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And then there was this incident. On one occasion, our relatives had some sort of gathering at Grandfather's house on Miyamasuzaka. I was playing in the garden with cousins about my own age. Somehow I got into a squabble with one of them and I struck him. My uncle came out of the house and defended his own son without allowing me to explain myself.

Not being accustomed to this kind of treatment, I looked on his action as a total miscarriage of justice perpetrated by a grown man armed with overwhelming physical strength against a child who was not yet old enough to go to elementary school. I abhorred this injustice. I soon forgot the reason for the fight, but for ten years I could not forget my sense of disgust. And until my uncle died of tuberculosis, I did not have the slightest goodwill toward him.

Without his ever knowing it, his behavior challenged the very order of my universe. If I had been more exposed to the outside world during my childhood, I would surely have come across many similar challenges many times in many places. But before I went to elementary school, I had almost no such exposure. I grew up under the protection of my parents and knew less about the realities of the outside world than most other children my age.

I was defenseless against malicious intent and intrigues, and I was sensitive to even the slightest breach of justice. While both of my parents were enthusiastic about our education, they did not always concur when it came to educational philosophy. It was Mother who got worried about our staying home all the time with too little contact with other children.

Out of this concern, she thought of the kindergarten at the Catholic girls' school that she herself had attended and where she had quite a few acquaintances. Once she got that idea, she tried to convince Father to let her take us there. Father, a stubborn atheist, did not welcome the idea of mixing his children's education with Christianity. On top of that, he had serious doubts about the. In the final analysis, their difference of opinion could perhaps be ascribed to their mutual dissatisfaction with each other's lifestyle. Mother was a city girl, and although she was not the flamboyant type, she enjoyed socializing with people.

Father, on the other hand, had acquired the unpretentious mannerisms of his rural family despite its grand landholding status. He had no liking for wine or cigarettes and would rather spend his time reading at home. In any case, leaving aside my sister who was too young to go, they finally decided to let me try out the kindergarten experience. But for me, the new environment was not easy to get used to. With so many children, it was impossible for the Western nuns to give the same scrupulous attention I was used to with my parents.

Since the nuns did not bother to secure my understanding—What a difficult child I must have been! The school's playground was equipped with sandboxes and wisteria trellises for the kindergartners and I would stand in a corner and watch the girls in uniforms running about during recess time as the black-robed nuns moved among them. I would also listen curiously to the strange sound of the church bells echoing under the blue sky.

He will get used to it before long," Mother said. As I listened to their conversation, I wondered why it was necessary for me to get used to the other children and to join their ranks when I was not the least unhappy in my present situation. In the end I did not stay at the kindergarten for a long time, nor did I discover anything about the complexities of the world from the children there.

I can fairly say that my kindergarten experience left in me only a series of strange and acute sensory impressions of Westerners in black attire, church bells, and young girls in uniforms swarming around the schoolyard. It would be incorrect, however, for me to say that until the time I went to elementary school, the world of my sheltered childhood always revolved in a rational orbit.

During my childhood I often suffered from swollen tonsils and fever. When the fever ran high, I would be besieged with nightmares.

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There was never any color or sound in them, and even the shapes of things became blurred. Although it was difficult to tell exactly what it was, there was something that resembled a gigantic wheel coming my way, slowly and noiselessly, and about to crush me. But there was no way to escape regardless of how desperately I tried. The wheel-like object was so enormous that it nearly blocked out the sky. Even the gray sky itself turned entirely into a ponderous mass, looming and pressing closer every minute. The horror is impossible to describe, and just when I thought my entire body and soul were drained of any strength to resist, I would awaken from my dream.

My whole body would be drenched in a cold sweat and I would be totally exhausted, and yet the dream remained real. Because the same nightmare recurred whenever I had a fever, I could even feel a premonition of the dream unfolding as I began to doze off.

Sometimes, instead of being crushed by the wheel-like object, I found myself descending deeper and deeper into a whirlpool. The whole universe was turning in its vortex. I couldn't tell whether it was made up of a gas, a liquid, or some other substance. In any case, as it swirled, it sucked me into the depths of its bottomless abyss. I did not know what lay at the bottom. But as my infinite descent continued, I was further and further removed from my world, a world which I could comprehend. The horror was exactly the same as when I was about to be crushed by the huge wheel-like object.

To be sure, I had other dreams as well. But as far as I can remember, they were no more than somewhat inauthentic reenactments of minor incidents in my everyday experience. These episodes were sometimes pleasant and sometimes not; but supernatural events did not occur, and neither did they cause me any great emotional disturbance. However, the horror in the two types of nightmares—I'll just call them that—was for a long time the only thing that terrified me both in my real life and in my dreams. What was it that horrified me so much in those nightmares?

Or was it the human society that stretched infinitely beyond the confines of my family? Or was it rather the unknown world, general matters beyond my comprehension? In any event, the horror seemed inseparable from the premonition of total destruction. Perhaps it signified the destruction of the rational order and, accordingly, of a world I could comprehend. If so, I have to say that the dark, turbulent, and opaque abyss of the irrational reality lurking beneath the rational order had already opened wide during my younger days, though it manifested itself only when I was suffering from high fever.

But it was not until much later that I peered down into the abyss of real life. When I awoke from my nightmares, Mother would wipe away my cold sweat and say, "So you had a bad dream again. Don't worry, it was only a dream. Although I was not pampered, I was carefully sheltered, not only from the menacing realities of the outside world, but also from any problems inside the family, or even from questions a child might have about himself.

Reality for me existed only in a faraway world. This is probably the only viewpoint of what people call "children from good families. I grew up as a sickly but well-disciplined child, sensitive to expressions of love, and filled with a peculiar sense of justice. On the other hand, I was at a complete loss when it came to interacting with other people. I had a strong sense of self-respect, but probably none of the charms of a child.

With that I embarked on my journey. I was plagued by high fever and terrified by nightmares, and the bitter medicine and castor oil Father prescribed were near torture for me to take. The few days after my temperature had gone down, however, were not totally joyless. Father was careful to prevent relapse by forbidding me to go outdoors even long after I was on my way to recovery. Yet it was also during this time that I was able to monopolize Mother's scrupulous attentiveness, the source of my unsurpassed happiness. Moreover, I was permitted to eat my favorite foods during my recuperation. When the sliding door was opened, plenty of sunshine filtered in through the glass window over the veranda.

Father would come in to check me once a day.

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Mother, on the other hand, would come more often, bringing me such things as food or medicine. Sometimes she would sit beside my pillow and read children's tales to me. Lying in bed, I would begin to imagine how the unfinished story would unfold; I would look out through the window into the small yard and watch the sunrise, the sunset, and the changing contours of the stone lantern's shadow in front of the shrubbery.

