Specialities of Japanese Television Advertising

Abstract

Japan’s advertising industry is the third largest in the world, nevertheless relatively unknown in the West. This article discusses often-cited specialties of Japanese advertising and analyzes whether these are really special to Japan or based solely on the referent system of the United States or some form of exoticization by foreign scholars and/or self-exoticization by the Japanese. This discussion of previous literature in English and Japanese language will be backed up by results from our own content analysis. Some of the discussed specialties include, for example, the dominance of 15-second ads and celebrities, atmospheric ads, and the non-existence of comparative advertising. This article tries to debunk myths about Japanese advertising and its so-called specialties. We argue for a more holistic approach, since only knowing also the media of other countries makes it possible to speak about specialties of a country’s media. Thus more comparative research is necessary.