- Kato Hidetoshi's Data Base -
Japanese Popular Culture Reconsidered
Publication Date:199203
Book title: MEDIA, CULTURE, AND EDUCATION IN JAPAN [A COLLECTION OF PAPERS]
Publisher : National Institute of Multimedia Education
One of the best-known festivals of Japan is the Gionmatsuri of Kyoto, which has been held every year on July 14 since the seventeenth century. Hundreds of thousands of spectators from various parts of the country and abroad are excited by the splendid parade of floats, decorated with exotic materials. The hot and humid air of that season in Kyoto makes the people damp, even wet, but they still dare to watch the festival in mid-day with joy and fascination.
Though Gionmatsuri is typical of the traditional-popular culture of Japan, very few people are aware of the origin and significance of the event. In order to clarify a major point of this essay, a modest reminder of its historical background is necessary.
As many historians have proved, Gionmatsuri was inaugurated by wealthy merchants of Kyoto late in the seventeenth century to commemorate the golden days of international trade before the Tokugawa government decided to adopt an isolationist policy in 1612. The merchant-traders who had been active in foreign trade with the countries of Southeast Asia before the enforcement of the new policy were obliged to confine their commercial activities solely to the domestic market. The huge merchant ships, which used to make regular voyages to Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, where adventurous Japanese had already established colonies with populations of thousands, became useless. Out of frustration and disappointment, they decided to cut down the masts of their boats and to install them as the center poles of parade floats, called hoko, which they decorated with foreign imports like Persian carpets and European tapestries obtained in the heyday of foreign trade. In other words, Gionmatsuri was invented partly as a humble resistance against a new foreign (or anti-foreign) policy, and partly as nostalgic sentimentalism on the part of the merchants.
This story of Gionmatsuri is indicative not only of the nature of Japanese society but also of modern and contemporary Japanese popular culture in the sense that Japan during her period of isolation achieved a unique cultural maturity. Indeed, as Arnold Toynbee aptly remarked, from 1612 through 1868, approximately two and a half centuries, there existed in Japan the only period in the whole of human history where absolute peace prevailed and society devoted its efforts to cultural enterprises. Of course, there were minor internal conflicts, but after the Tokugawa government firmly established its power, Japan's economic surplus, which otherwise would have been used for foreign investment and external expansion, found its outlet in the area of domestic cultural development, particularly popular culture in the strict sense of the term.
As is known by most Japanologists, this social stability and cultural development started with the famous katanagari or "sword hunting" of 1588, which was executed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi1 (1536-1598), the predecessor of the Tokugawa government. Under this policy and regulation, Japanese common people were totally disarmed. Every sword owned by commoners was confiscated by the government, permitting only the samurai class to possess swords. Moreover, even the samurai class was discouraged from being rude and militant, and it was not allowed to use its swords except in case of danger and emergency. These historical facts are quite contrary to the popular image depicted in such contemporary popular fiction as Shogun. As a matter of fact, daimyo (feudal lords) were prohibited from building military castles and forts, as well as from having forces with firearms. The policy was to minimize armed forces and to maximize socioeconomic and cultural development, and the samurai class was very adaptive to this new policy.
Actually, it may be safe to say that there had been a literary tradition among Japanese samurai even before the isolation policy was adopted. For instance, since the medieval period, it was customary among samurai to exchange poetry with their opponents before fighting on the battlefield. A samurai who was illiterate or had little learning and poor literary taste was despised by his peers. It was natural, therefore, that the samurai after the seventeenth century became essentially civilian bureaucrats rather than brutal fighters. In this connection, as early as the late seventeenth century, each daimyo03.6.30 started to inaugurate schools, called hanko, for the higher education of his retainers. Daimyo were eager to invite eminent scholars, and they were very competitive in recruiting good instructors in order to raise the cultural level of the elites of their territories. It is interesting to note here that many of these hanko have continued until today as local universities and high schools. The samurai of this period, especially after the mid-eighteenth century, were required to be literate on a sophisticated level. They also had to be competent in calculation and computation since they had to deal with professional merchants when selling local products or borrowing money. Both were necessary if their local economy was to enjoy stability and prosperity. It was also often necessary for them to be knowledgeable about technological innovations in textiles, ceramics and other products.
In a word, samurai were expected not only to be sharp bureaucrats but also forward-looking technocrats. In their spare time, they indulged themselves in such artistic activity as the tea ceremony (which, incidentally, was one of the most important arts for their social interaction), music, and sometimes noh drama. Even though they carried swords, these were simply symbols to indicate their privileged status, and, as mentioned before, swords were never used as weapons. Indeed, the martial arts of modern Japan were simply physical exercises and the object of artistic appreciation for samurai.
