Christmas Express (Hometown Express X'mas)
JR Central (JR Tokai)1988
Christmas Express (Hometown Express X'mas) is a 1988 television commercial (series) for JR Central.
The line
You coming home is the best present
Why it works
On a Shinkansen platform at night, a dressed-up teenage girl waits for her long-distance boyfriend; the passengers disperse, he seems not to have come, and then he moonwalks out from behind a pillar holding a gift. Set to Tatsuro Yamashita's “Christmas Eve”, the 1988 spot for the newly privatised JR Central starred a 15-year-old Eri Fukatsu and became the first of a Christmas Express series that ran until 1992. Director Kazuyoshi Hayakawa recalls the railway's brief: a telephone company could only carry voices, but the bullet train carried people to one another. It is studied for selling a rail line through longing rather than speed or service, and for its cultural reach: viewers flooded JR Central with calls asking about the actress and the song, and the series is credited with popularising the idea in Japan of Christmas Eve as a night for couples. Japanese media still cite it as a masterpiece commercial.
Techniques
- Pathos Sells the bullet train through longing, framing it as the thing that carries people to one another rather than a fast service.
- Storytelling A girl waits on a night platform, the crowd disperses and her boyfriend seems absent, until he moonwalks out from behind a pillar with a gift.
Sources · 3
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