What do you think?
Rate this book
Harvard East Asian Monographs #173
Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland
In 1996 over 16 million people visited Tokyo Disneyland, making it the most popular of the many theme parks in Japan. Since it opened in 1983, Tokyo Disneyland has been analyzed mainly as an example of the globalization of the American leisure industry and its organizational culture, particularly the company manual. By looking at how Tokyo Disneyland is experienced by employees, management and visitors, Aviad Raz shows that it is much more an example of successful importation, adaption and domestication, and that it has succeeded precisely because it has become Japanese even while marketing itself as foreign. Rather than being an agent of Americanization, Tokyo Disneyland is a simulated America showcased by and for the Japanese. It is an America with a Japanese meaning.
- GenresHistory
264 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 1999
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 8, 2025
An in-depth survey of Tokyo Disneyland up to the late 1990s, on-stage, backstage, and off-stage.
Though Aviad Raz waxes academically much too often, the insight from real interviews conducted both with foreigner and native TDL employees rings true. Anonymous interviews, given with context in Japanese culture, shine a light on everything from TDL hiring practices, life as an employee, marketing and economics of Disney in Japan, relationship with Oriental Land Company, and manual design.
The only features in the book I found distasteful were
(1) the overt academic tone, trying to fit Disney's adoption and transformation in Japan from a pedantic lens of "Black Ship" from America;
(2) the silly and annoying use of romanized spelling for key Japanese terms that would translate much better as-is (in kana or kanji: しつけ、本音 & 建前、正社員 ＆ 準社員 etc);
(3) the poorly told in-person dramatization of horror stories, such as mascots removing their mask: the author Raz never explicitly tells what happened when discussing employee dismissal episodes, instead choosing to gloss over them like bullet points in an essay.
Otherwise, the book reads quickly, packed with information and brutally honest quotes from former TDL staff and OLC operators.
Some of my favorite quotes below:
p 22
I later discovered that all of OLC’s foreign cast members were contract employees from Disneyland in California. No job interviews for foreigners were conducted in Japan.
p 26
The Japanese media, in addition to being skeptical about Mitsui’s real motivations, were unanimous in predicting the project’s failure.
p 27
In 1980, over 100 OLC managers went to Disneyland to learn how to run the park, and 200 Disney people came to work on site in Japan. “Park procedures are all laid out in volumes of Disney manuals,” said Ron Cayo to Koren, “and strict adherence to these has been a big part of the project’s success.”
p 35
We don’t have the monorail because of Japanese bureaucracy. In Japan, if you have a train that’s going only to one station, it’s not considered a train. That’s what we have. A train that goes to only one station. That’s Western River Railroad in Adventureland. It’s a ride, not a train. Otherwise, we would have to deal with the Transportation Department, apply for various licenses, and be subjected to various requirements and supervision. This was something we didn’t like to deal with.
p 39
“In TDL,” he said, “the Imagineering Department cannot manufacture or engineer anything, since this is done by OLC and its contractors.”
p 47
The Mystery Tour—with all its Disney villains (Dizunii no warumonotachi)—seems much more “Japanese” than the Haunted Mansion.
p 51
The existence of such a pattern, that’s something psychological. People always go clockwise. Early guests always go to their left, where they find Adventureland. This is what our experts say. By the way, the phenomenon is not unique to TDL. You can see if happening in subway stations, too.
p 58
“It doesn’t matter how brave a samurai is, still he cannot beat time.” An underlying theme is that Japanese cultural identity is never separate, that it can perceive itself only by using other cultures as mirrors.
p 61
In the media and through its public relations, however, TDL markets itself as a 100 percent copy of the American original. TDL is marketed mainly through advertising and public relations.
p 63
The illusion that once you enter TDL, you enter America is maintained onstage. Cheerful American (Disney) music plays continuously along the walkways. American voices (as well as Japanese) can be heard over the public address system, and American-style food predominates in the 37 restaurants. … Hamburgers, American-style pizza, and popcorn have consistently been the top three dishes in TDL.
p 76
OLC conducts massive hiring of part-timers around February, before the beginning of the Japanese fiscal year. Hiring for the summer months is done around May.