The same was true with merchants. By definition, their major concern was moneymaking, but in their value system leisure activities had great importance. According to Miyamoto Mataji (b. 1907), an authority on the local history of Osaka, the center of commercial transactions of the day, the ideal of the Osaka merchant was to retire from business at the earliest possible age (after successful capital accumulation) and to delegate routine business to a trusted chief clerk. Retired merchants could then enjoy music, dance, book reading, or the tea ceremony. It may be worthwhile to not here that this tradition has been continued in contemporary Japan. As has been often noted, at social gatherings such as banquets, all Japanese, especially men, are supposed to give a performance--usually singing. Nowadays it is often accompanied and amplified by an electronic gadget known as a karaoke. This amateurism in the arts can be traced back to the days of the Tokugawa period.
The merchants of the Tokugawa era were also patrons of great artists. As is known by most art connoisseurs, such artists as Koetetsu, Korin, and Sotatsu were not only appreciated and encouraged by wealthy merchants of the Kyoto-Osaka area but also financially supported by them.
The implication of the social history of the period of the isolation policy is that, in spite of literary class distinctions, both the samurai class and the merchant class had to have a common arena where they could (often had to) mix and socialize with each other. As mentioned in preceding paragraphs, the samurai had to deal and work with merchants, and for down-to-earth business negotiations a "neutral zone" was needed to erase class distinctions. In order to meet this new need, the chaya (teahouse) came into business, which later turned into what is usually known as the geisha house in the West. As a matter of fact, the chaya later in its evolution became an establishment with female entertainers. An absolute rule in such establishments was to have the samurai deposit their swords at the entrance gate. In short, as far as the chaya was concerned, as Kato has pointed out in his Toshi to Goraku, its time and space were regarded as not only neutral but also classless.
Farmers, who were between the samurai and the merchants in caste system but who were actually the poorest of all, also made an effort to be highly literate because they were supposed to keep the records of the village. In addition, whatever surplus they could save was often used for intellectual betterment. They were unable to be the patrons of artists, but they were willing to offer hospitality to travelling men of letters. As is well known, when Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), one of the greatest haiku poets, wrote his famous "Oku-no-hosomichi" he was hosted by both wealthy merchants and rich farmers during his extensive journeys. Wherever he stayed, he was asked to give instruction in haiku to those who were interested in this form of short poetry. Painters also did not have much difficulty finding host families wherever they went. They were usually solicited to do their paintings on sliding doors or on scrolls to pay for their room and board, and they often stayed in a village for several months. It is no wonder that Western missionaries who visited Japan in the eighteen century noted with amazement that "in Japan, even a peasant is a poet."
Popular education also penetrated the farming class. There were no regulations or laws regarding elementary education, but the farmers, even the poorest peasants, were willing to send their children to local private terakoya (literally "temple school" because the classes were usually held in Buddhist temples where monks and/or priests gave lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic) in the hope, as R. P. Dore argues, that the children might succeed in their upward mobility. According to a historical survey, at the end of the eighteenth century, each rural community throughout the nation had at least one terakoya (the total number or rural communities of the period was something like 70,000). As a result, Japan became the country with the highest literacy rate early in the nineteenth century, (The literacy rate of the nation at that time is estimated at between 45 and 50 percent.)
The implication of the high literacy of the Japanese population is extremely important in understanding modern and contemporary Japanese popular culture. First, it should be noted that Japan was the first country that succeeded in forming a "mass audience" in the field of popular fiction. The publication of the popular fiction usually known as Kibyoshi or Ninjobon began to flourish in the mid-eighteenth century, and the "reading public" came into existence at that time. Such best-selling authors as Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848) sold thousands of copies, and historians claim that Bakin was the first author in the world to succeed in establishing himself as a perfectly independent writer in the sense that he earned his living solely by his royalties and honoraria from his writing activities. Kibyoshi and Ninjobon were numerous, and many people, including women, read these publications with enthusiasm, especially in urban areas.
Rapid secularization took place along with developments in literacy and artistic taste. Borrowing the dichotomy of Eliade, what had been regarded as "sacred" was transformed into something "profane." A good and typical example is kabuki. This theatrical form was invented by Izumo-no-Okuni (1572-?), a shaman of the Izumo Shrine, and in 1603 she gave her first secular performance in Kyoto. Furukawa Miki has shown how since then kabuki gradually became a popular theater. The term kabuki is the noun form of the verb kabuku, meaning "to deviate from the norm," and in its usage in the seventeenth century, kabukimono meant people who dressed and behaved with extreme eccentricity. In other words, kabukimono were the punks of the seventeenth century, and Izumo-no-Okuni was the leading figure of this eccentric group. At any rate, her performance attracted huge audiences, and the number of theatergoers increased almost explosively in the eighteenth century. Here again, an important aspect of the performing arts as represented by kabuki was that the theater was not monopolized by any particular social class. The majority of audiences were urban commoners, but quite a few samurai and wealthy farmers were also found among theatergoers.
