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5
Japan’s televisual discourses
Infotainment, intimacy, and the
construction of a collective uchi
T.J.M. Holden and Hakan Ergül
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Editors’ introduction
The matter of message
production,FOR
addressed in the previous chapter,
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appears in the following selection, as well. Rather than politics, though,
it is economics that – along with audience – appears most determinative
in media/tion content.
The medium tackled here is television, which is
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ubiquitous in Japan; consumed by nearly 100 percent of the population
on average three and a half hours a day. Observation of the routines,
assumptions, tropes and creations of local TV producers reveals
just how discursively loaded Japanese television is. According to
T.J.M. Holden and Hakan Ergül, discourse should be viewed at three
successively deeper ontological levels of media/tion: the first is a
communication practice dubbed “infotainment” – a form of packaging
and knowledge delivery that now spans stations, time blocks, and
genres; the second is intimacy – a link forged with the audience via both
the form and content of the infotainment broadcast; the third, a logical
product of the previous two, is the formation of an extensive, singular,
linked public on the image of an all-encompassing private. Like
classical “gemeinschaft” organization, relations among and between
TV producers, performers and audience are shown to be organic;
vocabulary is shared; experiences are emotive; and a collective
narrative history and moral understanding underpins consciousness.
The authors dub the totality – the producer’s consciously constructed
media/tion – the supra-discourse of (televisual) uchi.
Introduction
When traveling in northern Japan, people are frequently greeted with the
words “O-ban desu.” A local expression, it substitutes for the more common
“konbanwa,” or good evening. But o-ban desu is not only a local form of
greeting. It is also the name of a television show in Miyagi prefecture, a state
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in the northeastern region of Japan’s main island, Honshu. The show, aired
in late afternoon, is produced by Miyagi Terebi (Miyagi TV); it has run for
over a decade.
In this chapter we peer behind the scenes of OH! Ban desu, a mostwatched show on Japan’s most consumed medium of communication.
Employing an assortment of ethnographic methodologies, we uncover a
number of discursive practices that span traditional television genres, and
bear on successively deeper ontological levels of human existence. The most
immediate of these communication practices is what others have labeled
“infotainment” – a form of packaging and knowledge delivery. The second
discursive practice, operating at an affective level, is that of intimacy – a link
forged with the audience, which stems from both the form and content of the
infotainment broadcast. The final discursive practice flows from the prior
two: it is the re/production of an extensive, singular, linked public on the
image of an all-encompassing private. In sociological terms it is the kind of
community embodied in the word “gemeinschaft” – where relations are
organic, vocabulary is shared, experiences are emotive, and a common pool
of moral understanding underpins consciousness; in terms most commonly
articulated in Japanese Studies, it is an uchi, or familial “space” among and
between the performers of the show, and their audience.
It is clear from our study of OH! Ban desu that these three types of discourse are products of intentional televisual strategies. To demonstrate this
we spotlight the reflexivity and rationality of infotainment producers, wholly
attuned to the viewer/consumer whose attention they are trying to capture.
Though these levels of discourse are fairly well integrated, we treat them
serially. Didactically, this is unavoidable, although clearly, this is not how
these discursive voices present themselves to viewers (i.e. in static, discrete,
severable packages of meaning). Herein lies a methodological problem: the
incommensurability between “the actual” and the scientific explanation of
the real. One more point of note: we will treat these discursive layers in
reverse order: moving from what we feel is the most ontologically embedded
to the least. Stated alternatively, we begin with societal form and move
steadily toward communication content. From the structure of uchi, to its
operative affective engine (and logic): intimacy, then finally, the communication trope – infotainment – which, by design and operation, works to
engineer intimacy and, therefrom, forge a collective uchi. Along the way we
will consider the geographic, social, linguistic, and economic dimensions of
intimacy, as well as producer-inflected techniques that we call, respectively,
“boundary negotiation,” “carefully crafted spontaneity,” “post-produced
reality,” and “intentionally-engineered intimacy.”
Throughout, we must bear in mind that this is based on data that have
been obtained primarily from one locality in Japan. We believe, and will
argue, that our claims equally apply at a national scale – they mirror
techniques employed in other Japanese localities, as well as on nation-wide
television broadcasts, on other stations, in other genres. We would quickly
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Japan’s televisual discourses 107
admit that it is less likely that such discursive practices are employed in
other countries (whether in Asia, or elsewhere in the world) – at least in the
specific ways revealed here. Instead, we reckon that discursive practices are
reflective of social, cultural and historical ontologies rooted in this particular
context; ontologies pertaining to self, group, community, and society, as well
as communication styles, the positioning of television among the constellation of media in this particular society, and the centrality of star-based
popular culture in Japan.
Before arriving at these conclusions, however, a little background.
About infotainment
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Traditional communication studies – particularly European ones – have
employed the term “infotainment” to refer to a kind of TV show that blends
information and entertainment, limited to specific genres. These include
quiz programs, docutainments, sports programs, competitions, talk shows,
how-to programs, and news programs. In Japan infotainment operates on a
different model. First, it is more extensive – so much so that it might be said
to be the preferred mode of televisual communication (see also Kawabata
2002; Ishita 2002). Second, Japanese infotainment is an intentional consolidator: spanning all genres, and mixing their variegated elements. Third,
infotainment does more than simply wed all information-based genres; it has
become a sort of extravaganza, by which we mean something beyond the
norm of simple information transmission. It is a mass-mediated spectacle –
the kind of production that moves beyond the simple, everyday, lived world.
It is the kind of fabricated communicative event that has been associated
with popular culture (e.g. Boorstin 1961; Fiske 1989; Twitchell 1992). Strung
together, moment after moment, on channel after channel, day after day,
infotainment has become one of the major reproducers of the popular
motors of consumption in a hyper-capitalist (Tobin 1992; Clammer 2001),
(post)information society.
