Study On Koizumi’s Government Communication Strategy

Japan has a long history of using the media for political communication.Since the early 1960s,political parties and politicians have gradually realized the importance of political communication and have been actively adapting to the media environment,using a variety of communication strategies to guide public opinion.Most of the"communication strategies" are used by political power to gain influence through the media and to control and manipulate public opinion,with the aim of gaining public understanding and approval,thereby increasing support and gaining or consolidating a position of power.The series of communication strategies adopted by the government during Koizumi’s administration in 2001 were dramatic,strategic and systematic,and gave a new contemporary connotation to Japan’s political-media relations.Koizumi’s use of communication strategies made him one of the few "long-lived prime ministers"in postwar Japan.Under the operation mechanism of the communication strategy,Koizumi’s government adapted to the laws of media reporting,built a mimetic environment of "theater politics," took control of agenda setting,and achieved control over the flow of information in the political system,while the media was reduced to a tool of government propaganda.The media has become a tool of government propaganda and has never escaped the fate of political domination.The prevalence of political marketing has also given rise to the excessive consumption of political entertainment.In this environment of political consumption,the government’s communication strategy is essentially to use the media to construct a political landscape,to evoke the emotional demands of the people with a pan-political and populist approach to the struggle between us and the enemy,to gain public opinion,and to gain legitimacy for the regime.The government’s political communication process reflects the accelerated operation of Japan’s bubble politics and the general trend of social conservatization.This article examines the characteristics,specific measures,and trends of the Japanese government’s control and use of the media,and then explores the mechanism of the Japanese government’s communication strategy during Junichiro Koizumi’s rule.The purpose is to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the communication strategy and the relationship between the Japanese government and the media during the Koizumi administration.In this era of visual effects and emotional logic,it is worth exploring how the government should prevent the proliferation of media-oriented communication policies and build a more open political communication mechanism.