Another example of secularization may be found in the development of sumo, the well-known form of Japanese wrestling. Etymologically speaking, sumo originally meant "simple (undressed)dance" dedicated to holy deities, and the sport used to be performed only in sacred shrines. Sometime in the fifteenth century, however, sumo transformed itself into a secular game where wrestlers competed in power and technique. A careful observer of sumo today will find the remain s of the original religious ritual in the ceremonial parts of the sport, for example, the process of purification of the arena by salt and the Shintoist shrine roof hung over the arena.
The art of storytelling, as Yasutaka Teruoka (1898- ), and others (Kazuo Sekiyama, for example) have shown, also had a sacred origin. That is to say, storytelling in Japan originated in the preaching of Buddhist missionaries. In order to make their appeal more popular, the preachers invented more attractive methods of speech. Thus, storytelling, both serious and comic, became a new form of popular entertainment. With the development of urbanization, especially in Edo (Tokyo), Osaka, and kyoto (incidentally, these three cities were called santo, meaning three cities, and became one of the favorite subjects of the writers of the day), smaller theaters specializing in storytelling and vaudeville appeared as new entertainment facilities. These places were originally called yoseba, or "temporary gathering places," but later evolved into permanent establishments, and the original name was abbreviated as yose. According to historical records cited by Geinoshi Kenkyukai, there were more than 800 yose in Edo alone toward the end of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, as media researchers have learned in their studies, television's versions of yose have been constantly gaining extremely high ratings. Yose alone is a unique audio service that can be found only in the international flights of Japan Air Lines. Jetsetters and tourists alike enjoy this traditional popular art during their long and boring flights. It is interesting and important to note that the vaudeville performances that originated in the eighteenth century can be heard aboard one of the world's largest fleets of 747s.
Reference to 747s and package tours should remind one of the development of mass tourism in Japan, which also started in the middle of the eighteenth century. During this period, the government strictly prohibited commoners from travelling, because free physical mobility might have brought the migration of farmers from relatively poor regions to more affluent areas. However, an exception was made for those who wanted to travel for religious purposes. For example, if a merchant or a farmer submitted an application for a private tour to the Ise Shrine or a pilgrimage to the famous eighty-eight temples of Shikoku Island, such a petition was almost automatically approved since religious trips were thought to be admirable, desirable, and, at least, harmless behavior. Therefore, major shrines and temples became interested in organizing groups of people who were supposed to be devoted believers of these sacred places. In order to attract more people, secularized quasi-priests organized groups called ko in each community, and ko members travelled together to shrines and temples. Even though poor farmers could not afford the cost of travel, ko were organized on a mutual aid system, and people were able to join such organized trips on a rotation basis. As a result, Ise Shrine or Koyasan Temple became the equivalent of Mecca among Moslems, and people thought that they had to visit at least one of these places once in their lifetime.
Good accommodations were prepared to entertain these groups of tourists. As represented in Hiroshige's famous series of ukiyoe depicting the fifty-three stations of Tokaido, the major trunk road connecting Edo and Kyoto, small towns emerged along the roads of pilgrims. Of course, for many, shrine or temple worship was simply an excuse to justify their holiday trip. As is familiar to most students of popular culture and modern Japanese history, such great humorous fiction as Tokaidochu Hizakurige (1802-1809) by Juppensha Ikku (1765-1831) was the product of the mass tourism of the era. As a matter of fact, it is worthwhile to note that Yasumi Roan (1760-?), another popular writer and traveller, wrote Ryoko Yojinshu [The art of traveling] in 1810, which turned out to be one of the best-selling books at the turn of the nineteenth century. The Japanese group tour of today is world famous, sometimes even notorious, and that popular image of Japanese tourists is quite correct in many occasions; but at the same time it should be understood that such group tours have been a part of traditional popular culture and that the 747s are part of a continuity from the day of Ikku to the contemporary technological age.
These historical reflections show, in summary, three important characteristics of Japanese popular culture: (1) Japanese popular culture came into maturity during Japan's period of isolation when the nation's surplus energy found its outlet in the field of cultural activities and developments. (2) In spite of nominal class distinctions, Japan became an egalitarian society where everybody could enjoy popular culture ranging from tea ceremony to kabuki. (3) Popular culture in contemporary Japan should be studied as a continuous tradition dating from the Tokugawa period.
