Because They Wanted to Introduce Akiko Fuji as a Giant

 2024/11/3

■ Because They Wanted to Introduce Akiko Fuji as a Giant

Shin Ultraman, directed by Shinji Higuchi and supervised by Hideaki Anno, was a masterpiece.

Mr. Anno and I are the same age. Last autumn, I caught up with his doings at an exhibit at The National Art Center Tokyo.

I also once asked Mr. Higuchi, who is four years younger, about his hobbies at a Keio University event.

My attachment to the Ultraman of the 60s is even stronger than to Godzilla of the 50s and Kamen Rider of the 70s.

 

I wanted a Flash Beam. I wanted to wear the Science Special Search Party badge.

Those happy memories are a privilege exclusive to our generation, a paean illuminated by a beam.

I was deeply moved by the movie's inclusion of homages to Ultraman Q.

Gomess, Litra, Peguila, Pagos, Mammoth Flower, Goga.

And Neronga.

I like Neronga.

I want a pet Neronga.

Perhaps the aliens known as Mefilas were given semi-leading roles out of a wish to introduce SSSP Member Akiko Fuji as a giant.

I was reminded of the masterpiece "Giant Member Fuji versus King Ghidorah" by Makoto Aida.

Both Imit-Ultraman and Alien Zarab seemed secondary characters.

Even stars like Alien Baltan and the Kemur Man were intentionally left out,

I got it.

Even a flawless hero can be defeated.

Animosity – and a twisted reverence – toward Zetton. Childhood trauma.

All-out resistance by powerless humans. Childhood hope.

An homage to the impressions left in the hearts of youths, and new iterations.

These were depicted in full.

How far will the younger generation and foreigners go in squarely embracing this?

Neronga, Mephilas, Zetton.

The structure, with its focus on three episodes, also marked a gallant decision to discard the remaining 36 episodes that include Red King, Pigmon, Bullton, Gomora, Dada, and Seabozu.

I spoke with Takayuki Tsukagoshi, the chairman of Tsuburaya Productions, about production of the work.

The movie offered a complete depiction, didn't it.

"No, there's more to come."

Huh?

"We're making more."

Wow.

Hope for tomorrow springs forth.

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Intellectual Property Content Strategy

■ Intellectual Property Content Strategy

I served as the chair of the Content Working Group of the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters.  

The pillars of its intellectual property plan are as follows,

1) Content strategy for the Web3.0 era, etc.

2) Reform of copyright regulatory structures and related policies in line with the digital era

3) Realization of a digital archive-based society

4) Strengthening of measures against counterfeit products and pirated material

5) Support for video production through improvements to shooting location environments, etc.

Making Web3.0 the top issue was a topic.

The Working Group sounded the alarm over the significant growth in access to pirate websites.

It called for the strengthening of international cooperation and enforcement aimed at implementing comprehensive government measures and cracking down on sites overseas.

A key point was taking a position of placing Web3.0 and user-generated content (UGC) at the forefront, along with past measures for laying the groundwork for rights handling and promotion of overseas expansion.

Discussions also addressed the positioning of global platforms.

While past content policy has been strongly tinged with a negative perception of platforms as invading "black ships," the Working Group affirmed an accurate evaluation of these as global sales channels and providers of funding.

Although Japan has continued to lose out in the area of digital innovations, the view was also put forth that with the coming of Web3.0, opportunities are arriving for leveraging the power of intellectual property such as characters.

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How to Listen to Music

■ How to Listen to Music

In How to Listen to Music, Naoki Tachikawa selects 100 albums from 1975 and 100 from 2021.

These include many songs that I have never listened to or don't know, so I check these one by one.

At the same time, I was excited to also see a lot of songs that I would definitely include if I were doing the selection.

Cornering Mr. Tachikawa when he visited the Okinawa International Movie Festival, I ran my thoughts by him.

Tachikawa's selection for 1975, when he was 26, starts with Syd Barrett.

Why?

"Because I liked him."

The bass line from "Gigolo Aunt" echoes in my head even now.

