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.

Japan is one of the most media-saturated societies in the world. The circulations of its "big five" national newspapers dwarf those of any major American newspaper. Its public service broadcasting agency, NHK, is second only to the BBC in size. And it has a full range of commercial television stations, high-brow and low-brow magazines, and a large anti-mainstream media and mini-media. Japanese elites rate the mass media as the most influential group in Japanese society. But what role do they play in political life? Whose interests do the media serve? Are the media mainly servants of the state, or are they watchdogs on behalf of the public? And what effects do the media have on the political beliefs and behavior of ordinary Japanese people? These questions are the focus of this collection of essays by leading political scientists, sociologists, social psychologists, and journalists. Japan's unique kisha (press) club system, its powerful media business organizations, the uses of the media by Japan's wily bureaucrats, and the role of the media in everything from political scandals to shaping public opinion, are among the many subjects of this insightful and provocative book.

Japan has developed what is arguably the most sophisticated and the most democratic broadcasting system in the world. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1st September 1923, with its devastation and confusion drove home in its appalling way the importance of being able to broadcast immediate information to the public. The same year, the Ministry of Communications promptly established an administrative system to regulate broadcasting. In less than a decade over one million people were registered listeners. Under the post war Constitution of 1946 freedom of "speech and all other forms of expression" was guaranteed, and the subsequent Broadcast Law instituted a dual system of broadcasting with the public service Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) on the one hand, and commercial and private broadcasting organizations on the other. In 1978 there were ninety-one television broadcasting organizations and fifty-one radio broadcasting organizations. In this informative study, Professor Ito and his team comprehensively describe the staggering growth of broadcasting in Japan from the dawn or radio and television to satellite communication and through to the multiplex broadcasting of the future.

The BBC and NHK have dominated their national media systems since the 1920s and still play a central role in shaping political, social and cultural life. Both are highly trusted news organizations, and vitally influence national identity. Yet despite remarkably similar organizational and funding structures, they differ in their editorial autonomy, relationship to the state, and in the social and cultural roles they play. While the BBC, proud of its independence, acts as a watchdog on the powerful, NHK prefers a guide dog role cooperating with rather than confronting political elites. The BBC is also more willing to challenge prevailing social norms, often serving as an agent of social change. NHK prefers to avoid controversy, serving as an agent of social stability. The book argues that these differences were shaped by decades of conflict and cooperation between broadcasters, governments, commercial media, interest groups and audiences. The broadcasters adopted distinctive editorial strategies to retain public support and elite approval in the face of technological upheaval, hostility from commercial rivals, and continuous political interference. Both, however, continue to uphold the belief that democratic and social goals are better served by public rather than commercial media.

The convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting raises many questions. What form will convergence take in the future? When convergence produces new opportunities in the information, education and entertainment markets, what sort of rules of the game will be required? How will the players behave in these new markets? What policies might be needed?

My dissertation examines the role of radio broadcasting in constituting mass culture as an integral part of politics in Japan during the period from the mid-1920s to the 1950s, that is, during both the Asia-Pacific War and the U.S. occupation. Transwar Japanese radio broadcasting has been discussed primarily in narrow terms of state control and indoctrination during the Asia-Pacific War, and the liberation of the masses or lack of such in the postwar "democratization" initiated by the U.S. occupation. My study demonstrates that Japan's transwar radio culture was far more lively and indicative of much more complex power relations. Contrary to common belief, wartime discourses and practices of Japanese radio never uniformly imagined radio listeners as passive audiences. Rather, political and social elites as well as government officials and broadcasters made systematic efforts to engage mass audiences as conscious listeners and radio participants who would choose to put what they heard into practice out of their own will. These efforts paralleled the empire's mobilization of national and colonial subjects for conducting the war. When the U.S. occupation arrived, habits of radio listening and audience participation from the former era actually facilitated, rather than impeded, the occupation's mission to transform the Japanese into active and self-responsible citizens for rebuilding the nation state in the new global order. My dissertation demonstrates that while radio was indeed a powerful and effective medium, politicizing the masses into "responsible" members of society through radio was neither a unilateral process nor a smooth operation. I argue that if radio served as a unique intermediary in transwar politics, it did so because of its ability to channel major political themes, norms, and representations into the realms of mass culture and the rhythms of the everyday. My research documents how seemingly trivial popular genres of broadcasting such as the amateur singing contest, the quiz show, and the serial drama played a central role, although not without unexpected twists, in awakening the masses into "responsible" and "useful" members of society in work and play.