VIDEO: Weirdest Japanese Commercials

This video is the ultimate compilation of crazy Japanese commercials that will make you say “What the hell did I just watch?!” Although, if you think about the fact that Japan is the country that produces 90% of the world’s weird stuff, this won’t seem so weird after all. Still, people find it fascinating – so fascinating that they’ve actually studied it. “A Study of Japanese TV Commercials from Socio-cultural Perspectives: Special Attributes of Nonverbal Features and Their Effects” was written by Koji Akiyama, form Yamanashi University. Here’s a short excerpt from her paper.

“On February 1, 1993, the Japanese public TV station NHK celebrated its 40th anniversary and on August 28 of the same year the commercial TV station NTV in Tokyo also celebrated the same anniversary. To commemorate this occasion, both stations have been airing retrospective specials since this January. The first Japanese TV commercial was for Seiko, the watch company. The commercial was broadcast as a timecast on NTV. 1 During these forty years, countless TV commercials have been on the air; most of them soon became out of date and forgotten and some of them have been remembered nostalgically as a mirror of times passed.
For the first twenty years, Japanese TV commercials had given the audience the “dream” of a modernized style of living and much new information necessary for achieving it. Consumer goods such as electric appliances, cars, medicines, and western foods – things that help people modernize and simplify daily life – were mainly and most favorably broadcast by the companies (clients) over and over again until the name of the products could be the topic of a small talk over tea. Those commercials were widely broadcast and largely accepted through the new method of advertising, although in many cases the commercials were considered an intermission in the regular programs – a time for going to the bathroom.
For Japanese TV commercials, the decade of the 1970’s was the decade of substance and maturity. The role of TV commercials became not only that of informing people of new products but also that of stimulating desire of their purchase by making the audience enjoy the contents and scenes of the commercials. Ultimately they were designed to improve the image of the company by their advertising tactics. The 1980’s was the decade of selection and attraction. Through the development of mass media, especially of satellite broadcasting and cable TV, an overwhelming amount of information has been given daily to Japanese through TV commercials. By various kinds of advertising tactics, the companies encouraged us Japanese to purchase their products or services, so that we need to be more discerning in the selection of information necessary for us. TV commercials themselves must attract our attention first of all before trying to inform the audience about the products or services and before trying to persuade us to go to the stores or agencies.
It is safe to say that people and their culture create TV commercials and that through watching and studying TV commercials in a particular country, we can gain insight into the characteristics of the people and the society.”

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