About Japanese TV
Before appreciating these elements, the reader should know a bit about
Japanese television, for there is much about the medium that facilitates this
mode of discourse. First, Japanese TV has a diffusion rate of 100 percent and
is viewed by virtually every Japanese person every day.1 It outpaces other
popular forms of information – above all, newspapers (86 percent), cell
phones (73 percent) and the Internet (27 percent). On average, at least one
TV set plays seven to eight hours a day in each Japanese dwelling, with
personal viewing rates approaching 225 minutes daily. Japan ranks second
worldwide in daily TV viewership, and this number almost single-handedly
accounts for the fact that media consumption is the third largest activity
engaged in by Japanese during the day (behind sleep and work).
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Regarding content, programs do not easily fit within the conventional
genres well established in media studies. While programs can be filed under
traditional categories such as news, sports, dramas, music shows, quiz shows,
talk shows and advertising, many shows also span or, better, blend these
genres. These shows can be labeled “infotainment” programs. However,
unlike infotainment programs of other countries, there is an assortment of
infotainment types.2
Among the most popular of these types is the wideshow (waidoshō) – a
subspecies dating back to 1966 that can be said to be culturally Japanese,
without precedent or cousin in the West.3 A favored domestic genre, wideshows last for two to three hours, appear on every station, and garner the
largest audience. Perhaps this is because they comprise different “corners”
such as cooking, infomercials, happy talk, how-to, docutainment pieces, and
news reports. This contrasts with western TV, where it is customary to
encounter these corners as separate programs. Importantly for our later
argument, it is not only the hosts who are a fixed set; so, too, are the guests.
Also important for later in this discussion, it is not unusual to view a guest on
one morning wideshow discussing, say, the kidnapping of a Japanese
journalist in Iraq, then encounter him opining about the latest fashion trends
on another wideshow later that same day. As Iwabuchi (1999: 191) observes,
this has created an “intimate proximity between stars and audiences,”
conferring a person-next-door aura to the former.
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Infotainment and intimacy
In this way, the visible members of Japanese television are like a family or a
club. One effect is the creation of a shared, on-going conversation with
viewers. Its persistence works to transcend the private worlds of atomized
viewers, forging a televisual community tied together into a collective public
via a shared set of rhetorical forms and intentionally mediated discourses.
Ontologically, TV’s “channels” are just that: pipelines among and between
(officially) rival commercial fiefdoms, and their various publics. This results
in a seamless, interconnected and effectively borderless “space,” held
together by uniform visual, verbal and cognitive vocabularies, engaged in
and decodable by all.
There is a second dimension to seamlessness, which assists in engineering
greater intimacy: the integration of disparate elements within any one
show. For example, while two people are featured in the studio “kitchen”
discussing preparation of a Japanese dish, others in an adjoining set worry
about the growing social problem of youth crime. Shortly thereafter, those
from the cooking corner join the show’s entire cast to taste the food just
prepared. After sampling the food, the announcers may assume the role of
newscasters. In short, in mediating disjunction between “corners,” infotainment shows not only cross traditional genre boundaries, but hybridize
those genres.
The significance of infotainment
What the multiplicity of voices and fluidity between content areas suggests
is that Japanese TV has manifested more than a simple movement toward
infotainment. Its content reflects a shift in the operant discursive formation:
toward a totalized, hybridized form of communication. This view sets our
work apart from past studies of Japanese infotainment, as well as most genre
studies. More, because we are claiming that this is a pervasive “thought
style” (Fleck 1932) in Japan’s communication context, our attention to infotainment should not be viewed as a quirky or quaint aspect of contemporary
popular culture; rather it should be regarded as a profound shift in rhetorical
forms underpinning and giving force to Japanese public culture.
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We make these claims based on our access to the local production of one
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show in particular, OH! Ban desu!. These observations were made possible
by a key informant at MTV, a former producer of the program whom we will
refer to as “Watanabe.” We were not only provided free access to the studio
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throughout the production cycle, but were able to interview every principal
About the study
4
in front of and behind the cameras. This observation enabled us to make
sense of the numerous decisions that determine the substance of each corner
daily.
Our approach reflects a departure from the preferred strategy associated
with research on the infotainment phenomenon. Beginning with its precursor, tabloidization, the tendency has been to employ qualitative content
analysis of televisual texts (Ergül 2004; Brants 1998). We believe that though
it is important to know what is “out there” on the screen, it is also crucial to
know how this discursive approach arises. In a word, how is it understood,
talked about, constructed, and delivered via the production process? To
answer this question we sought to observe and interrogate televisual information and entertainment workers in situ, as they produce their content.
MTV is one of four local TV stations in Sendai, the twelfth largest city in
Japan, with a population in excess of 1,000,000. MTV was established in 1970
as a local branch of Nihon Terebi, one of Japan’s four nation-wide networks.
MTV’s broadcasting area is limited to Miyagi prefecture, a state comprising
nearly 860,000 households. As the top-rated locally produced program, OH!
Ban desu could be called an indispensable fixture of the local mediascape.
Identical to other wideshows that appear nationally, OH! Ban desu commands three hours and ten minutes of the broadcast day.5 Aired live, Monday
through Friday, it runs from 3:50 p.m. until the seven o’clock news, and is
divided into eight discernible “corners”. Of all locally produced shows, it
consumes the largest portion of total broadcasting for any one show.
Physically, the production space is surprisingly small, particularly considering how large a staff it commands. Technically, it is well equipped for a local
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station, with three new cameras, two of which are easily maneuverable. A
large, light green, oval table is the centerpiece. The number of people on
camera at any one time varies from two to six, depending on the segment.
Away from the set, five rooms are used: two guest lounges, pre- and postproduction facilities, and one newsroom. The news space is noteworthy as it
bears on the matter of televisual “reality,” discussed below. Like any
ordinary Japanese office, it consists of rows of unpartitioned desks, stacked
with papers and books. A microphone sits on a worn desk, haphazardly
affixed with tape. One meter away a small tripod holds a camera. It is here,
on this makeshift, true-to-life set, that the daily news reports are broadcast.