…
One such ad appeared on January 29, 1996, in the semimonthly magazine an-an, a young women’s (age 18-25) magazine with a circulation of 650,000…
The ad’s opening line declares, in pink letters, that “every day is meeting and discovery.” …
The message is that every day in TDL you can meet different people and enjoy different experiences. (In reality, workers have very little contact with anyone in the park outside those with whom they work, and transfer of workers among divisions is strictly forbidden.) In the ad, all workers are portrayed as part of the “TDL family.” The blurb to the right of the picture optimistically says, “In this coming spring, who are you going to meet and what will you discover? It’s time to hire the new cast members of TDL, and it’s your turn.”
p 77
Jobs in attractions, merchandise, food service, and costumes divisions pay 900 yen per hour; security, 930; parking, 950; cooking, cleaning, and merchandising in the park hotels (called Disney Fantasy), 1000; dishwashing and driving, 1050. A registered nurse can earn 1300 yen per hour. For work between 7:00 and 9:00 AM or 7:00 and 10:00 PM, the wage increases by 200 yen per hour and for work between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM by 225 yen. TDL’s employment ad, like its self-advertising in general, conveys a sense of singularity.
p 79
Although most applicants yearn for jobs in the Attractions Division, most of them will end up in the Food, Merchandising, or Custodial divisions. Many of those with whom I spoke told me that they had accepted the job with the idea of requesting a transfer to Attractions after a while.
…
However, OLD prohibits such transfers. If a worker wants to change his or her job, s/he must first quit and then reapply for a new job interview.
p 82
Recruits are required to wear their costume and name tag. The tag is printed with the last name in roman letters (in contrast, name tags at DL and WDW give the employee’s first name).
p 86
The view that the Japanese are generally more willing to accept a strong organizational culture like Disney’s is confirmed by the news of labor problems at Disneyland Paris.
Although interviewing at WDW takes much longer, it shares TDL’s “hiring on first sight” policy.
“Each successful applicant must conform to certain highly particularistic standards of appearance. Complexion, height and weight, straightness and color of teeth, or disfigurement of any sort are all grounds for flunking the Disneyland body test.” This same criteria are evidently in place at TDL, where cast members are surprisingly tall, well-shaped, and acne-free.
p 88
The teamwork quiz is missing from TDL’s orientation.
…
“You see,” he explained, “we Japanese don’t need such a quiz. For us it’s childish. We are already used to teamwork. We have been used to teamwork ever since elementary school, no, kindergarten.”
p 97
Interestingly, the manual shows some American influence. “If you are at the office with your colleagues,” it says, “just call their names, without san or even title. This is Walt Disney’s way” (p. 6). However, “when answering the phone, talking to strangers, or in public, always refer to your colleagues with san and rank title” (p. 6).
The protocol on “how to open a door,” for example, advises employees to “knock three times (twice is for beggars—monogoi)” (p. 7).
“If you knock once, the person inside doesn’t notice you; if you knock three times, he will be annoyed. Therefore beggars knock twice.”
p 102
The Disney Training Program is highly regarded among both Americans and Japanese. … In Japan Disney is considered the model for service in the same way that McDonald’s is the model for the fast-food industry.
p 103
TDL wages are normal for the service industry. Supervision is close and may be arbitrary. The shain in the nearby office may step into the kitchen or the shop at any time. Working conditions are tough, but not chaotic. … The jobs require minimal intelligence or judgment— like many other jobs in the service sector. … Cast members’ “communication” with outsiders is totally prescribed by the manual, and it is forbidden to talk about any OLC matter with an outsider.
p 107
Regulars are fully socialized into company life; part-timers are “cheap labor” trained to do a routine, semiskilled job. According to the common assertion, only seishain, not junshain, become shakaijin (society people; adults) by virtue of joining the company.
TDL manuals for junshain, which were evidently copied from Disney manuals, are an exception in Japan. In this respect, the strong organizational culture of TDL’s junshain is a result of the Disney Way.
Many Japanese commentators have hailed the Disney manuals for part-timers as the “secret of TDL’s success” (Komuya 1989; Tadokoro 1990).
p 110
“Do you know why they don’t have hanbaiki [vending machines] at TDL? They don’t need it. We are the hanbaiki., Customers push, and we throw out a spiel.”
p 114
Indeed, the Disney view of human nature is basically emotional; according to TDL’s Trainer’s Guide, the correct answer to the question “What moves people?” is “20 percent reason, 80 percent emotion” (p. 9). … life in TDL involves a great deal of emotion management.
p 116
“Trainers say, people have dreams about Disneyland, you cannot break their dream, it would break their heart.”
p 117
“The leads realize we know it exists, so they tell us, if a guest comes to you in panic because she hasn’t seen her baby for an hour, don’t mention the message system. They tell us, using the message system too often will destroy the atmosphere of dreams and magic.”
Following an accident, the closest employee (usually a part-timer) is to call a supervisor (management) and then first aid. “Why not first aid first?” I was asked by several naive cast members. The manual then instructs the employees attending the victim to immediately write down any admissions uttered by him or her regarding self-carelessness.
p 119
Communication is conceived as yet another buzzword, a facade, something “imported from America,” a trendy slogan that has no contents. For Japanese cast members, this holds true for DisneyTalk in general.
p 121
Food work is the lowest-ranking occupation in the park.
...
At the top of the pyramid are the tour guides, followed by those in operations (ride operators, ticket sellers, and custodians, in that order); below that are those who work in merchandising; at the bottom of the ladder are the food workers.
p 124
Company rules strictly forbid removal of the head gear in public; doing this under any circumstances means automatic dismissal.
p 126
“Role distance” — distancing one’s “private” self from the social, or organizational, role one is assigned “onstage” — was therefore much less of a problem in the eyes of Japanese cast members. … “Disney is so special. Even when I got tired of working at TDL, Disney was still special to me. Even if you’re tired, and all worked out, and angry, once you see a stuffed Mickey, it makes you feel better. I’m not sure why.”
Those who considered the job too boring or without real chances of promotion simply quit. Cast members who expressed their resistance to TDL’s emotional subjugation in explicit terms were in the minority.
p 133
“Smiles” are produced even through the telephone line.
p 137
The park is obsessed with time standards based on the most efficient way of doing the job. Attractions are timed in seconds and half-seconds. Lines are timed, and retimed, in minutes. There is also an obsession with standardizing the requirements for materials, machines, tools, working conditions, and the staff to fill the job. Wage charts for various hours and shifts are meticulously defined and standardized.
p 139
Shitsuke does not come from the manual. It comes from the heart (kokoro).
Given the emphasis in Japanese companies on education, training, and job rotation, the personnel department was traditionally the most powerful in a Japanese organization.
p 141
The cast members at TDL, like the workers at other service companies in Japan, are not sent to an ethics center. Rather than cultivating the “self” through work, part-timers are expected to assume, temporarily, a “self” prescribed for them in the manual.
p 142
The devil resides in Disneyland, and it is not the Black Ghost, but the manual.
p 148
In the wake of TDL’s enormous success, litle countries have sprouted all over Japan. These include, in a chronological order, Gluck Kingdom in Tokachi City, Hokkaido; Space World in Kyushu; Canadian World in Ashibetsu City, Hokkaido; Tobu Worl dSquare near Nikko; Shima Spanish Village; Sea Paradise in Yokohama; and a Universal Studio Tour to be opened in Osaka.
p 158
In Japan, age cohorts tend to be more coherent in terms of behavior, and life-stage activities—such as school completion, marriage, childbearing, workforce participation, and retirement—are particularly predictable.
p 159
In marketing terms, TDL’s success depends on keeping its repeaters (around 85 percent of all visitors). In addition to adding a new “big attraction” every year or so to draw people to the park, TDL must work itself into everyday life.
Disney enters many homes every Friday morning from 7:30 to 8:00 with the television program Mickey Kids. Hosted by Mickey Mouse and sponsored by TDL, the program is a quick sequence of TDL promotions, commercials for Disney merchandise, and glimpses of short excerpts from Disney cartoons. The program combines lots of Disney happiness with the Japanese adoration of sports and the genki spirit.
p 164
Cartoon characters, now a ubiquitous part of Japanese popular culture, are a successful marketing theme. One can even find them promoting serious services for adults, such as bank accounts. Mitsubishi Bank first put fluffy Sanrio characters on its credit cards and account books and then hired the Disney characters to do its promotion.
The Japanese see the park’s Mickey as more effective and stronger than the original animated Mickey.
p 168
In TDL, one can observe small groups of classmates—han—roaming around together. They usually have some prearranged assignments such as interviewing a gaijin (foreigner) and getting his or her autograph. Han also have some particular prescriptions designed to encourage teamwork.
“Before I left home, my mother gave me 3000 yen. I used some of this money so that all of our group members could buy the same TR-shirt. Our shirts are very beautiful, and we are very happy today. I hope you are not angry,. Now at least we have a pleasant memory.” ~Sincerely, Kumiko Tanaka
p 169
According to official OLC data (published in TDL 1995), women older than eighteen years invariably constitute more than 60 percent of the visitors. The customer profile of the Disney retail stores in Japan similarly shows that the largest age group (around 33 percent) is between 20 and 29 years old, and that 53 percent of the customers are single females.
