Abstract
Part IV of this series focuses on cultural programs—one of the three pillars of wartime radio broadcasts along with news and recreation for soldiers—especially “lecture broadcasting” and “school broadcasting.”According to Fuji Tada who led the wartime “lecture broadcasts” at NHK, the mission of the lecture broadcasting was to “build up spiritual solidarity of the 100 million people to pursue long, all-out war.” Mitoji Nishimoto who laid the foundation for school broadcasting underlined that the important thing was “to make the public have a sense of unity as they feel that people become bonded together by listening to a same program, which at the same time attach them to the government.”It is not surprising to read those statements now because what the wartime lecture broadcasts and school broadcasts was calling on the home-front men and women as well as children was part of the common sense of that time. Rather, what is unexpected is that both Tada and Nishimoto had been known as intellectuals advocating an antiwar or non-combat stance. Tada had criticized Japan as a colonial empire. Nishimoto who had studied progressive education in the United States had criticized militarism and called for the construction of international peace.When and how did they change? What message did they want to convey to the public? This paper attempts to decipher the struggles of organization men at the mercy of the time based on historical sources while portraying the reality of wartime cultural programs by analyzing broadcast scripts.