Like the newsroom, the show’s set communicates “lived in” – almost as if
it strives to be no different from the humble homes it is received in. Watanabe
confessed “[we’ve had the same set decoration] for almost ten years. There
haven’t been any big changes since” aside from the recent additions of artificial flowers and indirect lighting. A bit sheepishly the producer commented,
“it looks too old, doesn’t it?” This symbolic content – the invariant set, its
lived-in look, the warming flowers and lighting – is important, we would
assert: a post-produced effect; conscious construction that engineers an
intimate bond with the audience.
Furthering this connection with the audience is the support staff at OH!
Ban desu. In particular, there are the ten telephone operators – all female –
seated in the right corner of the studio. The operators field calls from the
audience, who dial a number displayed on-screen during the broadcast,
inquiring about recipes for the foods prepared in-studio. The callers,
Watanabe asserts, provide a glimpse of the larger audience:
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they are generally women, in their forties, fifties . . . housewives. Also,
those who stopped working for a year or so to deliver babies. They watch
TV at this time at home . . . They cleaned the house in the morning, made
their daily shopping and already prepared the dinner. Their children have
returned from school. Now, they all are waiting for the sarariman to come
home.
This profile, in turn, dictates the show’s content. “We want to entertain our
audiences,” Watanabe says, “not make them too worried or sad. Our broadcast period is the time that audiences take a rest in front of TV . . . they need
some entertainment, not sorrowful stories.”
Constructing the televisual uchi
Our data illuminate the three levels of discourse identified at the outset.
Each level connects communication practice to deeper issues of social identification, connectivity and cohesion. The data trace relationships between
media producer and consumer in ways that reveal the contours and operative logics of deeper societal structure. In the following sections we examine
the relationship between specific discursive practices, Japanese social
organization, values and behaviors. By the close, television’s powerful role
in forging a nationwide “public” should be apparent.
Uchi: the Japanese private public
Above all, television employs its discourse consciously in ways that forge an
insular, hermetic world. This world features a shared vocabulary and realm
of experience, a common way of seeing and interpreting the world. This
experiential “space” is propped up by numerous pillars, including the
geographic, economic and linguistic. We will refer to this hermetic world
as an uchi, one part of a binary that has long been asserted as a major
structuring principle of Japanese society (e.g. Nakane 1970). Kondo (1990:
141) captures the principle thus:
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uchi describes a located
perspective:
the in-group, the us facing outward
of the world . . . [it is] a center of belonging and attachment . . . uchi defines
who you are through shaping the language, the use of space, and social
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interactions. Uchi
instantly implies the drawing of boundaries between us
and them, self and other . . . Depending on the context, uchi can be any
in-group: company, school, club, nation . . .
Uchi is not, however, simply home or inside but a circle of attachment; a
locus of identity. It is often engendered by reference to its antipode, soto. To
be sure, any society provides a shifting set of associations for its members;
ones that can be defined variously, in terms of geographic, historical, genetic,
social, moral, economic and political membership. However, in Japan, the
fact that nearly all social relations are defined and evaluated in terms of
belongingness and difference is important in understanding the structure,
logic, meaning and outcomes of societal activity. This, we would argue, is no
less true on Japanese TV.
Teleuchi: domesticating the exogenous
This conception of uchi/soto has been invoked vis-à-vis Japanese TV before
(i.e. Cooper-Chen 1997; Kamimura et al. 2000). However, these writers cast
television as an authoritative medium, enabling its audiences to observe
what is beyond their circle. On this account, television is a screen – a
protective filter – enabling the audience to peer out at the insecure, risky,
and unfamiliar environment, while remaining safely ensconced within the
domestic uchi. That sphere inside, is – on these accounts – private, secure,
familial.
Later we will argue that the infotainment content addressing the world
outside is neither produced to be, nor does it operate as, a neutral filter
between uchi and soto. Instead, it is consciously constructed to deliver an
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affective state of identification and belongingness. We refer to this production strategy as “intentionally engineered intimacy.” Television not only
serves as the instrumentality that constructs affective experience; it also
provides an insulated space for the viewer. In a word, TV creates a metaphysical, but tangible, locus for the audience to observe, enter, and actually
experience the benefits of uchi. There, the audience comes together and
engages in intimate “exchange,” as members of one family. One way this
occurs, we argue, is via uniform content transmitted to and appropriated by
viewers, who then carry it outside their boxed world, for use during their
unmediated social relations.
That, however, moves us rather far ahead in this analysis. For now, simply
consider that televisual form and content set borders around “Japan” and
“Japaneseness.” Even if it is seemingly unintentional, the infotainment style
works to communicate the essence of “home,” engendering feelings of
shared intimacy among hosts, guests, in-studio audience, featured “real life”
participants, and fellow (unseen) viewers. Support for this notion could be
found at OH! Ban desu. There, the producers employed televisual strategies
that engineered “insiderness” or else tendered invitations for inclusion and
membership. Importantly, these decisions were not always painstakingly
cogitated; rather they often belonged to the province of cultural comfort,
implicit understanding, and taken-for-grantedness.
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The geographic dimensions of uchi
The most obvious evidence of this comes in the program’s title. The fact that
it derives from a local dialect immediately situates the program geographically; the greeting communicates “localness.” When viewers tune in, they
know they are entering a “space” that is familiar, physically proximate, historically underwritten, and emotionally shared. “OH!Ban desu!” signifies
the Tōhoku uchi. The “inside” world does not begin and end there. The local
emphasis recurs in other corners of the program, as for instance where foods
and prepared dishes generally emanate from Tōhoku. So, too, is there a continual emphasis on the local in the various segments: news, audience participation, recommended travel, shopping, and local events. In this way we
could speak of intimacy generated by and buttressing familiar subjectivities.
Another element localizing discourse is the male host, Satō Muneyuki.6
Known as “Mune” (moo-nay), he has recorded more than 30 albums over
the last 30 years, with the bulk of his songs centering on the Tōhoku area.
Mune defines himself locally, gushing: “I love Sendai and Tōhoku with all
my heart. This is my home . . . The audience, too, love their singer Mune . . .
Perhaps that was the reason Miyagi Terebi picked me for this program.”
At another point he opined: “I always believed I was more than a TV star.
