"it's hard to see this data fabrication as an "exception to the rule": this is the rule that got caught."

Wait, are you saying that all information in the public realm in Japan is fabricated? That's a rather vast claim!

"commercial interests should not determine the content of health information."

Of course, if public authorities say things, those claims have much more weight. People know that private interests are vested interests. So you're saying we ought to trust the government in Japan rather than private corporations, right?

"Wait, are you saying that all information in the public realm in Japan is fabricated?"

No, but I am saying it is systematic that Japanese TV shows have few checks upon what they present as "reality." I don't see this natto thing as one show screwing up as much as one show getting busted for something everyone else does all the time - which is fabricating things that look real to get to the desired conclusion.

"So you're saying we ought to trust the government in Japan rather than private corporations, right?"

You need someone to be checking the validity of television claims. That can be gov't enforcement of law or something NGO - like Consumer Reports - activity.

"I don't see this natto thing as one show screwing up as much as one show getting busted for something everyone else does all the time - which is fabricating things that look real to get to the desired conclusion."

Well, it's product placement, isn't it? TV shows endorsing products is the same phenomenon we see in Japanese magazines, where every product you see in the editorial pages has been paid for. It's the same with reviews in music magazines, or pay-to-play support slots for bands, or pay-to-display art galleries, or museums which turn out to be part of department stores. It's pretty disconcerting at first for someone like me, who comes from a society where the state pays for a lot of things to keep them "free" from commercial influence (or rather, to "balance" the commercial and non-commercial sectors -- to the benefit of both, usually).

I think the big question here is, does this commercial placement actually stop good culture coming through, make an overly-capitalist environment, or destroy national identity? And I'm constantly surprised by how benign the results of these self-evidently bad practises are. Museums in department stores put on interesting shows in Tokyo (we don't have them at all in the West), the art world in Japan is if anything under-developed in terms of its commercialism (in other words, people paying to show their work keeps commerce out of art shows rather than injecting it in), magazines show as-nice-or-nicer clothes in paid advertorial features than Western mags do in stylist-driven ones, and Japaneseness isn't threatened by product placement on TV -- we're talking here about natto, an eminently national dish, rather than Coke and burgers, for instance. What's more, it wouldn't surprise me at all if, when the REAL results come in for the effects of the natto diet, they turn out to be almost as beneficial as the natto-makers are currently claiming. If green tea makers faked their data, would it mean that green tea wasn't healthy?

I've been watching this in wonderment and awe. It seems like Internet counter-hysteria is exposing all the stupid bullshit on Japanese TV and having a corrective effect. First yarase, then rigged boxing, now this? Maybe those food shows will finally be exposed as the frauds they are.

"Fraud" is an emotive word, though, and assumes that there's no value in the exposed thing. What if they were doing the right thing for the wrong reason?

And, more interestingly perhaps, what if a "hidden hand" of editorial reason were selecting from within the proffered array of products to be placed? Saying, you know, "Natto manufactures, yes, McDonald's no."

This is what really fascinates me: the way that cultural choices are being made by producers, promoters and consumers, even within what looks like a totally commercial field, which end up creating a totally different landscape than we see in other countries where the same commercial conditions might apply. Isn't this the real "Japanese conspiracy"? That the nation conspires to reproduce its DNA within the money system in very much the same way it would without the money system?

The long national nightmare is over. Natto supplies on store shelves will return to their previous levels, so that the thousands of foreigners who love the stuff can get their fill.

Aggh - you beat me to the punch on that one, but thanks for the link anyway.

Here's an interesting question: do any of the producers, etc, buy shares in related companies before the show goes out, then cash out after a few days? How did the natto manufacturers' share prices do last week?

"TV shows endorsing products is the same phenomenon we see in Japanese magazines..."

I think we both agree that this is a very "Japanese" system, although it was present in the U.S. as well before the 1960s. I also agree that there are sometimes positive benefits - for example, when "educated elites" choose interesting items for young readers to indulge in. That being said, this leads to the questions, does the end justify the means? Does this mean elitism is good? (No.) Politically and philosophically, I am opposed to these means - that there is no line between commercial and public interests, that there is a very weak line between commercial priorities and free speech. I think we need to admit that this is not a cut-and-dry issue, but I do think once you realize the nature of the system, you then start questioning even the time when the results please you.

