“Tokyo-Hyaku-Bijin” as Media Experience

Establishing the Processof Media Event Focusing on Newspaper Articles in the Late19th Century

Abstract

Many scholars have pointed out that in Meiji and Taisho period Japan,

event culture and the media industry （particularly newspaper companies）

came to be deeply involved with each other. However, what was the process

through which such media events came into existence? In this paper I focus on

a geisha popularity contest called “Tokyo-Hyaku-Bijin” （literally, “One Hundred

Beauties in Tokyo”）, which was held in Asakusa in July 1891, and examine thekind of media-related event it became. I found that, first, the event’s reality was

constructed both on the pages of newspapers and in the world outside of them

due to their sharing of a variety of information about it. Second, the event was

a forerunner of the modern celebrity system in its use of photographs that

made it possible for many unspecified people to consume images of these geisha.

Namely, in “One Hundred Beauties” we find an experience involving two

forms of media. Furthermore，this event was also the beginning of the media

event cycle in which newspaper media outlets would report on and advertise

events they had planned themselves.