I am Tōhoku’s Mune.” In his invocation of geographic borders, Mune demarcated the physical shape of the televisual uchi; a space where performer and
audience become fused – as members of the Tōhoku family.
While the familial unit crafted by OH! Ban desu is largely geographically
defined, not all social space is physical. Without question, considerable
televisual discourse invokes spatial units of nation, region and locality; but
even more crucially, it forges a human unit predicated on shared culture,
polity, and social and emotional affiliation, that ties viewers into a cohesive,
empathic community. Other elements assist in creating this connection –
language and economy, above all – as well as shared cultural history and
vocabulary. Let’s consider these aspects now.
The linguistic dimensions of uchi
Obviously, boundaries between geography, polity, and culture are often
inextricably linked. One example is how “cultural space” is invoked via
language, then used as the platform to build televisual uchi. In OH! Ban desu
this occurs via Muneyuki’s use of “zūzū-ben,”7 a local dialect. This helps
bring the show closer to home; making it more intimate for the audience. As
one informant explained: “[Mune] uses that local dialect very often . . . it is a
franker way of conversing with people of the Miyagi area. The audience likes
to hear their own dialect from someone on TV. And Mune is very good at
this dialect.” As this dialect is confined to Tōhoku, its use communicates a
desire to circumvent “nation-wideness” – an element imposed in the widespread use of standardized Tokyo dialect on television. In so doing, “Japan”
is cleaved and placed on the outside; its parts are differentiated into “us” and
“other” (or, in the logic of uchi/soto, “inside/outside locality”). As we will
explore later, this has the effect of creating affective links between consumers
and message producers.
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The economic dimensions of uchi
Observing OH! Ban desu, one is struck by the extent of commercial knowledge being disseminated. Numerous corners amount to highly elaborate
“infomercials” – extended advertisements about shopping, often delivered
in situ or else in an intimate setting. Specifically, the kitchen, recommended
spot segment, and train station weathercast segments operate this way. The
content unequivocally communicates an aim to inform viewers about the
best shopping centers and the cheapest restaurants, most often those that
offer special discounts to female customers. This emphasis not only reflects
a keen awareness of the program’s target audience, but also exerts an
influence on what foods, shops, and bargains will be consumed in the
coming days.
In this way, local information – in the form of economic opportunities,
available goods and services, and actual consumption – situates communicators and viewers in a larger social system of reproduction. Infotainment
becomes a discursive formation that creates a substantive, need-based,
utilitarian – but ultimately empathic – relationship with the audience.
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The consumption drumbeat begins with a “commercial corner” hosted by
Nagamine Ryō. An energetic field reporter in his early thirties, Nagamine
sports casual attire, roving the streets on foot with cameraman in tow. His
ostensible purpose is to taste various dishes in the establishments dotting his
footpath, but a less stated objective is to invite audiences into the inner
spaces featured along the route. Behind this intimate invitation is what we
call “carefully crafted spontaneity” (CCS) – an intentional communication
trope, which we will discuss at length below. Here we simply wish to draw
attention to this approach, one of the central discursive strategies on live
TV programs. In a nutshell, CCS conveys the sense that the audience’s
experience of a person, place or thing transpires in simultaneity with the
communication. This has the effect of pulling the message recipient within
the orbit of the broadcast. CCS depends on conveying a sense of roughness,
of unscripted action. Doing so suggests immediate, fluid, unstructured –
even risky – content. Of course, none of this works without the audience’s
interpretive complicity: not only the suspension of disbelief, but the active
wink; the willingness to suppress awareness of an elaborate, wellorchestrated “set up.” After all, CCS requires considerable technical sleight
of hand: production-added shenanigans that must be dismissed by the
critical, viewing eye.
What is seen is an announcer walking along the street or in a shopping
mall, presenting the wonders of a physical space beyond studio and home.
Importantly, it is a world singled out for its economic characteristics: a site of
production and/or consumption. We draw attention to CCS here because
our informants did: they made no pretense about the “accidental” encounter
with shops. Watanabe laughed when we observed how the reporter makes
everything seem spontaneous. “The way it works . . . we tell the audience that
we have never been there before. But actually someone must go there
beforehand and let the owners know the time we plan to arrive for shooting.
The program is live, so we must take care [in arrangements].”
The apparent relationship between the televisual production and the
economic world is neither casual nor random. Watanabe admitted
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sometimes what we do is just like PR. This sort of commercial has
increased in time. [Early on] we realized that our audience wanted to be
advised about their city. So, every day we have to find something new – a
restaurant, an exhibition or shopping center in Sendai.
And, he concluded, when they visit there should be many shoppers. “Otherwise . . . if no one is there, the viewer might think the place is not popular.”
What results, though, is a cozy relationship with the corporate world.
Sponsors are required, obviously, to keep the show running, so a nod to
products and services is unavoidable. And while Watanabe insisted that
financial connections don’t dictate content, he did allow that “sometimes . . .
there is a sort of relationship between companies and the sales department
of MTV.” Later he pointed to the screen and said: “this car exhibition (we
are) covering . . . is organized by [names company] . . . one of the most famous
companies in Sendai and they basically sell that car.” At that moment
Nagamine was crouching next to the car, gushing about its special features.
Watanabe continued: “the company is a station shareholder. So, because this
[is their car] show, we have no choice but to broadcast it. It’s unavoidable. If
they want to see their product on the screen, it is you – the producer – who
should find a way to realize their demand.”
This is not the only case of a company seeking to wrangle on-camera
advertising. One staffer sighed, “Actually, we try hard to get rid of these
demands as soon as possible . . . We never like it, but nothing can be done.”