"Natto manufactures, yes, McDonald's no."

But "Oosama no Buranchi" always, always says "Disneyland, yes!" because Disneyland pays the bills. I don't think this natto diet was about national vs. international interests. A "McDs diet" is just not even plausible. But this Mega Mac (with four beef patties) craze is also doing super well, probably because of all the media coverage.

Tofu is bad. I heard it on the news, last week. A shaky-voiced expert warning women not to eat soy based products as they 'have been found' to increase the risk of breast cancer.

Not so long ago Japanese women were being paraded for their simple, elegant dietary wisdom in front of their non Japanese, nutritionally challenged cancer candidates. At that time, we were informed of the 'finding' that Japanese women had the lowest rates of breast cancer or, any cancer, in the world: due to soy based products…me smells a natto.

With the first 'findings', Japanese women took on a new kind of value for western women. They were respectfully observed and attempts at culinary emulation soon followed. Japanese women wafted into western kitchens, invited (ever-so modestly) by western women, out of very real fears and concerns. Silent, shaman-like entities conjured out of minimalist recipe books that silently admonished starchy, maxi-sized portions slopped onto chipped plates.

What now? Will we shoo our wise Japanese comrade in feminine physiology out of our kitchens? Or, will we barricade the door against the scientists and their findings?

"Read all about it!" Or, just the headlines: A thematic exercise brought to you by google...

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/soydangers.html

http://australianetwork.com/news/stories/asiapacific_stories_1826483.htm

http://www.news.com.au/sundaytelegraph/story/0,,21054484-5001021,00.html

http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/soy.htm

I was always suspicious of the information on Aru Aru Daijiten. Every week there's a new food or product being touted as a cure-all, and my cynical side couldn't help thinking that some agricultural lobby or consortium of manufacturers (maybe even JA) was paying good money for the sales boost. It doesn't feel so good to be right. I try to avoid watching it if I can, but my wife watches, and sure enough, there's been a lot more natto in the fridge than usual. While in this case, the deception is not about concealing the dangers of a harmful product, I think it still represents a shameful practice, and is the tip of an iceberg that will most likely stay submerged. I don't really understand Momus's knee-jerk anti-marxyism here; if the results are benign, lies presented as fact in the media are a positive thing?
The producers aren't fabricating data to produce better art, and I don't buy the idea of the producers pushing distinctly Japanese products as some sort of cultural propagation scheme. The natto thing was high-profile, and the show may be cancelled as a symbolic punishment, but that won't stop the flow of money determining what gets presented as fact on other shows.

knee-jerk anti-marxyism

but the very idea of a bunch of gaijin getting hyper over natto-related issues is too embarassing guys. kill the issue in whatever way you can and quickly move on to the next topic please.

I think your attempt to pass this thing off as "silly natto talk" means you are either intentionally trying to move us along to some issue in which your incoherent philosophy is less neutered or you are embarrassingly ignorant of the issues present in what's going on here. My guess - the former.

no, seriously it is kind of embaressing

somehow if momus' standpoint (which is so reasonable, obvious and kind of basic) found its way into the basic premise of this place rather then cause culture wars this could go so much further.

until something like that might happen i think there's no way i can say anything too coherent here.

(If you are just going to come on here and tell us to stop talking about a post because of some ongoing spat, can you at least have the courtesy to put the message in parentheticals? That way, most of the readers who don't care about all this can ignore you more easily.)

sorry i thought i was kind of over-using those ( ). never thought i could put the entire thing in brackets. that's really cool , i'll definitely keep it in mind. from there i can work on what radiohead calls how to dissapear completely.

