ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the evolution and state of public relations (PR) in Japan, and considers the historical, social, and cultural reasons why it has lagged behind, in order to discover what is necessary for Japan and other nations to catch up. Japan succeeded in industrialization and becoming rich, but the goal of a "powerful army" ended with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to the United States cultural anthropologist Edward Hall, Japanese society is a typical "high-context" society, in which a high degree of cultural code is shared implicitly, and this alone can save on the "quantity of information" that is exchanged when communicating. The clear goal in the hearts of Japanese people was for their nation to rise up from the post-war devastation and achieve "recovery and development." As a narrow island nation with a high gross domestic product, Japan has a wide range of media that extensively covers the entire country.
