Doing Fieldwork in Japan

Doing Media Research in Japan

The mass media are ubiquitous in Japan and are an important institution connecting state and society. In the Japan field there are arguably fewer studies of the mass media, however, than almost any other significant type of social actor. The mass media present the researcher with a bewildering and complex variety of methodological issues and problems, many common to studying any Japanese organization, but some unique to this particular variety . The neat, textbook formulas for conducting research, from conception and access through data gathering, analysis, and write-up, are often irrelevant in the actual field situation. The path of my own fifteen years of research on NHK, Japan’s mammoth public broadcaster and the second largest (after the BBC) broadcaster in the democratic world, and on NHK’s relationship to and consequences for politics in Japan illustrates this well (Krauss 1996, 1998, 2000). Research trajectories and practices are often not mechanical, preplanned, logical processes but the result of cumulative, ad hoc, and evolutionary ones. These processes, and thus the research outcome they produce, may in unexpected ways e l l i s s . k r a u s s Doing Media Research in Japan Ellis S. Krauss studying media and society. involve combining fortuitous serendipity with foresight, wedding makeshift responses to design, and creatively incorporating altered conceptions and unforeseen developments into original research plans. Interest: Why Did the Trains Run in Prime Time? One’s conception of a research project rarely results from contemplating the “state of the field,” then deciding on a project solely because it promises to discover new paradigms. The actual origins of a research project are often more complicated and interesting than this stereotypical fantasy of academic creativity would suggest. In my case, it was the result first of curiosity stimulated by a visiting friend’s unexpected reaction to a Japanese experience, and eight years later being presented with a spontaneous but undeniable opportunity. In 1975, a colleague and his wife, David and Rena Ziegler, visited us in Japan. I was proud of aspects of my adopted foreign land, and among these was NHK. Back home we had sometimes bemoaned American network news’ dependence on dramatic visuals, hosted by “star” anchors. In Japan, I pointed out the solid, factually based reporting that concentrated on policymaking , presented by staid newsreaders and obviously working journalists. I was sure he would find my NHK news as superior to U.S. evening news programs as the elite Japanese newspapers were to American tabloids. To my surprise, instead he found it uninteresting, unpolished, and staid and was scornful that its news had so many segments about, and visuals of, trains and train stations. Although surprised at his reaction, I began to watch the news with this new and different perspective, and eventually I had to agree. From that moment, my future interest in NHK was at some level an attempt to answer the questions—why was NHK’s news so different from American news in style, content, and presentation, and why did they have so many segments about trains? Once back home, my newfound interest in media led me to introduce a new course on “Political Communication,” encompassing subjects such as media’s role in election campaigns, television news’ coverage of politics, and polling and its political uses, but only concerning American media and politics . In Japan in 1983 for research on political opposition in that country, my interest in media on the other side of the Pacific was further stimulated by conversations with Glen Fukushima, a fellow Fulbrighter that year. We both perceived especially print media coverage of the United States to focus Doing Media Research in Japan | 177 so much on militarism, violent crime, and bizarre occurrences that it gives a very biased and one-sided picture of our more complicated society. Media was thus still very much on my mind during the last few months of this stay in Japan. Initial Access: There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch My intended research on political opposition in Japan, however, was not going well. Compared to when I had interviewed Diet members five years previously, this time they seemed more adept at giving evasive or merely formal responses. I sensed that Diet members in the intervening time had become quite conscious that what they said to foreigners was not always without an impact that reverberated back to Japan. I had worked hard, but felt...