Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 47

From Rapeman to Mother Superior: The New Woman in Japanese Television Drama No doubt, television has been used as a high-tech henchman of hegemonies as some writers have suggested (Christian-Smith; Gramsci). However, if not unduly regulated by the dominant groups, television is also a mirror of the tastes and a champion of the aspirations of average people. This latter role can be seen in Japanese television. For example, Sata and Hirahara have presented a strong case arguing that the history of Japanese television is a chronicle of the mass psychology and social conditions of post-war Japan, first reflecting the anger and frustration of the people immediately after the War (1950s), next the dark side of rising industrialization (1960s), and finally the preoccupation with foreign fads and fables in the 1980s, when the country had reached the status of an international economic power. We may extend Sata and Hirahara's thesis into the 1990s. The present decade has found Japan at the threshold of a new era in gender consciousness. Its young women are defying the tradition of early marriage, causing a "marriage squeeze" for men (Iwao; Hong). They are also entering college in unprecedentedly large numbers, making them more educated than their male counterparts in the same age cohort (Kokusei-Sha Corporation 553). However, this is not to say Japan has achieved a modern womanhood. On the contrary, among the world's most advanced economies, Japan is the slowest in modernizing its relationship between the sexes. As Sumiko Iwao, author of The Japanese Woman, has pointed out, many Japanese men today "continue to view women as not fully adult" (18). The old pattern has been sustained, in part, by the popular culture of the present, which has produced a spate of materials that are blatantly sexist in nature. It runs the gamut from the traditional pornographic "manga" (comics) to the high-tech CD-ROM sex. Rapeman (original English title), a high drawing movie/video, is a prime example. In spite of its superior cast and production, it is a