Sometimes, I could hear Mother playing the koto in a room at the other end of the house. We had a small crystal radio set in our house, but even deft manipulation of its controls would succeed only in making it produce just barely audible sound. Therefore, it never occurred to anyone to use it to listen to. Grandfather, fond as he was of Western things, did have a hand-operated gramophone with a large trumpet-shaped speaker, the kind not many families had at the time. My encounter with music probably began with Mother's koto. Though its flowing notes did not stir my emotions, I liked its timbre and still do.

Father played the shakuhachi , but its sound did not resonate with any joy or sadness in my heart. The notes of the koto were not the only thing I heard as I lay in bed. When I was restricted to my sickbed, I would listen to children's tales and fantasize their ongoing plots. I would watch the same shrubbery in the garden over and over again or even gaze at all the minute details in the grain of the ceiling board. But I still had too much time on my hands. I listened intently to all the sounds that came into my six-mat room from the world outside. Even though I was not living in music, I was at least living in a world of sound.

The sound of Mother's footsteps in the corridor as she ap-. Apart from his opera Kurofune Black ships , his best-known works include "Aka tonbo" Red dragonfly , "Pechika" Stove , "Karatachi no hana" Wild orange blossoms , and "Kono michi" This trail. On the last two songs, see chapter Into the six-mat room of our unusually quiet and fenced-in house, the noise from these peddlers conveyed with extraordinary vividness the varied rhythms of these working men.

Today, the only sound that can be heard on opening the window in a suburban Tokyo home is the roar of traffic. In those days, however, Tokyo was still filled with the voices of living people. On a cold winter night, the approaching melody from the flute of the noodle vendor could be heard until its crisp notes gradually faded away into the distance.

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In an instant its melancholy tunes awakened the frosty roads, the clatter of geta as people hurried away with hands tucked inside their kimono, the warm glow coming through the window of the neighborhood bathhouse, and the crescent moon hanging high above the telegraph poles. And then there was the rattling sound of the storm shutters in the wintry wind and the distant whistle of the freight train passing through Shibuya Station. The notes from Mother's koto formed a part of my world of sound, a world perhaps not intrinsically different from what Verlaine called "the murmur of the street.

The child who seldom went out to play quickly learned to read. With this ability, my recuperation began to assume an entirely different meaning for me. I no longer felt bored even when I had to lie in bed for several days. When my parents bought me books, they did not seem to worry about my not reading them; instead, their worry was that I was reading too much. Why don't you get a little more rest?

But as soon as she left, I would start to read again. This habit turned into a character trait, and even now, I sometimes have to remind myself, "Reading just takes away from. It became so only when I was sick in bed and couldn't find any other enjoyable things to do. Had I not been a sickly child, I would probably not have been so fondly attached to the printed word or thought of becoming a writer later on. He was from the country-side and a student at Waseda University. While he seemed to be ill at ease with Father, he was very relaxed with Mother. If he returned early from the university, he would have a long conversation with Mother over a cup of tea before finally going off to his room.

He was fond of children, and when we went out for a walk, he would let me and Sister each hang onto a finger and lift us off the ground. You'll exhaust him," Mother would say. It's really nothing," my cousin would say. With that, Sister and I would repeatedly pester him for more, and he would play along with us until he got tired. I suppose he was really fond of children. But perhaps he was even more fond of Mother. For a long time I idolized him. He was by far stronger than anyone I knew; he was nice to Mother, and he was the best playmate we could ever hope for. One time Mother took me, Sister, and my cousin along while Father, as I remember, was still out on a house call.

At Dogenzaka, Mother bumped into some drunks. She paid no attention to them. My cousin, as usual, was entertaining us with both his hands and had a nonchalant look on his face, but I am sure he was taking stock of the situation. As soon as he saw that the drunks' behavior was getting out of hand, he quickly let go our hands and stepped in between them and Mother. Pushing the drunks aside, he demanded sharply, "Go away!

One of them shouted something and tried to grab my cousin's shoulder with one hand, only to find his arm twisted high behind his back, which immobilized him. The other drunk had already made good his escape. Releasing the man's right arm and pushing him away, my cousin said to Mother, "Let's go. I was really worried. When the man tried to. But considering his physical prowess, I suppose he could easily handle two or three ordinary men.

And if he should decide to rough them up, there was no predicting what would become of his challengers. After his graduation from the university, my cousin returned to the countryside, got married, and carried on the family's farming tradition. I seldom got to see him afterwards, but on the rare occasions when we visited him, we found that he had turned completely into a young country gentleman and was busy running a farming co-op.

Come to think of it, I can read and write and nobody else here can. But at Waseda I spent almost all of my time practicing kendo and your father often scolded me for that. Everyone in our family enjoyed his company while he was living with us. During World War II when Tokyo was devastated by fire, the first place we sought shelter was at his house. At that time, my paternal grandfather and grandmother had already passed away, and their house had ceased to be a possible asylum for us in the midst of the war.

My cousin and his wife never gave Mother any cause for anxiety while she was attending my sister, who gave birth to her second child at their house. When we were children, my cousin physically protected us when necessary; and after we became adults, we could still always count on him if we found ourselves in trouble.

While I admired my cousin, I never imagined that I could one day become as strong as he was. I was prone to illness and more frail than other children my age. Perhaps I should say that my cousin's great physical strength made it possible for me to ignore the physical difference between me and the other children. Naturally, it was expedient for me to think like that. Physical prowess was not the only thing we didn't have. When it came to power, Father had absolutely none. When my Dietman uncle became a prefectural governor, I was absolutely dumbfounded to see so many government bureaucrats prostrating themselves before him.

Men with titles like section chief would treat even my aunt like a queen, and some would even tie the shoelaces for their son, who was about my. To be sure, Grandfather also behaved like an emperor in his own house, ordering Grandmother and his maids around with his chin. But the character of their behavior was different. My uncle's entire family could give orders at will throughout the entire organization of the prefectural office.

Although I could sense my uncle's vast authority, I only looked at his extraordinary behavior with detachment and without the slightest envy. I grew up without developing any particular attraction to what might be called masculine attributes, whether they were measured in terms of physical strength or worldly authority. I had no aspirations for the power of coercion or for a grandiose character. Rather, I yearned for the gentler and more delicate things in life, qualities others would, I suppose, describe as effeminate.

I will have more to say about this later. What kind of books did I mostly read as a child in my sickbed? Today, I can remember only the names of two authors. One of them was Harada Mitsuo, and the other was Kanetsune Kiyosuke. Thanks to him, by the time I started elementary school, I already knew that the human body was made up of cells, that many illnesses were caused by bacteria, and that human beings and monkeys probably shared a common ancestry. My first hero was not a celebrated Japanese warrior or Siegfried, but an Englishman named Charles Darwin.

The first Latin word I learned was Pithecanthropus erectus Java man. Harada Mitsuo talked about a myriad of phenomena in the universe, from the structure of the galactic system to an atomic model, from the experiments of Archimedes to those of Michelson and Morley. I was filled with curiosity, and I had no communication whatsoever with the world around me.

