JAPANESE TELEVISION: ADVERTISING, CULTURE, AND MEDIA PRACTICES

Abstract

This brief overview examines Japan’s enduring relationship with the small screen and television broadcasting, a surprisingly faithful relationship in a time of upheavals in media consumption. Television connects all 126 million inhabitants, informing, persuading, relaxing, befriending, and providing topics for discussion and ways of contextualising events, brands, people and world-views. It is now virtually impossible to escape the worlds of the screens in any way in Japan, meaning it is also impossible to escape the manufactured content on these screens. The driving force behind this promulgation of screens is at its most basic level a self-promotion, a need to perpetuate consumerism and brandism, to ensure that screens continue to be bought and continue to integrate into everyday life, providing a direct conduit between products and consumers. These products range from the television screens themselves, everyday consumer goods, through to opinions and worldviews, selections and slices of life for consumption by audiences eager to absorb and consume and connect.