Early Japanese Television Studies Afflicted with “Archive Fever”

Abstract

This paper reviews the research method employed for my dissertation, which involved watching all the available episodes of a series in the NHK archives and linking this experience to Jacques Derrida's concept of the archive. This article highlights the power of archives and the presence of 'ghosts' that appear to resist them. Archives have the power to select and discard materials, and their structure means they constantly raises the specters of what was not preserved. Derrida described such structures as 'Archive Fever', but this article shares my experiences of getting lost and encountering ghosts to address these issues.