McLuhan’s World, Or, <i>Understanding Media</i> in Japan

Marshall McLuhan was a divisive figure.To some he was a revolutionary media theorist and thinker, who literally put media theory on the map.To others he was a mere prophet (or profiteer) of the new media age, a public figure who lectured to private corporations, and was a hot topic in Madison avenue circles whose aphoristic style blended well with advertising copy.In Japan McLuhan was a divided figure.Before he was translated he was introduced, and this introduction was performed by two different people in two markedly different ways.In lieu of discussing my own encounter with McLuhan's Understanding Media, I'd like to use this space to ask us to think of a different space of reception: late 1960s Japan.Here interest in McLuhan had a fireworks--like intensity matched by an accompanying brevity.There would be McLuhan revivalsaround his death in the early 1980s, and from the late 1990s into the 2000s, as his work was repurposed for a new media era.But what is fascinating about reception of McLuhan in Japan -in addition to its impact on media theorization thereafter, and its important place in the still--to--be--written story of McLuhan's global reception -is the way that the divisive figure of McLuhan is literally mapped onto two very different writers, who introduce two very different McLuhans.The McLuhan boom in Japan was brief, but intense.It began in late 1966, and had all but died out by mid--1968 barely lasting long enough to see the translation of Understanding Media, which appeared in November 1967.Far more popular than the translation was the 1967 McLuhan's World (Makurūhan no sekai), a work of applied McLuhanism by a man who did the most to shape the reception of the figure in Japan: Takemura Ken'ichi.Takemura is known as the preeminent McLuhanist in Japan, and his 1967 McLuhan's World sold ten times more copies than the eventually translated Understanding Media, and made it up to #8 on the bestseller list of 1967.McLuhan's World was the Understanding Media for Japanese audiences.What marked Takemura's work was its appeal to general audiences, and perhaps even more significantly its presentation of McLuhan as the prophet of the electronic age, best read by business people, salaried workers, television industry heads and marketing executives.Takemura channeled a very specific McLuhan for Japanese readers: McLuhan the business visionary, McLuhan the adman, McLuhan the prophet of media industries and their transformations.And perhaps most importantly, a McLuhan localized forthe Japanese context, complete with references to Japanese popular culture, ads, and politics with predictions thrown in to boot.McLuhan's focus on television as tactile medium meshed with then current journalistic discussions about TV kids as the so-called "skin tribe"; television was presented as a "happening" medium, a conception that influenced both TV producers and advertising directors; Toyota and Honda

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