Performing Democracy: Audience Participation in Postwar Broadcasting

From the beginning of postwar Japanese broadcasting, audience par- ticipation programs proliferated and were considered instrumental in bringing democracy to Japanese society. Once television broadcasting started in 1953, however, this ideal was challenged by a new breed of audience participation programs that seemed to foreground commercial success by highlighting participants' shocking performances and therefore invited the criticism of "vulgar television." Some commentators supported this audience participation by arguing that "vulgarity" should be interpreted as the vitality of ordinary people. Over time, these two seemingly opposing arguments converged to the notion that television must be a classroom where democracy is taught.