Jeannie Lo, an American woman who took a leave from Harvard to spend some months as an office lady at Brother Industries’ Nagoya plant in 1986, was amazed at how OLs “cluttered their desks with toys and pins of Disney characters.”
p 171
Although OLs are usually hired as keiyaku-shain, they cannot expect promotion or seniority wages. They are known as shokuba no hana (flowers of the office) — “pretty to look at and decorative but insubstantial and transient.”
Many OLs remain at home with their parents as long as they are single. They can therefore use their income primarily for shopping and consumption: clothing, hobbies, and vacations.
p 173
The Sanrio novelty company, which specializes in cute items, found in a market survey that “items sold to Japanese girls between the age of five and the time of marriage would be bought in America only by girls from four to seven years old” (White 1993:126).
The kawaii style dominated Japanese popular culture in the 1980s, thus coinciding with the formative years of TDL’s success. … Disney characters fitted neatly into this local consumerist realm of the kawaii.
“The essential anatomy of a cute character consists in its being small, soft, infantile, mammalian, round, without bodily orifices, and non-sexual.” In addition, the style should not be traditional Japanese but foreign—in particular American or European. Disney did all that and conquered a top place in the Japanese pantheon of the cute.
p 176
Middle-aged customers account for around 40 percent of TDL’s visitors (TDL 1995: 5). Moreover, it is often the parents who decide when and how often a family will visit TDL. Since TDL’s success depends on securing repeat visitors, it largely depends on catering to a middle-aged market.
p 177
OLC data (TDL 1995) suggest that the average repeater is most likely (65 percent) an adult from the Kanto district (40 perfect from Tokyo itself). S/he has already been to TDL seven or eight times and arrives around 9:00-10:00 AM and leaves around 6:00-7:00 PM, buys a snack and some stationery, eats a hamburger or a pizza for lunch, and probably does Splash Mountain. OLC realizes, of course, that getting the repeaters is its key to success.
…
The main strategy for attracting repeaters is new attractions.
…
The same strategy is also behind OLC’s plans to build a second park, “Disney Sea,” adjoining TDL’s southeast side.
There are several major types of repeat visits in TDL: the family visit (around 35 percent of all visitors), the date (25 percent), the group visit (25 percent), the school excursion (7 percent), and the hospitality tour, or organized groups of workers from a particular company (7 percent).
Although repeaters come from all age groups, the core group is arguably the middle-aged.
p 178
Visitors therefore spend at TDL a sum equal to three or four regular outings in Tokyo. They come back to TDL because they like it and because there is nothing similar to it, despite its expense.
p 179
It is not that TDL is naively received as “America”; the Japanese consumer is more clever than that. I think that this remark conveys an appreciation of TDL as a total environment, complete-unto-itself (as an imagineer would say), a spacious, clean, and safe utopian space. And it’s “fun.”
p 180
Disneyland represents a ‘serious’ date rather than a casual one—also, one suspects, because of cosst as well as ‘wholesome’ environment.
WDW is now the number one honeymoon destination in this country and may soon be also the number one site for marriage.
p 182
Elderly people are usually neither repeaters nor Disney fans. ...
As far as its advertisements are concerned, TDL is a temple of youth.
p 185
IPA members argued that children’s life in Japan is increasingly managed by parents who send them to juku (cram schools) and teachers who do nothing but follow the rigid curricula set by the Ministry of Education.
Though Aviad Raz waxes academically much too often, the insight from real interviews conducted both with foreigner and native TDL employees rings true. Anonymous interviews, given with context in Japanese culture, shine a light on everything from TDL hiring practices, life as an employee, marketing and economics of Disney in Japan, relationship with Oriental Land Company, and manual design.
The only features in the book I found distasteful were
(1) the overt academic tone, trying to fit Disney's adoption and transformation in Japan from a pedantic lens of "Black Ship" from America;
(2) the silly and annoying use of romanized spelling for key Japanese terms that would translate much better as-is (in kana or kanji: しつけ、本音 & 建前、正社員 ＆ 準社員 etc);
(3) the poorly told in-person dramatization of horror stories, such as mascots removing their mask: the author Raz never explicitly tells what happened when discussing employee dismissal episodes, instead choosing to gloss over them like bullet points in an essay.
Otherwise, the book reads quickly, packed with information and brutally honest quotes from former TDL staff and OLC operators.
