TELEVISION PRESENTS only itself and it presents itself as only television. The convention of theater, of film, is that something else is being presented—life itself. And this is also the convention of certain elements of television—the drama, the moviebut the format of the medium, that of a day-long, night-long variety show, prevents its pretending to be anything other than what it is. This being so, presentation in television is direct. The person doing the talking looks directly at us, the watchers. There is no convention to insist that we are looking at something other than what we are. The only reality is the ostensiblesomeone in front of the TV camera talking to us.
If we are being addressed this directly by commentator or by salesman, we are, in a way, also addressing them. These people are doing it for us, the watchers, and our opinion of them is for various reasons valuable. They want to appear at their best both because they wish to sell us something or influence us in some other way and because, since they are in the public eye, they want in more general terms our good opinion. Various are the ways in which they attempt to obtain this.
We are all familiar with many of the means—carefully chosen words, an implied flattery, the attempt to create enthusiasm, a certain ingratiating unnatural naturalness. We are not so familiar (nor are they) with less conscious means: those through which they, perhaps unknowingly, imply and we, often equally unknowingly, infer; those through which we consciously deduce. These would include what they say without using words—the speech of the face, the hands, the stance; it would also include their ideas on the medium and how to use it, ideas we deduce from viewing TV as an entirety; it would also include their true, rather than their merely stated, opinion of us.
Naturally such ideas vary in various countries since assumptions upon which this behavior rests vary conspicuously from one culture to another. This being so, something is revealed about assumptions, beliefs, and generally agreed upon ideas, when these varying positions are regarded. Those to be seen in Japan are common to that country and there are a great many of them.
So many that it is difficult to know where to begin. Let us start with one which is, so far as I know, unique. This consists of the commentator at one side of the small screen and an assistant at the other. The commentator is always male and usually middle-aged. The assistant is always female, usually young and often pretty. He comments on the news or upon whatever the subject of the program is, and she assists.
But her assistance is so minimal that, to our eyes, she might as well not be there at all. Not for her the “equal” participation of the American “anchor person.” She nods soberly at the camera when he makes his various pronouncements; she says So, dcsu ne? (Isn’t that just true though?) when he makes a cogent point; and she will sometimes add a bit of information of her own which, upon examination, turns out to be a rephrasing of what he himself has just said.
To people of other cultures watching these two the effect is unsettling. We are certainly used to double commentators but usually each commentator really comments. In this format—and it is very common on Japanese television—the pretty girl is not only redundant, she seems absolutely unnecessary. This is because we fail to comprehend her function. Yet she has a very important one.
A commentator is, by definition, giving his opinion. In the West this is quite enough. One man’s opinion is as good as another’s, etc. In Japan, however, to give an opinion is to appear opinionated, and this is a fault in a society where dissenting opinion is at least officially unvoiced, and where a consensus of opinion is the invariable goal. These two qualities are hopefully ensured by this near-mute, if attractive, young lady. Her nods and monosyllables of agreement indicate that he is not alone in his opinion and that therefore he is not merely opinionated. Rather, he is stating a truth, since more than one person agrees upon what he says. At the same time she introduces harmonyit would be unthinkable of her to disagree with him or even to offer a conflicting opinion of her own—by indicating that we all (and it is us she is so earnestly nodding at) agree and the wishedfor consensus has, indeed, already been reached.
One can trace this strange duo back to radio, where they arc still to be heard, his voice supported from time to time by her syllables of assent. One can perceive its principles in even earlier forms of entertainment. In the Bunraku doll-drama, the various voices of characters and commentator (all spoken and sung by a single man) are mutually supportive; in the Noh drama, the chorus affirms and comments upon the dialogue. I can think of no instance where the commentary is not supportive, which means that I can think of no example where irony or any other “deeper” meaning is even suggested. Nor should it be, since the intention is a straight presentation within a context which seeks to make us regard the ostensible and only that as the real. This is as true, in Japan, of ancient drama as it is of modern television. It is, however, only radio and television which has made the assenting voice female, thereby plainly implying that women in Japan have a male-supportive role—and no other.
That women are somehow the weaker sex and are therefore naturally subservient is a typically Japanese message and appears in many forms through many different media. In television this major burden is carried by the commercials where, by implication, the woman is only daughter, wife, homemaker, and mother. In these roles she is identified almost entirely as a consumer: when young she eats chocolates and tries new face creams on camera; married, she is careful about underarm odor and the kind of menstrual napkin she wears; about the house she smiles over the virtues of detergents, air-conditioners, vacuum sweepers; and as a mother she forces various foods on her surprised and delighted spouse and children.