As was mentioned in the preceding section, with the rise of the reading public, the publication business gradually developed as a pioneer of the Japanese information industry, and many authors tried to sell their books; at the very least, there were many people who liked to write. Thus, we have excellent access to the writings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In the field of essays alone, for instance, there are such voluminous collections of works as Nihon Zuihitsu Shusei (1979) in roughly one hundred volumes of 300 pages each. Interestingly enough, quite a few authors liked to keep records of urban popular culture, and this includes Kiyu Shouran (1830) by Kitamura Shinsetsu (1783-1856). This book was an encyclopedia of the everyday life of that era, and the author made his best efforts to clarify the origin and function of very trivial yet important objects, events, manners, and customs, ranging from housing to cosmetics, language to food habits. In the preface of this great encyclopedia, Kitamura said,
From my childhood, my only hobby has been reading books, and knowing that my ancestors left a huge library, I thought that it might be worthwhile to organize trivia. I know that ants make their nest by accumulating small bits of soil. What I am trying to do in this volume is something similar to their enterprise.
With this philosophy in mind, Kitamura started his data gathering. His style of writing was genuinely secular, yet scholarly and academic, in the sense that he was quite familiar with Japanese as well as Chinese classics; he attempted to give the definition, common usage, and etymology of each word he used. For instance, under the heading of utage (banquet), the author traced the usage of the word in ancient Japan as well as Korea; according to his theory, this term originated in the gathering of newlyweds with their parents. This kind of study of individual items in popular culture is a treasure trove for those who are interested in the everyday life of common people, not only of his day but also of today. It is no wonder that Kiyu Shouran is used as the classic and basic source book by students of popular culture research, even today.
Another important characteristic of Japanese popular culture research has been the fact that folklore in its broadest sense was fully explored by researchers, and that folklorists in this country, as represented by Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), have worked vigorously in the field of popular culture. In his celebrated book, Meiji Taisho seso shi [A social history of the Meiji-Taisho era], Yanagita looked at the changes that took place after the Meiji Revolution (usually referred to as the "Meiji Restoration") in such everyday life areas as drinking, courtship, family life, entertainment, and so forth. Indeed, it seems that one of the features of Japanese academia was, and is a genuine scholarly interest in everyday trivia. Thus, popular culture research in this country gained "citizenship" in intellectual circles several centuries ago.
Yanagita stated in the preface of this widely read book that "this...is not a history book quoting the actions and words of heroes and bigshots. I am simply concerned with the ideas and attitudes upon which common people in the country can agree, if they think a little bit about their own personal experience" (pp.113-14). Yanagita and his students in the last few decades concentrated their efforts on studying popular practices in food habits, religion, festivals, special local occasions, changes in the consumption of alcoholic beverages, and many other miscellaneous facts by means of extensive field research. Yanagita himself, being a folklorist according to his own style, left voluminous writings about the popular belief system and finally his grand theory of cultural diffusion in East Asia. His most frequently used word was jomin (common people), and he never forgot the importance of the everyday life of jomin. In this sense, it may be safe to say that Yanagita and his group were the pioneering researchers of popular culture. As a matter of fact, Miyamoto Tsuneichi (1907-1982), one of Yanagita's students and colleagues, left an excellent study of sarushibai, or street entertainment performed by tamed monkeys.
As is obvious from the preceding paragraphs, folklore, or minzokugaku, in Japan has been slightly different from the common usage of the term in English. It is true that Yanagita borrowed, or at least hinted at, the works of Frazer and other European folklorists when they became interested in the daily lives of the jomin. However, their concern was not the archaic, historical, or primitive aspects of society. Their basic belief was that in order to understand Japanese society, as well as other societies, the facts of life of the jomin living in contemporary society were the key issue. Yanagita emphasized repeatedly the importance of this discipline by saying that the shortcoming of historians and social observers was their focus only on the elite circle. According to him, most social records in both the past and the present were more or less those of political, economic, or administrative figures; very few records of jomin were kept. But Yanagita claimed that throughout history it was the jomin who shaped and led the society at work. He says, in this connection, that to listen to "the voices of the voiceless" is the most urgent task for minzokugaku. In order to realize this task, he and his colleagues made extensive trips all over the country, collecting oral histories and observing the manners and customs of various parts of Japan. This group of folklorists finally compiled a handbook of field research titled Minzokugaku Nyumon [An introduction to folklore research] (1947), which consists of some 2,000 questions to be asked of jomin, rural and urban alike. Indeed, the writings of Yanagita in thirty-one volumes are a great resource book for the understanding of popular culture. Those interested in the historical roots of Japanese rituals, games, sports, and entertainments cannot afford to neglect Yanagita's work. In other works, minzokugaku was and still is the discipline from which modern popular culture research emerged.