The world was there not for me to change but only to interpret. Perhaps the books of Harada that I read did not provide accurate interpretations of the world,. To me, that was almost analogous to poetic inspiration, something no children's tale could come close to having. With regard to the origin of human beings, only a long historical process could convince those who believed in the Bible to accept the theory of evolution. As someone who started off with the theory of evolution, it would probably take me a long time to recognize the significance of myths. It was only coincidental that the books I read were concerned with the natural sciences and not with psychology, history, or the social sciences.

Had I encountered another Harada Mitsuo of the social sciences, my curiosity in the organization of black African tribes might well have been stimulated in exactly the same way as my interest in the structure of the galaxies. The first foreign word I learned—for me it had the reverberation and mysterious aura of an incantation—might not have been the Latin word for the Java man but perhaps the contemporary German word Gemeinschaft , meaning a "closely knit kinship community.

As a child, I did not learn about the natural sciences from the books I read; rather I discovered the excitement in interpreting the world.



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For a long time afterwards, I never entertained any doubt that the world was capable of interpretation and that its structure evolved from a rational order. I still remember the content of Harada Mitsuo's writings, but not anything about his literary style. With Kanetsune Kiyosuke, on the contrary, I have forgotten just about everything he said, but I can still remember very vividly the profound impression I had when I first came across his unique narrative style.

In those days, almost all the authors of children's books would address their audience as "boys and girls. Of course, no one could expect to discover in such writings the kind of questions the authors themselves privately cherished, or their own thinking processes, or the real excitement and frustrations of their experience. That is to say, the authors' individual personalities were not revealed to their readers. But Kanetsune Kiyosuke alone did away with "boys and girls"; he addressed us as "my readers. I am sure you have learned some. Just listen to Die Winterreise.

He stood on the premise that there was no such thing as universal truth and appealed to his audience on what he himself truly believed. While I found myself almost at a total loss about what he was saying, I could nonetheless see that he was trying to make his case, that he had personally been moved by his experience, and that he had contemplated on his own accord. In the process, he displayed his wit and attacked with his sarcastic stings, taking the offensive and the defensive by turns. In short, he lives in his writings.

It was in the writings of Kanetsune Kiyosuke that I discovered literature. And because I could not even remotely understand the content, perhaps I could even say that what I discovered was literature in its pure form. Kanetsune Kiyosuke was the man who later stirred up quite a controversy in Japan for suggesting that "the pianist is expendable.

What he actually said was that "the piano will produce the same timbre whether it is played by Iguchi [Motonari] or walked across by a cat. I wish they would represent in their music the hearts of young Japanese in love in the same way Chopin infuses his own feelings of love into his compositions. Perhaps Kanetsune had already evacuated from Tokyo, or perhaps he was only there for the summer to escape from the sweltering Tokyo heat.

With disheveled hair the color of snow, the scrawny old man was wearing an informal kimono with a piece of string instead of an obi around his waist. The plumes of the tall. It was near autumn, and the old man was strolling buoyantly along in the wind with a bamboo cane in his hand. The more I read and learned, the more questions I ended up having. The only person around me that I could talk with in an effort to dispel my doubts was Father.

As our conversations grew more frequent, I naturally found myself strongly influenced by his way of thinking. The fact that he enjoyed chatting with his little son—for lack of other people to talk with—also contributed to the situation. But a vicious cycle had already begun. When I started elementary school, I realized right away that other children did not have the slightest interest in the kind of topics Father and I talked about. When I discovered that no other children had developed any capacity for inquiry, I enjoyed my conversations with Father even more.

But the more often we talked, the more difficult it was for me to get satisfaction from talking with children my own age. And that was not all. A scholar might apply positivistic thinking only in his study or laboratory, but Father—the potential scholar—went beyond that and applied it in his everyday life as well. According to him, spirits and ghosts were merely illusions. Grandfather's worship of the god of harvests was just a pitiable form of superstition.

Mother's idea about the immortality of the soul seemed improbable, but even if the idea were true, the inability to verify it rendered any contemplation on the subject a waste of time. The deeds of larger-than-life heroes in legends and tales were simply embellished exaggerations. Nobody could possibly tell exactly what had happened since they took place so long ago. The love stories depicted in novels were totally unrealistic; only adolescent boys and girls who knew nothing about life would take them seriously. As a consequence, nothing could be more ludicrous than to deliberately divide elementary school-children into separate teams to make them compete.

As a child, though I could only barely understand these ideas, I kept hearing them. It was not that I was precocious; I just learned the language of adults before I became an adult. And I had absolutely no doubt that adult language was a far more powerful tool than the utterances of children in any attempt to explain the world in a coherent way. Even if a child can adapt to adult language, it is not easy to go in the opposite direction. All adults have their own share of disillusionment, but most people are too preoccupied with their work to confront theirs.

But Father was not a busy man, and instead of glossing over his disillusionments, he tried to theorize about them. As for me, I would say that under Father's overwhelming influence, I did not begin life by first romanticizing it and then gradually realizing its disillusionments. Rather, I anticipated disillusionment from the very start and then I gradually created my own romances. I was considered "bashful among strangers" when I did not mix well with the other children at kindergarten.

That I had no desire to join them in their games at the elementary schoolyard was because I couldn't endure the stupidity of children's play. But since a child has only a child's role to perform, I myself had to confront and deal with such childish behavior.

That drove me to the brink of self-hatred. Naturally, I could not appreciate this situation, nor, I am afraid, could Father. It was Mother, and Mother alone, who did. Among my relatives' children, almost none went to the district elementary schools. Instead, they were sent to the "special" schools. The girls would attend Saint Maur or Sacred Heart.

The reason they were considered "special" was that their students came exclusively from middle-class families. Most of my relatives in Tokyo thought it unbecoming for "children from good families" to mix with the local city kids. But Father did not share that view. Quite the contrary, he thought that mixing with these children was anything but unbecoming. Indeed, the reason he did not hesitate to send his only son to the conventional district school was that he thought such interaction would be most valuable.

His belief that money does not determine a person's worth, I suppose, also reflected his status as the second and not the eldest son of a landlord, a position that made it impossible for him to inherit the family fortune. Although I have no idea where he might have acquired it, he also held a kind of rational egalitarianism, an idea Mother could also accept because it did not conflict with her Catholic faith.

No matter how poor the families of their son's schoolmates might be, when they came over to play, my parents would do everything they could not to make. But, of course, their very solicitous attention itself only had the effect of sensitizing them to the disparities between their families and ours.

The classmates I played and fought with just like anyone else in the schoolyard underwent a subtle change in demeanor once they arrived at our gate. I would dash through the gate to get in, only to discover that my friends were not following. Looking back in surprise, I would see that some of them were about to run back home, while others were hesitant to come in. Since these were the same children who would always fight to get into the classroom first, I was at a total loss as to why they had become so reluctant to come through our gate unless I went in first.

