This book is an exploration of media scandals in contemporary Japanese society. In shedding new light on the study of scandal in Japan, the book offers a novel view of scandal as a specific mediatized ritual which follows moral disturbances throughout Japanese history. Media and society are analyzed largely in terms of social performances, while the focus is on how Japanese transgressors talk and act when explaining their scandals to the public. A detailed analysis of three case studies is provided: the drug scandal of the popular Japanese celebrity Sakai Noriko; the donation scandal centering the heavyweight politician Ozawa Ichirō; and the Olympus accounting fraud revealed by the British CEO Michael Woodford.
This book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, anthropology, communication and media studies.
1. Introduction 2. Theoretical Background 3. Case Studies 4. Japanese Scandal as Social Ritual 5. Japanese Scandal as Media Product 6. Concluding Remarks
Biography
Igor Prusa is a Czech scholar in Japanese studies and media studies, currently affiliated with Ambis University, Prague. He worked at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Prusa received his first PhD in media studies at Prague’s Charles University in 2010. In 2017 he defended his second doctoral thesis at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include contemporary Japanese society, media scandals, and anti-heroism in popular fiction. His research has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Media, Culture & Society and Japan Forum. Apart from his academic activities, Igor Prusa is a music composer in a Japan-themed band, Nantokanaru.
‘This is an excellent piece of work that combines fascinating ethnographic and historical data in a well-rounded and well thought out theoretical perspective. The only other book that I know in English that is anything like this book is the work of Mark West mentioned by the author several times. This book is superior to West’s book in that it puts its material in a theoretical framework that allows us to make comparisons not only with other cases in Japan but also with cases elsewhere.’
Roger Goodman, Nissan Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford
‘This is an astonishing book. You may start reading thinking that "scandals" are marginal if entertaining, and you soon find yourself learning and thinking about the most probing issues and intricate mechanisms of the contemporary Japanese society. By combining the analytical insights from philology, media studies, and cultural sociology with an intimate knowledge of Japan, the author succeeds in explicating the social functioning of scandals as highly mediatized rituals that tend to preserve the status quo, while shedding lights on the range of roles and strategies of the actors involved.’
Koichi Nakano, Professor of Japanese Politics, Sophia University Tokyo
‘Theoretically engaging and interdisciplinary in its approach, Scandal in Japan provides an insightful critique of the Japanese media’s complicity in the ritualized performance of scandals. Beyond showing how media scandals serve to reproduce society and social norms, Prusa’s careful analysis—ranging from celebrity to political to corporate scandals—reveals the ways that spectacle, pseudo-events, and fake news distract from meaningful social change.’
Jason G. Karlin, Professor of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo
