Why so many loudspeaker announcements?

13 comments

1. If you’re going to sleep all day you could have just stayed home. Get up, lazy bones.

2. Japan has this juxtaposition of love of peace and quiet, and love of constant unnecessary noise from all sides.

   You can see it with arcade games, pachinko, digital Casio watches, etc.

   As someone with an apartment exposed to multiple streets, I absolutely despite all the load pre-election complaining crap. Never have I ever seen this in any European city, and I feel like it should be illegal.

3. I did have a laugh once at a beach resort, the announcements the trucks made.
   Old people time for exercise.
   No barbeques.
   Young people go home. and so on during the day.

   I was half expecting to hear ” will the people on the beach stop having fun”.

4. I love it actually. It makes it unique even if it’s annoying.

   Expect the recording of the guy talking in Nippori station he’s really annoying to me lol

5. In many towns the public address systems are operated by the “Kominkan” (公民館) and staffed by retirees who have a lot of time on their hands. 7:30am may be early to you, but that’s mid- morning to these senior citizens.

6. If you really want to get to the bottom of it:

   アナウンス or チャイム is synonymous with the dystopian past Japan had to systemically command social compliance in people. Back a couple decades ago when we were more “sheeple” than we once were. Its a sort of remnant of the war era but since its become so ingrained in Japanese society its just used everywhere because its effective at getting people’s attentions.

   Except, rather than regard it as dystopian its been adopted into culture on many levels because its widely regarded as convenient.

   If you’ve attended Japanese elementary schools you’ll see where the programming begins.

   Source: I am Japanese and my parents taught me this back when I was a curious kid asking the same question. Once you realize its dystopian roots you’ll never hear チャイム the same, haha.

   A lot of Japanese people are actually cautiously aware of the negative connotations of チャイム being used in schools (dystopian application and its a bit dehumanizing) which is why more and more schools are moving away from the チャイム system.

7. Someone old explained this to me.

   Back in the times when Japan was rapidly developing and becoming the industrial powerhouse of Asia, noise coming from construction or related to it was seen as a cheerful reminder of the great times coming. It helped to fight the anxiety over the image of Japan being backwards and industrialisation was the antipode of being backwards at the time.

   Weirdly enough, Japan seems to be stuck in that early 20th century mindset in many ways. It’s just my speculation, but changes don’t come easy here. People needed a painful transformation to become an industrialised nation and now when another transformation is well due, people overdo their old attachment rituals.

8. For some reason the local politicians decided my quiet street corner was the perfect place to stop their trucks and give impromptu speeches. I finally snapped one morning at 9am, opened all my windows and blasted the song Bleed by Meshuggah.

   The satisfaction of seeing them panic, not know what to do.. then lose the volume battle was fucking majestic. I urge anyone to invest in a large speaker system purely to fight these arseholes.

9. How else would you know it’s time to start overtime?

10. I guess Japanese people just have a difference sense of what noise is annoying and what can be ignored.

    An American talking in a loud voice on the train gets dirty looks, yet a politician can part a car with loudspeakers three-meters in front of my window and shout their name over and over again and people think that is acceptable.

11. Tangential but the call to get out of the pool and do some calisthenics is both amusing and amazing that nobody objects.

12. I like it. It’s nice. With the exception of towns that play the early morning exercise one.

    Why do I think it’s nice?
    Tow criers or announcements bring everyone together. I get that it’s kind of been made “redundant” by the internet, mail, and every other form of communication, but it’s the one things that binds a whole town together – and we don’t really have that anymore in the slowest… so I like it and am sad when I’m in a town in Japan that DOESNT have three time a day chimes.

13. Hahah.

    Walk into a supermarket where they have a loudspeaker in the sashimi section and a loudspeaker in the tofu section.

    Both playing different songs on repeat.

    I think locals are better than gating out peripheral stimuli somehow than foreigners. Not saying it’s genetic , probably ingrained at school.

    You only have to see mamachari and school kids crossing the road without looking to question if people are actually aware of their surroundings.