Japanese television -- room for improvement?

Japanese TV programs are typically of an intellectual standard that would not insult the intelligence of the average 10-year old. Humor tends towards the basic, with the stooge getting hit over the head providing the principal cause for merriment in many comedy programs. Plot-lines in televised fiction tend towards the sentimental and/or violent, and the use of celebrities (or would-be celebrities) sitting round a table eating and drinking as they discourse on a level only slightly above that of the average kindergarten class has reached an all-time high (or low, depending on your point of view).

But it's not really that which is so irritating to many Western viewers. Much, after all, can be forgiven on the grounds of cultural difference (but the Japanese themselves tacitly confirm this low opinion of the programming standards by largely ignoring the one-eyed monster which still remains switched on, glowering from its corner, in almost every living room in Japan).

Visibly audible

No, what really grates on the nerves is the low technical quality of the programs. Coming as I do from a country where the standards of camerawork, sound, etc. in TV broadcasts are relatively high, it was a great shock to me when I first noticed the prominent use of highly visible microphones on Japanese television. In most British productions, the aim is to disguise the inner workings of the magic that is TV. I can name some notable exceptions to this -- Terry Wogan's famous stick microphone which he used to intimidate friend and foe alike, Anneka Rice's mobile sound rig which she wore as she raced breathlessly around Britain on her treasure hunts, and one or two others. Crossroads was regarded as laughable at least partly as a result of its technical glitches (apologies to all who were weaned on a non-British TV diet; you can probably come up with your own examples).

On Japanese TV, by contrast, the aim seems to be to show that "we are on TV, so we must make it obvious that we are, indeed, on TV". Ignoring the obvious advantages of boom microphones, many shows will use tieclip lavalier microphones prominently attached to each member of a panel of "experts", together with tabletop and/or handheld microphones, and quite probably rifle or other boom mikes into the bargain (forgive the jargon, but this kind of thing constitutes a lot of my bread and butter). In any case, at least two or three microphones are used to pick up the vocal sound. One would therefore expect total fidelity in the sonic field, with every nuance being picked up and glittering with the brilliance of a diamond on velvet.

Audible wallpaper

Well, hardly. Once all this high-fidelity sound has been mixed, (typically with far too much treble element for Western ears), background music is often added. What? you ask. Background music under the talk part of a talk show? Yes, that's right. The music, needless to say, has nothing to do with the topic or theme being discussed. Usually harmless light jazzy music or ambient New Age, occasionally light rock, sometimes with heavy drumbeats, and sometimes even with vocal parts which compete with the ostensible purpose of the program.

Occasionally reggae-type syncopation, heavier rock or popular classics make their appearance. The mix is occasionally so heavy that it is difficult to distinguish the words of the participants on the show, as in the case of what is otherwise usually an excellent program, Asahi TV's News Station, one of the few news programs that does something other than repeat press releases, when it presents its football (soccer) reports. The studio reports of games played etc. are invariably overlaid ("underscored" is much too weak a word here) with a soccer theme. When recorded clips of games are played, the music is turned off, and on the return to the studio, it comes on again at full volume.

Another sound-related oddity is the use (or abuse) of backing music for commercials. The group providing the music is prominently featured in the credits (credits for a commercial? Yes, in Japan), and the editing is done with a razorblade. Come the end of the 30 second slot, the chosen song is cut off sharp, in mid-chord if necessary. No-one seems to use time-stretching technology, despite the fact that much of this technology is manufactured in Japan.

The choice of song often affords some unintentional humour. My personal favourite came when a new sports car was filmed driving along twisting mountain roads to the strains of Procul Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". As the car snaked round a particularly vicious bend, the line "I was feeling kind of seasick" came up, and then the ad ended. There have been other moments, but this was my personal best.

Let it not be said that the humour is always unconscious, though. In the afore-mentioned News Station, the music selected to accompany political comment often seems to be chosen by a producer with a sardonic sense of irony. I particularly enjoyed seeing an analysis of the vastly unpopular ex-Prime Minister Mori conducted to the strains of the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill".

What you get is...

So much for the audio elements of TV. What about the visual elements? Well, it would appear that many Japanese TV cameramen have difficulty holding their drink. Actually, this is true of many Japanese people, not just TV cameramen, but in this case, probably drink should be ruled out as an explanation. However, one might be forgiven for believing that the culprit is the demon alcohol, as the cameras shake, dip and swirl crazily around the studio, leaving the viewer with a distinct feeling of vertigo at best and nausea at worst (one Japanese friend of mine claims to be physically sick watching these shows).

What has almost certainly happened is the same phenomenon that has afflicted Japanese restaurants -- pretentiousness. Just as in the average Japanese Western-style restaurant, even the humblest cook feels it incumbent to wear the full regalia of a chef de cuisine, and the waiters are under a compulsion to serve even a hamburger with the pomp and ceremony that used to accompany cordon bleu cookery in Europe, Japanese cameramen and directors feel obliged to include every trick shot from every art film that ever won a European prize in the past 20 years, regardless of the subject matter being filmed. Or they slavishly copy David Lynch's latest camera angles and apply them to a chat show of celebrities solemnly discussing the taste of a bowl of noodles for 30 minutes on end.

