The Only Reason to Watch Japanese Television

Before visiting Japan I’d built up this image of their television being wall-to-wall anime and surreal game shows. The reality: NHK runs food talk programs from morning to mid-afternoon and then pivots to children’s gymnastics. Not dramatically different from daytime television anywhere, just with better snacks under discussion.

The commercials, though. Japanese TV commercials operate on a completely different frequency from anything produced in the west. Where western advertising has mostly collapsed into a single grammar—aspirational slow motion, string swells, a voice telling you what to feel—Japanese spots are dense with character and built around scenarios that don’t resolve so much as detonate. Something happens, something strange, a product appears briefly, it ends. Thirty seconds that feel structurally complete in some way you can’t quite explain.

Part of it is how Japanese culture uses celebrity. Tommy Lee Jones spent well over a decade being visibly confused in canned coffee ads for Boss. The joke was never really about the coffee—it was about the incongruity of that particular face in that particular context, and Japanese audiences apparently found it sustainable for fifteen-plus years. Western celebrities do ads too, obviously, but there’s usually a pretense of dignity involved. Japanese commercials seem to have decided dignity is optional and moved on.

Every broadcaster should run these on a loop. Not to sell the products. Just to remind the industry what thirty seconds can do.