Why do I study and enjoy Japanese television drama? For starters, it isn't anything at all like American television. It consists of a self-enclosed world that takes place within a broader culture (Japan) that has convinced many people it is itself a self-enclosed world. Some of Drama World's most interesting stories have been about those times when the broader culture wakes up to the fact that it does not live in a self-enclosed world. Google, terrorism, climate catastrophe, the English language, earthquakes, a Japanese person having better job opportunities abroad, so many unseen factors penetrate the culture and force it to take another look at itself. But the Japanese television drama industry over the years has operated as if the same thing—an unforeseen outside influence entering the scene that changes the story forever—could never happen to them.
What makes Japanese television drama a special art form is that it has refined itself over the past fifty years according to schedule. A set group of companies, funded by advertising revenue, has been able to sustain itself without relying on "blockbusters" and "hits"—without a profit motive, basically—to create its seasonal, constant turnover of stories that reflect, democratically, the width and breadth of the culture. Unlike the American book industry, where highly desired and popular stories ("best-sellers") are used to fund much more substantive, though debt-ridden work ("literature"), a highly irregular and unjust method of distributing the wealth if ever there was one, the Japanese television drama industry has constructed a system where value and wealth are evenly distributed. In the American book industry, if it wasn't for highly lucrative genres that get published, diet regimen books, for example, or ones whose titles scream "How to Restore Your Mental Equilibrium Through the System I Have Perfected", or those that have "Girl" in the title or suggest "female empowerment", invariably with a woman in glossy on the cover not so subtly trying to pull the wool over our eyes, whatever a celebrity has to tell us or a politician will not, then books that actually have something important to say would never get published. That is not the case with Japanese television drama. All works whether ambitious or small-scale, insulting to one's intelligence or invigorating and challenging, rely on the same ecosystem, regardless of the value and worth of each individual story. The enormous success of HANZAWA NAOKI didn't help fund the rest of the industry; it simply existed within the same world.
I cannot speak with authority, but from my perch on the landscape it seems to me that the industry works similarly to the Japanese construction industry whose method of distributing projects to companies large and small relies on secretive negotiations for bids. Companies agree ahead of time which companies are to receive which construction projects and then go through the formality of an open-bidding process as if everything hasn't been prearranged. The term for this is "dangou" [談合]. If you are on the outside of this system and feel it illegal or a scam, you are inclined to call it "bid-rigging" or "collusion." If you are a small construction company working within the system, you are grateful for the illegality (if indeed that's what it is) because it gives you the chance to play in the game. If you are a large construction company coming to the aid of smaller ones through the secretive system, you can feel that you are doing your part to help the little guy, within their communities, so long as they do not disrupt the business model of those like ourselves who direct and lead the field.
Frankly, I have not paid that much attention to the way talent agencies distribute actors to the television companies for work. Nor have I paid much attention to the economics of the television drama industry. I do little more than thank God that it exists and that I am still able to absorb Japanese drama while living abroad. It seems that there are great numbers of individuals, in Japan and abroad, who obsess over the scandals that revolve around the talent agencies, none the least for the way they are able to shoe in undeserving talent for roles over those much more capable and qualified, let alone for the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse they heap on their talent. I have paid little attention to it, but that doesn't mean I am not on the side of the observers. One wonders, at any rate, how any entertainment industry could survive if it wasn't riddled with corruption and deception and false promise from the outset. Many of us here in America are discovering by the day, in 2024, how our number one form of entertainment, politics, sets the standard for corruption everywhere else.
Enter Netflix and the idea of streaming service into the somewhat pure world of Japanese television drama. Chiaki at Drama World has brought to our attention a news item published this September at Yahoo Japan for the impact a highly capitalized, foreign influence—Netflix—is having on the conservatively organized Japanese television drama industry. I didn't read the article as a sign of impending doom for the industry; in fact, I read it with the conservatives in the industry in mind knowing that they will be able to withstand the storm. But there is no doubt the industry faces an enormous challenge. I won't summarize the article—Chiaki has done a great job for those who do not read Japanese—but I will make a few generalized observations here as they strike me.
For good reason, the article is highly focused on actors. It is a bit shocking to discover how underpaid even those who receive steady work from the industry are. All the more impressed I am with the professionalism of actors for taking on jobs that serve, often enough, as no more than a passing phenomenon: the drama gets made; the actor gets paid; the drama enters the grave. No matter... the actor, and the people of the industry, have made a decent living from the system as it exists.
I am not surprised to see, however, that there is a sort of ranking system for who receives the work. The article doesn't tell us specifically how the system functions for distributing jobs, but one can read between the lines for the way "good behavior" (professionalism on and off the job) is rewarded. It also gives us a good answer for why pop stars and celebrities and singers with no acting experience continually appear in roles for which they are little qualified: they are cheap hires. The ubiquity of "brand" actors in the industry, as opposed to those who fully believe in their art, function as an incentive for garnering larger ratings for a drama, the advertisers that support one. The cheap hires readily accept receiving minimal pay under the premise that a drama offers them what they really need, greater, more legitimate forms of exposure. If the hire happens to be good at acting, and the beauty industry approves, then that gives the "actor" a chance at getting hired for commercials and advertisement copy where the real money is made.
