Shooting Range of a Film Critic Intending to Change Society

Iwasaki Akira’s View of ‘Mass’

Abstract

　Our task here is to analyse the remarks of Iwasaki Akira（ 1903-81）, a film

critic, as a case study of the historical investigations into the problem of how

the images of ‘mass’ were formed and what role aspects of media like films

played in the course of formation of mass society in Japan.

　　In Chapter 1, we point out that Iwasaki was a person who had been working

on the ‘mass’ problems throughout his life, who had also been regarded as a

man of resistance from wartime to the period of occupation.

　　In Chapter 2, we analyse Iwasaki’s pre-war view of ‘mass’ and made it

clear that he recognized mass as a target capable of enlightenment for social

reform.

　　Chapter 3 throws light on the early post-war views of Iwasaki’s ‘mass’ and

made his sense of enlightened obligation clear.

　　Section 1 of Chapter 4 treats Imamura Taihei’s critical comments on the

proposals of Iwasaki to enlighten the ‘mass’, which can be seen as a transitional

view to the phrase ‘mass as the core’ by Tsurumi Shunsuke and Matsumoto

Toshio. In Section 2, we compare Tsurumi’s thought of the mass （neither passive

nor monolithic） with Iwasaki’s pre-war sense of obligation towards mass

enlightenment. In Section 3, we make a comparison of Iwasaki with Matsumoto,

who talked of the possibility of anti-establishment movement among mass society,

and pointed out that Iwasaki saw negative inclinations towards Fascism in it.

　　To conclude: Iwasaki never stopped talking about the ‘mass’, the images of

which were successively questioned and revised by succeeding generations of

polemicists like Imamura, Tsurumi, Matsumoto. Iwasaki’s works thus performed

should be one of the factors in developing the image of the responsible

mass at the time of the advent of Japanese mass society.