Another name that should be introduced as a pioneer in the field of popular culture research is Kon Wajiro (1888-1973). Trained as a graphic designer in his youth, Kon became interested in recording miscellaneous yet important aspects of the lives of his Japanese contemporaries in visual form. For example, he was the first artist who kept records of the floor plans of farm houses as well as slum areas of Tokyo. He also made detailed studies of the possessions of these people. He counted the kinds and numbers of clothes, kitchenware, furniture, and other household materials by direct observation, and made wonderful drawings of these items. He was fascinated by the way people lived, and coined a new word, "modernology." According to him, just as archaeologists dig archaic remains from underground, "modernologists" follow their discipline by digging into the everyday life of their contemporaries, in both their material culture and their behavior patterns.
In order to prove the importance of modernology, Kon explored many new innovative methodologies, and his most famous work was done in the Ginza, the busiest shopping street of Tokyo in the early 1930s. In this study, for example, he spent all day in a coffeeshop watching the attire of the people passing by: the number of men wearing hats, the number of women in kimonos, the number of umbrellas, handbags, and their combinations. All were counted and each percentage was calculated. Being an artist, he did not use a camera. Instead he used his sketchbook, and left huge numbers of quick and yet precise sketches of what he saw. His most interesting study, however, was what is known as the "private eye" method of social observation. He picked up a person on the street at random, and chased after this person for hours to see what one did in the Ginza. A middle-aged lady, for example, started her rambling by window shopping at a jewelry store, stopping there for three minutes. Then she crossed the street to pay a visit to a department store, first in the kimono section, then in the housewares section where she purchased three tea cups. After the department store, she went to the ticketing office of a theater just to take a look at the posters and the price of tickets. Kon followed her until she took a bus, probably to go back home. For each stop of his "silent informant," he carefully and accurately took memos on her use of time and space as well as the amount of money she spent. Kon also conducted time and space research vis-a-vis crowd behavior in the Ginza by counting the number of people in each street intersection by the time of the day and the days of the week, in the hope that he might be able to find regularities in the street life of urban populations.
These direct observational records in themselves did not have any immediate sociological significance, but Kon had a firm belief that the behavior of people is indicative of the day and that observational records could be good historical data. His data, partially used by William Whyte in the late 1970s for comparative research (in Kato's A Comparative Study of Street Life), were another milestone in the history of popular culture study in Japan.
Quite apart from Yanagita's minzokugaku and Kon's "modernology," another classic of popular culture research appeared in the 1920s, by a scholar whose original discipline was the German language. His name was Gonda Yasunosuke (1887-1951), and his works are still quoted by most scholars in popular culture research as well as mass media studies. As a matter of fact, Gonda was the first scholar who paid proper and serious attention to the effects of movies.
In his representative work, Minshu Goraku Mondai [The problems of popular entertainment], published in 1920, he studied the number of people attending theaters in Tokyo from 1902 through 1918 and discovered that the number of the annual total audience increased from 8 to 21 million in these seventeen years. He was struck by the fact that attendance at live theaters had declined as the overwhelming part of the audience by the late 1910s were movie fans. Indeed, according to the statistics, it was clear that the absolute numbers of the audience in live theaters, including yose, declined drastically despite the increase in the total number of theatergoers. In other words, theaters in the late 1910s meant almost automatically "movie theaters" rather than traditional "live theaters."
Gonda further found that, in contrast to traditional theaters, movie theaters were full of young people, including elementary school children. These facts made Gonda very much concerned with the sociocultural effects of this new audiovisual medium of mass communications. With this problem in mind, he conducted the first audience survey in 1917 by the questionnaire method, soliciting the cooperation of thirty-one elementary school principals. Altogether, he obtained responses from some 12,000 children and found that, without a single exception, the children were familiar with movies and that they were exposed to the media as early as the age of six. The frequency of moviegoing, on average, was found to be approximately once a month, but Gonda discovered that, though the number was small, there were "heavy viewers" who attended movie theaters more than three times a week. In order to find a possible correlation between movies and juvenile delinquency, he further studied major juvenile detention homes in Tokyo and its vicinity and found that considerable numbers of the young people in these facilities were heavy viewers of movies. In extreme cases, there were a few who told him that they indulged themselves in movie theaters all day every day, skipping their schoolwork. At the same time, when he interviewed the children in the detention homes, Gonda learned that 27 percent of them said that they were influenced by movies before they committed minor crimes such as stealing or shoplifting. Thus, Gonda concluded that, in spite of the great potential of movies for educational purpose, this new form of entertainment might pose a new social problem, especially among the youth.
It is true that modern methodologies of social research were not introduced when Gonda conducted his survey, and a sociologist today might argue about the validity of his data, but it is surprising that such large-scale audience research was done at the turn of the century, and that it was done by a scholar whose major interest was the German language, and not popular culture research.