Because of its great wealth and because it isn't Japanese, a company like Netflix, in theory, can break the back of the conservative, domestic television drama industry. Actors are being paid significantly more for their work when employed by Netflix. And those who have been ostracized from the industry for their bad behavior outside of work (getting caught taking drugs, engaging in ruinous, adulterous affairs, etc.) no longer have to submit to a system whose hold over them extends to their private life. Stated this way, as the article for Yahoo Japan does, it makes Netflix sound like Abraham Lincoln coming to free the slaves. However, need we say, anything that sounds too good to be true comes at a cost. We'll find out what that is over the upcoming years as these actors submit themselves to greater benefits, but also to all the flaws of the soulless (or "anonymous", if you prefer) American business model.
Outside of the benefits to the actors themselves, streaming services like Netflix offer more superficial changes to the industry: one can binge dramas at one's leisure; one doesn't need to follow the seasonal programming schedule, nor the advertiser-based model of broadcasting where one must endure the mosquitoes at the campsite that is television commercials as they interrupt the flow of a drama and our appreciation of the beauty. And this in addition to having to wait for a week in between episodes. Superficial changes for those of us who read the dramas. But not superficial for those who depend on the advertising-generated model to sustain the television industry. As strictly a reader of Japanese television drama and not a supporter of it (I don't watch drama on a Japanese television set, within a Japanese home, from which I can then go out and purchase the products it is selling, apply the values it promotes to my home and work life), the economics of the industry doesn't concern me. But I can see the battle lines being drawn and how the war will shape the art form and I can say that I am most definitely on the side of the Japanese-centered, conservative television industry.
Little addressed in the article is how these changes will impact the writing of dramas, which is what really interests me the most, the writing. My primary concern is that of Mike's who runs the Japanese drama site HamsapSukebe. On his own site he writes, "I want more money in jdoramas because a healthy industry means more things for me to watch. I just hope they don't try to cater to a foreign audience and continue to cater for the locals first." That second sentence deeply concerns me too. Where there is great money paid, there is great debt owed. If the Japanese production teams are rewarded financially by foreign companies, there is no doubt they will feel some obligation to abide by that company—or country's—values. Nothing depresses me more than to see a beautifully Japanese actor like Watanabe Ken have to dumb-down his Japanese-ness for the sake of an American-made film. Mike's, and my concern, should be read in tandem with an earlier article Chiaki posted on her site called "The controversy over Ubukata Miku's (scriptwriter of "silent") remarks on "Bokura no Jidai."" There, we can read the opinions of someone directly responsible for the content of Japanese television drama, scriptwriter Ubukata Miku, for how she feels about foreign influence over her art and culture.
Among her crucial points, which all of us need to take seriously, is the worry that by adapting to foreign models, the special flavor of the Japanese language, its tones, hints, suggestions, what those who intuitively understand the language appreciate, will be sacrificed to a malignant force that really isn't that interested in the Japanese television industry's standards, let alone Japanese culture itself. All for the sake of "diversifying" its content, huge companies like Netflix may be actively at work to undermine what makes Japanese drama Japanese. Companies like Netflix thrive on consumer choice, most definitely not quality art, so even if every one of us is given little choice than to be subject to the empire of consumer choice, none of us should be enslaved to it. I for one will make it a point to keep an eye open for the ways the Japanese television industry might be corrupted by foreign influence. My strong desire is that writers like Ubukata Miku will be spared having to dumb down her content, her uses of language and style, just so that her stories can reach a broader audience.
The comments section to the Yahoo Japan article was impressively lengthy. Some of the comments I read I have folded into my commentary above. I am pleased to see confirmed that there are Japanese who get their episodes of television drama off internet sites too [自分は地上波のドラマもネットで配信されてから観ます]. One person asks, interestingly, where does legitimacy reside, in the streaming services or in the television stations backed by ad revenue? It is possible for a great drama shown on a streaming service to "move up" to television. [しかも見るのはリアルタイムではなく配信ですけど。よく配信から活躍の場を地上波に変えるとレベルアップしたと表現する記事を目にしますが、現実はその逆ではないでしょうか] Articles will tell us that legitimacy resides in ad-based television. But this person feels it's the opposite, in the streaming services. I find this argument very interesting because it mirrors what is happening in the political and cultural spheres where freedom of speech somehow still manages to exist outside of both. No one but a person disinclined to think for him or herself would get one's political news from mainstream, legacy outlets anymore. But is streaming service companies comparable to independent media outlets (that is to say, non-corporate ones), blogging, freelance journalism? My opinion is no, they are not. They are just companies working within the same system out on the hunt for a hostile takeover bid. It is for this reason that I do not consider Netflix Abraham Lincoln.
Out of all the comments I read, though, the most poignant, and therefore my favorite one didn't really have anything to do with Japanese television drama. This person's beef was with life itself. [TVは若い男のイケメンときれいな女子で というコンセプトが中高年には面白くないので私はドラマを見ない TV自体見なくなってきた] As middle-aged this person states that he or she has zero interest whatever watching stories about handsome young men and pretty young women and whatever roadblocks life throws in their way. As a result he or she watches less and less drama. The comment was a bit off topic for the comment thread, but once one reaches a certain age one's agony, and thus one's appeal to God has to start somewhere. Why not anonymously online?
[Photo: 長谷川京子, Hasegawa Kyoko, photographed by 伊島薫, Ijima Kaoru. For a photo essay in which Japanese actresses and models were asked to reveal their fantasies about their perfect death. This included being asked which designer clothing they would prefer to be caught dead wearing. For Hasegawa, Yves Saint Laurent, Rive Gauche, apparently]