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<DIV><SPAN class=298110616-05012005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>Markus,</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=298110616-05012005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=298110616-05012005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I was
also waiting to see how long before the Kine-Japan community started in on the
<EM>Winter Sonata </EM>phenomenon.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=298110616-05012005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>I'm
particularly interested in the reaction generally in Japan (and among KJ-people)
to Bae's "boycotting" the <EM>Kohaku Utagassen </EM>on NHK.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=298110616-05012005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>A
leading role on that show is the ultimate accolade for a Japanese
pop-entertainer, and for Japan's first genuine Korean star to be offered that
honor -- and to decline it -- seems to speak volumes about the current
Japan-Korea political and social climate! What's the aftermath?
What are folks saying about Bae on the street in
Japan??</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=298110616-05012005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=298110616-05012005><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff
size=2>Peter</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<BR>Peter M.
Grilli<BR>President, Japan Society of Boston<BR>One Milk Street, Boston,
MA 02109<BR>Tel: 617-451-0726<BR>Fax: 617-451-1191<BR>E-mail:
<A href="mailto:grilli@us-japan.org">grilli@us-japan.org</A> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B>
owner-KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]<B>On Behalf Of </B>Mark
Nornes<BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, January 05, 2005 4:56 AM<BR><B>To:</B>
KineJapan<BR><B>Subject:</B> WTF: The Winter Sonata Boom / The Kanryu
Wave<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>OK. Somebody's gotta do it. <BR><BR><I>Winter
Sonata's</I> been out there for a couple years now, and it has yet to be taken
up by the KineJapan community. Here we go. <BR><BR><I>Winter Sonata</I> is a
2002 KBS drama from South Korea. It was broadcast in a dubbed version on NHK
BS in 2003 and was a surprise hit. The real story here is the Kanryu Wave, the
incredible popularity of Korean television and cinema. But this post is going
to be rather long, so I'll stick to Winter Sonata for now.<BR><BR>Last April,
just after I got here, NHK showed it in an 11-12 pm slot which they usually
reserve for high-profile US television programs like ER and West Wing. Knowing
it was something of a phenom, I tried watching it but it didn't take.
<BR><BR>But over the subsequent months I saw too much not to catch all 20
hours of the <I>kanzenban</I> just shown on NHK on the lead-up to New Years.
What have I seen? <BR><BR>My first shock was in the bookstore, looking to see
what was recently published on Japanese cinema. That section had shrunk to
make way for scads of books, catalogs, shashinshu, and magazines devoted to
Korean cinema and television----mostly star stuff. <BR><BR>On my trips to
Korean and Thai grocers in Okubo, I saw crowds of middle-aged women at tiny
shops selling photos, photo magazines, photo magnets, photo keyrings,
photo-everything of Korean tv stars. <BR><BR>And I saw the star, Bae
Young-jun, every day. Just about everywhere. It's quite extraordinary.
<BR><BR>He's on television constantly. He's referred to on tv even more. His
face is plastered on posters and magazines wherever you go. <BR><BR>At the
Ginza Sony building, middle aged women were patiently listening to a sales
pitch for a new digicam just so they could <BR>have their pictures taken next
to a life-sized photograph of the Winter Sonata star Bae
Young-Jun.<BR><BR>I've been contemplating a new look, and every time I go in a
glasses shop they try to get me by buy the frames Bae has made famous.
(Actually, you can buy just about every kind of glasses he's ever worn:
http://www.haruta.com/yonjun.htm). You see these everywhere, particularly on
the husbands of middle-aged women. They appear ready to lunge off a person's
face to do god-knows-what.<BR><BR>Over the past year, it's become quite a
phenomenon. And some of the antics are pretty crazy. <BR><BR>Tsutaya is being
sued for 10 million yen for selling a necklace similar to a major prop in the
film. A department store in Yamaguchi got into trouble selling legit versions
of the jewelry (for 140,700 yen), but only because the autographed photos of
Yon-sama they used to entice women into the sales were forged. It became a
problem when someone tried to auction one of the photos on Yahoo!; the highest
bid before they pulled it was 56,000 yen. <BR><BR>When Bae came to Japan in
late November to promote a big fat shashinshu, which costs something like
15,000 yen and quickly sold 100,000 copies. Bae met such huge crowds at the
airport, some women who travelled from as far away as Kyushu and
Hokkaido---that he attempted to sneak out a side entrance to his hotel. It
didn't work and he was literally mobbed by an estimated 1,000 oba-chan. Ten of
them got crushed by fans or run over by his car and had to be rushed to the
hospital. <BR><BR>The Winter Sonata soundtrack sold over a million copies. A
novelization sold nearly a million copies. and hundreds of thousands of
program guides and DVDs.<BR><BR>This year, NHK's sales of the textbooks that
go with their TV English lessons dropped, and sales of the Korean textbooks
grew correspondingly. <BR><BR>You can now go on tours that take you to the
locations for the show (http://www.his-j.com/tyo/tour/4kor/kor_op_sona.htm).
The hotel that owns the iconic lane of trees just unveiled life-size statues
of the two lovers in an embrace. Last week TV nets showed Japanese tourists
clumsily imitating the pose before the statues. Dai-Ichi Life Research
Institute estimates the show brought 69 billion yen to the South Korean
economy through a boom in Japanese tourism. <BR><BR>It's said to have
generated 122.5 billion yen in sales of DVDs and products connected to the
show. I read an interesting article in the Asahi that said every product
Yon-sama has endorsed enjoyed a immediate and huge spike in sales. Apparently,
he gets about a cool million (bucks) for every television commercial. There
are estimates, granted in sports shinbun, that he made 40 million dollars from
work in Japan last year. <BR><BR>NHK began showing the "kanzenban" late enough
in December that it ended on December 30th. I assumed they were going to pull
him out at Kohaku to pump up the ratings, and sure enough they extended an
invitation. He turned them down, which must have been quite a slap in the face
for NHK. He basically owes his fortune to the network. And now that the show
is over, they must be <I>really</I> smarting because their ratings failed to
top 50% for the first time in history (people kept tuning into the
competition---especially Bob Sap and Akebono flailing away in K-1). <BR><BR>So
like a good film and television scholar I watched all 20 hours of the
kanzenban, "complete" it seems by virtue of having been subtitled so you can
hear Bae's (surprisingly deep and charming) voice. Actually, I have nothing
against a good tv melodrama, and like the sprawling long-form structure of
Japanese television (and HBO). So what was Winter Sonata like? Well, this is
already long and I'm sleepy. Maybe tomorrow. Unless someone else wants to jump
in....<BR><BR>Markus<BR><BR><BR>A. M. Nornes<BR>Program in Film and Video
Studies &<BR>Department of Asian Languages and Cultures<BR>University of
Michigan</BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>