Some of my favorite quotes below:
p 22
I later discovered that all of OLC’s foreign cast members were contract employees from Disneyland in California. No job interviews for foreigners were conducted in Japan.
p 26
The Japanese media, in addition to being skeptical about Mitsui’s real motivations, were unanimous in predicting the project’s failure.
p 27
In 1980, over 100 OLC managers went to Disneyland to learn how to run the park, and 200 Disney people came to work on site in Japan. “Park procedures are all laid out in volumes of Disney manuals,” said Ron Cayo to Koren, “and strict adherence to these has been a big part of the project’s success.”
p 35
We don’t have the monorail because of Japanese bureaucracy. In Japan, if you have a train that’s going only to one station, it’s not considered a train. That’s what we have. A train that goes to only one station. That’s Western River Railroad in Adventureland. It’s a ride, not a train. Otherwise, we would have to deal with the Transportation Department, apply for various licenses, and be subjected to various requirements and supervision. This was something we didn’t like to deal with.
p 39
“In TDL,” he said, “the Imagineering Department cannot manufacture or engineer anything, since this is done by OLC and its contractors.”
p 47
The Mystery Tour—with all its Disney villains (Dizunii no warumonotachi)—seems much more “Japanese” than the Haunted Mansion.
p 51
The existence of such a pattern, that’s something psychological. People always go clockwise. Early guests always go to their left, where they find Adventureland. This is what our experts say. By the way, the phenomenon is not unique to TDL. You can see if happening in subway stations, too.
p 58
“It doesn’t matter how brave a samurai is, still he cannot beat time.” An underlying theme is that Japanese cultural identity is never separate, that it can perceive itself only by using other cultures as mirrors.
p 61
In the media and through its public relations, however, TDL markets itself as a 100 percent copy of the American original. TDL is marketed mainly through advertising and public relations.
p 63
The illusion that once you enter TDL, you enter America is maintained onstage. Cheerful American (Disney) music plays continuously along the walkways. American voices (as well as Japanese) can be heard over the public address system, and American-style food predominates in the 37 restaurants. … Hamburgers, American-style pizza, and popcorn have consistently been the top three dishes in TDL.
p 76
OLC conducts massive hiring of part-timers around February, before the beginning of the Japanese fiscal year. Hiring for the summer months is done around May.
…
One such ad appeared on January 29, 1996, in the semimonthly magazine an-an, a young women’s (age 18-25) magazine with a circulation of 650,000…
The ad’s opening line declares, in pink letters, that “every day is meeting and discovery.” …
The message is that every day in TDL you can meet different people and enjoy different experiences. (In reality, workers have very little contact with anyone in the park outside those with whom they work, and transfer of workers among divisions is strictly forbidden.) In the ad, all workers are portrayed as part of the “TDL family.” The blurb to the right of the picture optimistically says, “In this coming spring, who are you going to meet and what will you discover? It’s time to hire the new cast members of TDL, and it’s your turn.”
p 77
Jobs in attractions, merchandise, food service, and costumes divisions pay 900 yen per hour; security, 930; parking, 950; cooking, cleaning, and merchandising in the park hotels (called Disney Fantasy), 1000; dishwashing and driving, 1050. A registered nurse can earn 1300 yen per hour. For work between 7:00 and 9:00 AM or 7:00 and 10:00 PM, the wage increases by 200 yen per hour and for work between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM by 225 yen. TDL’s employment ad, like its self-advertising in general, conveys a sense of singularity.
p 79
Although most applicants yearn for jobs in the Attractions Division, most of them will end up in the Food, Merchandising, or Custodial divisions. Many of those with whom I spoke told me that they had accepted the job with the idea of requesting a transfer to Attractions after a while.
…
However, OLD prohibits such transfers. If a worker wants to change his or her job, s/he must first quit and then reapply for a new job interview.
p 82
Recruits are required to wear their costume and name tag. The tag is printed with the last name in roman letters (in contrast, name tags at DL and WDW give the employee’s first name).
p 86
The view that the Japanese are generally more willing to accept a strong organizational culture like Disney’s is confirmed by the news of labor problems at Disneyland Paris.
Although interviewing at WDW takes much longer, it shares TDL’s “hiring on first sight” policy.
“Each successful applicant must conform to certain highly particularistic standards of appearance. Complexion, height and weight, straightness and color of teeth, or disfigurement of any sort are all grounds for flunking the Disneyland body test.” This same criteria are evidently in place at TDL, where cast members are surprisingly tall, well-shaped, and acne-free.
p 88
The teamwork quiz is missing from TDL’s orientation.
…
“You see,” he explained, “we Japanese don’t need such a quiz. For us it’s childish. We are already used to teamwork. We have been used to teamwork ever since elementary school, no, kindergarten.”
p 97
Interestingly, the manual shows some American influence. “If you are at the office with your colleagues,” it says, “just call their names, without san or even title. This is Walt Disney’s way” (p. 6). However, “when answering the phone, talking to strangers, or in public, always refer to your colleagues with san and rank title” (p. 6).
