Asadora) in Transition

EAPC 5 (2) pp. 101–109 Intellect Limited 2019

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

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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, including their status and current challenges. Co-editors Ford et al. dedicate their

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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 exceptions. 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

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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. The most successful series since the shift to 8 a.m. was Asa ga kita! (2015–2016), which reached an average of 23.5 per cent of viewers. Even though audience ratings have halved over time, this figure is still high if we consider the diversification of TV programming and the general decline in audience numbers. For NHK, a public broadcaster financed by fees, asadora is one of its flagships, alongside the news and the Taiga dorama (a historical period drama). The basic principles of NHK as a public broadcasting organiza- tion are political independence, the offering of multifaceted perspectives in its reporting and the widest possible distribution of its content so that all citizens will have access to the broadcasting. One of the asadora’s requirements is thus to reach as many people as possible in terms of content as well. For years, the asadora has had the reputation of a ‘housewife’ genre. Yano (2008: 104) sees one reason for this reputation in the brevity and daily broadcast of the asadora, which enables women to establish close relationships with the characters and the events without having to neglect their household duties. From early on, the content of morning dramas was also directed towards women. The first asadora, written by novelists such as Kawabata Yasunari or Hayashi Fumiko, still had male protagonists. Starting with the very successful Ohanahan (1966–1967), a clear focus was established, with a few exceptions, on the life story of a female main character. Based on the life of the author Hayashi Ken’ichi’s mother, Ohanahan tells the story of a young woman who becomes a widow and raises her children alone. Such stories of women who master their lives against all odds and various adversities have become recipes for asadora’s success that continue to this day. As Harvey explains, these stories about women in professional roles such as authors, doctors and pilots are often contradictory in themselves, ‘promoting the ideal of women working outside the home, but at the same time holding up for emulation traditional values such as filial loyalty and self- sacrifice’ (1998: 133). This reality demonstrates that compromises between the interests of different groups of viewers must be negotiated in the scriptwrit- ing process. Some asadora heroines are based on historical personalities who have achieved exceptional success as women, such as the singer Sato- Chiyako (Ichibanboshi) (1977), the beauty specialist Yoshiyuki Aguri (Aguri) (1997) or the translator Muraoka Hanako (Hanako to An) (2014). Other protagonists are loosely based on the wives of famous men, such as Gegege no nyo-bo- (‘Gegege’s wife’) (2010), which refers to the manga artist Mizuki Shigeru, or Massan (2014–2015; see Timo Thelen’s text). These series emphasize the wife’s support as an important key to the husband’s success. From the 1980s on, asadora production and screenplays were also often in the hands of women, a situation that further stressed the female perspective. A look at NHK’s current figures on asadora (Hayashida et al. 2019: 77) shows that housewives are no longer the predominant consumers of asadora. People over 60, in particular, tune in at 8:00 a.m. for the primary broadcast, most of them women over 70; the asadora Manpuku (2018–2019), for example, achieved a market share of 34 per cent among these viewers. Only 6–14 per cent of women aged 20–59 tuned in at that time. This strong focus on viewers over 60 has certainly affected the production and content of the series as well as its marketing concepts.

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It is also important to measure asadora’s presence in everyday Japanese life not solely by its audience rating. Countless paratexts such as magazine articles and features in other television programmes contribute to the morning drama continuing to be an almost inevitable factor. Asadora is a topic of conversation in everyday life, it provides material for variety shows, and it opens up marketing potential for merchandise, fashion and tourism, for example. Those who live in Japan cannot avoid being at least roughly informed about the current series, even if they never watch it. And, if a certain topic (such as the ageing population, LGBT rights or foreign residents) appears in the asadora, the topic has surely arrived in the Japanese mainstream discourse.