"It's that sort of song, isn't it."

The work lacks photos of album jackets. Might that be due to copyright issues?

"Actually, it's not clear where the rights reside."

David Bowie.

A photo exhibit was held in Kyoto.

During a P-MODEL live performance at Circus & Circus in front of Ginkakuji around 1980 or so, a slender foreigner in a hunting cap sat next to me.

"That's Bowie," I realized.

A commotion arose during the performance.

Maybe he was in Kyoto to shoot a shochu advertisement.

Perhaps he met Tachikawa-san back then.

Pierre Barouh.

His album Le pollen was produced by Mr. Tachikawa.

Japan was full of energy back then.

"1981. That was when energy was highest."

I liked the song "M.de Furstenberg" by Vivre, and even looked for the park in Paris.

Brigitte Fontaine.

Comme à la radio carries a strong tone of The Art Ensemble of Chicago. I'm torn between it and its predecessor Brigitte Fontaine est... folle! Barouh was a part of both albums.

I went to see her 1988 performance in Japan.

"Did it. Unfortunately, though, it lacked power."

Bryan Ferry.

His set at the Budokan apparently recalled Last Year at Marienbad.

"Bryan grinned like 'a magician doesn't reveal his tricks,' but I guess he hit the nail on the head."

Long ago, I drove from Paris in search of Marienbad in the Czech Republic.

Then there are also a lot of artists like João Gilberto, The Kinks, and Talking Heads, who should be included but aren't.

"Because the work is about selection. Selecting is hard."

In this era of exploding information volume, the ability to select may prove more important than the ability to create.

A DJ selects, combines, and expresses. That's the sort of ability.

"Someone who readies Costello the night before and listens to him while commuting, and someone who listens via streaming services, are fundamentally different people."

"Earphones make you inward-looking. Music should vibrate in the air and be listened to in the open."

"Music is something that connects people. It should be listened to together."

These are words to treasure.

We are flooded with information.

There are people who hate a mess and always keep things neat around them.

"Serge was like that. He always kept his desk neat."

Gainsbourg was a neatness freak! I wanted to see that with my own naked eye.

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The Paraconsistent World

■ The Paraconsistent World

The Paraconsistent World is a book by Jun Sawada, President of NTT.

I underestimated this amazing book.

Amazingly profound ideology and management philosophy underlaid IOWN, the grand technology concept that followed INS, VIP, and NGN.

Appearing amid the DX boom, this digital book connects the opposing sides of digital and analog, global and local, and centralization and decentralization. It accommodates contradictions and conflicts between the pairs as it addresses the shift from trade-offs to paraconsistency (i.e., simultaneous realization).

Posing questions about homogeneous thinking and the data supremacy toward which a logic-centered world has headed since the times of classical Greek philosophy, the book seeks ideas and technologies that fuse East and West.

I would not have imagined that such thinking was the current beneath IOWN.

In a story from 1992, the book relates how Shumpei Kumon and other GLOCOM members gave NTT executives their first introduction to the Internet, only to receive an unfavorable response. This was no surprise, as the technology represented a full-on negation of the existing telecommunications business. Jun 

The book's author, Jun Sawada, reports that he served as the secretariat for the NTT side. A GLOCOM member introduced him to the discussions as "a person destined for importance."

Three decades later, Mr. Sawada had become the president who orchestrated the company's transition to IP and the end to its telephony era.

Shumpei Kumon has recently become disenchanted with Internet society. To address the challenges of surveillance capitalism, social disparities, and information panic, he reportedly issued a call for three reforms: technology, social responsibility, and trust in information.

President Sawada states his intent to address those. This is a dialogue between giants.

NTT is also undertaking surprising management reforms, including the reorganization of its group, the strengthening of telework, and the discontinuation of staff relocation assignments.

President Sawada exerts a steady hand over this, wielding both technology and ideas.

I intend to keep a close eye on how he navigates the post-pandemic turbulence.

