Why Did Baseball Broadcasts in a Dramatic Kodan Storytelling Style Gain Popularity?

Verification from Percentages by Broadcast Genre and Viewers’ Preference

Abstract

Sports announcer Norizo Matsuuchi’s baseball play-by-play commentaries in a dramatic kodan storytelling style became extremely popular among the Japanese public around 1930. This article analyzes anew the background to the popularity by taking a different approach from preceding studies.First, the author looks at longitudinal changes in shares of broadcast programs by genre such as “news,” “cultural,” and “entertainment.” Then, the article reports the fact that the period when the share of “entertainment” declined and the heyday of this dramatic play-by-play announcement overlapped, based on which the author explores reasons for the popularity from the following three perspectives.1. Radio. listenersListeners wanted “entertainment,” but there were not enough programs in this genre. Insufficient “entertainment” left the listeners dissatisfied.2. Norizo Matsuuchi. It is highly possible that the above factor prompted Matsuuchi, who had always been prioritizing listeners’ preference, to employ kodan—Japanese entertainment art of storytelling—in his baseball commentaries.3. Japan Broadcasting Corporation. The Japan Broadcasting Corporation was presumably aware that one of the factors for slower growth of radio listeners, compared to overseas counterparts, was that a limited number of “entertainment” programs were available, but given the broadcaster’s principle of serving as a “public institution,” it could not increase “entertainment” programs with no reasonable grounds. It was then that Matsuuchi’s dramatic play-by-play hit the scene, and it is likely that the broadcaster decided to take a stance of admitting it although those commentaries were not necessarily objective.As preceding studies have pointed out, the kodan style was familiar to the Japanese public and was undoubtedly received well by a broad range of radio listeners. The author adds the above three perspectives to this conventional view in an attempt to interpret the birth and continuance of the kodan style play-by-play more profoundly and identify the background to its huge popularity—how the commentaries captivated conventional baseball fans and non-baseball fans alike—more clearly.