2019 年 95 巻 p. 143-162
The purpose of this paper is to explore how television documentaries as a
particular mode of expression were formed through an investigation of the
composition of sound recording as a prehistory of television documentaries.
By tracing the genealogy of the radio programs Man on the Street, which
started broadcasting during the occupation of Japan at the end of World War
II, and Social Survey, one of its spinoffs, this paper examines the formation process
of television documentaries from the following three points. First, this
paper focuses on the fact that particular documentary aesthetics were imported
under the leadership of the General Headquarters (GHQ), and examine these
modes of expression within the dynamic of broadcast policy. Second, it examines
how Japanese staff who actually produced these programs merged their
ideas with the occupation army’s to create a unique form of Japanese radio documentary.
Thirdly, it demonstrates how the democratic program ideas presented
by GHQ became sharply distinguished as what would be called Rokuon-
Kōsei. These points are investigated from a detailed technical, historical and
formal analysis.
This paper presents two concluding points: 1) that opinions of socially vulnerable
communities became newly accessible in radio broadcasting after
World War II and 2) that this was made possible by a brusque and minimalist
editing method that was developed with the intention of broadcasting these
subaltern opinions with little modification. This genealogically leads us to the
television documentary The Real Face of Japan, which was produced with a
new montage theory that until then had not been done in the documentaries
and culture films, and was subsequently highly praised by documentarists and
critics. Thus, this paper offers a new analytical point of view for reviewing
early television documentaries through describing the formation process of documentary
modes of expression called Rokuon-Kōsei in earlier radio documentaries.