Asadora research Despite asadora’s enormous presence in everyday Japanese life, the format has received little attention in English-language research compared to other media products, especially anime and manga. Although Harvey wrote two fundamental essays on the subject (1995, 1998), new perspectives on the series format appear rather sparsely. This scarcity may also be because viewing the material can be quite laborious: one current asadora has over 150 episodes, which corresponds to nearly 40 hours of television viewing. With recordings of older asadora, the difficulty is that some no longer exist (see Masuda’s contribution), and NHK only grants access to its archives to a small number of researchers upon request. In Japan, however, a number of fresh publications on asadora have appeared in recent years, which is certainly because the stabilization of viewer ratings has led some people to speak of a new flowering of the morning drama. Three books by more journalistically oriented authors (Kimata 2017; Shinan’yaku 2017; Tako- 2012) provide insights into the background of asadora’s production, including insider interviews. To mark the 55th anniver- sary of the first asadora broadcast, NHK has published a book that provides a richly illustrated overview of the history of the series format (NHK Drama Department 2015). One of the first to study asadora academically was Muramatsu Yasuko, who examined the image of women in asadora from a feminist perspective (1979). Gender remains one focus of asadora research; Watanabe and Shiroma (2019), for example, address male roles in asadora in their recent work. Chance addresses the ‘gendering of the black market’ in current asadora and shows how the connection of female figures with this area ‘helps to rewrite the dark wartime era’ (2018: 751). Linguistic studies on asadora are also available, with a focus on gender (Occhi et al. 2010; Okamoto and Shibamoto Smith 2008; Shibamoto Smith and Occhi 2009), as well as on dialect (Kinsui et al. 2014; Maynard 2016), as dialect is a particularly important indicator of authenticity in many morning dramas. Several studies have been published in recent years on the touristic impact of asadora on filming locations, including studies by Maruta et al. (2014) on Jun to Ai (2012–2013); Tajima (2015, 2018) on Amachan (2013); and Timo Thelen and I (Scherer and Thelen 2017, 2018) on Mare (2015). In addition, recent English-language articles on other topics have been published by Yano (on Japanese Americans in asadora) (2008, 2010), Dusinberre and Aldrich (on the nuclear power industry in asadora) (2011) and Johnson (on asadora and media intimacy) (2018). NHK itself conducts extensive quantitative studies on asadora for which viewers are interviewed online and by telephone.

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The results are published regularly and offer comprehensive insights into the viewing habits of asadora audiences, including when they watch, with whom they watch and if they do other things (such as eating or household chores) while they watch.

The articles of this special issue In this special issue, we look at asadora from different angles and use various methods to approach this everyday Japanese phenomenon. The articles are based on field research, qualitative analysis of the series as well as of paratexts and quantitative content analysis. My own article addresses the asadora Hiyokko (2017) to illustrate the position of the series format in everyday Japanese life. I understand the asadora as a ritual phenomenon that constantly naturalizes the construct of the Japanese nation while simultaneously reaffirming the position of the public broadcaster NHK as a ‘social centre’. Sachiko Masuda has analysed an extensive corpus of asadora qualita- tively and quantitatively to demonstrate how the Second World War’s Pacific theatre (often known as the Asia Pacific War) is memorialized in asadora and how collective memory of this period of Japanese history changed after 3/11. Specifically, she focuses on the depiction in asadora of 15 August 1945, the day on which the Japanese population learned of their country’s surrender through the emperor’s radio announcement, known as the ‘Jewel Voice Broadcast’. The catastrophe is also an important aspect in Dolores Martinez’s contribution, which discusses the successful asadora Amachan (2013). Against the background of 3/11, Amachan combines the topic of ama divers with that of the Japanese idol industry. Martinez shows how the series established national solidarity after the catastrophe as a major theme and conveyed a positive image of rural northern Japan. Kyungjae Jang examines Kazamidori (1977–1978) as an early example of the use of an asadora for regional development. This series, set in Kobe, contributed to the initiation of various conservation projects for Kobe’s Kitano-cho- district. As Jang shows, however, certain memories were strongly emphasized – specifically of the western inhabitants of this neighbourhood during the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries – while the history of the Japanese and Chinese population receded into the background. Jang’s study may thus also stimulate a critical look at the current media-tourism boom. The asadora Massan (2014–2015), which focuses on the development of the Japanese whisky industry, is innovative in its inclusion of a foreign protagonist for the first time. Timo Thelen analyses the portrayal of the Scottish protagonist Ellie and shows how she (as well as the whisky in the series) serves primarily to demonstrate Japan’s uniqueness. According to Thelen, the series has largely missed the opportunity to engage with multiculturalism in Japan in a meaningful way. Even though we address many facets of asadora in this issue and trace current developments, much remains to be done. One research gap for future studies is to gain detailed insights into asadora production and asadora filming in the studio as well as on location. Another promising approach would be to conduct qualitative interviews with asadora fans, with a focus on personal and collective memory in connection with media products. In view of the upswing in asadora research in recent years, further new perspectives on this national institution will certainly not be long in coming.

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Acknowledgements I wish to thank all the authors of this edition for agreeing to participate in the project and for undergoing the editing process with me. A special thank-you is due to Timo Thelen, who has always provided help and advice. I would also like to thank the reviewers of this edition for their commitment and for their valuable advice to the authors.