The fact that all of this commercial information appears in the program’s
opening hour is significant. It establishes the dominant narrative thread:
practical information packaged in a light, entertaining way. It also suggests
that in a program dedicated to getting close to the viewers, commerce and
consumption are deemed major means toward this end. As such, we aver,
the commercial corner is actually about intimacy. The acts of exploring
commerce, discovering bargains, and engaging in “real world” consumption
might appear utilitarian, but one by-product is drawing an audience closer by
communicating shared consumption “needs.” Shared interest narrows
distance – one step in forging a tightly knit community. At a macro level, we
would claim that it is this aim of drawing the audience closer that explains
why Japanese TV is awash with commercialized information. By delivering
commercial ventures (or products) to the viewer/potential consumer, infotainment shows like OH! Ban desu operate as conduits, creating proximity
between inner and outer; the “worlds” of the viewer and that viewed.
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The service dimension of uchi
Proximity is also achieved by providing tangible services. Most obvious is the
phone bank that operates throughout the show, proffering recipes to viewers.
The producers characterize this as “friendly communication”: that which
transcends the divide between information (which is generally supplied by
technicians and professionals) and everyday knowledge. In Watanabe’s
words: “We are trying to improve our communication with the audience . . .
we must keep thinking how to maintain contact with them. This is the most
important aim.”
Toward that end, a recent innovation has been the “Bandesu Network,” a
corner that enables audience members to share problems, with the hosts
assisting the search for solutions. In creating a physical network among
audience members, a rational strategy smoothly slides into an affective one.
Watanabe explained:
We [have always] received a lot of phone calls during the program and
despite ten operators, the lines are always busy. Audiences ask a lot of
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questions about a variety of topics – so many problems . . . sometimes, very
little things . . . For example [pulling a paper from a file] this one . . . She
asks how to remove a wine stain from a cloth . . . Our audiences are mostly
housewives so . . . they are interested in useful information about their
daily life or some advice about kids’ problems or social events around
Sendai.
Watanabe indicated that in the past the staff tried their best to answer such
questions, but now, rather than read books, ask experts or conduct Internet
searches, the network of viewers will serve as the main problem solvers. “In
this way,” Watanabe concluded, “audience members will meet and share
their own problems with each other.”
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Rationalization: the motive force for infotainment and intimacy
As the Bandesu network
demonstrates,
the producers are imbued with
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audience awareness. So, too, do we see that more is at work in infotainment
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At the same time, economic information is often precisely
what the audience wants. “When we give [economic] information,”
Watanabe explained, “we get higher ratings.” Indeed, it was audience interest that prompted the decision to institutionalize the commercial corner into
the daily show. Beyond economics, this underscores the degree to which
the crafting of the infotainment message is a conscious process; rational,
systematic and, above all, audience-attuned. Let’s explore this further.
Audience-sensitivity is manifested in the extreme “uchiness” of OH! Ban
desu. However, it is important to note that such uchiness did not always exist.
Rather, it emerged as a result of conscious strategies, based on rational
production processes: attending to audience ratings, then engaging in a
painstaking campaign of trial and error.8 “To be honest,” Mune explained,
“at the beginning, the program went really bad. The ratings were decreasing
daily. I told myself, ‘singer Mune! You have to do something for your
audience!’ It was no longer possible to fulfill all my concert invitations. [I had
to devote] less time to my compositions and more time to the program . . . I
had to be in Sendai . . . ”9
More was involved, though, than the host’s concentration. There was also
an audience to attend to. “Observing the viewing statistics every morning,”
Watanabe explained, “we realized that some blocks of the program were
losing audience.” Minute by minute accounting revealed that when Mune
left the studio – when he talked to people in the street and made jokes –
viewership increased.” That wasn’t all. The producers felt that Mune needed
to change the image he transmitted to the audience. Watanabe again: “Mune
is a funny guy, right? Well, ten years ago, at the beginning of the program, he
was much more serious. He was always carrying this serious mask through
the entire program . . . dressing up in a stylish and formal way.” This lasted
only for a year. Again, assisted by the ratings monitor, they recognized that
when he was dressed like ordinary folk and joking around with them
naturally, a higher response followed. Today, Mune sports an apron, cooks
in-studio, smiles more often, offers casual, playful looks to camera and
guests, and even sings once a week. In short, his style has shifted from intense
to light. The elegant singer Mune has been transformed into a relaxed, casual
TV personality.
Mune was not the only aspect of the show that required refurbishing. The
production staff recognized that the content was too intense for viewers.
Hence, the idea was born to mix the twin components of information and
entertainment. Rhetorically, they jettisoned the lecturing tone, making
content lighter and easier to follow. In Mune’s words, their material now
centered on “things that are ordinary, everyday.” Another important
change, uncovered in the first year, reflected the insight that “whenever we
broadcast local information, the ratings increased.” As Watanabe explained
“the audience watching local news was two times bigger than that of national
news. After [discovering] that, we put in more local news and local events.
The same goes for sport news[...] the audience loves it.”
Takehana Jun, the newscaster, elaborated:
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at the beginning . . . we were getting our news mostly from the NTV [the
mother station]. The journalist [who] transmitted the important news
of the day . . . knew nothing about the issues in Tōhoku. So, our [local]
reporter added local news into the national reports . . . Still, we couldn’t
help losing audience daily. After we saw that our audience was more
interested in the local, rather than the national news, we immediately
changed the content and used much more local information in the news
reports.
Thereafter, higher ratings ensued. Ultimately, this prompted a ten-fold
increase in the amount of time devoted to local reports: from three to thirty
minutes per broadcast.
In the many ways described above, the world bounding the viewing audience was recognized and intentionally played to. Within one year producers
transformed the show, through a trial and error process, to feature local information and heighten local identification. Today’s ubiquitous local emphasis
in every corner was the result of conscious crafting aimed at creating a
spatially defined uchi.
Engineering intimacy
Beyond the geographic, economic, service, and linguistic, the construction of
a teleuchi depends on one further element: the affective. We spied the effort
to forge emotional links with the audience at every turn. Admittedly, connectivity is a staple of televisual communication anywhere, but the existence
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of the cultural construct, uchi, distinguishes Japan and its televisual discourse. In the following sections we highlight four intentional strategies
that transcend distance between audience and the “world” inside the screen,
fashioning a shared space. These strategies redefine the communication geometry: embracing, subsuming – if not consuming – the affected audience.