But it never occurred to me that we had a big house. Of course I was not ignorant of the fact that there were smaller houses in town, but the people who lived in those houses seemed so totally unrelated to my life. I was also surprised at the extraordinary astonishment on the part of my school chums over the light refreshments Mother prepared for us when we returned home. One time, one of them said in an impressed voice, "Wow, your mom's really nice!

In any case, it was difficult to play with those kids who ran away from my house without telling me why. Soon, I grew weary of their strange uneasiness, a complete and puzzling departure from the way they acted when we were playing in the schoolyard. And so I met my classmates less and less often outside school. That doesn't mean, however, that there were no exceptions. I doubt if I will ever forget a boy in my class who always did poorly at school and who was often scolded by our teachers.

He was a big but skinny boy with clumsy movements and an oddly large head. Everybody was chummy with him because he had a likable personality. I once chanced on him at a place I would never have dreamed of. In those days there were many night stalls in that area, and the smell of acetylene lamps filled the air along the narrow sidewalks. Jostling our way through the crowd, we stopped by the goldfish stall, peeked inside the shop selling wind-bells and potted morning glory, and watched the bargain sale by the banana.

Folks, if you ain't buyin', it's your loss! I'll make it an even better deal! Now this ain't no fair business deal for me! But I'm desperate and I don't care any more! Some customers bought a whole pile, while others bought less, but the place was always filled with an uproarious activity. At the gomoku narabe stall, a middle-aged man was quietly waiting for customers behind the chessboards set up with black and white pieces. Every now and then, he would cry out to the passers-by, "Two more moves on the black pieces and you can win!

You can win by just making two moves! If you win, I won't charge you anything. Hey, the young student over there! How about a game? But then they just continued to stare at the chessboards with little intention of leaving soon. Even after Father had urged me to keep going, I wanted to stay until somebody made his move so that I could see whether my reading of the game was correct. At first glance, the strategy seemed easy to unravel but actually was, I gather, rather complicated. On both sides of the street, brightly lit stores were bustling with crowds of shoppers going in and out.

In addition, there were many eating places, all jammed with people. I wanted to go into one of these places to see what it was like. Perhaps it was because this particular night was very hot, and I felt thirsty. We went into an ice shop for some shaved ice. The boy who happened to take our order was none other than my classmate with the big head. He had noticed me from afar, and even though we saw each. Not only could the clumsy boy from school move with an agility one would never have imagined, but, compared with the wide-eyed child taken into the restaurant by his parents, my friend was already a full-grown adult who could maneuver his way with total ease in the cramped restaurant, handle his many customers, take their orders, and deftly bring them shaved ice.

I'll talk to you later," he said in a friendly voice. I, on the other hand, had never in my entire life experienced what it meant to be busy! The boy took the money from Father for our drinks. The world was actually revolving around the transaction between Father and the big-headed kid, and I was merely an onlooker. To me, this meant a rediscovery not only of my classmate, but also of my own place and my own role.

I didn't know how to react to such a sudden and overwhelming discovery. The shaved ice with bright red, yellow, and green colors looked delicious on the outside, but it didn't taste good when I actually put it into my mouth. Among the some fifty male and female students in my grade was a carpenter's son who had distinguished himself academically.

Even during recess, he often spent his time studying. He was not very close to the other kids, but I was his friend as well as his rival in class. One day on our way home, he invited me to go to his place. The carpenter's home was on a rather wide street close to the school. It was so cramped with lumber, half-made storm shutters, and desks that some overflowed onto the sidewalk. The doma was littered everywhere with wood shavings, leaving no space to walk. In front of his house, my classroom rival suddenly said courteously, "Please wait here for a moment," and went inside himself.

As there was no other entrance, passing through the work area seemed to be the only way to get in and out of his house. But he had no intention of showing me the inside. After a while, he reappeared and sat down on a wooden block on the sidewalk and said, "Here's fine. We saw neighborhood housewives and some students from Kokugakuin University in formal attire, their geta reverberating sharply as they strolled by.

I can no longer remember what we talked about or what we did. At any rate, what took me by surprise after a while was a sharp voice from his house, calling my friend's name. With the lips closed, this is called humming, humans have vocal folds which can loosen, tighten, or change their thickness, and over which breath can be transferred at varying pressures.

The shape of the chest and neck, the position of the tongue, any one of these actions results in a change in pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced. Sound also resonates within different parts of the body and an individuals size, Singers can also learn to project sound in certain ways so that it resonates better within their vocal tract.

This is known as vocal resonation, another major influence on vocal sound and production is the function of the larynx which people can manipulate in different ways to produce different sounds. These different kinds of function are described as different kinds of vocal registers. The primary method for singers to accomplish this is through the use of the Singers Formant and it has also been shown that a more powerful voice may be achieved with a fatter and fluid-like vocal fold mucosa.

The more pliable the mucosa, the more efficient the transfer of energy from the airflow to the vocal folds, Vocal registration refers to the system of vocal registers within the voice. A register in the voice is a series of tones, produced in the same vibratory pattern of the vocal folds. Girl group — A girl group is a music act featuring several female singers who generally harmonize together.

All-female bands, in which also play instruments, are usually considered a separate phenomenon. These groups are sometimes called girl bands to differentiate, although this terminology is not universally followed, with the advent of the music industry and radio broadcasting, a number of girl groups emerged, such as the Andrews Sisters.

The late s saw the emergence of all-female singing groups as a force, with distinct girl groups releasing songs that reached US. A more globalized music industry saw the popularity of dance-oriented pop music led by major record labels. This emergence, led by the US, UK, South Korea, also, since the late s, South Korea has had a significant impact, with 8 of the top 10 girl groups by digital sales in the world originating there. The ladies were together from until the early s, and known for their harmonies, as well as barbershop style or novelty tunes.

The Three X Sisters were also especially a notable addition to the music scene, the Boswell Sisters, who became one of the most popular singing groups from to , had over twenty hits. The Andrews Sisters had musical hits across multiple genres, which contributed to the prevalence, the rise of girl groups appeared out of and was influenced by other musical movements of the time period. Importantly, the first successful girl groups of this era were typically white and this era was also advantageous to the beginnings of girl group music because of the newfound prevalence of the radio as well, which allowed this style of music to spread.

Also, the Lennon Sisters were a mainstay on the Lawrence Welk Show from on, in early , doo-wop one-hit wonder acts like the Bonnie Sisters with Cry Baby and the Teen Queens with Eddie My Love showed early promise for a departure from traditional pop harmonies. However, it was the Chantels song Maybe that became arguably, the mixture of black doo-wop, rock and roll, and white pop was appealing to a teenage audience and grew from scandals involving payola and the perceived social effects of rock music.

However, early groups such as the Chantels started developing their groups musical capacities traditionally, through mediums like Latin, the Shirelles solidified their success with five more top 10 hits, most particularly s number one hit Soldier Boy, over the next two and a half years.

