The Winter Sonata Boom / The Kanryu Wave

[Mark Nornes]

On Jan 6, 2005, at 1:11 AM, Peter Grilli wrote:
>
> I'm particularly interested in the reaction generally in Japan (and 
> among KJ-people) to Bae's "boycotting" the Kohaku Utagassen on NHK.
> 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? 

I don't think there is an aftermath. For one thing, the Bae phenom is 
pretty well restricted to a certain demographic (how many times did I 
write "middle-aged women" in the last post?). Video artist Kato Itaru 
was over at my place the other evening, and he said that when he saw 
these women crooning over Bae he couldn't help flashing on the image of 
them crowded around a stage watching him dance and tucking bills into 
his G-string. (Kitano compared the Winter Sonata tours to salaryman sex 
tours to Korea.) Everyone else is scratching their heads, although I 
think they're missing something in there if you actually sit down and 
watch the thing.

In Bae's place they did have Yi Byun-ho (or however you transliterate 
his name), who people might know from JSA. He gave a passionate speech 
about the new connections between Korea and Japan, and dreamed of the 
day when the interaction between the two peoples spreads from "eizo 
bunka" to every other aspect of cultural and civic life.

The other reason is that Kohaku is not what it was. In my previous 
post, I should qualify the ratings I gave by saying they came from a 
sports shinbun I was reading in a ramen-ya today. They wrote that it 
was the first time it went below 50%, but who knows what stats they 
were using. Here are the ratings from Video Research:

http://www.videor.co.jp/data/ratedata/program/01kouhaku.htm

You can see that in most parts of Japan, there was a pretty dramatic 
drop of 5 to 10 percentage points in the past year. And the year before 
last there was a to-do because there were parts of the evening when the 
Sapp-Akebono match actually beat Kohaku.

Now I was with my family in Tokushima, and they are strict Kohaku 
watchers from decades back. And the fact that all the papers are 
reporting the drop in ratings for Kohaku says something about the high 
status with which it is regarded. But the reality is that people are 
less and less interested in it. The sports shinbun I was reading had a 
fascinating graph that tracked ratings in the Kanto region by the 
minute. One column listed the Kohaku performers. The others the other 
networks. One was boxing I believe. Another was K-1 
(http://www.so-net.ne.jp/feg/k-1gp/). Obviously, a large percentage of 
viewers are monitoring what's going on on other networks. You could see 
them migrate to the other channels when the dramatic entrances 
concluded and the fighting began.

Kohaku will probably always be around as long as live music performance 
constitutes a regular and inexpensive time-burner for television. But 
who knows what will come of its prestige.

Markus
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