Begin Japanology - Television

 

Polarised and Partisan: Polish Media and Presidential Election

In the re-election of Poland's president, how much of a helping hand did media offer? Plus, Ghassan Kanafani's legacy.

Polish voters have re-elected President Andrzej Duda to another term in office and the state broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP) was instrumental in his media campaign. To many Poles, TVP could just as well be Telewizja Propaganda - the channel backed Duda to the hilt, and helped him scrape through with a 51 percent victory.

Privately owned news outlets have been far more critical of Duda, so the president and his backers have tried to delegitimise those platforms over their foreign ownership. They have played the xenophobia card, suggesting that German investors in Polish media companies were trying to swing the election.

Japanese Commercials #1

Cutting the TV cord: The Netflix-driven online phenomenon

A look at how online streaming services are revolutionising entertainment across the globe.

Subscription video service Netflix is now the most popular US platform for watching entertainment on TV. According to a recent survey by Wall Street firm Cowen & Co, it has now overtaken traditional broadcast, cable television and other online streaming services like Youtube and Amazon. 

With its own studio in Hollywood, Netflix is now one of the world's biggest film and TV producers. It boasts collaborations with some of television and cinema's most renowned names, such as a multi-year production deal with former US president and first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama. 

Newsreaders in chorus: The monopolisation of local news in the US

A viral video raises concerns about America's biggest TV news network. Plus, Britain's poverty porn industry.

The monopolisation of local news in the US

It may not be a household name, but the Sinclair Broadcast Group is the biggest local TV news network in the US, with 173 stations.

Sinclair stumbled somewhat clumsily into the limelight this week after it ordered its local TV anchors across the United States to read from a script accusing other news outlets of trying to control "what people think".

The irony, it seems, was lost on the company, which is now trying to expand its reach to 70 percent of Americans.

Getting that deal past the regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, probably won't be an issue. Sinclair has a friend in the White House in Donald Trump, whose administration is currently binging on deregulation.

Japan's blackface problem: the country's bizarre, troubled relationship with race

Baye McNeil, a black American writer who has lived in Japan for a decade, told me he found the blackface appalling — but didn't think it was worth wasting too much time on in a country he loves, despite suffering from routine racism.
"These singers were some old guys doing niche music and weren't that terribly popular, so it wasn't like they were in my face all the time," McNeil told me.
But McNeil lost his patience last month when members of a popular mainstream Japanese group posed for the promotional photo that appears at the top of this page. In it, the members of girl band Momoiro Clover Z grin in full blackface alongside old crooners Rats & Star, who have been performing in paint since the 1980s. The two bands were set to appear together on Fuji TV, a major network.

But as McNeil knows all too well, this episode was only part of a much larger problem with race in Japan, a problem that cannot be quickly fixed with a petition. To Americans, and indeed most people, it’s pretty obvious that blackface is extremely racist. How could the Japanese, as well-educated as they often are, tolerate this practice? The answer goes way beyond mere ignorance of blackface's ugly history, to a powerful national belief in Japan's ethnic purity that leaves the country incapable of dealing with its race issues.

Racism in Japan isn't just for TV. it happens across the country.  A student from Pakistan who's family lived in Japan was attending junior high school in Chiba until he could no longer take the overt racism directed towards him, not only from the schools students, but the teachers and the schools principle as well.  The cities Board of Education had little idea on how to address the issue or resolve the problems and the abuse the student faced.  They choose to sweep the whole incident under the rug rather than dealing with the appalling racism this young man faced.   Students have been classified with derision by teachers simply because they believed them to be from another Asian country.   As the article mentions especially China and Korea.

Japan's race problem

Japan's problem with racism is well-established. A 2005 report by a UN special rapporteur described "profound" racism in the country, much of it aimed at people from former Japanese colonial holdings in China and Korea.
In 2013, extremist nationalists led a series of anti-Korean protests; they threatened to flatten Tokyo’s Koreatown and build a gas chamber in its place. Japan is one of the few democracies without hate-speech laws, so little was done to stop this. Anti-racists staged counter-demos, and an extremist group has since been forced to pay compensation, but the national government has done stunningly little to prohibit racist hate speech, particularly given Japan's recent history of fascism.
"The blackface thing is emblematic of a larger problem of Japanese politics and civil society in which diversity is not recognized, or cultivated, or respected," said Kyle Cleveland, associate professor of sociology at Temple University’s Tokyo campus, who lectures on race.

North Korea Wants To Watch Teletubbies

North Korea has been in months long negotiations with the BBC over which programs they might broadcast.  Among the favorites: Top Gear,  Dr. Who and Teletubbies as they are considered non political.  

Given that North Korea tightly controls what's broadcast on Korean Central Television how will this comport with their overarching desire to control the flow of information to its populace?  Also its a crime to view such programing in North Korea.  What are going to do? Broadcast the programs then promptly imprison the population in its wide network of prison camps.

 

"Extensive enquiries have been made about what these three shows involve and if they would be suitable for the [North] Korean people," a Pyongyang insider explained. "Anything too political was not suitable but these are entertainment shows, and one of them is for young children."

The decision follows a BBC initiative last year, supported by the Foreign Office, to draw up a list of programmes that the North Koreans might consider obtaining. At the time, the Foreign Secretary William Hague hailed it as "a good way to improve understanding about the outside world within such a closed society".

  

This what happens when one runs afoul of the law in North Korea for watching or possessing these materials.

 The watching of non-sanctioned programmes is harshly punished. Eighty people were reportedly shot recently for crimes that included being caught with pirated copies of South Korean programmes. Such penalties have failed to dampen demand, however, perhaps explaining the regime's willingness to consider foreign exports and so make its own channels more popular. Many North Koreans store foreign programmes on USB sticks, which can be pulled out and hidden from police if required.