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