching Comics),” YTV Report, June 1968, 76–80. 29. Dave Kehr, “Anime, Japanese Cinema’s Second Golden Age,” New York Times, 20 January 2002. 30. “Zadankai: Anime to Anime Buumu Wo Kataru (Roundtable: Speaking About Anime and the Anime Boom),” 27. 31. Kawatake, ed., 111–114. 32. Arnold, (accessed). 33. Tezuka, 15. 34. “Ashita No Terebi Manga,” Gekkan Nihon Terebi 1967, 22–23. 35. “Yomu Manga Kara Miru Manga E (from Reading Comics to Watching Comics),” 82–83. 36. Nikki White, Selected Comments from the Australian Press on the Samurai [Internet] (4 Jan 2006, accessed 01 Feb 2006); available from http://www. home.netspeed.com.au/reguli/sampress.htm, Nikki White, The Samurai (Onmitsu Kenshi) [Internet] (4 Jan 2006, accessed 01 Feb 2006); available from http://www.home.netspeed.com.au/reguli/THE%20SAMURAI.htm. 37. Kawatake, ed., 128,; Joanne Ninomiya, “Personal Communication,” (Honolulu: 2006). 38. Ninomiya. 39. Karen Horton, “Kikaider Sweeps the Islands,” Sunday Star-Bulletin and Advertiser, 5 Jan 1975. 40. Ibid, Phil Mayer, “New TV Heroes Conquer Monsters, Ratings,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 6 September 1974, 3, Derek Paiva, “‘Kikaida” Superheroes Take on Next Generation,” Honolulu Advertiser, 12 April 2002. 41. Horton. 42. Nadine W. Scott, “Symbolism Seen in TV Hits,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 14 September 1974, A6. 43. Arnold, (accessed), Susan J. Napier, Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 249–256. 44. John Lie, Multiethnic Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 53–82. 45. James Cary, “Isle-Born Blonde Spoofs U.S., Japanese Manners,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 24 June 1958, 18, “New Career for Linda: She’ll Study Psychology,” Honolulu Advertiser, 17 June 1965. Ms. Beech later retired to a secluded valley in Hawai’i Island, and became one of the subjects of the documentary Home Movie.

336

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46. Dick Beyer (a.k.a. The Destroyer), The Destroyer Story [Internet website] (2003, accessed 23 February 2006); available from http://www.thedestroyer.com/story.htm. 47. Dick Beyer (a.k.a. The Destroyer), (Honolulu: 2005). 48. Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez, The Japanese Version (New York: The Center for New American Media), Videorecording. 49. Shigemi Sato, Widow of Japan’s Pro-Wrestling King Denies His North Korean Propaganda Image [Taipei Times (21 July 2003)—Internet] (2003, accessed 23 February 2006); available from http://www.taipeitimes.com/ News/feat/archives/2003/07/21/2003060358.

NOTES TO THE EPILOGUE 1. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, Broadcasting in Japan: The Twentieth Century Journey from Radio to Multimedia (Tokyo: NHK, 2002), 214. 2. Tadao Miyamoto, “Rumor and the Swells of Social Unrest,” Japan Interpreter (Spring 1974): 66–67. 3. Laura Hein, “Growth Versus Success: Japan’s Economic Policy in Historical Perspective,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 115–118. 4. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 205–206. 5. Nobuō Shiga, Shōwa Terebi Hōsō Shi (History of TV Broadcasting in the Shōwa Era), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobô, 1990), 331–332. 6. Kiyomi Nakano, “Basu No Tsugi Ni Terebi Ga Kita (after the Bus Comes Television),” Chōsa Jōhō, August 1966, 10. 7. Jun Yoshida, “Development of Television and Changes in TV Viewing Habits in Japan,” Studies of Broadcasting (1986): 151. 8. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 228. 9. Nakano, 10. 10. Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 38–39. 11. V. Dixon Morris, “Idioms of Contemporary Japan Iii,” Japan Interpreter (Summer-Autumn 1972): 388–389. 12. Miyamoto: 66–67. 13. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 218. 14. Ibid., 232–233. 15. Yoshida: 146–150. 16. Yasuko Muramatsu, “The Views of the Japanese Youth toward Television,” Radio and Television Culture Research Institute (1974). 17. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 221–222. 18. Norma Field, In the Realm of a Dying Emperor (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991), Takashi Fujitani, “Electronic Pageantry and Japan’s ‘Symbolic Emperor,’” Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 4 (1992). 19. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 280. 20. Ellis S. Krauss, Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000). 21. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 234.

