11PM
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
The show that invented Japanese late-night adult television — jazz, mahjong, fishing and nudity.
11PM was Japan's first late-night television show with adult content, a mostly live wide show broadcast on the Nippon TV network from 8 November 1965 to 30 March 1990, 8,625 episodes in all. Nippon TV made the Monday, Wednesday and Friday editions in Tokyo; Yomiuri TV made Tuesday and Thursday in Osaka. It was modelled on America's Tonight Show and opened every night to a scat theme and an animation of line dancers.
It began as a current-affairs show hosted by a magazine editor and drew almost no viewers. The television writer Kyosen Ohashi suggested bringing in 'play', the things television had not touched, and ended up hosting himself until 1985, with Yukiji Asaoka beside him on Fridays for sixteen of those years. His Mondays mixed the Naked Reports series on the sex trade, with the entertainer Maki Carrousel among its reporters, with serious specials on wartime forced labour and 'comfort women', on Okinawa's return to Japan and on relations with South Korea; the show won a Galaxy Award in 1972. Fridays were for leisure: fishing, mahjong lessons, new cars and a phone-in board game. Kinya Aikawa hosted Wednesdays from 1974 to 1986. In Osaka the writer Giichi Fujimoto hosted from the first week, with segments such as a tour of secret hot springs. Year-end specials included a strip-show contest.
Parents' and women's groups called it vulgar, and in 1975 the Communist Party chairman Kenji Miyamoto called it pornographic, while the writer Hisashi Inoue called it the best programme on television. Losing viewers to rival late-night shows such as TV Asahi's Tonight, it ended in March 1990.
Starring
Kyosen OhashiHost
A television writer turned host who brought 'play' into the show and fronted it from 1966 until 1985.
Yukiji AsaokaAssistant
An actress and singer who sat beside Ohashi on Fridays for sixteen years, the other half of the show's best-known double act.
Giichi FujimotoHost (Osaka)
A novelist who hosted the Osaka editions made by Yomiuri TV from the show's first week.
Kinya AikawaHost (Wednesdays)
An actor and radio personality who hosted the Wednesday editions from 1974 to March 1986.
Maki CarrouselReporter
An entertainer who was among the reporters of Naked Reports, the Monday series on the sex trade.
Why it matters
11PM set the pattern for Japanese late-night television, and its pattern was a mixture that later shows would split apart: reports from strip shows and soaplands one night, wartime forced labour, 'comfort women' and Okinawa another. Its host said that for one serious series he had earned the right to talk nonsense for the other 364 days. That bargain is what makes the show worth remembering. Sex sold the late-night slot, and the slot, once sold, carried subjects that rarely drew ratings; even Nippon TV's annual charity telethon grew out of one of its specials. The same programme sat near the top of the lists of shows parents least wanted their children to see, and was called the best on television by a leading novelist. It leaves open whether that bargain was a clever use of freedom, or one paid for by the women whose bodies filled the other nights.