...what you see

In addition, the inner workings of television are often laid bare for the viewer. As one example of this, consider the regular 7pm news report from NHK (the equivalent of the BBC). This is presented by a single anchorperson. For the first half of the news (the two headline stories, usually) he remains standing -- Japanese presenters often stand where Western ones would sit. But for the second half of the program, the camera pulls back, and the presenter is shown walking to a chair nearby, with other cameras, teleprompters and monitors (not to mention all their associated cables) clearly in view, and sitting down, where he takes a sheaf of papers from a headphoned assistant. The camera then changes to a talking heads shot at the new position, with the assistant never being seen again for the remainder of the program.

There are other oddities. One is the introduction of a guest to a program. In the majority of these cases, the camera will start at the feet, and track slowly upwards to the face. At first I took this to be the wish to concentrate on the female guests' legs, to the exclusion of their faces, but when I saw the same technique applied to a shot of the previous Emperor, taken in the 1930s, I realised this could not be the case. The best guess I have been able to come up with is the idea that this camera shot represents a bow. The head is respectfully lowered and the gaze is directed at the feet, and slowly moves up as the bow is relaxed. I don't know if this is true, but it seems to me to be as plausible as any other explanation.

This is not to be confused, of course, with the Japanese cameraman's habit of focussing on the subject's hands for extended periods of time throughout an interview, or even his or her feet, where a Westerner would show only the face or at least a head-and-shoulders shot. My Japanese wife is unable to provide an adequate explanation for this symptom (the head-and-shoulders shot, by the way, is often reserved for an inset of the reactions of the studio "celebrities" to the videotape clip currently being shown).

And now an interview with Mr. Blur...

Nor is it to be confused with the Japanese wish to remain anonymous on TV. Many news programs interviewing (say) a person who once knew a suspected murderer or his victim will scrupulously refuse to give their name or show their face, and their voice will be electronically disguised into the bargain. "No name, no face, no story" doesn't apply here. The anonymous electronic squawk accompanied by a close-up of the back of the neck is an all-too-familiar sound on Japanese TV. Obviously one can sympathise with those who have witnessed a gangland murder and are frightened of possible reprisals. But to anonymise (for want of a better word) a person who once knew a suspected murderer when they were at school together? The victims of criminals are often not protected in this way, while the suspected criminals themselves are disguised (to avoid reprisals from their victims?).

Speaking of which, there is an unwritten rule that prevents the sight of handcuffs on TV. As a suspect is led to the police van, the area surrounding his wrists is mosaicked out in the same way as the genital areas of those unfortunate enough to be caught au naturel and portrayed on Japanese television. According to one of the few lawyers in Japan, this is simply a matter of custom and "protecting the dignity" of the suspect. Considering that the fact that the suspect is obviously handcuffed, and also that the said suspect has usually been interrogated for a number of days without legal representation and in ways which would often raise howls of protest from civil rights activists in other countries, not to mention the pre-arrest trial and condemnation by the media for several days before the official arrest, this seems a very strange state of affairs). But then the whole Japanese legal system is decidedly odd to Western eyes, and deserves a space of its own for comment.

The sight of silence

Another development over the past few years has been the development of sub-titles for many programs which would otherwise not seem to need them (game shows, quizzes and the like). These are not discreet little symbols to help those who have lost their hearing through the overuse of background music -- these are big, in-your-face brightly-coloured characters taking up half the screen. And what do they say? "Uh?" "What?" "I don't know" or simply "..." (silence) are some of the words of wisdom that are shown regularly on Japanese "talent" shows. Do I need to add that these titles are hardly ever used to make clear anything which passes for serious explanation?

The reasoning behind this phenomenon is obscure, but is probably intimately connected to the manga comic books which occupy such a large part of Japanese adult life (the figures seem to be shrinking slightly, but comics, with their strange mixture of super-realism and total fantasy, together with large overprinted representations of the sounds, are still enormously popular "reading" fare). These subtitles effectively demote the participants in these chat shows to the level of comic book stereotypes (actually, this is a promotion in some cases), and provide the viewer with a familiar interface. Assuming, that is, that the average reader of comics is the same as the average watcher of these shows (not, I think, an implausible hypothesis).

Nature (and the Japanese) abhor a vacuum

So what is the meaning of these features of Japanese TV? For the most part, TV production techniques seems to be based around agoraphobia -- filling in the blank spaces that might otherwise lead to tedium. This would be consistent with other tendencies in Japanese life observed at first hand and at second hand. Despite the famed Japanese sense of space and emptiness in design (the sound of one hand clapping), today's Japanese modern design seems to cram as much as possible into the space available.

A non-Japanese graphic designer friend of mine complains that all his attempts at balanced design for his Japanese clients are frustrated by the clients' insistence that every square centimeter of space is filled by text and graphics—no white space is to remain on the page.

Japanese architects add flourishes and ornaments at every possible turn to their buildings. Japanese fashion designers designing for the Japanese market add beads, frills and flounces to otherwise sensible garments. Japanese chefs seem to want to add every conceivable ingredient to their creations (in both modern Japanese and Western cookery). So is it any wonder that the one of the symbols of modern Japan, television, also exhibits these tendencies?

But for the foreigner trapped in Japanese TV-land, the only escape from this whirlygig overstimulation is the safe, if at times boring, documentaries put out by NHK, whose directors and cameramen eschew (at least for the moment) the fancy tricks and technical overkill that make contemporary Japanese TV the overstimulating, dizzying nightmare that it currently is.