Gonda, however, was extremely sympathetic toward popular culture phenomena, partly because of a populist attitude derived from his interest in Marxism (while studying the German language and linguistics, he encountered Marxian economists who were reading the works of Marx and Engels in German) and partly because of his own urban background. He repeatedly remarked in his writings that, with the rise of movies and other modern entertainment, the arts were liberated from the monopoly of the rich and that a new era of popular culture, which was shared by the masses, was coming. Essentially, he believed in the great potential of this emerging new cultural trend supported by the common sense of the people. With the money, which was not a great fortune, that he earned from his renowned Gonda's German Japanese Dictionary, he performed extensive field work. He interviewed various popular entertainers, visited movie districts of major cities, and observed the menus of inexpensive restaurants to learn the details of the "eating out" habits of lower-class people. His energetic studies were compiled in the four volumes of the Selected Works of Yasunosuke Gonda by his admirers in 1974 with annotations so that popular culture students today can appreciate Gonda's pioneering and extraordinarily suggestive work.
Another important contribution to popular culture studies was made by Ohya Souchi (1900-1970), a freelance journalist and social critic who was also interested in observing the everyday life of the people. As a graduate of Tokyo University, where he majored in sociology, Ohya was interested in various aspects of the lives of the common people. Among his numerous writings a reader will easily locate many essays written from the 1930s to the 1960s related to popular culture at large. He did, for example, a study of historical changes in the lyrics of popular songs as the reflection of the sociocultural environments of each period. Ohya also was a very talented participant-observer and a great investigative reporter who utilized imaginative journalistic techniques. One of his earlier works included a collection of the records of taxicab passengers at midnight. In order to learn what middle-class men talk about in taxicabs, he disguised himself as an assistant to the driver (thanks to an earlier model of the Ford, which required extra hands) and listened to what passengers in the back seat said to each other, or sometimes what they talked about to Ohya, who pretended to be an honest young assistant to the driver. By doing so, he did marvelous work on "the topics of the town." In the postwar period, he continued to work in the same style. Through his connections with underground organizations, he succeeded in sneaking into one of the illegal gambling spots in Tokyo and published his findings. When striptease became a new genre of popular entertainment, he went to those theaters and, without hesitation, rushed backstage to interview the performers, asking about their backgrounds as well as their observations of the audience from the stage. He sometimes claimed that he was the John Gunther of Japan and said that most of his works were the pieces of his own Inside Japan.
In 1953, when television was introduced to Japan, Ohya took a very critical and serious attitude toward the media, and published his well-known "peanuts theory of TV." According to his observations as well as his own experience, television watching is similar to having a bowl of peanuts on the table. A person usually continues almost unconsciously to pick up peanuts and eat until the bowl becomes empty. Likewise, once the switch is on, a person usually continues to watch television, and scarcely turns it off regardless of what is on the screen. Ohya said that television was an addictive information machine, and since many of the programs were, in his judgment, sheer nonsense, he predicted that if the Japanese people became television addicts, they might be in danger of becoming a collection of fools. Thus, he coined the phrase "one-hundred-million-fool-making effect" (100 million meant the whole population of the country), which was borrowed by hundreds of journalists, critics, and scholars, either supportively or negatively, for years. Ohya sometimes defined his ideological position as "an irresponsible social observer," but his keen insights and interpretations stimulated a concern about popular culture phenomena in contemporary Japan.
These reflections lead to the following summarized statements: (1) Intellectual interest in popular culture in Japan can be traced back as far as the late nineteenth century, when scholars and writers had an enthusiastic interest in the everyday affairs of common people. Such a trend was accelerated by urbanization, especially in the three cities of Edo (Tokyo), Kyoto, and Osaka. (2) Popular culture studies and research were conducted by scholars with diverse backgrounds. They were, more or less, detached from orthodox academia, but their contributions have been properly appreciated and evaluated in academic circles. (3) The facts and data related to popular culture recorded by these pioneers are still valuable sources in popular culture studies, and, for those who are interested in Japanese popular culture research, their works should not be neglected. Popular culture researchers in Japan today are well aware of the importance of the intellectual tradition in this field in the last two centuries.
As was indicated in the preceding paragraphs, Japanese culture, especially urban culture, came into maturity during the period of isolation, a time when Japan also developed its high literacy and experienced a notable growth of the arts. Contemporary Japanese popular culture can be seen as a continuation of developments that began in the eighteenth century. Indeed, kabuki theaters still attract millions of people every year. Yose, in spite of Gonda's warning, also still survive, though the number has declined with the diffusion of radio and television. Artistic practice among amateurs, haiku, for instance, is more popular than ever. Millions of Japanese who enjoy haiku write to sections of newspapers devoted totally to this poetic contest every week. Or one may argue that photography, a world-famous pastime of the Japanese people, is a contemporary version of haiku in the sense that each snapshot is a visual presentation of the photographer's sentiment and feeling at a particular time and place. Though the forms of presentation are different, both haiku and a photographic snapshot are aesthetic expressions of a person, and, most important, such expressive behavior is shared by the whole population of the country. In the nightspots where the geisha entertained their guests in the past, today one will find charming hostesses in bars and nightclubs as their replacement, though their contemporary counterparts are not as talented in the arts of music or poetry. The point here is that, though seemingly new, Japanese popular culture today is a historical product and that a student in this field must look into the continuities of popular culture in their historical context.
