Japanese trendy dramas: new imaginaries of Japanese women in Tokyo Love Story

ABSTRACT During the bubble era (1986–1991) Japanese television dramas attained their golden age, brought about by the innovative narrative formula of ‘trendy dramas’ – love stories that displayed a trend towards urban, consumer-oriented, glamorous lifestyles [Lukács, Gabriella. 2010. Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan. Durham: Duke University Press]. Drawing from media anthropology, cultural studies, and gender studies, this paper explores the ways in which trendy drama discourses redefined the politics of Japanese women’s identity and to what extent they reproduced patriarchal views towards women’s selfhood. Through an ethnographic study of one of the most popular trendy dramas, Tokyo Love Story (TLS) [1991. Produced by Ōta Tōru, featuring Suzuki Honami, Oda Yūji, Arimori Narimi, and Eguchi Yōsuke, aired January 7, 1991, on Fuji TV], involving qualitative questionnaires, and analysis of newspaper articles, I will argue that TLS not only contributed to the redefinition of the modern and urban woman, but was also a pioneer in reinventing Japanese womanhood for the future generations.