Media and Politics in Japan

1. Media as Trickster in Japan: A Comparative Perspective

19 1 Media as Trickster in Japan: A Comparative Perspective SUSAN J. PHARR No institution in advanced industrial societies is more elusive as to its role and its effects on politics than the media. Numerous books on modern political systems make no more than passing reference to the media, listing the major daily newspapers and their circulations , per-capita television viewing time, and so on, and then moving on to consider the “real” institutions of government and the policies that emerge from them. The great bulk of political science research in the 1990s—whatever its focus or methodological approach—hardly acknowledges that the media exist as a distinct force in political and social life. In contrast with this neglect of the media in the general literature of political science, there has emerged over the last thirty years an extensive literature on the media as such. Claims have been made that the media amount to a “fourth branch of government,” that they increasingly shape the contours of social reality, and that they are transforming the nature of political leadership, as politics becomes a matter of who can best shape and sell, through the media, a compelling, evocative persona.1 The results of surveys similarly confound those interpreters of political systems who would ignore the role of the media. One study in Japan reported an astonishing and much cited finding: when a broad range of actors in politics— bureaucrats, party officials, business elites, union leaders, media elites, leaders of feminist and other social movements, and so on— were asked to rank each other according to power and influence, all actors, except the media themselves, ranked the media first. Nor was Japan an exceptional case. The same study reported similar results for Sweden and the United States.2 Just as the media’s power and significance are assessed quite differently , depending on who is doing the research, the nature of that 20 Susan J. Pharr power has also proved elusive. A survey of the bodies of literature discussed so far suggests that there are at least three major interpretations of the media’s role in relation to the state and to society in advanced industrial societies, according to whose interests the media are thought to serve. In the first, the media are cast in the role of spectator. This approach sees the media as more or less passive transmitters of information among the various “real” players in politics, and thus as serving no particular interests at all. Though the media are seen as an important resource, they are essentially neutral conduits for information and ideas in political battles of which they are largely observers. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, most of the literature on the media saw them as having minimal effects on politics and the public.3 By the early 1970s the view that the media play an independent role—for example, in agenda setting—had been widely accepted by scholars in media studies. However, the difficulties of verifying major independent media effects on politics continue .4 Further, because much of the general literature of political science ignores the media, it too, by implication, casts them in the minimalist role implied in the “spectator” approach. A second view sees the media as watchdog. According to this perspective —which is typically the one adopted by the media themselves in explaining their role—the media are an independent critical force on behalf of the public. Thus Shanto Iyengar, Mark Peters, and Donald Kinder showed that the media set the public’s agenda and have a “priming” effect by altering the standards people use in evaluating public officials.5 Doris Graber went further to hold that the media in their watchdog role are a major force for political change; in the United States after the Watergate affair, for example, Graber found that the media through investigative reporting stirred public reactions and demands for reform, aroused political elites who were in a position to remedy political and social ills, and proposed remedies themselves.6 Obviously, not all who adopt such a view accept the media’s motives at face value, or see the effects as wholly beneficial. Some see commercialism and populism going hand in hand and point out that taking on the powers that be swells media audiences. Indeed, an outpouring of popular criticism of the media in the mid-1990s has charged, in effect, that the mass media take their watchdog role too far, invading the personal lives of politicians, demeaning...