UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Radio Broadcasting and the Politics of Mass Culture in Transwar Japan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Ji Hee Jung Committee in Charge: Professor Takashi Fujitani, Co-Chair Professor Stefan Tanaka, Co-Chair Professor Frank Biess Professor Valerie Hartouni Professor Lisa Yoneyama 2010 Copyright Ji Hee Jung, 2010 All rights reserved The Dissertation of Ji Hee Jung is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-chair Co-chair University of California, San Diego 2010 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page .............................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents...........................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements........................................................................................................vi Vita................................................................................................................................ ix Abstract...........................................................................................................................x Introduction Rethinking Radio Broadcasting in Transwar Japan........................................................1 1. The Politics of Representation, Japanese Historiography, and Radio ....................1 2. Beyond Binaries: Transwar Broadcasting and Mass Audiences ............................7 3. The Politics of Mass Culture ................................................................................14 4. Chapter Organization............................................................................................17 Chapter 1 The Making of Radio Listeners: Listening Guidance and Habits of Listening in Transwar Group Listening............................................................................................22 1.1. Introduction........................................................................................................22 1.2. Listening to Radio: A New Mode of Engagement ............................................24 1.3. The Group Listening Movement: Making “Proper” Habits of Listening..........29 1.4. Listening Habits during Total War ....................................................................39 1.5. Listening Habits and the U.S. occupation..........................................................47 1.6. Rajio no tsudoi (Radio Listening Group): “Old” Habits and “New” Subjectivity in Postwar Group Listening..................................................................54 1.7. Closing: Habits of Radio Listening and the Subject Formation of Tranwar Japan .........................................................................................................................63 Chapter 2 Radio Singing Show Nodo jiman (Amateur Hour) and Audience Participation in Transwar Japan .............................................................................................................70 2.1. Introduction........................................................................................................70 2.2. Ordinary People Perform on Radio: “The Liberation of Microphones”?..........73 2.3. The Rise of Amateur Performance ....................................................................76 2.4. The Making of Self-Entertaining National Subjects on Wartime Radio ...........85 2.5. Amateur Performances, the Imperial Airwaves, and the Community of Sympathy ..................................................................................................................92 2.6. Self-Entertaining Subjects off the Hook..........................................................100 2.7. Voluntarism, Mobilization, and Liberation: Nodo jiman and the Postwar Politics of Memory .................................................................................................110 2.8. Singing Individuals and the Rebuilding of National Community ...................124 2.9. The Culture of “Ordinary Japanese”: The Exclusionary Logic of the Postwar National Community.................................................................................138 2.10. Closing: Amateur Performances and the Postwar Longing for a iv Community of Sympathy........................................................................................147 Chapter 3 The Quiz Show: A ‘New’ Mode of Audience Participation and the Construction of the Postwar Subject ................................................................................................152 3.1. Introduction......................................................................................................152 3.2. A “New” Mode of Participation ......................................................................156 3.3. Experimenting the Genre: Hanashi no izumi (Fountain of Knowledge).........168 3.4. Familiarizing with the Genre ...........................................................................183 3.5. Configuring the Future: Quiz Shows and Postwar Rebuilding of the Nation-state.............................................................................................................194 Chapter 4 Radio Serial Drama Kane no naru oka (Bell Hill): The Vision of Rehabilitation in Occupied Japan.......................................................................................................200 4.1. Introduction......................................................................................................200 4.2. Discursive Construction of “Furōji (Juvenile Vagrants)” ...............................203 4.3. Redeemable Children and Child Savers: Liberal Guidance and Sentimental Connections ........................................................................................216 4.4. Sentimentalism, the Aesthetic of Commitment, and the National Community .............................................................................................................226 4.5. Father Flanagan Goes to Japan: The Vision of Rehabilitation and U.S. Global Hegemony...................................................................................................237 4.6. Kikuta Kazuo, Juvenile Vagrants, and the Celebration of New Subjectivity .............................................................................................................244 4.7. Closing: Three Redemption Stories of Juvenile Vagrants in the Transwar Transpacific ............................................................................................................253 Epilogue......................................................................................................................259 Works Cited ................................................................................................................264 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my co-advisors Professors Takashi Fujitani and Stefan Tanaka. I could not have wished for more generous, supportive, and intellectually-challenging advisors. I greatly benefited not only from their vast knowledge and intellectual rigor but also from their constant and close attention to my ideas, research, and writing throughout the course of my graduate studies. I am also very grateful to my committee members Professors Frank Biess, Val Hartouni, and Lisa Yoneyama for their invaluable words of advice and encouragement. In addition, I also want to thank other faculty members at UCSD for generously providing helpful advice and references, especially, Professors Boatema Boateng, Pamela Radcliff, Denny Widener, Michael Schudson, and Ariana Hernandez-Reguant. I am also grateful to Professor Todd Henry for his comments on Chapter Four. In Japan, I received help from many scholars and graduate students. Professor Yoshimi Shunya generously hosted me in his excellent program and made available his support in a number of ways. I am greatly indebted to Yoshimi Seminar members at Tokyo University for their incisive comments on my ideas. My deepest appreciation goes to Professor Takeyama Akiko who is the pioneer of the study of Japanese radio broadcasting. My study greatly owes to her invaluable scholarly works and life-long efforts. She generously shared with me her vast knowledge and numerous rare materials from her personal collections. I cannot thank her enough for her hospitality and warm encouragement. I also want to thank Professor Yamaguchi Makoto for his insightful suggestions and encouragement. In addition, I was lucky to receive advice vi and help from Professors Kitayama Kenzō, Masashi Yazawa, and Mark E. Caprio during my research in Japan. I also want to thank Ms. Matsuko Kyoto for her help. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Marlene Mayo for her helpful suggestions for my project, encouragement, and support. Professor Yamamoto Taketoshi also provided kind advice during our brief encounters at the National Archives and the Prange Collection. I wish to thank Sanae Isozumi at the UCSD Library, Nagamine Shigetoshi at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies Library, Tokyo University, Lawrence H. McDonald at the National Archives, at College Park, Maryland, Eiko Sakaguchi, Ken Shimada, and Amy Wasserstrom at the Prange Collection, Kakeya Shōji at the Japan Youth Center (Seinenkan), and generous staffs at the NHK Museum of Broadcasting, the Tsubouchi Memorial