In January 2018, the Trump administration marked the first anniversary of its inauguration that had stunned the world. What will the policies, words, and actions of President Trump, whose priority is to further pursue national interests under the slogan of “America first,” bring about to the U.S. society as well as to the U.S.—Japan relationship? In order to study the attitudes of the American and the Japanese, NHK conducted the “U.S.—Japan Simultaneous Public Opinion Survey” prior to the anniversary.The survey finds that 33% of the respondents in the U.S. and 18% in Japan have a favorable opinion of President Trump—figures are low in both countries. In the U.S., people who have a favorable opinion are limited to republican supporters, white people, the middle—aged　and older, and rural residents. Many Americans think President Trump has done more to divide the country, and opinions are split on tighter regulations on immigrants. Meanwhile, the current state of the U.S. economy is received well. Regarding the administration’s protectionist policies, those who support “America first” and tariff increase on foreign products respectively outnumber those who oppose. On contrast, in Japan, the majority have a “negative” opinion on “America first.”Regarding the current U.S.—Japan relations, around a half of the respondents in both countries find it excellent or good. To a question on the U.S—Japan alliance, many Americans and Japanese regard each other’s country as a reliable ally. The Americans and the Japanese share a common perception that North Korea's nuclear and missile program is a threat, and over a half of people prefer non—military solutions such as “negotiation” and “economic pressure” in both countries alike.

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Japanese local media organizations are increasingly using platforms such as Yahoo! News, SmartNews, and LINE NEWS. Initially, this move was mainly led by local newspapers, but we have seen more and more local broadcasters making inroads into platforms in recent years, and news provided by local broadcasters, which had been consumed solely in each area, started to “cross the border.” Consequently, local information and problems are becoming increasingly visualized at the national level.Similarly, different types of media are visibly “intermingling”-while radio stations are eagerly going online and posting transcriptions converted from audio to text, newspapers are posting videos and becoming more like television. As a result, new moves have appeared in various media organizations. For instance, radio stations are now shifting from audio to text, having more access from out-of-area listeners than from local　listeners. On the other hand, broadcasters are purchasing scoop videos from newspapers that have turned into “television”. Furthermore, some local media started distributing videos nationwide in collaboration with platform companies.Meanwhile, there have been some cases where news distributed by local broadcasters to nationwide audience became the target of groundless abuse and calumny on the internet.These media organizations are going through trial and error to seek the best option of the new types of information delivery via platforms. These efforts may trigger new perspectives other than the traditional Tokyo-oriented one. When broadcasters finally overcome the conventional centralized mindset and present alternative views, broadcasting will be able to further serve democracy.

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Broadcasting in Japan will mark the centennial anniversary of its first broadcast in 2025, seven years from now. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the depiction and editing of each book of Hososhi [History of Broadcasting, a series of chronicles of Japanese broadcasting published by NHK (hereinafter “Chronicle”) and to find clues to how to summarize and depict the 100 years of broadcasting.The paper focuses on four Chronicles, in which the history of broadcasting in Japan is comprehensively summarized by NHK. 1) Hososhi [The History of Broadcasting] (1951), commonly known as “25-Year History” 2) Nippon hososhi [The History of Broadcasting in Japan] (1964), commonly known as “35-Year History” 3) Hoso gojunen shi [Fifteen Years of Broardcating] (1977) 4) Nijusseiki hososhi [The History of Broadcasting in Japan in the 20th Century] (2001)One of the distinct characteristics of the Chronicles is the fact that each book covers the complete history of Japanese broadcasting, not just adding new chapters, but featuring and re-editing the whole historical events up to the publication.This indicates that each book has different perspectives with different perception of broadcasting, different priorities in organizing and analyzing a great number of events, and different stance for the depictions of whole history. The paper looks into the above aspects as the “historical perspectives” of each Chronicle. The author explores the transition of how different perspectives of each Chronicle influenced specific depictions of the historical events.With this approach, the author aims to present the significance of the perspectives in compiling Chronicles to offer clues to how to examine the 100 years of history of broadcasting.

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A major characteristic of the NHK Japanese Time Use Survey is the survey’s continuity that allows time-series comparison of the data. For this reason, we have tried to make minimum changes to the questionnaire, but as people’s media use has become more diversified, some aspects of their activities have become difficult to handle, which gave rise to a need to modify the questionnaire for the next 2020 survey. To identify specific problems, we conducted focus group interviews, the result of which revealed the following three issues to be addressed: 1) assuming fragmented, on-and-off activities and simultaneous activities to design the best entry method, 2) categorizing communication on the internet, and 3) categorizing media use activities and re-examining the wording. There are possible two options for the modification. One is that we minimize the changes to the regular survey questionnaire as much as possible in order to secure the time-series comparison and conduct a separate agile survey focusing on media activities that cannot be figured out by the regular survey. The other is we prioritize grasping the current state of media use activities and redesign the entire survey. Which direction we should take is to be discussed from now on. In the process, we will need to revisit what aspects of Japanese lifestyle should be covered by the NHK’s time use survey and what can be grasped by the diary-style method in time use research. We plan to take the following steps: design a new questionnaire based on the results of the focus group interviews, conduct a time use survey on media use in October 2018, using the re-designed questionnaire, review the problematic points of the new questionnaire, and modify the questionnaire for the 2020 NHK Japanese Time Use Survey.

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Various methods have been attempted to analyze broadcasting programs, but each has advantages and disadvantages, which makes researchers keep exploring the methodology. Under these circumstances, the author examine whether “rhetoric” can serve as an auxiliary line to help analyze multifaceted texts for broadcasting programs. Since ancient Greek times, rhetoric has been studied as a method for expressing and communicating messages, and the system of classical rhetoric including metaphor, comparison, and repetition has been adapted in secondary education in Europe. The 19th century saw the demise of rhetoric, but rhetoric revived in the late 20th century as people realized rhetoric is deeply related to how people perceive things.Rhetorical analysis on television is said to be incorporated into semiotics analysis and cultural studies that became popular in the 2000s, but rhetoric is now expected to serve as an useful method to help understand the implicit and intellectual process of program production because it has been developed as a practical science for public speaking and expression and thus is easy to understand for people involved in program production. At the same time, since rhetoric has a potential to be expanded to the fields of semiology and epistemology, it can also serve as a common foundation that bridges production and academism.Rhetoric functions as grammar, especially in the world of visual expression, which allows program analysis focusing on rhetoric such as metaphor and metonymy. As better environment for analyzing individual programs is being developed by program archives, it is important to cultivate the potential of rhetoric as an auxiliary line.

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