Somewhere, a Bear Is Selling Yogurt

The best Japanese TV commercials operate on a logic that feels imported from a parallel universe—one where the rules of cause and effect, human dignity, and the relationship between product and desire were negotiated from scratch by a committee of delighted children. A talking polar bear sells canned coffee. A salaryman transforms into something amphibious and joyful. A woman weeps with gratitude over a toilet freshener. Underneath all of it: a sincerity that makes Western advertising’s knowing irony look like cowardice.

I’ve been watching compilations of these things for years. There’s something about the late Friday morning headspace that makes them perfect—you need something that isn’t quite absurdist but isn’t quite real either, something operating in the register just adjacent to sense. Japanese commercials live there permanently. They’ve built infrastructure there.

What strikes me most is how fully committed everyone is to the bit. The guy doing the hyperactive office worker skit isn’t winking at you; he has completely inhabited that man. The idol group holding the snack product aloft looks genuinely honored to be holding the snack product aloft. This is either the most sophisticated media culture on earth or the least cynical. I go back and forth on which.

The dreamy yogurt drinkers, the animated bears, the businessmen having small transcendent experiences on public transport—they’re all selling something, obviously, but somewhere in the execution the transaction gets buried under enough spectacle that you forget to feel sold to. That’s impressive work. It’s also, about forty seconds in, usually extremely funny. Ohayou gozaimasu. Happy Friday.