The protocol on “how to open a door,” for example, advises employees to “knock three times (twice is for beggars—monogoi)” (p. 7).
“If you knock once, the person inside doesn’t notice you; if you knock three times, he will be annoyed. Therefore beggars knock twice.”
p 102
The Disney Training Program is highly regarded among both Americans and Japanese. … In Japan Disney is considered the model for service in the same way that McDonald’s is the model for the fast-food industry.
p 103
TDL wages are normal for the service industry. Supervision is close and may be arbitrary. The shain in the nearby office may step into the kitchen or the shop at any time. Working conditions are tough, but not chaotic. … The jobs require minimal intelligence or judgment— like many other jobs in the service sector. … Cast members’ “communication” with outsiders is totally prescribed by the manual, and it is forbidden to talk about any OLC matter with an outsider.
p 107
Regulars are fully socialized into company life; part-timers are “cheap labor” trained to do a routine, semiskilled job. According to the common assertion, only seishain, not junshain, become shakaijin (society people; adults) by virtue of joining the company.
TDL manuals for junshain, which were evidently copied from Disney manuals, are an exception in Japan. In this respect, the strong organizational culture of TDL’s junshain is a result of the Disney Way.
Many Japanese commentators have hailed the Disney manuals for part-timers as the “secret of TDL’s success” (Komuya 1989; Tadokoro 1990).
p 110
“Do you know why they don’t have hanbaiki [vending machines] at TDL? They don’t need it. We are the hanbaiki., Customers push, and we throw out a spiel.”
p 114
Indeed, the Disney view of human nature is basically emotional; according to TDL’s Trainer’s Guide, the correct answer to the question “What moves people?” is “20 percent reason, 80 percent emotion” (p. 9). … life in TDL involves a great deal of emotion management.
p 116
“Trainers say, people have dreams about Disneyland, you cannot break their dream, it would break their heart.”
p 117
“The leads realize we know it exists, so they tell us, if a guest comes to you in panic because she hasn’t seen her baby for an hour, don’t mention the message system. They tell us, using the message system too often will destroy the atmosphere of dreams and magic.”
Following an accident, the closest employee (usually a part-timer) is to call a supervisor (management) and then first aid. “Why not first aid first?” I was asked by several naive cast members. The manual then instructs the employees attending the victim to immediately write down any admissions uttered by him or her regarding self-carelessness.
p 119
Communication is conceived as yet another buzzword, a facade, something “imported from America,” a trendy slogan that has no contents. For Japanese cast members, this holds true for DisneyTalk in general.
p 121
Food work is the lowest-ranking occupation in the park.
...
At the top of the pyramid are the tour guides, followed by those in operations (ride operators, ticket sellers, and custodians, in that order); below that are those who work in merchandising; at the bottom of the ladder are the food workers.
p 124
Company rules strictly forbid removal of the head gear in public; doing this under any circumstances means automatic dismissal.
p 126
“Role distance” — distancing one’s “private” self from the social, or organizational, role one is assigned “onstage” — was therefore much less of a problem in the eyes of Japanese cast members. … “Disney is so special. Even when I got tired of working at TDL, Disney was still special to me. Even if you’re tired, and all worked out, and angry, once you see a stuffed Mickey, it makes you feel better. I’m not sure why.”
Those who considered the job too boring or without real chances of promotion simply quit. Cast members who expressed their resistance to TDL’s emotional subjugation in explicit terms were in the minority.
p 133
“Smiles” are produced even through the telephone line.
p 137
The park is obsessed with time standards based on the most efficient way of doing the job. Attractions are timed in seconds and half-seconds. Lines are timed, and retimed, in minutes. There is also an obsession with standardizing the requirements for materials, machines, tools, working conditions, and the staff to fill the job. Wage charts for various hours and shifts are meticulously defined and standardized.
p 139
Shitsuke does not come from the manual. It comes from the heart (kokoro).
