A Study of the Urban Audience in the 1930's (<Special Symposium>Discussins on the New Theory of Audience)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the audience of mass media historically. Recent historical studies have focused on the quantitative development of mass media. They treated people merely as audience. For mass media study, this may be natural and necessary, but their viewpoints were insufficient to clarify the roles of mass media in daily life. For the people called "audience", existence as media audience was only one aspect of their daily life. The necessary method is to treat people in their daily life as a whole. This article examines the daily life of the people who lived in the Sumiyoshi-Apartment house, Fukagawa, Tokyo in the 1930's. This apart-ment house was built by Dohjunkai to accomodate urban lower-class people.It was designed according to the newest ideas of architecture, so it has been called a symbol of modernism in the 1930's. Analyzing many aspects of its inahbitants' daily life and mentality, it has evidently been found that their way of life did not change so much. It contrasts with the kaleidoscopic change in the amusement quarters of Tokyo. The inhabitants, having poor income, could afford to read the newspapers, but could not enjoy many other entertainments. These people, whose educational standards were not high, had poor knowledge about public affairs in the 1930's when Japan spread the war in China. When directly facing social problems they formed their peculiar attitudes, which were not so clearly-structured as the intellectuals' attitudes, but which were deeply rooted in daily life. The government was more troubled by their attitude than by that of the intellectuals, who were "converted" and participated in the militaristic policy. However, they could not extend their logic to public affairs, so gradually many of them departed from their daily-life mentality and finally conformed themselves to the national policy.