Kisha kurabu and koho: Japanese media relations and public relations

This paper explains the background of media and public relations in Japan including historical and cultural influences, media attitudes toward government and business, the social perception of the media’s role, and the ways in which public relations activities are carried out. The view of Japanese media as the opposite of US media in terms of agenda-setting ability is shown to be ethnocentric. There are considerable similarities and differences in the ways that media and public relations are carried out in the United States and Japan, and these similarities and differences are described in some detail. A universalistic standard of media performance is then utilized to comparatively evaluate the respective media in a manner that avoids the pitfalls of both ethnocentrism and relativism.