Asadora) in Transition

EAPC 5 (2) pp. 101–109 Intellect Limited 2019 East Asian Journal of Popular Culture Volume 5 Number 2 © 2019 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/eapc_00002_2 Editorial ElisabEth schErEr revisiting a national institution: NhK’s morning drama (asadora) in transition This year, the idea of taking a critical look at the Japanese morning drama (asadora), which started in 1961, almost suggests itself: from April to September of 2019, the public broadcaster Nippon Ho-so- Kyo-kai (NHK) is airing the 100th series of this classic format, called Natsuzora. At the same time, the asadora looks back on a decade of changes that have resulted from digitization, alterations in TV viewing practices and demographic change. This year is thus the ideal time to publish this special issue of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. The idea of compiling a special edition dedicated to this serial format was born at the 2017 European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS) conference in Lisbon, where Dolores Martinez, Sachiko Masuda and I presented material on asadora. Kyungjae Jang and Timo Thelen, both of whom also conduct research on asadora, joined the project afterwards. Why asadora? Why is it worth taking such a detailed look at this series format? The asadora, which runs six times a week in the morning for 15 minutes, has been a fixture on Japanese television since 1961 and is still among the programmes with the highest audience ratings today. The format is often referred to as ‘koku- mintekina dorama’ (‘national drama’) because of its special presence in everyday 101 02_EAJPC_5.2_Editorial_101-109.indd 101 17/10/19 11:09 AM Elisabeth Scherer Japanese life. An investigation of this series format can illustrate how popular media products and the construct of the nation are discursively interwoven. As the articles of this special issue show, the asadora is vital for the construc- tion of collective memory in Japan. Again and again, the format offers new and generally feminine perspectives on certain sections of modern Japanese history and creates interpretations of the development of the Japanese nation. Memory is always influenced by current events from when the series was first broadcast, which was particularly evident after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 11 March 2011 (hereafter referred to as 3/11), as the contributions by Dolores Martinez and Sachiko Masuda in this special issue demonstrate. In addition to this function as a medium of collective memory, asadora also has an external effect as an instrument of Japanese cultural policy. The prime example of this effect is the most successful asadora of all time, Oshin (1983–1984), which achieved an average audience rating of 52.6 per cent and became a kind of symbol for Japan. During a visit to Japan in November 1983, US President Ronald Reagan even drew an analogy between the rise of the protagonist Oshin and Japan’s economic success after the Second World War (Haberman 1984). This positive image has been actively exported abroad: from 1984 onwards, the Japan Foundation made the series available to broadcast- ers worldwide free of charge as part of its cultural programme, such that by 1995, the series had been broadcast in 44 countries (Takahashi 1998: 144). As Iwabuchi (2015: 421) explains, Oshin thus conveyed a new international image of Japan that was detached from the negative image of Japanese imperialism. The situation is similar with the asadora Amachan (2013), which takes place partly in northeastern Japan (To-hoku) and addresses the catastrophe of 3/11. The series, which has also met with success in other Asian countries, counter- acts negative international reporting, especially on the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima, with a forward-looking view and throws a positive light on the To-hoku region. The asadora format is also worth a closer look because of its significant effects on filming locations. In recent years, media tourism has developed into an important economic factor worldwide, and numerous efforts have been launched in Japan to promote fans’ travel activities and thus help structur- ally weak regions achieve economic upswings. In this issue, contributions by Kyungjae Jang and Dolores Martinez show how tourism, asadora and regional/ local identity interact in this manner. The asadora, with its long history, is ultimately an ideal starting point for examining changes in broadcasting culture. The audience ratings for linear television are falling steadily in Japan, as they are in many other countries, while online streaming services such as Netflix have invested heavily in the Japanese market and are steadily gaining users (Chin 2018). At the same time, social media are becoming increasingly important for the discourse on TV content and offer opportunities to involve fans more actively and to create new forms of co-viewing practices. The asadora must