Paper short abstract:

Revisiting my article, 'Tourism and the Ama: the search for a real Japan', this paper considers Japanese nostalgia for the past and traditional lifestyles, through NHK's 'Amachan'. This 2013 asadora was hugely successful and has been called a social phenomenon. What exactly does this mean?

Paper long abstract:

In the 1980s, domestic Japanese tourism was often based on a nostalgia for a Japan that was rapidly vanishing. Diving for seafood, the work of the ama, was a form of ancient and traditional fishing that was seen to be disappearing at an accelerated rate. Daughters in ama villages were seeking other sorts of employment and by the turn of the century even Kuzaki, where I did my fieldwork in 1984-5, was finally experiencing depopulation. No one wanted to be an ama, it was too hard -- this was said even in the 1980s.

However, older divers continue to dive, Mikimoto continues to put on tourist demonstrations of 'pearl divers', the Japanese are trying to have ama diving designated an UNESCO form of intangible culture and the NHK asadora 'Amachan' has caused at least one young teenager to take up learning to dive.

This paper examines the hugely successful television series in an attempt to understand the twenty-first century's nostalgia for this way of life. How is the past being remembered? Why are divers of such interest to the Japanese? Some examination of the history of depicting divers in romantic poems and erotic prints may help us understand the cult of the ama, but 'Amachan' did not necessarily go down that line as much as it involved 'finding oneself' -- that is, it was about one's ikigai in contemporary Japan.

The series also constrasts the past and the present; Japan at the height of its economic success and post-bubble society; and appears to offer hope to Japanese youth. Its messages seem to have struck an important cord, particularly after the events of 3/11. This is not a television program to be ignored.

Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this research is to show how Japanese television dramas represent "August 15th" and how it is related to the memory of war among Japanese people, by analyzing and comparing the scenes of "August 15th" in war memorial dramas and NHK's morning drama series.

Paper long abstract:

Japan has a genre of journalism called "August journalism" in which mass media such as newspapers and television write about war and peace annually in August. In previous research, Takumi Sato (2005) has revealed how "August 15th" was memorized as "the unofficial war memorial day" and became mythicized among Japanese people after the war, by examining past newspapers, photographs, radio programming etc.. As Japanese TV dramas have not been studied from this perspective yet, I will focus on them to show how they represent "August 15th" and how it is related to the memory of war (here refers to the Asia-Pacific War) among Japanese people.

In the history of Japanese television broadcasting, the dramas that have dealt with war frequently are war memorial dramas (mainly two hour special drama) and NHK's morning drama series (so-called asadora). These few years I have been studying how the dramas of both types deal with the aspects of war along with the times, I found out that there are subtle differences in the representation of "August 15th" between 1965 and 2015．

In this presentation, I focus on how the dramas depict "August 15th" which is regarded as "the unofficial war memorial day" in Japan. As a procedure of analysis, I first outline war memorial dramas and NHK's morning drama series along with the flow of 70 years after the war and briefly introduce their features and differences. Next I extract the scenes of "August 15th" represented in both dramas, compare and examine them from the aspect of audiovisual references to the Emperor's announcement of Japan's surrender (Gyokuon-hōsō) and Japanese people's reaction to defeat etc.. If time permits, I will also focus on 5 years afer the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011.3.11), which is said to have drastically changed the existence of the mass media in Japan, by drawing attention to similarities and differences between depiction of "war" and "earthquake disaster" .

Paper short abstract:

This presentation deals with NHK's series format of asadora and its role as a national institution in Japan. The asadora is interpreted as a "media ritual" phenomenon, which experiences profound transformations in recent years through a changing broadcasting landscape.

Paper long abstract:

The series format of renzoku terebi shôsetsu ("serial TV novel"), short asadora, is regarded as a national institution in Japan: For generations, people have been turning in the state broadcaster NHK in the morning to follow the plot, which extends over half a year. Watching this series is thus more than just pure entertainment; it has become a ritual that contributes to the structuring of everyday life. The content of asadora is often characterized by traditional values, provides an ideal image of Japanese family life and creates normative concepts of femininity and masculinity. Due to its great social (and also economic) importance, Hiyama Tamami refers to the asadora as the single kokumin-teki dorama ("national drama") on Japanese television (Hiyama on Toyo Keizai Online, 2015: 2). In asadora, Japanese identity is often constructed by picking up great national narratives as the 2nd World War or the reconstruction after defeat. This view of national history from the perspective of women is an important part of the Japanese culture of remembrance. Equally important for identity construction in asadora, though, is the strong emphasis on the regional, which is used pars pro toto to negotiate national values.

This strong media format has met several challenges in recent years: Due to digitalization, advanced recording technology and a diversified range of programs, it has become more difficult for TV stations to attract a large audience; on the other hand, popular TV formats like asadora are widely discussed on social media, and the audience is actively participating in expanding the narrative world of TV series.

In my presentation, I discuss asadora as a "media ritual" phenomenon, which reinforces "the media's authority as a social 'centre'" (Couldry in "Media Rituals", 2003: 30), as becomes apparent through expressions like kokumin-teki dorama and its strong focus on the 'national'. Since over the last 10 years the concept of TV as a medium has profoundly changed, I am also dealing with the transformation of the asadora format and its implications for the media ritual.