Motown would mastermind several major groups, including Martha and the Vandellas, the Velvelettes. Other songwriters and producers in the US and UK quickly recognized the potential of new approach. Phil Spector recruited the Crystals, the Blossoms, and the Ronettes, while Goffin, phil Spector made a huge impact on the ubiquity of the girl group, as well as bringing fame and notoriety to new heights for many girl groups. As of February , the city had an population of 48, Its total area was During the Edo period, the area of present-day Numata was the center of the Numata Domain, modern Numata Town was created within Tone District, Gunma Prefecture on April 1, with the creation of the municipalities system after the Meiji Restoration.

Numata is a commercial center and transportation hub, but was traditionally known for lumber production. Shiseido — Shiseido Company, Limited is a Japanese multinational personal care company, that is a skin care, hair care, cosmetics and fragrance producer. It is one of the oldest cosmetics companies in the world, founded in , it celebrated its th anniversary in It is the largest cosmetic firm in Japan and the fifth largest cosmetics company in the world, Shiseido is only available at cosmetic counters at selected department stores or pharmacists.

The company owns numerous brands and subsidiaries worldwide, in addition to its founding label, the company trades on the Tokyo stock exchange, and it is a chief competitor of SK-II. Arinobu Fukuhara, former head pharmacist to the Japanese Imperial Navy, after a visit to the United States and Europe, Arinobu added a soda fountain to the store. This later grew into the Shiseido Parlour restaurant business, and eventually led to the introduction of ice cream in Japan, the name Shiseido can be translated as praise the virtues of the earth which nurtures new life and brings forth significant values.

Shiseido was the first to develop the softening lotion, a liquid of toner-like consistency. The oldest softening lotion is named Eudermine, which is still marketed, the softening lotion was developed in response to lead poisoning, as the Japanese women used makeup based on white lead.

In , Shiseido introduced Rainbow Face Powder and this was a face powder with seven colors in a period when white face powders were the norm in Japan. In , the company expanding its store-base, it now has approximately 25, outlets. A joint-stock company was formed in , in , Shiseido began sales in Taiwan, closely followed by Singapore and Hong Kong.

In , Shiseido was the first company to produce sodium hyaluronate from non-animal origin sources, in North America and Europe, Shiseido products are sold in major department stores, pharmacies, and specialty Asian retailers. In December over , customer credit card and other details were leaked for the companys ipsa brand online store data base in Japan making it a major breach in customer trust.

In the first quarter of , Shiseido had a net profit of 2. In February , Masahiko Uotani was replaced as the CEO, in Japan, Shiseido sells Benefique pre-makeup and foundation products, Maquillage full-line makeup counselling-based products, and Integrate full-line makeup self-selection-based products. In China, aside from Maquillage, Shiseido also sells Aupres and their hydro powder eye shadows which have a creamy texture are among Allure magazines top beauty picks.

In addition to producing products under the Shiseido brand, Shiseido also has several other subsidiaries, Aupres is a line of cosmetics and skincare products made and sold exclusively in China. The group has expanded since then to include over members as of December , aged from their early teens to their mids. AKB48s producer, Yasushi Akimoto, wanted to form a group with its own theater. This idols you can meet concept includes teams which can rotate performances and perform simultaneously at several events and handshake events, Akimoto has expanded the AKB48 concept to several sister groups in China, Japan and Indonesia, with upcoming groups announced for the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.

As of December the group has sold over 41 million records, including over 36 million singles, as of September , the group has sold over 40 million singles. AKB48 is the highest selling act in Japan in terms of singles sold. In , Beginner and Heavy Rotation placed first and second, respectively, from to , AKB48s singles have occupied the top four or five spots of the Oricon Yearly Singles Chart. The group is split into teams, reducing its members workload. According to member Misaki Iwasa, each team has its own theme, Team A represents freedom, Team B is idol-like, with cute costumes, and Team K has a strong, powerful image.

New members are called trainees who are understudies for the group, in addition to their performances with the group, members are promoted by the Japanese mass media. AKB48 regularly hosts events, where fans can interact with the members, the group members ages range from their early teens to over 20, and they are selected from regular auditions. Members are not allowed to date, and must be well-behaved, any violation of these used to be punished.

AKB48 has a system allows members to graduate from the group when they are older and are replaced by trainees who are promoted. Kagome company — Kagome Co. Its core product is the Yasai Seikatsu brand of vegetable juice and it also claims to be Japans largest supplier of tomato ketchup and tomato juice. Kagome grows tomatoes in greenhouses and market gardens in Japan, since , it has partnered with Asahi Breweries to develop low alcohol fruit and vegetable drinks. Ichitaro Kanie began cultivating tomatoes in — according to Kagome the first grown in Japan and he soon began producing tomato ketchup and Worcester sauce.

However, tomato juice was not sold until , the Kagome trademark was registered in , and the Aichi Tomato Co. It also purchased a Japanese company specializing in vegetable lactic acid bacteria, Ltd, now Kagome Labio Co. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This volume was edited and produced by scholars of media convergence in Japan and beyond.

Despite not being published by a commercial or university press, it has been as vigorously edited and peer- reviewed as any other — perhaps more so. Each chapter went through two rounds of revisions. First, the editors read and prepared detailed comments that were shared with the contributors. After each contributor made revisions based on these comments, the manuscript was submitted to Kinema Club for editorial review.

Kinema Club is an international, informal collective of scholars devoted to the study of Japanese moving images. The collective sent the entire manuscript for external review to two anonymous readers, who provided another set of detailed comments on the manuscript and each of the individual chapters, which informed further revisions. Like the editors of this volume, its contributors and the members of Kinema Club, the external reviewers were uncompensated for their time and labor, which they provided for free as a service to better the field.

We thank these two reviewers, whose contribution made this a much better volume. The process of producing this edited volume was as invigorating as it was exhausting, and many debts were incurred along the way. We thank them, and all of the members of the Kinema Club Editorial Collective.

Marc Steinberg offered advice and encouragement that improved this volume in countless ways. His work is a foundation for us and continues to inspire. Ian Condry cautioned us about the risks of self-publishing. His counsel helped us decide to approach Kinema Club, for which we are extremely grateful. Keiko Nishimura translated Chapter 6. Fiona Jayde designed the cover, and Clifford Ivie kindly provided the frontispiece photo for the Introduction. The cover image came from udocorg, a young Japanese photographer and fashion movie director.

His creative work in a precarious media economy is what inspires this exploration of media convergence in Japan. We hope that it contributes in some small way to discussion and understanding of the media worlds that we inhabit and share. She is the co-editor of Sports Videogames and author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. She has most recently completed Atari to Zelda: He is the author of Making Personas: His research interests include cultures of anonymity and experiences of proximity of space and simultaneity of time in online media.

He is the author of Gender and Nation in Meiji Japan: He is currently completing a book on Japanese television and advertising. She is the director of Mikumentary, an ongoing series of short, non-commercial documentary films about Hatsune Miku. Candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he studies social media and online games from both computational social science and ethnographic perspectives.

