Abstract
This paper intends to elucidate the importance of considering the educational objective by examining the theories and the disputes of early movie education. In the first half of the twentieth century, movies were exploited to cultivate students to be militaristic. Although much was written about the value or methods of movie education at that time, there was little research evidence regarding the effectiveness of movie education. They were very subjective, their subjectivities were founded on the concepts of moral education and instrumentalism. In that situation, Yoshio Sekino gave much attention to concepts of movie education and wrote great theses about it. But his point of view about movie education is realistic. Though he insisted that the characteristic of movie education was to express real, vivid and actual lives, Norio Sasaki refuted that on the view of formalism. To explain that realism introduces "grand narrative" easily, a comparison with formalism is very helpful. Through examining the two researchers' dispute, this article describes why realism makes way for the exploitation of militarism.
