From: schoward@nyx.cs.du.edu (Scott Howard)
Subject: Twin Peaks in Japan
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 12:11:34 GMT


The following Article was recently published in the Australian "Sydney
Morning Herald" newspaper, and I though readers of this newsgroup might
find it interesting.
  Scott.
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JUST ANOTHER CRAZY LYNCH MOB

  It might seem strange that people usually knows for their industriousness
fly across the Pacific Ocean to be photographes in plastic sheets.

  But that is what Japanese fans of `Twin Peaks' do on group tours to
Snoqualmie, Washington, the town where the now-defunct television series
was shot. They pretend to be Laura Palmer, the high school homecoming queen
whose body, wrapped in plastic, is found washed up on the beach when the
series opens.

  Long asfter interest in the eerie David Lynch series has faded in the
rest of the world, Japan is in the midst of "Peaker" mania. Several
thousand fans attended mock funerals for Laura Palmer in Tokya and two
other cities earlier this year.

  Some people say there has even been an increase in the populatiry of
cherry pie, the food favoured by one of the characters, the FBI agent, Dale
Cooper.

  The new movie, `Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me', has been playing there
since the middle of May, although it won't open in the United States until
next month - a reverse of the usual pattern.

  But if all this seems strange, the strangest aspect of all might be this:
relatively few people here have actually seen the series. The show is
carried only on pay television satellite channel with a mere 900,000
subscribers.

  Since March 1991, the channel has shown the entire series six times and
it is now on the seventh round. Late this month, it plans to show all the
episodes in a 28-hour marathon.

  A servey taken by the station found that more than 30 per cent of its
subscribers joined just to be able to watch `Twin Peaks'.

  For those who don't subscribe, video-cassettes can be rented - or bought.
A complete set of 14 cassettes sells for US$750.

  Japan has also been awash in `Twin Peaks' paraphernalia. Cinemas showing
the movie are peddling `Twin Peaks' badges, baseball caps, T-shirts and
handheld fans. Bookstores are carrying Japanese version of the books like
`Laura's Diary', `Cooper Speaks Out' and `How to Be a Peaker'.

  Japan Travel Bureau, the nation's largest travel agency, has organised
six group tours, with a total of 300 people, to Snoqualmie. They stay at
the lodge where Cooper stayed, eat cherry pie at the diner where Cooper
ate, and lie on the beach where Laura's body lay. The five-day tour is
priced at US$2750 to US$3450.

  With its complicated plot and quirky characters, the television show was
a phenomenal hit when first broadcast in the United States in April 1990,
but was cancelled a year later as viewers lost interest.

  No-one can fully explain why `Twin Peaks' has generated such a cult
following in Toyko, especially since other American programs liek Dallas
and Dynasty, which were more successful in the United States, failed to win
big audiences in Japan.

  "The way it became popular was unprecidented," said Makoto Takimoto, a
film critic and senior editor of Jiyujikan, a leasure magazine. "I don't
think, generally speaking, that David Lynch's view of the world fits the
Japanese feeling. That's the point I have trouble figuring out."

          The New York Times