As a matter of fact, Japan is a country of popular culture in the sense that the society has been essentially not only homogeneous but also egalitarian for at least the past two centuries. In his well-known popular fiction, Ukiyoburo [A story of a public bath](1809), Shikitei Samba (1776-1822) stressed the fact that in a public bath, where people enjoy the hot air and water totally naked, a man is simply a man regardless of his social status. He says, "A public bath makes everybody equal. Nobody can discern a samurai from a garbage collector, a wealthy merchant from a poor peasant," and Samba's philosophy has been well accepted by the public in both past and present. Though the concept of "equality" in the sense of Western intellectual history was alien when the idea was introduced after the Meiji Revolution, Japan developed its own unique view on "equality" as represented by Ukiyoburo.
Egalitarianism in Japan has been dramatically accelerated in the last forty years in the process of "democratization." In the first place, through radical land reform, without a single exception, the agrarian population in Japan became independent farmers, even though the size of the average land holding is very small. In other words, the traditional landlord-tenant relationship in rural communities has totally disappeared. With the rise of small independent farmers, middle-class consciousness came to prevail even in small local villages.
In addition to the emergence of millions of independent farmers, the development of the mass media coupled with the improvement of the transportation infrastructure made existing urban-rural culture gaps disappear. In Japan today, one cannot find much difference between a central metropolitan area and a small island several hundred miles away from any major island of the Japanese archipelago. Various commodities are distributed nationwide, and the broadcast media cover every corner of the country. In the past, those who lived deep in the mountains, which cover 70 percent of the total land surface of Japan, were handicapped and underprivileged, sometimes even deprived, economically, socially, and culturally. Now, thanks to technological innovations, they can enjoy the same conveniences and advantages as city people.
Another equalizing effect came from the diffusion of higher education, as Kato demonstrates in Education and Youth Employment in Japan. In the past, major universities were concentrated in large urban areas. For instance, the old Imperial universities were found only in seven cities, namely, Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Fukuoka. However, under the new educational reform, national universities were established in each prefecture, so that young high school graduates everywhere could have the opportunity of a university education. It should also be noted here that in Japan today senior high school education is almost compulsory (98 percent of junior high graduates go to senior high, and the dropout ratio is almost negligible). As was mentioned before, the Japanese population was quite literate by the eighteenth century, and the new education reform of 1946 raised its literacy raised its literacy to one of the highest levels in the world. If popular culture is the product of mass society in which the traditional dichotomy between elite and mass does not have much significance, then Japan probably can be defined as a country of popular culture.
In addition to the "equalization" brought by agrarian and educational reforms, there is another important factor that makes the society more egalitarian--an extremely progressive income tax. In Japan today, personal income is classified into twenty-two brackets, probably the most differentiated system of categorization in the world, and those whose income is in the top bracket have more than 70 percent of their income taken by the internal revenue agency. For example, a business executive whose annual salary is 15 million yen (approximately 120,000 dollars) takes home only 50 percent of his nominal income. On the other hand, a young secretary-typist who earns 2.5 million yen (20,000 dollars) pays some 10 percent of her income as tax. In other words, an executive in his fifties earns only three or, at best, four times more than a young employee in her twenties (or even late teens) if personal income is considered in substantial terms. Democratization of income distribution in Japan, in this sense, is extraordinary, and its result is obvious. In short, what happened in Japan in the last twenty years resulted in the dominance of middle class consciousness.
According to annual public opinion surveys conducted by the Prime Minister's Office, the number of those Japanese who think of themselves as belonging to the middle class has increased every year, and in 1984 more than 90 percent of the Japanese responded that they were the members of the middle-class. Needless to say, responses to this type of public opinion research are essentially subjective, but it is worthwhile to note here that a small farmer as well as a business executive, a service station attendant along with a college professor, feel equally that they belong to the middle class.
There are reasons on their part to justify their middle-class consciousness or awareness. Their income level is close to the national average, which is made public by the Economic Planning Board or other government agencies, though the amount a parson earns could be a little more or less than average. Without exception they have at least a senior high school diploma, which assures them that they are average Japanese. They have a standard set of durable goods, another token of middle class-ness, which includes a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, a stereo, a television, a small automobile, and more recently a videotape deck. The material possessions of a factory foreman are essentially the same as those of the prime minister. Therefore, the Japanese declare without doubt or hesitation that they are middle-class people.