Notes to the Epilogue

337

22. Ibid., 235–236.; Douglas McGray, Japan’s Gross National Cool [Foreign Policy—Internet] (May/June 2002, accessed 11 November 2003); available from http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_mayjune_2002/mcgray.html. 23. Pure Love: Tear-Jerking Love Storeis Enthrall Japanese Women, [Web page] (14 October 2004, accessed 2005 15 December); available from http://webjapan.org/trends/arts/art041014.html. 24. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, 237–238. 25. Tetsuo Makita, How Do Japanese Spend Their Time on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day [NHK Broadcasting and Culture Research—Internet] (New Year, 1999, accessed 15 January 2004.); available from http://www. nhk.or.jp/bunken/BCRI-fr/h07-r1.html. 26. Shunsuke Tsurumi, A Cultural History of Postwar Japan: 1945–1980 (New York: KPI, 1987), 66. 27. The Japanese Dream: Foreign Fighters Earn Fame and Fortune in Japan, (Web Japan, 16 February 2004, accessed 1 January 2006); available from http://web-japan.org/trends/sports/spo040216.html. 28. Tetsuro Morimoto, “Orwellian Landscapes,” Japan Quarterly 30, no. 3 (1983): 279–280. 29. Yoshida: 148. 30. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking, 1985), vii-viii. 31. Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1994), 51–52. 32. Dick Hebdige, Subculture, the Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979).; John H. Boyle, “Idioms of Contemporary Japan I,” Japan Interpreter (Winter 1971): 53–54, Stuart J. Dowsey, Zengakuren: Japan’s Revolutionary Students (Berkeley, Calif.: Ishi Press, 1970), Shigeharu Sakurai, “Gakusei Kotoba,” Hōsō Asahi, May 1970. 33. Jianying Zha, China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture (New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 1995). 34. Field, 269. 35. Masataka Kōsaka, A History of Postwar Japan, 1st ed. (Tokyo and Palo Alto, Calif.: Kodansha International, 1972), 149. 36. Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996) looks at the problems caused by reliance on high-speed growth and consumerism.

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Index

A Anime (Japanese animation), 42, 267, 273– 80, 283–99 Exports to world 278–80 Hakujaden 274–5 Obake no Q-taro 280 Anpo (U.S.–Japan Security Treaty) protests (1960), 75, 110, 183–4, 196, 215–23, 226, 228 TV coverage of 216–220 Rural interest in 220–1, 222–3 Anpo (U.S.–Japan Security Treaty) protests (1970), 227–8, 235 Anti television violence movement, 182–6 Apollo lunar landing, 271–3 Asama-sansō hostage incident, 8, 113, 236–40 Astro Boy, see Tetsuwan Atomu.

Commercials, 66, 88–9, 90–1, 188, 189, 207, 238, 244, 249, 284, 294 Committee for Measures against the Mass Media, 191 Consumerism, 4, 9, 45, 57, 75, 80, 85 advertising 80–91 Criticism of 100, 251–1, 305 Children and 180–1 Postwar Japan and 41–3 Prewar Japan and 19–21 Rural areas 122–3, 134, 145, 147, 153

D Dentsū, 86–91, 180–1, 204, 295 Destroyer, The, xi, 115, 247, 284–5, 307–308. Disney, 242, 251, 268–9, 274–8

B

E

Beech, Linda, 284, 333 (notes) Beyer, Dick, see Destroyer, The. Broadcast Law, 44, 158–9, 187–8

Emperor system Prewar era 17–21, 161 Postwar era 36–7. 40, 80, 100 and Radio 23, 33 and Robert Fuller 253, 260–1 and Television 205, 208, 213, 298

C Children, television effects on, 48, 50–1, 59, 77, 94–5, 171, 178–80, 182–3, 192–3, 198 “Adultized children” 174–6 Imitating TV programs 197, 213, 217 Rural children and television 121, 140, 144, 145–6, 149, 155 Views towards TV 181–2 Combat (television program), 270–1 Commercial educational television, 187–190

F Fujitake Akira, 122–3, 224–5 Fuller, Robert, xi, 114, 241–2, 252–265, 271, 282, 285, 299, 333.

