The Jimusho System: Understanding the Production Logic of the Japanese Entertainment Industry

Abstract

Artistic works produced in the field of popular culture act as symbolic goods, shaping the way we understand our own lives and our place in society. The human interaction with these goods, however, often ignores the fact that, since the twentieth century, the vast majority of popular culture enters society in the form of commercial products, and is therefore subject to the shaping of a wider production system. In the early 1970s, the Production of Culture school brought this understanding into its analysis of popular culture, viewing cultural objects within the organization of their production: creative processes, audience reception, industrial frameworks, and institutional positions. One of the primary figures of this new approach, Richard A. Peterson, explains this so-called “Production of Culture” school as research that assumes that “the social arrangements used in making symbolic elements of culture affect the nature and content of the elements of culture that are produced” (Peterson 1994, 163). Acknowledging that the public cultural sphere is mainly constructed of products enabled a wider application of economic market analysis to the field of popular culture.

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