I translated and re-uploaded the article that was uploaded in 2006.
It's about recent TV commercials for tobacco products, but JT (Japan Tobacco) hardly promotes their tobacco products. Recently, it's almost non-existent. Most of the commercials seem to be filled with advertisements for tobacco manners, corporate image, and beverage commercials such as coffee, "roots" and "peach natural water," "drinking tea house," "green tea," and "senoby." Additionally, the company name is only listed as "JT" and not "Japan Tobacco." Is this also due to the times? Is it shameful to display their own company name? While it has long been said that smoking is bad for one's health, even opinion advertisements from the Japan Medical Association have begun airing on TV saying "smoking is also bad for the people around you." Smoking areas are getting smaller and moving to inconvenient places, and it's becoming a difficult situation for smokers. As someone who doesn't smoke at all, I don't know the struggles that smokers are going through. By the way, my father, who has been smoking for 40 years, has quit smoking at home. He quit perfectly. According to him, he's not quitting smoking, he's just taking a break from it. He said that if he didn't stop smoking with a relaxed attitude, he would feel pressured.
Returning to the topic of TV commercials, in the 1980s, when TV commercials for tobacco products were still aired, most of them featured foreigners (mostly white people with blond hair) smoking comfortably, as if in a scene from a foreign movie. Among them, the most impressive one for me is the TV commercial for "LARK."
(Cigarette)JT Mild coded. Lark Speak LARK 1988
In the commercial, a man appears in a suspicious trading place. Another man, identical to him, appears and they both show their photos to the trade partner, who is at a loss as to which one is the real person. Then, an idea for confirmation appears. The trade partner offers a cigar to one of them, and one of the men immediately tries to light it with a lighter. However, the other man takes out a "LARK" and says, "Speak LARK!" The man with the lighter is exposed as a fake and taken away. The actor played two roles in the commercial, but back then, it was impossible to process it with computer graphics (CG), so it was obvious that one of them was wearing a mask.
I translated and re-uploaded the article that was uploaded in 2006.
Looking back, it was probably the end of the year in 1998 when I was organizing my room. I was thinking of disposing of some old VHS videotapes and decided to check their contents before doing so. It was when I played the tape that I was hit by a nostalgic shock from the footage from around 1989, especially the TV commercial part that moved me. I thought I had to somehow save this footage, so I bought a video capture board at the beginning of 1999 and started capturing it from dozens of VHS tapes I had at home. The work was quite hard due to the performance of the computer at the time (Pentium II 400MHz) and the HDD capacity was only about 10GB. Sometimes frames dropped during capture, and it took time to edit and compress the footage for saving. I continued to stare at the hourglass and my computer screen night after night.
The first TV commercial that captured my heart was this one:
"Fuji Color SUPER HR Minamino Yoko ♪ Hideaki Tokunaga, 1987"
Minamino Yoko is wearing a light purple cardigan and staring intently while Hideaki Tokunaga sings "Shining~♪" (Minamino was really cute back then).
"Lion Page One Nishimura Tomomi ♪ Alfee, around 1987"
Although she is now labeled as the originator of natural stupidity, at the time, I feel like she was still a legitimate idol. I think it was around the time of her debut (the dates may be inaccurate since they rely on my memory).
Then, my friend D got hooked on this one:
"JT Libera Mild"
It features a line of blonde women on stage who turn into the screen and the letters LIBERA are highlighted by spotlights. The hands and feet are also shaped like LIBERA. Does anyone remember this?
And then I thought of something at that time. "Won't the TV commercials we're watching now become nostalgic footage someday?" It's actually true. Looking back, what happened at that time has already become nostalgic. In the end, I decided to proceed with capturing old VHS tapes and TV commercials from that time in parallel. And now, I have collected 20,000 TV commercials (as of 2006).
私のChatGPTの問答の練習の記録です。
ChatGPTのよくある質問で、日本の少子化問題の解決策を聞いてみました。
質問：
日本の人口が東京に集中している問題と、賃貸物件の家賃の問題を絡めて日本の少子化問題の解決策を論じてください。小学5年生の読解力しかない50歳のオジサンが理解できる文章でお願いします。
回答：
こんにちは、私はChatGPTです。日本では、少子化問題が深刻化しています。この問題にはいくつかの要因がありますが、今回は日本の人口が東京に人口が集中している問題と、賃貸物件の家賃の問題に着目して、解決策を考えてみましょう。
まず、東京に人口が集中していることが少子化問題に与える影響は大きいです。東京には多くの就職先があるため、若者や夫婦は東京に移り住むことが多く、地方や他の都市から人が流出しています。その結果、地方や他の都市では高齢化が進んでいる一方で、東京では若年層の割合が高くなっています。この人口の偏りが、少子化問題に拍車をかけているといえます。
さらに、賃貸物件の家賃の問題も少子化問題に影響を与えています。東京をはじめとする都市部では、家賃が高騰しているため、若者や夫婦が結婚や出産をためらう要因の1つになっています。また、子育てに必要なスペースや設備が整った住居が、手頃な価格で入手できないという問題もあります。
では、少子化問題を解決するにはどうすればよいのでしょうか。一つの解決策として、地方における就職先の拡大や創出が考えられます。地方での生活が魅力的になるように、住環境の整備や子育て支援の充実など、様々な施策が必要です。
また、東京などの都市部での家賃の問題については、低価格帯の賃貸住宅の供給を増やすことが求められます。政府や企業が、公的な資金や施設を活用して、手頃な家賃で質の高い住居を提供することが必要です。また、地方に移住する若者や夫婦には、地方への移住を促進するための手厚い支援策が必要です。
以上のように、少子化問題を解決するためには、地方の活性化や低価格帯の住居の供給など、様々な施策が必要となります。また、子育て支援や教育など、子育て環境の整備も欠かせません。さらに、女性の社会進出を促進することで、女性が働きやすい社会を作り、仕事と子育てを両立しやすくすることが必要です。
このような施策を実施することで、地方や都市部の若年層の割合が増え、少子化問題を解決することができます。また、東京などの都市部に人口が偏らなくなることで、地方や他の都市の活性化にもつながり、日本全体の発展につながることが期待されます。
以上が、日本の少子化問題に対する解決策の一例です。少子化問題は、今後ますます深刻化していくことが予想されますが、政府や企業、個人の努力によって、解決することができると信じています。