John LIE is C. He is the author of numerous works on race, ethnicity and the nation. His most recent book is K-Pop: His research interests include social media and speech communities, urbanity and popular culture. His research interests include Japanese creative industries, branding and East Asian cultural economy.

His areas of interest include online gaming, otaku subcultures and contemporary Japanese-American cultural relations. Japanese media is at a crossroads. In the second half of the twentieth century, the media industries followed a predictable path to increased revenue and audience growth, but today — with a shrinking national population in Japan, migrating audiences and declining sales — the future is less certain. Many reach their destination, some compromise by choosing the shortest path, while others turn back, unable to reach the other side before the light changes.

More than a few do not even attempt the crossing. Instead they wait — for the next light, i Introduction for friends, for updates on their mobile phones. Despite the tumultuous flows, there is a rhizomatic quality and organized chaos to the crossroads. The infrastructure is stable and familiar, and movement through the built environment is neither entirely free nor controlled. Japan prides itself on order, and its media is no exception. The dominant media corporations have long determined the direction and flow of content, but are now losing their preeminent place as agenda- setters and gatekeepers.

Whereas newspapers — Japan has the highest circulation in the world 1 — and television — Japanese watch and trust it more than many others in the world 2 — could once count on being able to filter information and set the terms of national discussion, social media has led to an explosive proliferation of channels of communication. This is especially notable after the natural and nuclear disasters that shook Japan on March n, , which did much to foster skepticism of the mainstream media and its perceived alliance with the state, as well as popularize social media as an alternative source of information see Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

Today, information is less constrained by the economics and politics of media corporations, and people are more active in commenting on received images and ideas, circulating them and creating alternatives. The Japanese media, despite its remarkable robustness and resistance to change, is showing signs of distress. For many in the Japanese media industries, the decreasing number of viewers of television and movies and decreasing revenue from ads in newspapers and magazines provoke a combination of denial and nostalgia for past prosperity. With each countdown, each self-congratulatory retrospective, each announcement of audience ratings and ad revenues, there is a longing to restore Japanese media to what it once was.

The gaze is backward to the past, not forward to the future. Frenchy Lunning Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, , Shoemaker and Tim P. Vos, Gatekeeping Theory London: Routledge, , The drama series Hanazawa Naoki io weekly episodes aired on TBS in is a rare example of a television program that became a major hit nationally. Rather, this drama that bucks the trend of declining ratings and revenue is the exception that proves the rule.

Again, the national audience reconstituted. Again, a notable exception. The soundtrack to Frozen was the only million-selling album from abroad in Japan that year. New York University Press, , When Hollywood films do compete with Japanese ones, the results can be remarkable, as when Love Live! King Enma and the 5 Stories, Nyan!

The Force Awakens in December Japan remains the second largest music market in the world and one of the last bastions of physical CD sales, a seeming anachronism in the age of digital downloads and music streaming services, and here too we see the fault lines of a media system in distress. While the s was marked by bestselling albums by the likes of Utada Hikaru, who broke sales records and enjoyed widespread national support, hits today are supported by small but ardent fan bases.

Numbers like these have made AKB48 the bestselling performers in Japanese history with a record 36 million total CD singles sold as of December AKB48 is a success story in a music market stubbornly holding on to what has worked and continues to work — for now — which obscures experiments in digital distribution and emerging metrics of success beyond the present system. The Kohaku uta gassen Red and White Song Contest , an annual year- end special program that pits popular male and female singers against one another, is typically one of the most watched television broadcasts in Japan and a good opportunity to get a sense of the mainstream 9 Patrick W.

Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade London: As the premiere television event of the year, which families watch together during gatherings to welcome the New Year, Kohaku has had staggering viewer ratings in the past. In , for example, By , however, that number had dropped to Aired on NHK, the national public broadcaster, Kohaku also provides a glimpse of the pressure points and politics of the Japanese media system. Although South Korean popular culture has thrived in the global market, as tensions between South Korea and Japan have mounted, South Korean performers have disappeared from the Kohaku lineup see Chapter 5.

See John Lie, K-Pop: University of California Press, , , , , Picked up by global media outlets and filtering back into the mainstream media in Japan, this became one of the biggest news stories to come out of Kohaku. Media convergence in Japan has introduced a plurality of voices that disrupt highly staged performances of national unity such as Kohaku.

Unlike the dynamic usually associated with the broadcast, the performer is no longer completely under control or in control of the message, which is not transmitted to stable audiences in front of television sets at home with family. The audience is fragmented, mobile and actively involved in curating media flows. Idols create a familiar and intimate link to audiences through their appearance across media genres and platforms. Close viewing and interpretation of media through the intertextual links of celebrity is one of the most notable aspects of Japanese media.

Palgrave, , British Film Institute, , Duke University Press, , 24, Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Sharpe, , Even as genres of television converge, so too does the content of programs and advertisements, which equally carry information about idols and thus intertextual meaning. While this aspiration often means performing on stage and television, this is not always, necessarily or even most importantly the case.

Utilizing new technologies and platforms for online self-presentation and promotion, a new generation of net idols and internet celebrities are self-producing and managing their own image and connections with fans and corporations. In the late s and early s, Japanese net idols were typically young women leveraging the technologies of blogs and digital photography to establish a fan base, which they managed through online interaction. Japan has greatly influenced the system of idol production in South Korea, where agencies also have enormous power.

Symbolically, the members of male idol group SMAP, who have been pillars of Japanese television and drawn together a national audience since the s, threatened to leave their management agency and upset its powerful position in the system in January Celebrity and Community New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Revenue comes from ads and tie-ups with advertisers for products and services featured in videos.

Today, Japanese corporations are drawn to internet celebrities such as HIKAKIN because they promise to connect them with the audience that has migrated away from mainstream media and advertising. Convergence means a coming together of two or more things, but, in discussions of media, there is some disagreement as to what is coming together, how and why.

Derek Johnson identifies connections between convergence and licensing and franchising in the United States in the s, which is long before what might be called the digital revolution. Approached this way, discussions of convergence have been ongoing in media studies for decades. Where Old and New Media Collide Grant and Jeffrey F. Wilkinson, Understanding Media Convergence: The State of the Field Oxford: Oxford University Press, Cain, Abel or Cable?

The Screen Arts in the Digital Age, ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Kay Hoffmann Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, , At the Crossroads of Media Convergence in Japan transition. Jenkins notes three simultaneously occurring aspects of convergence: When considering the cultural levels of convergence, active audiences are crucial, and they call attention to shifting dynamics of power. Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets, and reinforce viewer commitments. Sometimes, corporate and grassroots convergence reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding relations between media producers and consumers.

Sometimes, these two forces are at war. On the other hand, consumers are interested in archiving, discussing, annotating, appropriating, remixing and circulating media content. The participation gap is an issue of not only differential access to media technologies, but also differential literacy.