Choice quotes from this article:
http://www.asahi.com/life/update/0120/016.html

"What, it was all a lie? I always paid attention to 'Aru aru' so this is a real shock."--29y.o., office worker, female
"It's getting so much attention for being faked, I'm not going to be able to forgive them. I feel like I can't trust other TV shows now."--45y.o., self-employed, female
"I feel like I was totally betrayed. I even tried eating natto like they explained in the show. That show has a lot of influence so I believed them."--28y.o., restaurant worker, female

Yeah I was even considering giving natto another go, but I'm glad I stuck to my principles. So tonight I tuned in at 9pm to see what would happen, and in lieu of Aru Aru, some suit from Kansai TV came on looking like my dog does when I catch him peeing on something. He sited several US and Canadian studies about isoflavone and DHEA which had been referenced in the show, and apologized about the misleading way the information was presented. "We were weally bad and we pwomise never to do it again."
Then the news show that usually comes on afterward started about an hour early. I didn't watch it but they probably tried really hard to fill that extra hour without talking about natto.

(sibil_ator , that's great info , i'm looking forward to my first desoyed decaffinated soy-latte.)

The Yomiuri report had this:

"KTV said the subcontracted firm resorted to embellishing the data because an interview with the American researcher had not gone as well as had been expected"

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/culture/20070121TDY02011.htm

This is not uncommon: a producer will be given a particular brief for a programme (perhaps even suggest it himself) and if the subsequent research doesn't support the original concept then the temptation is to make the facts fit.

"Captain Japan" stumbled across a similar case when he investigated Daisuke Matsuzaka's "Gyroball".

http://www.bigempire.com/sake/gyroball_matsuzaka_1.html

I don't know baseball so most of his piece goes way over my head but it seems that the famed pitch was largely an invention of NHK who took two separate pieces of information and stuck them together:

"All throughout the making of the show," Tezuka says, "I told the NHK staff that Matsuzaka's throwing a sinking slider whose rotation might look like a gyroball. But they wanted me to say it was a gyroball....But no matter what I said...NHK just went ahead with it. The show's narrator said the pitch had a gyro spin. That's how the news of Matsuzaka throwing the gyroball first spread."

These kinds of blunders are not usually a covert attempt by advertisers to promote a product. More often they result from the desire of the programme makers or journalists to get the job done. A famous example of old was the false Asahi report on coral reef vandalism which ended up forcing the President to resign:

"On April 20, 1989, the evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun carried a photograph of a coral reef on which the initials "K.Y" had been carved. The caption of the photograph asked, "Who is this K.Y who damaged a coral reef?" However, it turned out that the newspaper’s photographer himself had defaced the coral."

http://www.geocities.jp/forelle2003/index_html/presscouncil.htm

Would you like artificial sweetner with that? And, what would the parenthetical philosopher have us move on to?

Another important point is that the presence of NHK basically gives the private stations a free-for-all on journalistic integrity and factual accuracy. Read the Japanese Broadcasting Law - like 85% of it is dedicated to NHK with almost nothing explicitly written about the expected behavior of the other stations. I am not sure whether BBC has the same effect on British TV, but when you have a station that must be "for public information and welfare" the other stations can assume their job is primarily commercial.

In the U.S., profit obviously is also the motivator for the networks, but there is a basic idea that "public duty" has to be spread out over the private networks, and viewers may expect more from the main stations.

"In the U.S., profit obviously is also the motivator for the networks, but there is a basic idea that "public duty" has to be spread out over the private networks, and viewers may expect more from the main stations."

This is not just an idea, but actually part of the FCC licenses that allow them to broadcast. It does not apply to cable or satellite, and the big networks have been gradually weakening their public interest programming in the face of increased competition, but it still exists and their are occasional FCC protests and so on about them not fulfilling the terms of their licenses by not making enough news/educational programming.

I believe the private stations in Japan also must appear before the Diet to renew their licenses, and the LDP has given the slightly-left-leaning TV Asahi a lot of trouble in the past at these hearings.

Marxy,

Off topic, but I was wondering what your take is on the movie "Letters from Iwo Jima," and how it's doing in Japan? I read somewhere that it's making grown men cry a la The Last Samurai!

