What is the Satirical Play "A Day in the Life of the Namihira Family" That Teaches Ultimate Test Marketing?

"A Day in the Life of the Namihira Family"
"SF Fantasia 5: Satire Edition" Published August 10, 1978 / Fujiko F. Fujio Complete Works "SF/Unique Short Stories" Vol. 4

A creator I follow mutually on note wrote an article about the movie "The Truman Show", which I enjoyed reading very much. I saw it when it was released, and I remembered that when I watched that movie, I thought, it's like "A Day in the Life of the Namihira Family".

So, I re-read "A Day in the Life of the Namihira Family," and reading it again now, I realized that it might be a work that was quite ahead of its time, with the theme of ultimate test marketing.

Therefore, in this article, I would like to examine the content of the "marketing" that appears in this work while organizing the historical background in which it was written.

First, an overview of the work.

This work was contributed to the fifth volume, "Satire Edition," of the SF anthology "SF Fantasia," published by Gakken in the 1970s.

This series was a magazine published in a total of 7 volumes, and under a visual-oriented editorial policy, it gathered a super luxurious lineup of writers for the included works and SF commentary. Although it was structured as an introductory book to SF, it is a series that even today, core SF fans buy and sell at high prices.

Fujiko F. sensei's assignment was a short manga for the "Satire Edition." The combination of satire and Fujiko F. might seem like oil and water at first glance. This is because one cannot imagine the master of children's manga creating works filled with irony.

However, in Fujiko sensei's unique short stories, he actually drew many works that were full of irony and looked down on society from an angle, as if to vent the frustration accumulated from creating for children.

A representative work of this would be "Gekiga Obake no Q-taro". I will examine this work in detail later, but it is a shocking work that hits hard on the fact that Shotaro, now an adult, is no longer in a period where he can live happily with a ghost. It is no exaggeration to say that I started my research after learning the breadth of F sensei, who could even draw such works for adults.

Now, let's look at the content of the work.

This work is a story about an ordinary family.
It is a four-person household consisting of a father (45), mother (40), eldest daughter (first year of university), and eldest son (first year of junior high school).

Their sense of living is middle-class..

This middle-class consciousness is an important point.

When reading the "Public Opinion Survey on National Life" around 1978, when this work was written, in response to the question of what their standard of living was, 90% of the public answered that their lives were middle-class. Since the population exceeded 100 million, this trend strengthened, and it was called the "total middle-class society."

The era of high growth had ended, the oil shock had been overcome, and it seems like a very happy era now, where people were enjoying a prosperous life.

In such a middle-class society, it is a story of a family whose average tendencies right in the middle are reflected in every figure.

Average income, medical expenses, time from waking up to leaving for work, breakdown of the mother's free time, expenditure on durable consumer goods, the mother's bust and hip size, eating habits, programs they prefer to watch, the eldest son's study time—all such data are positioned at the center of the national life survey.

Their leisure activities are also average. The whole family goes out to see the World Expo, the Mona Lisa, and pandas; they buy jumbo lottery tickets and kombucha; the mother and daughter go to see the movie Proof of the Man, and the son watches Space Battleship Yamato from the first day. Overseas trips are planned, and the treadmill is being used less and less.

They are a family that can be called the quintessential typical family, or Mini-Japan.

The story captures a trivial day in the life of such an average family.

However, just depicting daily life does not make for a drama or a satire. What characterizes this work is the adult perspective brought into this family, which is marketing of purchasing behavior. Marketing in this case is a method of using an average family in the world as a virtual model, capturing and analyzing their hobbies and preferences to reveal the median and the greatest common divisor of the world.

In modern times, I think these are methods called targeting or profiling, but back then, it was called lifestyle research.

The reality behind the cool English word "marketing" is just finding the average value. Such a cold perspective can be glimpsed in this work. But conversely, it seems that the method of taking averages worked precisely because it was a total middle-class society. Bestsellers, hit songs that everyone hums, talked-about movies, electrical appliances that need replacing... I get the feeling that it was an era where one could feel secure by being deeply immersed in such standardization.

In today's era, diversification is shouted, and it is unclear if the average value is truly the median. Music genres are subdivided, and the same goes for anime, manga, novels, dramas, and movies. Even if you aim for the volume zone, it is no longer as thick as it was in the 70s.

This work contains satire and irony toward middle-class society, but perhaps the sense of this satire is not felt as much in today's era.

This Namihira family is equipped with a test marketing function. This is the part where I recalled this work from "The Truman Show." In other words, they send things like clothes to the Namihira family, which is a mini-Japan, and have them choose one to find out what will become popular throughout Japan in the future.

This work has a clever ending. Among the clothes sent to the eldest daughter of the Namihira family, she chooses a super mini-skirt dress. It makes you think that next year's trend will be mini-skirts, but the man from the research company monitoring the Namihira family adds an explanation.

Don't expect the mini-skirt trend... She chose it before, but her old man scolded her... It seems it will be impossible for a few more years.

It is a stylish punchline that says when an era moves forward, it takes a little time to overcome the obstacles.

Bonus...

By the way, a few years ago, I heard that Shizuoka Prefecture is often chosen as the optimal location for test marketing to take the average value of all of Japan. When I remembered it, I wanted to look it up, and when I searched, I found the following article. It's interesting, so I want to write it down.

I also remembered an acquaintance who is a magazine editor saying that they would pre-release only in Shizuoka to see how it sells before expanding to nationwide sales. Even while saying it is an era of individuality, marketing that seeks the median still seems to be quite effective.

◇Reasons why Shizuoka Prefecture is said to be a suitable place for test marketing◇

1. It has characteristics close to the national market
Shizuoka Prefecture has demographic factors such as age-specific population composition ratios that are close to the national average. Economic figures and opinion survey data are at the national average. Various indicators such as civil power exceed the national average, and the risk of testing is relatively low.
2. The climate is mild and there are few differences due to weather conditions. 3. It has an appropriate market size.
It is easy to test with a market size of about 3% of the national total. It can be deployed at a cost commensurate with the market size.

4. Media costs are cheaper compared to the Tokyo metropolitan area and the Kansai area There is a broadcasting network only within Shizuoka Prefecture, and radio/TV media does not leak outside. Conversely, it is difficult for radio waves from other prefectures to enter. As for newspapers, the Shizuoka Shimbun is distributed with a household penetration rate of about 60%, and it can be covered by one paper.

5. It is an independent area as a market Shizuoka Prefecture has three economic zones—eastern, central, and western—with almost the same level of area power, and the industrial structure of each area is different. (By synthesizing these at the prefecture level, it resembles the entire Japanese market.) You can proceed with tests simultaneously while comparing the characteristics of each area.