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please mind the gap #17 w/marimoriko – accompanied by sony

22 January 2019
  • Collage
  • Internet
  • Reportage
  • Non-Music
  • Strange
  • Laid-Back
  • Cynical

Marking the beginning of a new direction, we begin the year by looking at the company and their societal status in post-war Japan to the present. The word for society in Japanese is, sha kai. The word for the company is, kai sha. Kai sha is meant to have been coined in the Edo period, between the seventeenth and 19th centuries, and the word for society, later in the meiji period. They are inverted versions of the same word, and were even used in the same context until translations for what we call society and company were needed. Although there are no concrete explanations for the use of these symbols or ties between the concepts, the fact that they are made up of the same symbols must indicate a kinship.

However, there is no doubt that the company plays a large role, or even too large a role in japanese society, even today, when karoshi, a word meaning death by work which has even entered the lexicon here, has become a normative event.

By looking at their advertising and commercials that wield a massive influence on japanese spending power, by looking at these, as well as the slogans and copy writing they choose to reflect the companies’ various images, i hope to find some interesting answers. The mediation of media, of ideas and of identities, and how this might influence the way a culture relates to these new technologies, accepting them readily or shunning them in fear.

Sony_logo.png

Playlist

https://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/SonyHistory/2-06.html#block4
Hosokawa, Shuhei (1984). "The Walkman Effect". Popular Music. 4: 165–180.