Programmed Viewership examines the concept of “program” in Japanese cinema as an organizing framework that links marketing and promotion, exhibition and distribution, viewing practices in public and domestic spaces. Rea Amit defines “program” as the ideological infrastructure or platform that perpetuates habitual and ritualistic patterns in film production and reception. Amit takes a holistic approach to understanding more than a century of Japanese cinema through the analysis of material film ephemera, cinema theatre, film content, and viewership. This framework positions programming, rather than provenance, as the decisive factor that confers a film’s cultural and institutional identity. While earlier scholarship has gestured toward loosening the tie between cinematic identity and its nation of origin, Programmed Viewership extends this insight by emphasizing that production constitutes only one dimension of a broader programmatic system.

Rea Amit is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of Oklahoma.

Table of Contents

List of Figures 
Acknowledgments 
Preface: Media Archeology Beyond Firsts and Lasts 
1. Interfacing with the Program: From Block-Printing to Block-Booking 
2. The Program Territorialized: Timelines, Space, and Place
3. The Program Televised: Domestic Viewing and Tele-Mediality
4. The Japanese Serial Universe
5. Program-able Viewership: Social Media, Reception, and Participation
Postscript: Deprograming and Reprograming 
Bibliography
Filmography