ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will analyze the relationship between corporate media production and consumption in urban Japanese media culture by discussing the case of a large Japanese media production company and its school for media entertainers, in the context of the popularity of the company’s local form of comedy. Run by Yoshimoto Kōgyō, Ltd. (Yoshimoto), the Osaka ‘New Star Creation’ (NSC) entertainment school acts as a dynamic site where corporate comedy production plans and comedy fans’ consumption practices coincide. 1 This specific case illustrates a general trend: across the globe, corporate media producers increasingly promote audience participation in various aspects of the production, circulation, and promotion of cultural goods and services in diverse local settings, and consumers increasingly seek out this complex participatory relationship in cultural production for their own ends, if not entirely by their own means. To put it another way, production and consumption are mutually determined, and promotion serves to strengthen this association.