Of course, there are a few who are slightly skeptical about their identification with the middle class. Some think that they cannot be middle class until they become independent homeowners rather than tenants in a housing project. Others may feel that the real middle class comprises university graduates, while others may think that their cars are too old and that such automobiles are not becoming to the middle class. On the other hand, there may be a relatively wealthy group of people who are afraid that they may not be middle class simply because they have bigger house or better cars than the average. But, generally speaking, the majority of the Japanese people today feel that they are middle class.
Of course, either implicitly or explicitly, class distinctions in terms of behavior patterns, artistic taste, kinds of magazines read, wardrobe, or use of language can be discovered if the public is carefully examined. However, everybody in Japan today is the recipient of and audience for popular culture. For instance, baseball, sumo, and other sports are enjoyed and appreciated by millions of people regardless of their social status of educational background. It is not strange to see, for instance, a senior vice president of a large firm enjoy his conversation on the scores of professional baseball games of the previous day with the driver of his limousine on his way to his office. Indeed, Paul Fussell's hypothetical figures called "X People," introduced in his witty book, Class, also seem to exist among upper-class Japanese today.
A good example of such trends, or even efforts, can be observed in group pleasure trips to hot springs, a common practice among business firms in Japan. The major purpose of this kind of trip, usually for one or two nights, under the name of "workshop" or "employees' welfare," is to make sure that everybody in the organization feels equal. In a huge banquet room, top management consciously mixes with newly recruited junior clerks, drinking together, singing together, and sometimes even sharing a room. On these occasions juniors are allowed to tease seniors, and vice versa, so that they can reconfirm their equality and solidarity as human beings. Not only on these special occasions, but also in daily office life, the egalitarian philosophy is at work. The same company cafeteria is used by both the president of the firm and by factory workers, and their topic of conversation, again, is sumo or favorite popular singers. In this sense, Japanese popular culture today may have the function of a social cement that closes the gaps between upper class and lower middle class, between highly educated and high school graduates, and sometimes even between male and female.
Interestingly enough, in Japanese society intellectual snobbery is almost nil. Of course, there are the minority who have high artistic taste, that is, are "high-brow." But "high-brows" in this country are also very knowledgeable about popular culture. It is a commonplace scene, at a bar at midnight, for a university professor or a high court judge to sing a popular song with a carpenter or taxicab driver. Such snobbery as "conspicuous non-ownership of television," which Reuel Denney brilliantly interpreted years ago, is totally alien in Japanese society. It is quite probable the spirit and philosophy of Ukiyoburo is still in action in contemporary Japan. Popular culture in this country is the culture that is shared by every single individual. In this sense, a new scope and perspective are needed to study not only the popular culture phenomena of Japan but also popular culture research methodology.
A new wave in popular culture research in Japan seems to be emerging, partly inheriting the tradition established by Yanagita, Kon, Gonda, Kitamura, and others and partly stimulated by mass media research that was introduced from the United States in the postwar period. At the same time, the populism that Gonda expressed in his work is another factor encouraging "progressive" scholars from such disciplines as sociology, psychology, political science, and literature to work on popular culture issues. Indeed, there was a group called the "Science of Thought"(see Shunsuke Tsurumi) that devoted much of its energy in the 1950s to popular culture study. This group consisted of intellectuals, mostly university professors, who felt that they were obliged to understand the everyday interests of the common people, or jomin, in order to establish real democracy in Japan. In this sense, popular culture research in Japan in the earlier postwar period, had, more or less, a political tone. As a matter of fact, left-wing political parties in the 1950s, while criticizing money-making capitalist popular culture as possibly another form of the suppression and exploitation of the proletariat, encouraged "productive" and "democratic" popular culture so that the lives of working-class people could be improved and that the proletariat could be prepared to fight with the capitalist system.
At the same time, scholars in academia also began to show interest in popular culture, especially when mass communications and journalism became part of the social science curriculum in colleges and universities. A few sociologists and anthropologists started ambitious and unique projects such as the sociology of bars (Kouri Takada), the sociology of bonsai (Nozomu Ikei), and the thropology of housing (Naoki Sugimoto). In the initial phase, there was criticism from conservative and traditional social scientists, but by the 1980s these seemingly deviant research projects has been accorded recognition in academia.
Summarizing the results of the previous discussion, it may be safe to say that: (1) Japan has been an egalitarian country, though the origin and nature of the philosophy are somewhat different from those of Western countries. Japanese egalitarianism was accelerated by the reforms of the postwar period. (2) The Japanese population is extremely homogeneous, and the gaps between social classes are probably much narrower than in other societies. (3)On the part of the elite in Japan, there seems to be less class consciousness and anxiety. They usually do not have much psychological and ideological resistance to popular culture. (4) In conclusion, Japanese popular culture is unique, and its research methodology requires that special consideration be given to this singularity.
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