Heibon (published by Magazine House) was founded as a literary magazine in 1945, but it changed into a popular magazine for amusement in 1948. It had two main elements-photogravures and stories. Being tied up with both radio and cinema in many ways, it enlarged its circulation during the first half of the 1950's. However, with the spread of TV during the 1960's, Heibon changed into a magazine whose main element was photogravures featuring TV celebrities. By doing so, it expanded its circulation again during the first half of the 1970's, but was finally discontinued in 1987.

The discontinuation of the magazine may be explained by three factors influencing each other. First, the change from the age of radio and cinema into that of TV diminished the role of Heibon. Second, Myojo (published by Shueisha) gained more popularity than Heibon since the 1970's. Third, Magazine House changed into a company mainly publishing ‘lifestyle-magazines’ which depend heavily on income from advertisements.

The three changes about Heibon - two changes of itself and one change of its publisher are very important when we examine popular magazines in post-war Japan.

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The Olympic theme songs (TOTS) play an essential role in providing dramatic effects for TV programs, as well as a legacy transmission to hand on to the new generation the excitement that sweeps through the nation during the worlds’greatest sports event. We investigated the origin of the Japanese Olympic theme music. In our study, three official theme musical compositions and the Olympic theme music employed by the Olympic broadcasters during the three Olympics held in Japan (Tokyo, Sapporo, Nagano) were included. We reviewed papers regarding the theme music for the Olympics and interviewed the composers of the official Olympic theme songs and the program producers of Olympic broadcasting channels. We found several common points between each TOTS. Firstly, all of the official theme songs were released more than a half a year before the Olympics opening ceremony. Furthermore, these songs were broadcast on the music programs of the Japanese national broadcasting station (NHK) of the games, such as “Minna no Uta (English title : Songs for Everyone)” and “NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen (English title : NHK Red and White Song Battle)”. Additionally, during these times the composition competitions of the theme compositions were held, and multiple artists participated in this competition and covered the theme compositions. On the other hand, TOTS of the news broadcasting was first introduced in 1988. In a quarter of the cases, the implementation of TOTS was linked to the employment of news casters, as they employed publicly well-known and experienced celebrities as both casters and performers of TOTS. It has been speculated that, since the private news broadcasters have fewer slots available to cover Olympic games compared to NHK, this was a measure taken to enhance the opportunity for TV appearances by engaging theme songs with Olympic coverage.

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