Given the emphasis in Japanese companies on education, training, and job rotation, the personnel department was traditionally the most powerful in a Japanese organization.
p 141
The cast members at TDL, like the workers at other service companies in Japan, are not sent to an ethics center. Rather than cultivating the “self” through work, part-timers are expected to assume, temporarily, a “self” prescribed for them in the manual.
p 142
The devil resides in Disneyland, and it is not the Black Ghost, but the manual.
p 148
In the wake of TDL’s enormous success, litle countries have sprouted all over Japan. These include, in a chronological order, Gluck Kingdom in Tokachi City, Hokkaido; Space World in Kyushu; Canadian World in Ashibetsu City, Hokkaido; Tobu Worl dSquare near Nikko; Shima Spanish Village; Sea Paradise in Yokohama; and a Universal Studio Tour to be opened in Osaka.
p 158
In Japan, age cohorts tend to be more coherent in terms of behavior, and life-stage activities—such as school completion, marriage, childbearing, workforce participation, and retirement—are particularly predictable.
p 159
In marketing terms, TDL’s success depends on keeping its repeaters (around 85 percent of all visitors). In addition to adding a new “big attraction” every year or so to draw people to the park, TDL must work itself into everyday life.
Disney enters many homes every Friday morning from 7:30 to 8:00 with the television program Mickey Kids. Hosted by Mickey Mouse and sponsored by TDL, the program is a quick sequence of TDL promotions, commercials for Disney merchandise, and glimpses of short excerpts from Disney cartoons. The program combines lots of Disney happiness with the Japanese adoration of sports and the genki spirit.
p 164
Cartoon characters, now a ubiquitous part of Japanese popular culture, are a successful marketing theme. One can even find them promoting serious services for adults, such as bank accounts. Mitsubishi Bank first put fluffy Sanrio characters on its credit cards and account books and then hired the Disney characters to do its promotion.
The Japanese see the park’s Mickey as more effective and stronger than the original animated Mickey.
p 168
In TDL, one can observe small groups of classmates—han—roaming around together. They usually have some prearranged assignments such as interviewing a gaijin (foreigner) and getting his or her autograph. Han also have some particular prescriptions designed to encourage teamwork.
“Before I left home, my mother gave me 3000 yen. I used some of this money so that all of our group members could buy the same TR-shirt. Our shirts are very beautiful, and we are very happy today. I hope you are not angry,. Now at least we have a pleasant memory.” ~Sincerely, Kumiko Tanaka
p 169
According to official OLC data (published in TDL 1995), women older than eighteen years invariably constitute more than 60 percent of the visitors. The customer profile of the Disney retail stores in Japan similarly shows that the largest age group (around 33 percent) is between 20 and 29 years old, and that 53 percent of the customers are single females.
Jeannie Lo, an American woman who took a leave from Harvard to spend some months as an office lady at Brother Industries’ Nagoya plant in 1986, was amazed at how OLs “cluttered their desks with toys and pins of Disney characters.”
p 171
Although OLs are usually hired as keiyaku-shain, they cannot expect promotion or seniority wages. They are known as shokuba no hana (flowers of the office) — “pretty to look at and decorative but insubstantial and transient.”
Many OLs remain at home with their parents as long as they are single. They can therefore use their income primarily for shopping and consumption: clothing, hobbies, and vacations.
p 173
The Sanrio novelty company, which specializes in cute items, found in a market survey that “items sold to Japanese girls between the age of five and the time of marriage would be bought in America only by girls from four to seven years old” (White 1993:126).
The kawaii style dominated Japanese popular culture in the 1980s, thus coinciding with the formative years of TDL’s success. … Disney characters fitted neatly into this local consumerist realm of the kawaii.
“The essential anatomy of a cute character consists in its being small, soft, infantile, mammalian, round, without bodily orifices, and non-sexual.” In addition, the style should not be traditional Japanese but foreign—in particular American or European. Disney did all that and conquered a top place in the Japanese pantheon of the cute.
p 176
Middle-aged customers account for around 40 percent of TDL’s visitors (TDL 1995: 5). Moreover, it is often the parents who decide when and how often a family will visit TDL. Since TDL’s success depends on securing repeat visitors, it largely depends on catering to a middle-aged market.
p 177
OLC data (TDL 1995) suggest that the average repeater is most likely (65 percent) an adult from the Kanto district (40 perfect from Tokyo itself). S/he has already been to TDL seven or eight times and arrives around 9:00-10:00 AM and leaves around 6:00-7:00 PM, buys a snack and some stationery, eats a hamburger or a pizza for lunch, and probably does Splash Mountain. OLC realizes, of course, that getting the repeaters is its key to success.
…
The main strategy for attracting repeaters is new attractions.
…
The same strategy is also behind OLC’s plans to build a second park, “Disney Sea,” adjoining TDL’s southeast side.
There are several major types of repeat visits in TDL: the family visit (around 35 percent of all visitors), the date (25 percent), the group visit (25 percent), the school excursion (7 percent), and the hospitality tour, or organized groups of workers from a particular company (7 percent).