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Kinsui, Satoshi (金水敏), Tanaka, Yukari (田中ゆかり) and Okamuro, Minako (岡室美奈子) (eds) (2014), Dorama to ho-gen no atarashii kankei (The new relation between drama and dialect), Tokyo: Kasama Shoin. Manpuku (2018–2019, Japan: NHK). Mare (2015, Japan: NHK). Maruta, Ko-ji (圓田浩二), Kanehama, Sho-ko (兼濱翔子), and Tamayose, Ayano (玉寄彩乃) (2014), ‘NHK asa no renzoku terebi sho-setsu “Jun to Ai” no ho-ei to Miyako-jima ni okeru juyo-’ (‘The broadcast of NHK’s morning drama “Jun to Ai” and its reception on Miyako island’), Okinawa Daigaku jinbungakubu kiyo-, 16, pp. 61–69, http://okinawa-repo.lib.u-ryukyu.ac.jp/ bitstream/20.500.12001/11904/1/No16p61.pdf. Accessed 9 August 2019. Massan (2014–2015, Japan: NHK). Maynard, Senko K. (2016), Fluid Orality in the Discourse of Japanese Popular Culture, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Muramatsu, Yasuko (村松泰子) (1979), Terebi dorama no josei gaku (Women’s Studies and Television Drama), Tokyo: Kaitakusha. Natsuzora (2019, Japan: NHK). NHK Drama Department (2015), Asadora no 55 nen (55 Years of Asadora), Tokyo: NHK Press. Occhi, Debra J., SturtzSreetharan, Cindi L. and Shibamoto-Smith, Janet S. (2010), ‘Finding Mr Right: New looks at gendered modernity in Japanese televised romances’, Japanese Studies, 30:3, pp. 409–25. Ohanahan (1966–1967, Japan: NHK). Okamoto, Shigeko and Shibamoto-Smith, Janet S. (2008), ‘Constructing linguistic femininity in contemporary Japan: Scholarly and popular repre- sentations’, Gender and Language, 2:1, pp. 87–112. Oshin (1983–1984, Japan: NHK). Pires de Sá, Fernanda, and Roig, Antoni (2016), ‘Challenging prime time television: Co-viewing practices in the Brazilian telenovela’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 22:4, pp. 392–407. Scherer, Elisabeth and Thelen, Timo (2017), ‘On countryside roads to national identity: Japanese morning drama series (asadora) and contents tourism’, Japan Forum, online only, pp. 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2017. 1411378. Accessed 11 April 2019. —— (2018), ‘Drama off-screen: A multi-stakeholder perspective on film tourism in relation to the Japanese morning drama (asadora)’, in S. Kim and S. Reijnders (eds), Film Tourism in Asia: Evolution, Trans-formation, and Trajectory: Perspectives on Asian Tourism, Singapore: Springer, pp. 69–86. Shibamoto Smith, Janet and Occhi, Debra (2009), ‘The green leaves of love: Japanese romantic heroines, authentic femininity, and dialect’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13:4, pp. 524–46. Shinan’yaku (指南役) (2017), ‘Asadora’ hitorigachi no ho-soku (The Asadora Winning Formula), Tokyo: Ko-bunsha. Tajima, Yu-ki (田島悠来) (2015), ‘NHK Asa no renzoku terebi sho-setsu “Amachan” no Kuji-shi ni okeru juyo-’ (‘The reception of TV drama Amachan in Kuji’), Doshisha University Social Science Review, 116, pp. 15–40. —— (2018), ‘Japanese idol culture for “contents tourism” and regional revi- talization: A case study of regional idols’, in A. Beniwal, R. Jain and K. Spracklen (eds), Global Leisure and the Struggle for a Better World, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 117–39.

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Takahashi, Kazuo (1998), ‘The impact of Japanese television programs: Worldwide “Oshin phenomena”’, Journal of Regional Development Studies, 1, pp. 143–56. Tako-, Wakako (田幸和歌子) (2012), Taisetsu na koto wa minna asadora ga oshiete - kureta (‘I learned all important things from asadora’), Tokyo: Ota shuppan. Uerukame (2009–2010, Japan: NHK). Video Research Ltd (n.d.), ‘NHK asa no renzoku terebi sho-setsu’ (‘NHK’s morning serial TV novel’), https://www.videor.co.jp/tvrating/past_tvrating/ drama/02/index.html. Accessed 28 June 2019. Watanabe, Yutaka (渡邊寛) and Shiroma, Mari (城間益里) (2019), ‘NHK renzoku terebi sho-setsu ni arawareru dansei yakuwari’ (‘Male roles in NHK’s morning drama serials’), Shakai shinrigaku kenkyu-, 34:3, pp. 162–75. Yano, Christine R. (2008), ‘Gaze upon sakura: Imaging Japanese Americans on Japanese TV’, in K. E. Ferguson and M. Mironesco (eds), Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 101–20. —— (2010), ‘Becoming prodigal Japanese: Portraits of Japanese Americans on Japanese television’, in Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai and Jung Bong Choi (eds), Television, Japan, and Globalization, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 217–39.

Elisabeth Scherer has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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