‘This is an excellent piece of work that combines fascinating ethnographic and historical data in a well-rounded and well thought out theoretical perspective.’
Roger Goodman, University of Oxford
‘This is an astonishing book… the author succeeds in explicating the social functioning of scandals as highly mediatized rituals that tend to preserve the status quo.’
Koichi Nakano, Sophia University Tokyo
‘Scandal in Japan provides an insightful critique of the Japanese media’s complicity in the ritualized performance of scandals.'
Jason G. Karlin, The University of Tokyo
Scandal in Japan is an exploration of media scandals in contemporary Japanese society. In shedding new light on the study of scandal in Japan, the book offers a novel view of scandal as a specific mediatized ritual which follows moral disturbances throughout Japanese history. Media and society are analyzed largely in terms of social performances, while the focus is on how Japanese transgressors talk and act when explaining their scandals to the public. A detailed analysis of three case studies is provided: the drug scandal of the popular Japanese celebrity Sakai Noriko; the donation scandal centering the heavyweight politician Ozawa Ichirō; and the Olympus accounting fraud revealed by the British CEO Michael Woodford.
Ritualising Scandal (Interview)
Podcast: Beyond Japan S2E5
Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese arts and cultures