Boundary negotiations
Central in this construction process is language. Specifically, the public
names attached to the performers conjure an atmosphere of intimacy, while
signifying uchi (and implying soto). For instance, while the host’s nickname,
used throughout the broadcast, may simply be construed as the affectionate
shortening of his first name, the name is also equivalent to “breast” or
“chest,” in Japanese. In this way an intimacy – a private referent, but also a
(tame) titillation – is attached to a publicly consumed personality. As such,
it is an intimacy publicly shared, which (in its constant communication)
renders viewers complicit: a community holding a private communication in
confidence.
This intimate mode of communication extends to the female host, as well.
Both at the station and during the program, the female host, Ukigaya Miho,
is called “Uki-chan”. This is significant insofar as “chan” is a diminutive, an
affectionate suffix reserved for members of a speaker’s uchi (whether family,
household, company, school, circle, community group, etc.).10 Like “Mune,”
invoking “Uki-chan” communicates emotional closeness; it tears down
barriers between the world inside the TV box and the audience consuming
the televisual message outside. This linguistic practice – widespread
throughout infotainment shows – provides a step toward uchiness and pulls
the audience from their normal soto position.
For the producers, though, the construction of uchi is not without its
difficulties. Infotainment shows constantly deal with facts – culled from the
world soto. This reality often requires the maintenance of distance between
performers on the screen and their audience. As Watanabe indicated,
while striving for casualness by calling Ukigaya, “Uki-chan”, and Muneyuki,
“Mune-san”:
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we cannot do this for Tomoko Mori because she appears in the news
reports. Just imagine that she is reporting some very sad news – something
like ‘two high school children died in a car crash in Aoba-ku’11 – and then
the other announcer calls her Tomo-chan’! . . . It would be very thoughtless, I guess. We just can’t do that . . . There is a very thin line here.
In effect, while producers strive to expunge the boundaries that exist in the
complex geography between the worlds inside and outside the box, they also
must manage boundaries extant within the architecture of the program.
The exterior boundaries constitute a physical geography that must be
transcended if shows are to actually communicate – if they are to succeed in
building and maintaining a constant audience. Nonetheless, uchi is not allinclusive. While the hosts and the audience may belong to this intimate
space, other communicators – such as the newsreaders and reporters – do
not. “Infotainers” exist inside, within the intimate grouping, while reporters
stand outside, separate from the intimate association.12
Carefully crafted spontaneity
One of the crucial aspects of live TV is the sense of real-time communication,
free of scripting. On OH! Ban desu, one might label it an “ideology of spontaneity,” well captured in the following anecdote. Mune spoke of performing
in a concert elsewhere in Japan during the show’s first year, returning to
Sendai 15 minutes prior to show time. Without time to prepare, the producer
and Ukigaya merely sketched out the opening and then they decided to
improvise. “It was scary at the beginning,” Mune admitted. “But I said ‘just
be yourself . . . be the singer Mune that Tōhoku people know.’ . . . I think that
was the longest program for me . . . But afterward, we received very surprising feedback: the audience loved it . . . They found it interesting.”
Thereafter, the off-the-cuff approach became a staple. Mune confessed
“sometimes even I don’t know what will come next in the program . . . It
makes me much closer to the audience . . . it’s like saying: ‘look, I’m just like
you! I have no idea where this program will take me . . . So, let’s all just go
with the flow.’” Ukigaya concurred: “It makes it more fun! . . . The audience
wants to see us acting naturally on the screen.”
Watanabe underscored the preference for rough edges, opining “we let
it be, as it is. Sometimes this makes the show much more natural. If you
rehearse the entire content, then it becomes too perfect for a live program.
The audience might think that it is boring.” The show, he asserted, should be
viewed as a work in progress.
Yet, despite these words, our observations suggest otherwise. Spontaneity
was more myth than reality, more buzzword than goal. The show’s performers and staff may disavow over-preparation, but the topics for each
program are, by Ukigaya’s admission, “decide(d) almost two – sometimes
three – weeks before the program [is aired]. But only the title. We prepare
the important parts a couple of days before. As for the tiny details, we decide
on them the same [i.e. broadcast] day.”
What’s more, we noted that “spontaneity” is generally secured by recourse
to scripting. Consider that two hours prior to airtime the hosts rehearse how
to act and what to say for each segment. The program is so structured that
even the short intros for each corner and the body language required are
run-through. For example, in the cooking corner each step of the recipe is
practiced from beginning to end. Not only the cooking itself, but also the
repartee and friendly exchanges between host and chef are scripted. During
this drill, ideas about the taste of the dish, not yet produced, will be discussed.
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One segment we observed had Ukigaya plucking a piece of fictitious food
from an imaginary plate, tasting it and pronouncing: “this is delicious!” Then
she joked, “but it might be better once it is really cooked.” Scripting also
extends to the viewer who recommended the recipe. Standing alongside the
host and chef, she practiced answering prepared questions written on a slip
of paper, studiously trying to strike a conversational tone.
Once on air, rehearsals don’t cease. We observed this exchange by three
women during a commercial break, prior to their up-coming segment:
Performer 1: “I will gesture like this . . . as if I am taking notes . . .”
Performer 2: “And then I’ll say: ‘Oh, what should I write?’.”
Performer 3: “And I’ll ask, ‘What should I memorize?’.”
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Suddenly, staring at one another’s poses – catching themselves in the artifice
of the moment – the three began laughing.
In this way, then, we see that, though live, almost all program content
is meticulously planned. As such, the discourse of intimacy becomes an
engineered text, a studio production. What emerges on-screen is a far cry
from what it purports to be. Rather than simultaneous, original, spontaneous,
unrestrained, undefined and rough, it is consciously crafted.
Post-produced reality
What is not engineered beforehand is often managed afterward, in the
production booth. There, technicians add colorful subtitles, digital images,
sound effects, and special frames to pre-recorded visual material. While
these decisions lie with the producer, the studio staff uniformly asserted that,
given the recent evolution of television discourse, failure to intervene
through technological enhancement would result in loss of audience. In their
view, the audience has been primed to a certain form of communication and
would not tolerate unadulterated material. As the news anchor opined, “the
audience doesn’t just sit in front of the screen watching the same channel for
hours. So we have to find a way to keep their attention focused on the screen.