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Report of the Commercial Broadcasters Association: In the Midst of Two Wars

■ Report of the Commercial Broadcasters Association: In the Midst of Two Wars

I contributed the foreword to the report from the Digital Network Study Group of the Commercial Broadcasters Association.

　---------

　Humanity today faces unprecedented trials in COVID-19 and Ukraine. We find ourselves in the midst of two wars.

　Across the globe, COVID-19 pushed DX forward several years. Japan acknowledged its defeat in the digital arena and established the Digital Agency. Amid these landslide events, what roles did television and radio play?

　The invasion by Russia sparked the first war involving a major nation in an AI- and data-driven society, the first amid ubiquitous smartphones and social media. Cyber attacks, fake news, digital sanctions... the battlefield of this war is chiefly in the digital arena. What role has broadcasting played in the conflict? Was it able to command a leading role?

　For the first time, spending on online advertising has reportedly exceeded advertising spending in the traditional four media outlets. Even more than the report of 2.7 trillion yen in spending online versus 2.5 trillion yen in the four media outlets, this lumping of television, radio, newspapers, and magazines into "four media outlets" seemed to me the more significant news item. NHK launched simultaneous distribution, Japan's Copyright Act was revised, and commercial broadcasting also began… The landscape underwent periodic shifts in scenery.

　The dichotomy between communications and broadcasting has already outlived its usefulness. A market once worth nothing has grown to the scale of 2.7 trillion yen. The time for looking back on 30 years spent failing to pursue that market is now over. The closed-world dichotomies between commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting, between flagship stations and local stations, will also be swallowed up by the vortex of the global Internet. This is now a time for examining positions within the 70-trillion-yen information market, which encompasses the Internet and the 4-trillion-yen broadcasting market.

　

　Within the government Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters, platforms and the metaverse are under discussion as content strategies. How will the industry address Chinese IT firms' capital investments in Japan, even as it responds to US-based IT firms exemplified by GAFA and Netflix? How will it meet the surging waves of new technologies such as the metaverse and NFTs? These, too, point to shifts in scenery. How will the broadcasting industry answer those?

　The industry passed through multimedia in the 90s and through the Internet and terrestrial digital broadcasting in the 2000s without drawing up a big picture. The consequences of this can be seen in the turmoil of the present. The private sector draws up strategy that takes in media as a whole. Such efforts are needed in the broadcasting industry as well.

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Where is NHK Heading?

■ Where is NHK Heading?

We spoke at the "Where is NHK Heading?" forum. 

This involved a discussion centered around NHK's management plan.

Japanese TV is weakening. It is 15 years behind in its digital compatibility, a classic case of digital defeat. 

The internet is dominated not only by Big Tech like Netflix and Disney, but also by Chinese companies like Tencent. 

While BBC operates 10 domestic TV channels and 3 international channels, and China's CCTV has 20 channels plus 5 in foreign languages, how does NHK fare? 

We need to consider how NHK catch onto both digital trends and global outreach.

Discussing a dual system for uniformly excellent domestic programming makes it seem like we are debating the merits of the Meiji era's feudal system of the shogunate and domains. 

NHK's budget of 700 billion yen should not be considered just within the 4 trillion yen broadcasting framework, but within Japan's 70 trillion yen information market.

Currently, there is no clear vision or outlook for what NHK should be or where it should end up. 

Thus, discussions tend to focus on minor issues like whether to reduce the number of broadcast waves or slightly decrease fees. 

We need to think about how to position NHK within the broader digital media landscape, including the internet.

Does NHK want to be like the BBC or CCTV, or does it want to change from the H in NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), where H means broadcast in Japanese, into something like the Japan Media Association or Japan Digital Association? 

These are discussions worth having. 

I have scribbled down a rough reform proposal. 

NHK Media Holdings can be divided into three sectors: hardware, software, and a lab. 

Hardware, software, and contents should be managed as intellectual property for all programs, which would then be distributed by the hardware network. 

Everything would be managed in the cloud, including data collection.

Broadcasting can be done using just a few channels, while the internet should stream news, education, drama, and other content on dozens of channels. This will be similar to China’s CCTV, where specialized channels can be internationally broadcasted. 

