The Comfort Zone: Japan’s Media Marketing of 9/11

Abstract

The 9/11 terrorist attacks were of course big news in Japan. And it was made bigger still by the Japanese mass media’s efforts to market 9/11 by placing the attacks into a context that would excite the emotions of the Japanese people. However, reporting the 9/11 attacks and subsequent related events presented a problem for the Japanese media for two reasons. First, the media was at a loss to explain what had actually happened. Second, and more fundamentally troublesome, was how to understand the significance and meaning of the attacks through the lens of Japanese society. The value of 9/11 as a media commodity depended on the Japanese mass media’s abilities to locate the comfort zone, or to package these events and their meanings in a manner that the Japanese public would find compelling and comprehensible. In the process of tackling these problems, the media passed through a period of situating and resituating the shocking images of airline passenger planes smashing into the World Trade Center towers, buildings that were very familiar to the millions of Japanese tourists who had visited New York City or to the many Japanese moviegoers who knew the New York City skyline from watching Hollywood films.