Simon and Schuster, Jenkins himself notes that he is focusing almost exclusively on the US, which raises questions about media systems elsewhere. The rate of convergence will be uneven within a given culture, with those who are most affluent and most technologically literate becoming the early adopters and other segments of the population struggling to catch up. Insofar as these trends extend beyond a specifically American context, the rate of convergence will also be uneven across 42 Jenkins, Convergence Culture , 3.

Otaku Culture in a Connected World, ed. Yale University Press, , A Potential Politics, ed. Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt Minneapolis: David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: University of Minnesota Press, , xxviii-xxix. Convergence as Divergence Optimistic claims that transnational flows would bring the world together in a sort of global cultural convergence have been met with critiques of the friction engendered by these flows. It follows that convergence occurs in different ways in different national contexts, which is to say that in discussions of convergence in context we need to pay attention to divergence.

In this section, we introduce the Japanese media system in its national context in the second half of the twentieth century. In the decades after the Second World War, the Japanese media and advertising industries consolidated to produce a distinct media environment that has been relatively immune to outside threats and internal upstarts.

An Ethnography of Global Connection Princeton: Over time, as Japanese industries prioritized the domestic, a robust media system took shape that made little room for foreign offerings, which began to disappear from the mainstream. At the same time, they also emptied the content of rerun value when the moment is over, the content is untrendy and export value, because audiences outside of Japan did not know Japanese performers the same way or desire their lifestyles.

The result was that Japan did not import or export much television content in the s — with notable exceptions such as dramas in East Asia 54 and anime more broadly — and diverged from North America and other parts of the world. The music industry took a similar path as Japanese producers came to assert a tighter grip on Japanese consumers by deploying Japanese performers.

Since sales of domestic music surpassed sales of foreign music in Japan in , 55 the overall trend has been toward a larger and larger share of the market for Japanese performers. Sales were driven by media appearances and promotion, which intensified in Japan from the s. See Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Duke University Press, Digital Asia 2 Blackwell Publishing, , For example, in , Tama, a Japanese garage band, sold more records in Japan than MC Hammer — by a factor of two to one — and almost as many records as Madonna.

Not speaking the Japanese language and not appearing regularly in the Japanese media puts performers from outside of Japan at a disadvantage compared to idols such as AKB48, who have near constant exposure. To understand J-pop, we must bear in mind that difference comes not from any essential Japanese character, but rather from a divergent series of industrial structures and practices that gave rise to distinct features produced and reproduced within the Japanese media system.

In the late s, a significant example of divergence occurred in the Japanese mobile-phone market, which was dominated by feature- rich handsets produced exclusively for Japan. Bourdaghs, Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: Columbia University Press, , Gender and the Art of Being Mobile London: This is an example of divergent technology and infrastructure leading to divergent media production, distribution and consumption. The phenomenon of divergent development is pronounced enough in Japan to earn comparisons with the Galapagos Islands. What is Media Mix?

Put simply, media mix refers to a system of media and commodities in relation to one another.

TRY NOT TO HEADBANG CHALLENGE (JAPANESE BAND EDITION)

The term was popularized in the s, but refers to practices of character franchising that emerged in Japan in the s. Mobile Phones in Japanese Life , ed. MIT Press, , University of Minnesota Press, , viii. Struggling with funding, Tezuka sought out sponsors for promotional tie-ups with Tetsuwan Atomu.

The result was that the characters of Tetsuwan Atomu existed not only in comic books and cartoons, but also on commodities that they promoted and that promoted them. Put another way, the deployment of Tetsuwan Atomu characters created synergy and inspired consumption across media and material forms. Media mix has its roots in the very analog world of printed comic books, hand-drawn animation and stickers, but in many ways resembles media convergence, which challenges implicit assumptions about digital media technology being key to the phenomenon.

Mai Shiraishi

In this way, media mix encourages us to consider media convergence in a different place and time and in different ways. Certainly industrial strategies of extension, synergy and franchising are aspects of media convergence that we see in media mix. Certainly corporations, audiences and media forms are coming together in both. The discussion of media mix, however, places more emphasis on characters and affective relationships with them a dynamic familiar from work on idols in Japan.

Affective engagement with characters will be familiar to many from the example of Mickey Mouse and the Walt Disney success story in the US, which resonates strongly with the example of Tetsuwan Atomu in Japan. Terebi anime nen shi Tokyo: There is a tendency to celebrate how different actors come together to produce media and material for the mix. As work on convergence has shown, however, the productive activity of consumers and their relationship to media industries should not go unproblematized. Historical accounts tell of Japanese children not only playing with and as Tetsuwan Atomu characters, but also using the character stickers they received with the purchase of Meiji chocolates to transform everyday objects into character merchandise, and therefore expand their attachments and points of access to the media world.

These children were, as part of their practices of play, imaginatively inhabiting a media world, expanding it through spreading character images, turning everyday objects into character merchandise and advertising Tetsuwan Atomu to others, who 72 Jenkins, Convergence Culture , chapter three. Springer, , The area of specialization in the national context of Japan might be affective economics in the deployment of idols and characters. In her research on more contemporary Japanese media mixes such as Yu-Gi-Oh!

A unique feature of fanzine publishing is that it is somewhat recognized by the commercial publishing industry. Most fanzine content consists of parodies of commercial publications and often seems to infringe on copyrights and neighboring rights of the original creators However, its function as a place for testing has been widely recognized in the commercial publishing industry as being indispensable for promoting the comics business and, therefore, the existence of fanzines has been tactically accepted within the industry Such a structure of the Japanese comics industry, which recognizes the existence and makes active use of fanzines as a home for testing, is rarely seen elsewhere.

Fan activities, as Jenkins, Ito and many others note, are increasingly mainstream in convergence culture around the world. Consider that there are thousands of fanzine events in Japan, with the largest, the Comic Market, drawing over , fans to Tokyo to 83 Ian Condry makes a similar argument in his discussion of characters and worlds as platforms for creative action for both professionals and fans.

Duke University Press, , Pink proposes three reasons why the flouting of copyright law is tolerated: All of this productive activity among fans is free marketing and free labor for corporations. Like fanzines, Hatsune Miku — a virtual idol produced by dispersed fan networks spanning the globe — is another noteworthy example of the productive activity of fans and affective alliances between corporations and fans brought together by characters see Chapter 8. Some of this music has been popular enough to be released on CDs, rank on the Oricon charts and make its way into karaoke boxes in Japan.

Facebook is a social media platform, but that does not change the fact that a corporation owns it and capitalizes on users spending free time on the platform and freely sharing data, which is collected and sold to interested parties. None of this is to diminish or dismiss the creativity of fans, the value of whose social lives and activities is certainly not completely captured by corporations, just as Kadokawa-Dwango profiting from people making free use of characters and platforms is not necessarily a simple example of exploitation.