Although repeaters come from all age groups, the core group is arguably the middle-aged.
p 178
Visitors therefore spend at TDL a sum equal to three or four regular outings in Tokyo. They come back to TDL because they like it and because there is nothing similar to it, despite its expense.
p 179
It is not that TDL is naively received as “America”; the Japanese consumer is more clever than that. I think that this remark conveys an appreciation of TDL as a total environment, complete-unto-itself (as an imagineer would say), a spacious, clean, and safe utopian space. And it’s “fun.”
p 180
Disneyland represents a ‘serious’ date rather than a casual one—also, one suspects, because of cosst as well as ‘wholesome’ environment.
WDW is now the number one honeymoon destination in this country and may soon be also the number one site for marriage.
p 182
Elderly people are usually neither repeaters nor Disney fans. ...
As far as its advertisements are concerned, TDL is a temple of youth.
p 185
IPA members argued that children’s life in Japan is increasingly managed by parents who send them to juku (cram schools) and teachers who do nothing but follow the rigid curricula set by the Ministry of Education.
January 15, 2023
I was looking on libgen for disneyland guide books and stumbled across this, i have no idea why i spent the afternoon reading it lol. it was kinda interesting readying about the disney company and cultural imperialism in Japan. soooooo dry and academic but i felt like i had to see it through
January 14, 2014
This book looked at Tokyo Disneyland from three angles, onstage (the spectacle and marketing), backstage (the company and its workers), and offstage (reception). I read the sections concerned with onstage and offstage as my research interests are less concerned with business management. I chose to read this book in order to consider some aspects of cultural imperialism, domestication, and national identities in the Japanese leisure market. On that end, it was thought provoking, but the arguments did not delve very deep into cultural imperialism and domestication.
Superficially, the organization is fairly straightforward, but the content of the chapters is not well-structured or signposted. Additionally, it may be in part that the Black Ship/sakoku narrative is problematic to me as an historian, but I found the analogy distracting and not productive. Its stated purpose was as a symbol of cultural imperialism; however, the author argues more that TDL is a case of distorted cultural imperialism, with the Japanese imperialists as consumers of western products. This is meant to be "Riding the Black Ship" but that metaphor is never sufficiently expanded on. I also find some of his assertions weak, particularly regarding Meet the World as he is unable to bring forward more than hearsay as evidence for who actually developed the attraction, TDL or EPCOT. Another discussion that would have benefited from more facets was TDL (and Disney theme parks in general) as constructed leisure environments and their reception. Rather than simply attacking the parks as places reminiscent of Brave New World, though without doubt they are that, approaching their use as informed, willful submission to control as a form of leisure would have been an interesting juxtoposition.
Though I do not fully agree with his analysis of reception, particularly among youth in Japan, which may have to do with the publication date of the book and my own biases, I would recommend section III for anyone interested on the issues of youth culture, burikko, Lolita complex, and kawaii as one way to look at those issues.
Superficially, the organization is fairly straightforward, but the content of the chapters is not well-structured or signposted. Additionally, it may be in part that the Black Ship/sakoku narrative is problematic to me as an historian, but I found the analogy distracting and not productive. Its stated purpose was as a symbol of cultural imperialism; however, the author argues more that TDL is a case of distorted cultural imperialism, with the Japanese imperialists as consumers of western products. This is meant to be "Riding the Black Ship" but that metaphor is never sufficiently expanded on. I also find some of his assertions weak, particularly regarding Meet the World as he is unable to bring forward more than hearsay as evidence for who actually developed the attraction, TDL or EPCOT. Another discussion that would have benefited from more facets was TDL (and Disney theme parks in general) as constructed leisure environments and their reception. Rather than simply attacking the parks as places reminiscent of Brave New World, though without doubt they are that, approaching their use as informed, willful submission to control as a form of leisure would have been an interesting juxtoposition.
Though I do not fully agree with his analysis of reception, particularly among youth in Japan, which may have to do with the publication date of the book and my own biases, I would recommend section III for anyone interested on the issues of youth culture, burikko, Lolita complex, and kawaii as one way to look at those issues.
December 8, 2015
This book was written before Disney added a second park in Tokyo, so that's important to note. Overall the book is good, but it doesn't go as deep as I would have liked. It strays into areas I personally didn't have a lot of interest in. That isn't a criticism of the book itself, just effected my enjoyment of it.Not terribly academic in it's language (which is a positive), but it often feels a bit academic in it's writing style, and I think it could've been more fun.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews