Broadcasting Politics in Japan
Ellis S. Krauss
The aftermath of Japan's 1945 military defeat left its public institutions in a state of deep crisis; virtually every major source of state legitimacy was seriously damaged or wholly remade by the postwar occupation. Between 1960 and 1990, however, these institutions renewed their strength, taking on legitimacy that erased virtually all traces of their postwar instability.How did this transformation come about? This is the question Ellis S. Krauss ponders in Broadcasting Politics in Japan; his answer focuses on the role played by the Japanese mass media and in particular by Japan's national broadcaster, NHK. Since the 1960s, television has been a fixture of the Japanese household, and NHK's TV news has until very recently been the dominant, and most trusted, source of political information for the Japanese citizen. NHK's news style is distinctive among the broadcasting systems of industrialized countries; it emphasizes facts over interpretation and gives unusual priority to coverage of the national bureaucracy. Krauss argues that this approach is not simply a reflection of Japanese culture, but a result of the organization and processes of NHK and their relationship with the state. These factors had profound consequences for the state's postwar re-legitimization, while the commercial networks' recent challenge to NHK has helped engender the wave of cynicism currently faced by the state. Krauss guides the reader through the complex interactions among politics, media organizations, and Japanese journalism to demonstrate how NHK television news became a shaper of Japan's political world, rather than simply a lens through which to view it.
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About Ellis S. Krauss
Reviews for Broadcasting Politics in Japan
Laurie A. Freeman, University of California, Santa Barbara
Journal of Japanese Studies
Broadcasting Politics in Japan is one of the best new works on Japanese politics I have read in years, and it deserves a wide audience.... It is refreshing to find a genuinely creative and original book on Japan that should have broad relevance for research on the press and political legitimacy in general. This is an excellent book, filled with rich detail, sharp insights, and a novel approach.
David Leheny, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Monumenta Nipponica
Ellis Krauss analyzes in rich detail the unique relationship between Japan's public broadcasting network—the NHK—and its political system. This book not only advances the West's knowledge about the relationship between journalism and politics in Japan but offers useful lessons about the media that go far beyond the Japanese case.
Foreign Affairs
Krauss's book is a rare model of how research should be done—i.e. grounded in theory and executed systematically, longitudinally, and comparatively.... Krauss includes both English and Japanese sources to fully document what must be considered the most thoroughly researched book to date (in English) on Japanese broadcasting.
Choice
The reader need not accept Krauss's conclusions to derive great benefit from reading this book.
Nathaniel B. Thayer, Johns Hopkins University
Political Science Quarterly
This is unambiguously an academic work, but also immensely readable. He amusingly distinguishes four types of mass media functions: those of watchdog, guard dog, guide dog and lapdog.... The book includes an entertaining section on successive NHK presidents.
J.A.A. Stockwin, University of Oxford
Japanese Studies