However, when discussing media mixes, scholars need to think about differential ownership; profit sharing, privacy and surveillance; and the freedom and limitation of creative action. This social factory thesis is precisely why autonomous Marxists at times advocate a refusal of 92 Condry, The Soul ofAnime , From Alienation to Autonomy, trans.

Semiotext e , More specifically, the question is how the soul and the social in media are put to work. As a corrective to certain strands of contemporary political theory, Franco Berardi argues that collectives are not boundless positive energy and potential, but rather groups of human beings with limited libidinal energy, which is channeled and capitalized on in manageable circuits. This channeling and feeding off of libidinal energy can serve to exhaust and pacify collectives, as well as divert channeling libidinal energy into other action.

In particular, Otsuka seems concerned that the labor of fans producing content for Niconico will be integrated into corporate structures. In the convergence of corporate and fan interests in affective alliances around idols and characters, we observe how one can actually desire capitalist relations, but also struggle to interact with and through media more freely. The direction suggested by this discussion is no less than a political economy of social media worlds. Conclusion Media Convergence in Japan is a collection of chapters by a group of scholars from around the world brought together by a shared interest in media and Japan.

The contributors recognize that as Japanese media circulates globally, scholars need a better understanding of the dynamics that produce it, which are changing. One of the goals of the edited volume is to take the general concept of convergence and work through it in a specific time and place. That is not what Media Convergence in Japan is about. If convergence points to a coming together of two or more things, media mix points to a system of media and commodities in relation to one another. Media Convergence in Japan is divided into five sections, which at times correspond with and at times depart from familiar divisions in the discussion of media convergence.

As Terry Flew explains, media convergence encompasses at least five major kinds of convergence: That said, the five sections are not meant to be an alternative list of the major kinds of convergence. Each section and chapter brings together the five major kinds of convergence in media convergence in different ways. Returning to scramble crossing in Shibuya, the traffic lights begin to flash and the flow of bodies subside. What was a chaotic jumble slowly starts to clear in anticipation of oncoming traffic. New arrivals pool on street corners and wait for the next light in a cycle without end.

Some look at the screens of their mobile phones, while the attention of others is captured by massive display screens integrated into the sides of buildings. Images of idols flash across those screens and stare down from massive posters plastered onto the sides of buildings. Music from loudspeakers on narrow side streets associated with hip youth culture drifts into scramble crossing. The music is all recent J-pop songs played for a fee, which producers pay to promote their performers. If one waits here long enough, the music starts to become familiar. A kiosk is crowded with people buying newspapers, magazines and comic books for the train ride home.

In a space so saturated with media — overflowing with information, proliferating with images and identities — nothing seems certain. As old and new media come together, much changes and much stays the same. So it goes with media convergence in Japan. Awash in image and sound, we wait for the light to change. Works Cited Berardi, Franco. The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy. Translated by Francesca Cadel and Guiseppina Mecchia. Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop. Columbia University Press, Accessed December 1, Western Pop Music in the Japanese Market.

Dyer-Witheford, Nick, and Greig de Peuter. Global Capitalism and Videogames. University of Minnesota Press, Amsterdam University Press, Yale University Press, Idols and Affective Economics in Contemporary Japan. The Mirror of Idols and Celebrity. The State of the Field. Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific: Gender and the Art of Being Mobile. The Case of Japanese Media Mixes. Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press, Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries.

Revaluation of Enthusiastic Consumers. Atomu no ko-ra wa koya 0 mezasu: Terebi anime nen shi. Who Owns the Future? University of California Press, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity and Capitalism in s Japan. British Film Institute, Fame in Contemporary Culture. Kohaku utagassen to Nihonjin. Media mikkusu-ka suru Nihon.

The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative. Fanthropologies, edited by Frenchy Lunning, Inside the Manga Industrial Complex. Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press, Villi, Mikko, and Kaori Hayashi. Digital Transition in the Japanese Newspaper Industry. Origins, edited by Frenchy Lunning, The constant news coverage was a profound disruption in the experience of everyday life for most Japanese, including those who were mostly unaffected spectators to the greater tragedy.

Television in Japan is, among other things, a technology of time control that modulates the diurnal cycle. In the days following 3. Morning and evening became undifferentiated, and unfamiliar newscasters donning helmets in news studios reported the events in a hypnotic cycle punctuated by new announcements, videos, and reports of the hundreds of aftershocks. Even the broadcasting of commercials was suspended, only to be replaced by the airing of unrelated public service announcements inserted as substitutes for paid ads.

Television Advertising in Risk Society of everyday life, an uncanny feeling of both repulsion and attraction suffused each new report and aftershock. The disruption to regular television broadcasting in Japan resulting from the events of 3. As the endless stream of images flash across the screen, television signifies the present. If most news stories are defined by their resolution within a limited period of time, a catastrophe is outside of time. In short, catastrophes create negative associations that commercial brands seek to avoid. During a catastrophe, the broadcasting of television commercials is suspended since images of death and suffering cannot be reconciled to the image that brands seek to project.

This chapter will explore how Japanese commercial television negotiates the unexpected and contingent, whether a catastrophe such as 3. Consolidated around five key terrestrial broadcast stations, Japanese commercial television has faced negligible competition in the past from satellite or cable television. Like many sectors of the Japanese economy, commercial television engages in anti-competitive practices that seek to prevent new entrants and to mitigate risk see Chapter 4. However, Japanese television today faces its greatest existential threat from media convergence.

Despite their tight grip on the television market, commercial television broadcasters are facing unprecedented challenges from new media as mobile phones, video games, and PCs compete for time and attention. Essays in Cultural Criticism, ed. Indiana University Press, , Owing to media convergence, audiences have developed increasingly migratory behavior that seeks out new platforms and dispersed media content; and consumers — empowered by social media — have become more active in their relationship to content producers and sponsors.

In what ways have new technologies of social media altered the perception of risk? What are the consequences of risk management for the Japanese media industry? With themes of disaster common in Japanese popular culture, risk is embedded in the narratives of national identity in contemporary Japan.

Instead, Giddens argues, the distinctiveness of modern life is rather in the way assessments of risk and contingency are built into modern institutions. Everyday life, with its routinization of work and play, form a framework for cultivating a sense of being that is essential to ontological security. In other words, the habits and routine of our ordinary lives insulate us from the anxieties arising from modernity. Since Japanese television is predicated on an intimate connection with its audience through idols and celebrities, the constant news coverage 6 Media Kankyo Kenkyujo, Media Teiten Chosa Tokyo , June 10, , accessed March 16, , http: Stanford University Press, , Television Advertising in Risk Society following 3.

As Patricia Mellencamp argues, the flow of time on television is a system of economics — both material and libidinal. The social deprivation resulting from the sudden loss of a familiar, though mediated, relationship is no longer a trivial concern in our increasingly media-saturated culture. Celebrities form the structure of our sense of identity and allow us to conceptualize our relationship to the wider world.