In this, of course, Japanese television is little different from television in any consumer society. The difference is the directness with which this is done. In ostensibly democratic and egalitarian America the commentator’s helper would be laughed (if somewhat nervously) off the screen; and any such overt suggestion (there are covert suggestions aplenty) that woman’s place is in the home would no longer help sell the product. As always in Japan, however, the intention is so open, so unveiled, so unmarred by any irony or duplicity, that the messages emerge with an often startling clarity.
Take, for example, the “togetherness” that is being pushed by TV commercials now that the “prime selling target” has moved from wife and children, and become the family as a unit. In Japan, it should be understood, to be a family man is a very progressive social stance to take. It means that one is unwilling to sacrifice one’s family (and, by extension, oneself) to the allpowerful employer. One’s private concerns now come before one’s social responsibilities. This mini-revolution is actually meaningless because, in practice, it means that the husband merely devotes more leisure time to his family and may, occasionally, attempt to avoid working at the company on Sundays. But the idea of such a revolution is very attractive. One of the symptoms is the wide use of the English “my” in various slogans: “My Car/My Family”. It is symptomatic of the symptom that it is the English “my” which is used and not the Japanese watakushi no. The one, being a foreign word, is as yet free from the unwelcome egotistical nuances which surround the Japanese.
Another symptom is the “happy family” which now finds its way into TV commercials. Here father, mother and kids are all gathered at the family table or, more rarely, on the family tatami while mother introduces them to this or that new product. Their glee is so extreme that even father is carried away by it. He compliments his wife on her buying prowess. Sasuga (“Isn’t that just like her”) he says, smacking his lips and beaming. She simpers her pleasure and the children grimace and look at each other knowingly—everything is OK with Mom and Dad.
Messages are rife in this small vignette. Among things suggested are: buying the right things is the true secret of a happy home life; at the same time the wife’s role as mere shopper has been subtly reinforced because she is after all fulfilling herself in this role, just look at the smiles on those kids’ faces, and just look at the playful hug her husband is giving her—things are going to be OK in bed tonight too.
There are some perhaps unintended messages as well. The one which strikes me most strongly is the apparent lunacy of the family. They behave like manic-depressives in the upward phase—all those roguish smiles and frenetic laughs over what is, after all, only a new breakfast food or laundry soap. It is the behavior of the mouse family or the rabbit family in the animated cartoons. There is something quite inhuman about these excesses.
Abroad, the TV watcher is, naturally, already familiar with this type of crazy family. He is so familiar with it that he is prepared to read the message with a certain cynicism. When sponsors discovered this, the family was promptly removedthe substitute was another family shifted a few millimeters nearer reality. In Japan, however, the viewer is usually immune to cynicism—being Japanese—and the family is taken at face value. These people are happy with their new product: this is the only message read.
(That the sell is very hard indeed is apparent. But in Japan there is only hard sell—no soft. The reason is that, in a culture where the ostensible is always the real, any attempt at soft sell—and there have been some—results in an unfortunate sideeffect: the sponsor doesn’t really believe in his product; he is sneaky and shifty in its presentation; if it is good enough to buy why doesn’t he just say so?)
More important than this simple reading, however, is what the reading affirms. In being happy with the new product the family has reached yet further agreement, yet higher harmony. No dissent, no confrontation will rend this happy group. And by behaving like a demented mouse-family this social unit has, furthermore, shown that they are unexceptionable, that they are Mr. and Mrs. Status Quo with all their little Quos—that they are, in fact, no threat.
I am no threat. This message is so clear and so incessant on Japanese television, and so accounts for the tone of the medium, that one must examine the phenomenon in some detail.
One might begin by noticing that the adults in TV commercials are all really children. They cock their heads like precocious youngsters, they use the gestures of the school-child, they smile and laugh in the most uninhibited manner (and one markedly in contrast to the smiles and laughter of true Japanese adults), and cajole in a way truly typical of the spoiled Japanese child. Further, the disembodied voices in these commercials (those we listen to while looking at the products) are plainly adults imitating children. Further yet, the music accompanying all this is reminiscent of the jaunty marches associated, in Japan at any rate, with kindergarten.
Perhaps behind all of this is some urge to return to the golden age of undisciplined, permissive, Japanese childhood, but the implication (to the extent that any is acknowledged) would seem to be that we are all as harmless as children. Look at us: we make fools of ourself, we invite you to laugh at us, we are fatuous to a degree—and yet, since we are so harmless, your laughter cannot but be indulgent, your hand cannot but reach into your pocket, your fingers cannot but open up the billfold. And if you don’t want to—then no harm done because, you see, we have really asked for nothing.
