Broadcasting Politics in Japan

This book may not draw much interest from many of this blog’s regular readers, but I’m better informed for having read it. Ellis S. Krauss is an internationally renown scholar of Asian history and policies, and his specific specialty is Japan where he has lived and/or visited for the last 50 years. He has received prestigious awards for his work. I’ve seen a picture of him receiving a medal from the Emperor of Japan. He now has emeritus status at UCSD where he taught in the global studies area, and he has lectured at many other American and Japanese universities. It has been my serendipitous good fortune to have met him through a dear friend and colleague, and he and his wife Martha have lovingly provided a reading list of books for me and my wife as we prepare for a tour of Japan.

 

In Broadcasting Politics in Japan, which was published in 2000, he reviewed his research into the development of political news coverage in Japan, beginning in the immediate post WWII era. The U.S. occupied Japan until 1952, and the U.S. agents wrote the laws and playbook for the development of the reporting of political news to the Japanese public with the intent of helping to legitimize the democratic society that was being taught to the populace. Particularly, he described the evolution of NHK, Nippon Hoso Kyokai, the Japan Broadcasting Company. NHK maintained its dominance of the political news delivery systems in Japan until the late 1980s when competition with commercial news networks finally caught up with it. The commercial news seemed to appeal more to the younger generation, but NHK has maintained an important part of the political news scene.

 

Dr. Krauss had access to all of the key players in this story, and his documented research efforts are impressive. I’ll leave you there with the topic, and I hope you’ll have a look at his impressive and most interesting research.