Otherwise, it will become boring for them . . . ”
The visual hook, according to this informant, arose with the introduction of
video technology. “Sixteen millimeter gave off an atmosphere similar to the
cinema . . . nothing looked ‘real’ . . . What VTR technology did was add a perfect sense of reality . . . Now the programs on the screen look much more real.”
These developments were not without problems. There has been a
decrease in newsreading, an increase in pre-taped material, and an enormous
amount of special effects inserted on-screen – changes Takehana refers to as
the “Americanization of TV journalism”:
This is all [to create] a sense of ‘reality’ . . . It started almost ten years ago
. . . At the same time, mosaic faces and distorted voices13 appeared in news
reports. These [tricks] increase the impact of news content. VTR technology made everything much easier. Now, in this digital era, content can
be reshaped many times in minutes.
One unspoken assumption is that, as technology evolves, this value-added
effect will only deepen. Certainly, today, TV text is overly “noisy” – replete
with sound effects, simulations, recreated events, visual and aural distortion,
and superimposed words. Once the province of “how-to” programs – where
subtitles made it easier for the audience to follow and write down directions
– by now every genre has adopted these practices. According to our sources
(and in accord with Japanese social logic), failing to emulate others would
engender an unflattering comparison.
These changes, however, have altered communication relations: between
knowledge producer and information on one side of Hall’s cultural circuit
(1980), and information and televisual consumer, on the other. These changes
are not neutral, obviously, as indicated above. Applied to media theory, we
apprehend a rebuttal of McLuhan’s disquisition (1964) on hot and cool –
since text here is providing greater definition and inducing more participation. By contrast, Morley’s assertion (1986) that television viewing is a
social activity, involving active participants, receives validation – at judging
from the comments of respondents. Most importantly, moving beyond Hall,
there appears an emerging triangular “hug” between those producing information, those consuming it, and the information itself. What emerges from
the televisual loop is proximity – if not intimacy – as a result of heightened
technological capabilities, economic imperatives, and audience preference.
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Intentionally engineered intimacy
As explained, uchi and soto reflect a complex set of social orientations in
everyday Japanese life, governing individual psychology and interpersonal
behavior. This has mandated strategies for managing emotions – ways of
separating interior, private faces from external, public ones. TV programming
understand this problematic, seeking ways to remove boundaries between
the worlds outside and inside the box. Language is one way, as indicated
before, and underscored by Watanabe:
It is our job to entertain audiences as if we are all in the studio. While
watching the program, the audience should feel themselves at home . . . we
should be like friends. The language we use is the one that the audiences
use in their life . . . For example, her name is Ukigaya Miho, right? So,
normally, we should call her Ukigaya-san. But in the program we call her
Uki-chan. This is more casual.
This reflects what Painter has called “quasi-intimacy” – Japanese TV’s
tendency to “emphasize themes related to unity (national, local, cultural, or
122
racial) and unanimity (consensus, common sense, identity) in order to create
an intimate and friendly atmosphere” (1996: 198).
Today, the bulk of Japanese TV fare adopts this cozy, consensual
ambiance, with guests, hosts, and audience frolicking together. The language
employed is informal, suggesting emotional proximity. Moreover, since the
inner architecture of TV culture is predicated on constant recycling of
human components (“tarento” rotating from show to show across the dial
and time slots), they actually are proximate – experientially, if not emotionally. Depending on the program, they touch or hit each other in humorous
ways, reminding one another of foibles and faux pas. In Painter’s words,
their interactions emphasize “spontaneity and play in order to simulate
intimate, informal in-group interaction” (1996: 198).
Stated alternatively, television is exceptional at defining groups – those
inside and outside. As learned in our interviews, this social geometry –
extending inside-out – was painstaking cultivated over the years. Trial and
error and attention to audience feedback impelled the televised product to
become more spontaneous, informal, humorous, interactive, and external,
with emphasis on practical knowledge, based on real-world actualities,
audience demographics and preference.
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Conclusions
This chapter has identified three discursive practices flowing through
Japanese television today: infotainment, intimacy and uchi. All connect with
one another; their links connect surface communication content to a style of
affective attachment engineered in audiences by TV producers. The result is
the forging of communal links at the level of social structure.
The centrality of television in contemporary Japan
This is significant because, in contemporary Japan, television is the most
authoritative medium. Reasons for this may include historical predilection
and/or contemporary need. The former inheres in the interpersonal
orientation we have addressed throughout – uchi – which, itself, owes its
origins to village-based social organization; the latter stems from the
inexorable dissimilation of this communal structure – an outcome driven by
increasing urbanization and industrialization, and manifesting itself in
higher levels of anomic detachment. Fukutake (1981: 61) has written
extensively about this, often making modern Japan sound as if it is being
observed by Toennies, if not Marx and Engels:
The personal relationships one finds in the village cannot exist in this
thoroughly rationalized society; hence, contacts with others are impersonal, marked by lack of intimacy and a sense of isolation. Reduced to
mere atoms in a giant social mechanism, people experience a feeling of
helplessness. Even though everyone in mass society is similarly cut off
from small communal society, there are no bonds to tie everyone together;
all have different origins, occupations, and social classes. Their educational
backgrounds and upbringing are also varied. With no community to ease
the feelings of isolation and helplessness and no common traditions or
customs, they live in a kind of anomie.
Enter television,14 whose function appears to be as linking mechanism;
bridging anomic existence and communal possibility. Certainly as far as infotainment programming goes, it appears to build connections among viewers,
combining them into a private public, a village-like collectivity with shared
values, practices, ways of seeing and, importantly, feeling. Nearly a decade
ago Tasker (1987: 154–5) observed this mass emotional connectivity, if only
in passing:
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The Japanese inhabitNOT
a scaled down
version of McLuhan’s global village,
their sense of group values reinforced by the vast quantity of vicarious
experience they have consumed together, more powerful than anything
the individualDISTRIBUTION
encounters in his daily life. Small wonder that cable TV has
never caught on: what is being sought is not choice but mass intimacy.