In a way this is soft-sell with a vengeance. These monstrous children are, in a truly childlike manner, having it both ways at once. It is in this manner that their message reaches the consumer who—not having been really, truly asked—can feel all the more free to do just what has been suggested. The happy family has merely offered him an example of unexceptionable, nonthreatening togetherness.
Look how unexceptionable I am: this is a message which demotes the threat of another person looking into your living room, and if the actors in TV commercials purposely imitate children, those non-pros on the talk-shows, the amateur hours, the endless “personal” interviews, indicate that the childplay is based upon something very real.
Notice the hands of the ordinary citizen when he appears on television—and bear in mind that inJapan the ordinary citizen is brought to appear on the tube with a frequency greater, I would guess, than in any other country. Where are the hands? They are folded in front of him, one gripping the other, in the lap if he is sitting, at the crotch if he is standing. This is the “good” position.
On foreign TV, particularly American, the non-pro often seeks to make something of his personality by waving his hands about more than he ordinarily would. They suddenly become “expressive” of him. Likewise, his stance—if he is standing—is not that of the ordinary Japanese facing the TV camera. He will assume a “natural” stance, in which the pelvis is expressively tilted—just a hint of aggression. If he stood as does his opposite Japanese number, feet together, hands safely in front, something like the schoolboy at attention, Americans would read the image as indication of embarrassment, would see someone who is immature, and, at any rate, someone without “an outgoing personality.”
But in Japan, conversely, the gesticulating foreigner is seen as egotistical (a bad thing), ill-mannered, and quite capable of disturbing an implied social harmony by his individualistic gesturing. On the other hand, the Japanese are all standing in well-mannered identical positions (well-mannered, to an extent, because they are identical), no one calling any undue attention to himself, all possible areas of danger (the hands, the pelvis) under firm control, all individualistic tendencies properly sacrificed to attain a goal of unexceptionable “good manners”—how well brought—up, how proper they indeed are.
(Apparent contradictions to these observations are, I think, only apparent. ThatJapanese TV dramas, differentiated from the commercials, are filled with the utmost anti-social violence does not indicate that such a display is to be condoned. Rather, it indicates a concern for the natural violence which hands firmly in the lap keep successfully under control. It is part titillation and part horrible example—in any event those exhibiting this degree of individuality are always reformed, put into prison, or killed. In the same way, the fact that in the home-dramas the happy housewife is revealed to be a mass of suffering, given to multiple love affairs, abortions, ungrateful children and a high degree of suicide, indicates no further degree of reality about real Japanese housewives. Rather, it represents an opposite extreme—both ends being equally far from middle: the real Japanese woman. In any event, both violence and tear-jerking are illustrations of fantasies entertained by sponsors and TV producers, not by the audience.)
The pervading juvenility of Japanese TV is the result of its conciliatory intentions. The complete fatuity of all Japanese programing except the dramas (where the fatuousness is of a different degree), its bland, inane foolishness, is a small price to pay when the result is something as grand as complete uniformity and utter consistency. Still, to the foreign viewer, Japanese television brings to mind Douglas MacArthur’s famous (and much resented) description of the Japanese as a nation of twelve yearoIds. It also makes one think that the general missed the age by at least a decade.
I am not saying that the Japanese are really like this. I am saying that the image they project on television, the image they choose to present, is precisely this. One sees it in other situations. Japanese formal behavior—so relentlessly conciliatoryremains absurd to foreigners who do not understand its reasons.) These are always those where a degree of presentation is called for. We are unexceptionable, we are no threat, we are—just look—nice and good. An evening of Japanese TV—in which this single intention is tirelessly presented and represented—makes one wonder just how the myth of Japanese inscrutability ever got started: could anything be simpler, or more simple-minded, than this open, naked display?
What we are seeing, however, is only that which has been selected. People on the tube—pro and amateur alike, both the newscasters and those who design the commercial—select (telling word) their “image.” Just as the Americans choose to present a type which is more individual, more argumentative, more “vital,” than anyone you are apt to find on an American streetcorner, so the Japanese have chosen an image carefully lacking in any obvious individuality, given wholeheartedly to assent, but equally “vital” in that the goal of the presentation is a uniform front. That safety would be identified with childishness and security with inanity are natural consequences of the presentational aim. Here too, as in the dramas, we are dealing in part with hopeful fantasy, since no people could ever be as bland or as unexceptional as those on Japanese TV. Unlike the fantasy in the dramas, however, this is accepted as “real.” One presents one’s image as into a reflecting mirror. And that mirror is the audience.
—1980