G Gaito terebi (plaza televisions) 61–3, 65, 66–9, 106, 159, 204 Gesture, 58

353

354 H

Index

Kamimura Shin’ichi, 47–9, 50, 178 Kato Hidetoshi, 42, 84, 104, 160, 307, 308 on rockabilly 174–5. on the “Television Age” 168–171 Visual literacy 170–1 Kelly, William, 9, 167 Kikaida (television program), 117, 280–3, 286 KIKU TV, 281–2 “Kimi no na wa?” (What is Your Name?), 44–5 Konto gojyūgo-go no urabangumi o buttobase! (Konto 55’s down with other programs!), 197 Korea, North, 286–7 Korea, South, 278, 299 Kyōgoku Junichi, 96

NEC Concert Hall, 89 NET (Nippon Kyōiku Terebi), 181, 187–90, 217, 241, 253, 281, 296 NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) And intellectuals 172 And Lockheed scandal 298 Anti-violence campaign 183–5, 195–6, 267 Competition with private broadcasting 43–6, 195, 197, 204 Early battles with NTV 54–7, 91–2 Establishment of 22 Kohaku Uta Gassen (Red and White Song Festival) 300–1 Ōya Sōichi’s criticisms of 163–4 Prewar radio policy 24 Rural areas 131, 140–1 Television research 26, 29, 30 TV policies and programming 58, 61–2, 92, 208, 228, 236, 269, 296, 298–9 NHK Educational TV 187–8, 190 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, see NHK Nippon Television, see NTV NTV (Nippon Television), 3, 4, 6, 59, 59, 64, 88–9, 92, 99, 157, 162, 197, 211, 248, 277, 296 Competition with NHK 54–7 Policies and programming 56–7, 61–2 See also–NHK, early battles with NTV

L

O

Lassie, 249, 268 Liberal Democratic Party, 8, 38, 227

Maruyama Masao, 40, 102 McQuail, Denis, 303 Mita Munesuke, 96–7, 100, 101, 270 Morris, Ivan, 36 Muramatsu Gō, 94–6, 102–4

Osaka, 20, 21, 72–4, 142–3, 173–4, 200, 244, 253, 268, 293 and Toilet paper panic 291–2 Osaka dialect boom 125–8 Ōya Sōichi, 3–4, 6, 9, 11, 108, 171, 172, 301, 303, 308 “100 million idiots” theory 160–5, 182, 240, 273 Ōzawa Yoshio, 49–50

N

P

Nakanishi Kingyo, 28–9, 31 Nandemo Yarima-show” (“The Let’s Do Anything Show”), 3, 162–4 Nationalism, Japanese, 36, 221, 246, 273, 277 And Rikidozan 62–6 And Tokyo Olympics 224–6 “Chopped up nationalism” 40,102 Postwar Crisis of 38–40

Para-social interaction, 210, 237 Pink Mood Show, 186 Plath, David, 139–40 Plaza Televisions–see gaito terebi Postman, Neil, 7, 302 Postwar Era Consumer culture 41–3 Family ideal 78–81 Occupation-era social changes 35–8

Hachi-ji da yo! Zen-in Shūgō! (It’s 8:00! Let’s all gather!), 198 Hanes, Jeffrey, xi, 20, 124 Hawai’I, 12, 29, 247, 280, 281–2, 284

I I Love Lucy, 242, 251–2

J JOAK (Tokyo Broadcast Station) 21–2

K

M

Index Post-Occupation era society (1950s) 38–40 Professional wrestling, 67, 97, 157–8, 172, 194, 204, 251, 269. See also Destroyer, the; Rikidōzan