also reinvent itself in these times – but only to such an extent that asadora maintains its function as a medium of collective national memory and still meets the expectations of its regular audience. The asadora is very Japanese in a way and shows ‘the social fabric of post- war Japan’ (Dusinberre and Aldrich 2011: 684) as well as current discourses in mainstream Japanese society. The format’s peculiarities and developments are also comparable with TV programmes from other countries, includ- ing their status and current challenges. Co-editors Ford et al. dedicate their 102 East asian Journal of Popular Culture 02_EAJPC_5.2_Editorial_101-109.indd 102 17/10/19 11:09 AM Revisiting a national institution book The Survival of the Soap Opera to the ‘crisis of daytime drama’ (2011: 3) in the United States and show how the soap opera can survive through the involvement of the audience and new themes. The situation is similar with telenovelas in Brazil. Viewing figures for telenovelas are falling, but the grow- ing unofficial online discussion, as Pires de Sá and Roig note, offers space for ‘the sharing of content and discussion regarding delicate issues like moral and sexual conflicts, the role of conservative and powerful political, social and reli- gious groups and private corporate power’ (2016: 404). The asadora thus offers several starting points for a more general discussion of the involvement of TV audiences, cross-media strategies for marketing TV content, and the signifi- cance of long-running TV series for national and regional identity. ParticularitiEs of thE asadora Since 1961, the asadora (officially titled Renzoku terebi sho-setsu, or ‘serial TV novel’) has entertained audiences for fifteen minutes every day from Monday to Saturday morning. The morning drama has a cyclical structure: the story is related to a female figure over a certain fixed period of time (formerly one year; now six months). Once this story is over, a new asadora starts, with a new protagonist, new locations and a different timespan of recent Japanese history. This closed structure of the narrative makes the morning drama similar to Latin American telenovelas, which also have a comparable genesis. Both telenovelas and asadora emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, respectively, from serial radio dramas whose narrative principles were transferred to television. The asadora tells changing stories, but a few basic principles remain the same. The series has a fixed broadcasting slot and welcomes its viewers daily with opening credits and a title song. Each asadora has its own narrator who comments on the events, which allows for following the stories even if viewers are busy during the broadcast and are not always looking at the TV set. The series content also has various continuities. The stories unfold against the background of certain periods of modern Japanese history (since the Meiji restoration in 1868, i.e. the start of Japan’s modern era), they revolve around a female protagonist and they stress the importance of the family; regional peculiarities (such as certain dishes and dialects) and the details of everyday life also play a major role. During the period 1961–74, the series lasted an entire year; in 1975, NHK changed to a semi-annual schedule that continues to this day, with two excep- tions. As of July 2019, in addition to the primary broadcasting (8:00–8:15 a.m.), NHK broadcasts a rerun at 12:45 p.m. on its main channel and at 7:30 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. on NHK BS Premium (via satellite) every day. All the episodes from the week are also broadcast again on BS Premium on Saturdays from 9:30–11 a.m. NHK has no permanent staff for asadora, but the team changes with every series, and producers or scriptwriters usually only work once in their lives for asadora. NHK Tokyo produces asadora for broadcast from late March/early April to late September/early October, and NHK Osaka takes over from late September/early October to late March/early April. NHK Osaka tends towards series with historical content (jidaigeki), and the locations are in western Japan, while NHK Tokyo is more likely to focus on current topics and to shoot in eastern Japan. Since the early 1990s, asadora audience ratings have declined significantly. Whereas ratings of around 40% were once usual, starting in 1994 they were only in the 20 per cent range and would continue to fall until 2009, when www.intellectbooks.com 103 02_EAJPC_5.2_Editorial_101-109.indd 103 17/10/19 11:09 AM Elisabeth Scherer Uerukame reached an historic low of 13.5 per cent (Video Research Ltd n.d.). NHK then shifted the broadcast time from 8:15 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. starting with Gegege no nyo-bo- (2010). The intention of this shift was to win over new target groups, and it did indeed result in increased ratings, which have since settled at around 20 per cent.

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