Core operations can be funded by the NHK’s standard license fee up to this point. 

This approach might even allow the usual license fee to be halved or allow for funding reallocation towards production costs.

Other network operations could include paid on-demand services and the metaverse.

NHK could build a metaverse where e-commerce and advertising strategies could be deployed.

The lab will be a technology and cultural research institute of great value. 

I would love to see it leverage its competitive edge by collaborating with corporations and universities.

Japan has traditionally maintained a unified broadcast model aligning hardware and software. 

The UK, including both BBC and commercial broadcasters, has moved towards a separation of hardware and software for all management to take place in the cloud. 

There are rumors that the BBC might end its broadcast signal output, and the discussions for abolishing its license fee system are dynamic.

The playing field has already changed. 

The convergence of communications and broadcasting has wrapped up. 

News that advertising revenues of six trillion yen and internet revenues of 2.7 trillion yen have surpassed the 2.5 trillion yen from four traditional media types illustrates a market that grew from zero to 2.7 trillion yen in 30 years. 

Although Japan failed to seize this market.

How we perceive what’s happening now will affect the strategies going forward. Is it an era of peace or wartime? Are we on a continuum or at a turning point? I see it as a turning point during times of war. 

The digital transformation during COVID-19 made us recognize this failure to seize the digital market, but it's unclear what will happen with television broadcasting. 

In Ukraine, amidst fake news and cyber-attacks where digital platforms are the main battleground, what are broadcasters doing in response?

The question of what to do with NHK might best be approached by planning as if in hindsight and asking ourselves how we would design NHK if it did not exist.

Rather than criticizing NHK, I want discussion veered towards an expansion of the information space that includes NHK and broadcasting as a whole.

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3D Urban Model × Urban DX

■3D Urban Model × Urban DX

We presented at the "3D Urban Model × Urban DX" event. 

The CiP Council, responsible for new urban developments at the intersection between the real and virtual world, initiated a plan in 2013 to create a digital agglomeration special zone spanning 20 hectares in Tokyo's Takeshiba area, which was officially opened in 2020. 

The plan involved fully implementing cutting-edge technologies. 

Numerous robots are put to work here, and telexistence jobs can also be done. 

Over 1000 sensors embedded about to collect and utilize data, and this information is displayed on digital signage boards. 

There is no other example of a smart building operating on such an integrated scale worldwide.

However, the advent of COVID-19 changed everything. 

As we were pushing for aggregation, COVID-19 demanded decentralization.

We need to create a new balance between centralization and decentralization, a "New Normal" that is more appealing than the pre-COVID environment. 

Just as the Renaissance emerged after the 14th century plague, we must consider what will be revived after COVID-19. 

This is the pending issue that has been posed upon CiP. 

The plan is to connect the areas from Takeshiba to Toyosu, Harumi, Odaiba, and around Haneda in a comprehensive manner via rail, cars, bicycles, boats, drones, and digital means. 

As tech and pop hubs are being planned in various locations, we aim to advance the creation of a connected “PopTech archipelago,” and we are progressing collaborative measures with Nagoya, Kyoto, and other cities, as well as international partnerships with Seoul, Barcelona, and Shanghai. 

Simultaneously, the challenge is to shift from horizontal to vertical expansions, with implementation of the metaverse and digital twin models.

Subsequent questions:

What’s possible with digital twin models?

There have been reports about the creation of a government-in-exile for Ukraine, while Estonia has developed an e-government that ensures the nation persists digitally even if physically invaded.

Japan could also consider creating a digital twin in anticipation of potential submersion from natural disaster.

Moreover, it would be great to see warfare restricted to the metaverse.

What is necessary for Urban DX?

Data is embedded into a physical space to help in understanding congestion in toilets and stores, and aids in disaster prevention—this is useful. 

On the other hand, in the virtual space, we have Pokémon GO—this is interesting. 

Urban DX in both real and virtual spaces should combine these aspects: being both useful and interesting.

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