R Radio And Taisho Emperor’s funeral 23 Emperor’s surrender broadcast 32–3 Pre-NHK years 21–22 Prewar legacy of 33–4 Prewar programming 23 Radio calisthenics 23–4 Rural areas 23 Prewar radio policy 24 Postwar “golden age” 43–45 Versus Television 64, 75, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92, 234 Wartime era 30 Rambo, First Blood Part II, 64 Report on the Influence of Television on Children’s Lifestyles, 192–3 Riesman, David, 75, 97, 127, 170, 171–2 Rikidōzan, 53, 247, 284, 285 As hero in North Korea 286–7 Murder of 269 Popular reaction to 65–6 Rikidōzan Pro Wrestling (TV show) 251 versus Sharpe Brothers 62–66, 88–9, 105 versus Thesz, Blassie, & Sharpe. 157. Rokabiri (rockabilly), 174–6 Royal Wedding (1960) 6, 10, 93, 98–9, 109, 203, 205–15, 216, 225–6 Television coverage and audience reaction 210–5 Effects of television 212–4

S The Samurai, 280–1 Shibukawa City, 122, 138–9, 142–3 Shichinin no Keiji (Seven Detectives), 153 Shiga Nobuo, 33, 54, 87, 175, 183, 204, 215, 240 Shōda Michiko (Crown Princess and later Empress), 203, 205–11, 213, 237, 260, 298 Michiko Boom 206–10 Shōriki Matsutarō, 46, 54, 62, 63, 197 Smith, Robert, 148 Spigel, Lynn, 79 Suesugi Setsuko, 126–8

355 T Taiyō no Kisetsu (Season of the Sun), 173 Takayanagi Kenjirō, 25, 29, 30, 31–2. Takeda Taijun, 93–4, 100–1 Tarento , 94, 101–2, 128, 207 Gaijin tarento 284–6, 308 Television Advertising and 86–91, 159, 165, 180–2, 189 Britain 27, 28, 31, 43, 46, 77, 148, 244 Early prewar concepts of 25–32 Early reactions to 57–60 Effects on rural Japan 129, 130–45, 145–56 Families and 71–2, 7–81, 83–5, 93–98, 100, 102, 183, 293–5, 300 Military uses of 30–1 National networks and key stations 98–100, 138, 275 Postwar concepts of 45–51 Rural communal spirit and 133–4, 146–8 Spread in rural Japan 129, 130–134 Spread in Japan 72–4, 107 United States 46–51, 56, 57, 61, 75, 77–8, 79, 82, 86, 92, 159, 174, 178, 185, 249 Terebi kekkonshiki (Television Wedding), 160 Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), 275–80, 283. Tezuka Osamu, 177, 271–2, 275–7, 279 Toilet Paper Crisis, 116, 291–2, 293, 295–6, 301 Tōkaidō belt, 19, 41 Tokyo, 6, 19, 41–2, 71, 72, 74, 98 Postwar population changes 125, 295 Prominence in media culture 121–3, 125–6, 127, 130 Rural areas and 134–5, 137–8, 141–5, 151–5. Tokyo Channel 12 (TV Tokyo), 188–9 Tokyo Olympics, 42, 99, 111, 215, 223–6, 270, 271 Tokyo Tower, 71 Tokyo University riots (1969), 8, 230–5. TV dinners, 95–6

U Uchimura Naoya, 181, 193–4, 195, 200 United States Decline of television programs on Japanese TV 267–9 Postwar views of 243–247

356 Reports of television in–see Television, United States Television programs on early Japanese TV 247–52 Urbanization, Japan, 19, 41–2, 94, 112, 124–5 Uwasa no Channel, 284–5

V Vietnam War, 8, 64, 196, 228–9, 235–6, 269–71 Vulgar programs (teizoku bangumi), 197–200

W Watashi wa kai ni naritai (I want to be a Clam), 190

Index Wiswell, Ella, 18, 146–7 Women Anpo protests and 218–222 Housewives and television 76–81, 93–8, 186, 193–4 Michiko boom and 208–10 Radio and 44–5 Rural women and TV 140, 141, 149–50 Television and 51, 59, 69, 81–5, 225–6

Y Yamamoto Isamu, 28 Yodogawa Nagaharu, 253, 255, 257–9, 261–3 Yoshimi Shunya, 13, 20, 126 Yugemae (Before Supper), 30

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