TV, for Tasker, has replaced pre-war icons of national identity. It is at the
core not only of individual lives, but of the collectivity. It is the instrumentality
that enables individuals to become enfolded into the national community.15
More than socializer, contemporary television plays doorman, granting
entrance to an exclusive club. As such, it serves an essential function in
Japanese society.
The “supra-discourse” of uchi
Beyond gatekeeping, though, television proffers an intentionally engineered
umbrella that defines, if not conjures, viewer uchi. The family based “space”
depends on a number of strategies emanating from the production side.
Rhetorically, linguistic strategies are essential in creating closeness, as is
content that refers to and configures the geographic boundaries; also
essential is content referencing local practices and understandings. Part and
parcel of this is a way a packaging local information in entertaining ways. We
refer to that as infotainment, an approach depending on producer-side
strategies involving rationality, the simulation of reality through postproduction techniques, and carefully crafted spontaneity.
What results is a protective screen, enabling those inside to view the world
beyond. The effect is that the relatively insecure, risky, and unfamiliar can be
observed without danger of contamination, reprisal or duress. The televisual
uchi provides a hermetic womb; something akin to gemeinschaft-like communities of pre-industrial, village-based societies.
124
The sub-discourse of intimacy
The imperative for intimacy may exist in all contemporary societies, simply
because of structural dynamics that engender distance, accentuate competition, and exacerbate conflict. However, Japan seems particularly rich in this
regard. In this chapter we have seen how infotainment form and content
work to forge affective connection and viewer release. This represents a
development well beyond what van Zoonen (1991: 217) perceived in Dutch
TV news: an “intimization” measured in a rising attention to human interest
subjects, an intimate and personal mode of address, and political behavior
and issues treated as matters of personality. Nonetheless, the intimization of
Japanese televisual form and content extends beyond news, to other genres.
While we have highlighted wideshows, we could have easily spotlighted
sports, advertising, public affairs broadcasting, games shows. All have been
intimized. In fact, more than within genre, intimacy operates beneath and
across genres, as a key rhetorical strategy. As such, intimacy must be
acknowledged as a mode of discourse. It serves as a baseline, one of the key
ways in which audiences connect with what is on screen, and may possibly
even be drawn within the televisual world. Once inside, viewers merge with
others, form a contemporary collective, an extensive private public based on
affect and shared experience.
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Final thoughts, next directions
This chapter has revealed numerous invisible aspects of the world behind
the TV screen in Japan. Hopefully it has also demonstrated the extent to
which what is behind the screen has origins, as well as impacts, in the larger
world within which it sits. What this chapter has not shown, but we believe
prevails, is the presence of this phenomenon on the national stage. The
tropes detailed above appear in other local contexts, so that TV communication and consumption behaviors – encoding and decoding acts – transpire
in relatively identical ways. Beyond this, these discursive tropes of intimacy
and acts of engineered collectivity are employed on national TV. In such
cases, it is not local localism that is attended to; rather, it is national localism.
As such, televisual communication exerts major impacts on matters of
national identity and nationalism. Showing this to be true is one challenge
for subsequent research.
Notes
1 The data for this section are culled from Holden (2005).
2 These include the so-called variety shows, info-variety shows (jōhō-baraeti), wide
shows [waidoshō], information/factual programs (hōdō bangumi), and infowideshows (jōhō-waidoshō).
3 The earliest of these shows, Hello Homemakers (also nicknamed “TV BackFence Gossip”) employed a chatty format, daily assembling 20 housewives to
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
share opinions and experiences about issues such as conflict with mothers-in-law,
the generational gap, and how to tie kimono sashes and manage family finances.
During the course of writing, both authors observed other wideshows – in Sendai,
Tokyo and Osaka – serving both the local and national level. Based on this
subsequent research, we are confident in the generalizations advanced here
concerning infotainment in Japan as a whole.
During this research, OH! Ban desu underwent certain changes. Some, which will
be discussed below, were cosmetic; others were aimed at drawing closer to the
audience. One such change concerned format. Whereas in the past the bulk of the
show’s first hour was allocated to the parent station in Tokyo, beginning in
August 2004 this hour was reclaimed by the local station. This meant, in the words
of the show’s producer, “now we have another 60 minutes we have to use. The
program will start at 15:50 still – no change in that. But what is new is that we will
not connect to the main station after the first ten minutes of broadcasting as we
have done all these years. [In the past] we were waiting till 16:50 to start the main
part of the program, but now we don’t need to do that. We have new corners
which will be located in that additional hour between 15:50 and 16:50.”
Following convention, we list Japanese names by family name first, personal
name second.
“Zūzū-ben” is a dialect used in the Tōhoku area. It derives its name from the
placing of a “zu” sound at the end of the words. It is considered as one of the
heaviest dialects by Japanese people, with the shape of the actual word hard to
catch.
Yoshimi (2003) argues that this same scientific, rationalization process has
occurred on the national level since 1990.
Nonetheless, every Thursday Mune appears on a nationally televised noon-time
wideshow, broadcast from Tokyo. He has just enough time to ride the two-hour
bullet train back to Sendai, change in the cab, and appear on OH! Ban desu.
Despite the local complications this causes, Mune’s routine is crucial in tying
periphery (Miyagi TV) to center (NTV).
“Chan” is often employed with those younger, especially children. When used
with adults, it implies emotional closeness. Suffixes implying a higher standing
include “san” or “shi.”
A district in Sendai city.
Although, as we explain later, news has increasingly become “intimized,” insofar
as a reporter’s relationship to information has become less objective, as has the
emotional distance he holds to the consuming audience.
Widespread practices in Japanese news, reality based and infotainment shows
today.
In fact other media as well, as Holden and Tsuruki (2000) demonstrated in their
study of Japanese cell phone dating.
Yoshimi (2003) makes the same general argument in his post-war history of
Japanese TV.
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Inter Cultural Studies of Architecture (ICSA) in Japan 2012