/ The present article analyzes the popularity of Winter Sonata (a South Korean television series) among Japanese audiences, especially among middle-aged women, and the impact of the accompanying hanryu phenomenon (the current fad for every aspect of South Korean popular culture) on Japanese society. Various types of primary and archival data were collected including indepth qualitative interview surveys from 33 female Japanese viewers of Winter Sonata. The interpretive analysis of the data reveals the reasons for Winter Sonata's popularity in Japan, and how this television drama and the hanryu phenomenon have influenced Japanese perceptions of Korean residents living in Japan, South Koreans and North Koreans. In light of the troubled historical relationship between Japan and Korea (given Japan had colonized the Korean peninsula for several decades), the impact of Winter Sonata and the hanryu phenomenon is especially noteworthy.

/ In the past few years, the popularity of Korean television dramas, songs and movies has skyrocketed in countries of North and Southeast Asia. This huge wave of Korean pop culture is referred to as the Hanryu (the Korean wave). One of the most significant trendsetters of the Hanryu was the Korean television drama Winter Sonata, which was remarkably popular in every Asian country where it was broadcast. The present article investigates the perception of Japanese audience members toward Winter Sonata's narrative and how this perception influenced their buying behavior of Winter Sonata memorabilia, such as clothing, cosmetics, DVDs/CDs of the program, trips to Korea and the like. Employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, this study finds that the popularity of the drama was generated by Japanese audiences' engagement with its narrative. Further, the audience perception of the narrative's quality was found to predict whether or not they purchased a Winter Sonata product.

In April 2010, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK: Nippon Hoso Kyokai) began broadcasting Justice With Michael Sandel, a highly popular lecture course by the Harvard political philosopher. Despite its serious content, the program has enjoyed much popularity and has been rebroadcast several times. In this article, I analyze how Japanese major newspapers have discussed the lectures and the scholarship of Michael Sandel. The analysis reveals that the popularity of Sandel's lectures reflects the feeling of uneasiness shared among the public about the current social climate in Japan. Sandel's political philosophy and educational practice seem to have offered the Japanese public a means to address moral political issues facing the country.

On Christmas Day 2010, a child guidance center in Japan received a gift of 10 school bags from someone acting as Naoto Date, the protagonist of the Tiger Mask comic book series popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the comic book story, Date fights as a professional wrestler wearing a tiger mask and donates his winnings to the orphanage where he grew up without revealing his identity. The episode caught the attention of the mass media, triggering copycat donations to such facilities throughout Japan in the names of various comic book characters. In this article, I analyze 3 types of media discourse surrounding this gift‐giving movement: newspaper editorials, experts' commentaries, and letters to the newspaper.