How are the local uyoku handling it? I found it fascinating that a Johnny's boy was cast into one of the lead-roles, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't done for the benefit of us Westerners or the veterans. What's the underlying message here? I'm sure he was cast specifically to get Japanese youth into the theatres, but to what end? So that they can see the futility of what their grandfather's had to go through? Have they even been going to see the movie?

The Atkins diet is very unhealthy, but that did not stop other media firms in countries around the world from covering it. If something seems like a good idea or profitable at the time, the media will cover it. The economics of media, going where the money is, overrides the notion of culture. Culture only changes "where the money is".

"Off topic, but I was wondering what your take is on the movie "Letters from Iwo Jima," and how it's doing in Japan?"

I haven't seen it, but I'd like to. Don't know much about how it's playing out. Anyone else?

"The Atkins diet is very unhealthy."

The Atkins diet, however, was not invented by a sole television program, but picked up by multiple networks.

The Atkins diet was created by Mr.(Dr.?) Atkins decades ago and promoted relentlessly until he finally managed to get a fad started, which then snowballed when media started reporting on the fad. This is clearly a very different, if related, type of situation. For one thing, the beneficiaries of the Atkins fad were more transparent: i.e. Atkins sold millions of books.

This is clearly a very different, if related, type of situation. For one thing, the beneficiaries of the Atkins fad were more transparent: i.e. Atkins sold millions of books.

The source of the Atkins diet is irrelevant. My point has only to do with greed. Someone paid off the TV show to do something positive to promote nattou, nattou was at a shortage due to high demand, nattou producers profit.

(In the Atkins' example, someone paid off other TV shows to promote the Atkins diet, either through advertising or product placement, people bought the books, publisher and author profited.)

Am I abstracting the analysis too much away from its "cultural" impact?

Retuers had its natto news item listed under "World Crisis". That made my day.

While I find it easy to speculate about the natto money changing hands behind the scenes, I'm wondering if anyone has come up with any hard evidence to that end. In the absence of such, all that we can be positive of is that the producers made up data to cover their own asses and boost the purported value of their story, true?

Whatwhatwhat? I completely missed out on all of this! (not being in Japan and all)
The natto diet isnt even a new idea, right? My Japanese girlfriends have been telling me about natto being THE one and only diet wonder for years. I have always been suspicious.

Still, i actually like natto.
Will the reverse psychological effect i will suffer from whenever enjoying the slimy taste from now on make me fat?
Hope not.

Maybe i should just eat spinach instead...all that iron...

You can't eat spinach! It's crawling with e-coli that will make you DIE!!!

My point is this: the Atkins boom was the result of a decades long campaign by its creator, whereas the minibooms that Marxy is referring to are created overnight by Dentsu or tv execs or something. I think that part of the reason that Atkins was so successful was because of that narrative. People liked the idea of a misunderstood outsider toiling away for all those years before getting mainstream acceptance, and the story helped sell the diet.

By contrast, the natto diet has no real narrative. It's just a revelation, handed down from heaven.

Not really true, Mutantfrog.
Like i said, the myth of natto as a diet helper has been around for years and years.
It's nothing new.
Atkins, on the other hand goes against anything that diet preachers have been telling us. It's a rebel diet. If you do Atkins you go fight against the armies of threpsologist who have been telling you NOT to have that steak for all your life.
Rebelution diet!!!Lets!

(Thanks for saving my life ealier by the way)

Sure, people have said that natto is healthy before, and I'm sure it is. But when did you ever hear of an ALL natto diet before this?

My boyfriend (who is japanese) insisted that the name of the city "Los Angeles" came from some story about an angel who lost its wing, = "Los(s) Angel). He insisted that it was true because he saw it on japanese TV. He refused to believe otherwise until I showed him the wikipedia article.

Wow. Fight fire with fire!
Go, Rei.

*****

Oh and Mutant, no really, that's what my friends said: in order to loose weight, they would eat nothing but natto for a few days. Loosing-weight diet, not healthy-eating diet. I had never heard of an only-steak diet before though, have you?

Well, the show has been canceled as a result of this.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200701240146.html