この論文は撤回されました。

    Amid the sharp depreciation of the yen, soaring prices of energy, food, and other necessities brought about by the Ukraine crisis and sanctions against Russia, and an increase in the national burden rate, the people’s impoverishment has only just begun. In addition, conflicts over the North Sea fishery and Sakhalin II have made the public aware of the vulnerability of energy and food security. This recognition, coupled with an increase in the operating rate of thermal power plants that use fossil fuels in response to rising demand for electricity due in part to global warming, has rekindled the debate over the pros and cons of nuclear power generation. On the other hand, with regard to defense issues, China and Russia are increasing military and economic pressure on Japan in cooperation amid ongoing tensions with neighboring countries that have territorial and historical disputes. In particular, China’s threat to Taiwan and the Sakishima Islands is increasing while the West, which supports Ukraine, is reducing its ability to deal with China. Russia’s military focus on the Northern Territories in light of the melting of the Arctic Ocean due to climate change also poses a threat.

    Perceptions of the utility of security, which are difficult to realize on a day-to-day basis, depend heavily on the media. Thus, perception of the cost of enhanced security also depends on the media. It follows that "Cognitive Warfare" depends on the verification of the media’s influence on the above two perceptions. Therefore, based on the campaign period system in which the media report on the election in accordance with the Public Offices Election Act and related regulations of their industries and companies, we examine the effects of media usage during the 2022 House of Councillors election period on the changes in voters’ political consciousness, especially with regard to security, before and after the election period.

    In this paper, I analyzed articles about war published in Haha no tomo (Mothers’ Companion) from September 1953 to March 2023. The aim is to contribute to understanding the reaction to the war in Ukraine by studying the history of the connections between mothers, picture books, and helping children understand war in Japan.

    This advertising-free magazine, first published in 1953, has served to promote Fukuinkan’s products to the mothers of young children. It contains practical information on raising children, such as original stories to read, but over the years many articles have also touched on famous events, such as war. The editors of Haha no tomo, which gradually developed a large readership, explained that thinking, knowing, discussing, and informing about war are a mother’s responsibility to her children.

    Across the seventy years of publication, Haha no tomo’s articles reflect the changing beliefs and opinions that mothers had about war based on their experiences. In the 1950s, those articles reflected strong beliefs in peace, but from the end of the 1960s to the early 1970s, the experience of watching the Vietnam War on TV made the magazine contributors reflect on their own experiences and how to explain the war to their children. Around the 1990s, the magazine argued that mothers, due to a lack of experience of war, should be storytellers about what happens during war. The magazine and its readers had been focusing on how to preserve the stories about the horrors of war. On the other hand, the question of why and how their mothers and grandmothers were ignorant before WW2 and cooperated with the war effort became forgotten. This reinforced the image of a peace-loving mother and made it difficult to talk about war when Japan was being drawn into conflicts such as the Gulf War.

    Currently the war in Ukraine is being ignored by Haha no tomo. Mothers and media have changed. New ways of telling the story of mothers and war are being sought.

    In this interview, we asked Masaru Zenke and Ayako Takada about new tendencies on war reporting. Mr. Zenke has worked as a chief producer and Ms. Takada as a director on documentary production and investigative reporting at NHK. They have been working on investigative reporting about the repression of civilians by military in post-coup Myanmar. And in the process of reporting, they have used a digital research method called OSINT (Open Source Intelligence). OSINT became known with the work of "Internet detective" Bellingcat. Although both Mr. Zenke and Ms. Takada see OSINT’s impact on war reporting as positive, they position OSINT as a complement to traditional journalistic practices. In this interview, we also asked them about news coverage of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. While citizens are practicing OSINT in this war, the spread of disinformation and fake news has become a serious problem. They pointed that the possibilities for new digital media practices are expanding, but also recognized the difficulties of traditional war reporting have not been resolved. Through this interview, the various possibilities and difficulties that digital technologies bring to war reporting were revealed.

    A "Naiyou-Mihon" is a promotional pamphlet that announces the publication of a large-volume books, such as a complete work or a series of books. In Japan, they were distributed in large quantities during the "The Boom of One-Yen Complete Collection (Enpon-Boom)" of the 1920s and the period of rapid economic growth after World War II. The technological and social circumstances surrounding media development have not been fully explored. The purpose of this paper is not to derive a theory about an author or work from what was written in each pamphlet. Instead, we seek to clarify the establishment process and the medium specificity of the "Naiyou-Mihon" itself. In this paper, we examined the establishment process of Naiyou-Mihon by analyzing newspaper articles and pamphlets from the Meiji era and beyond.

    It became clear that the Naiyou-Mihon appeared in the early 1880s against the background of the establishment of a Publication by subscription. It worked as a guidebook for readers living in local area how to make purchase. Initially, the term "Naiyou-Mihon" was not used commonly, and it did not appear in the newspaper until the 1910s. Later, in the Taisho period (1912-1926), the format (i.e., celebrity endorsements, specimen pages, and binding photographs) became fixed, and through the popularity of complete works of literature, it became widely known. Later, in the early Showa period, the term "Naiyou-Mihon" appeared in newspaper advertisements and was distributed in large quantities as a means of advertising.

    Then, how were these items accepted? In general, "Naiyou-Mihon" are not preserved by public institutions, but are disposable: ephemera in nature. However, we found that certain readers who considered these media as "reading material" and used it as a tool for literary education and edification as well.

    This article focuses on the question of how the ’Xiaozi culture’ created in China in the early 2000s and regarded as the media culture of the new urban middle class achieved differentiation from other stratified cultures. ’Xiaozi culture’ was characterized by apathy towards politics, a fervor for consumption, worship of global culture and cultural omnivorousness in which highbrow culture and popular culture coexisted. How these characteristics contributed to the differentiation of ’Xiaozi culture’ is investigated from the perspective of the cultural capital of media workers from elite universities of 1980s. Focusing on the middle-class magazines and newspapers that are at the center of the production system of the ’Xiaozi culture’, this analysis employs Shanghai Weekly, the most representative ’Xiaozi’ magazine (newspaper), as a case study. First, the editorial and management policies of Shanghai Weekly were clarified through a biographical analysis of the editor-in-chief and deputy editor-in-chief, Chen Baoping and Xu Husheng. Then, a comparison with other stratified cultures was performed in terms of front-page design, column placement and content production location information, in order to analyze the function of cultural capital in specific media practices. The results show that the editorial team of Shanghai Weekly consciously differentiated ’Xiaozi culture’ from ’official newspaper culture’ and ’masses culture’ by employing three strategies: (1) excluding politics and emphasizing consumerism, (2) focusing on Western culture within global culture (Western culture orientation), and (3) emphasizing the niche nature of the cultural market (limited acceptance orientation). It was also confirmed that the cultural capital of elite university students contributed to generating such strategies.

    Nowadays, Karate has gained worldwide popularity as a type of martial art. One of the reasons for this is that karate has been found to have a spiritual value that is not found in other sports. Additionally, when propagated domestically and internationally, karate has attracted attention for its educational benefits, especially for young people. It has increased its popularity as a form of learning for children and supported the management of dojos.

    Because of the above-mentioned situation, this paper focuses on the globally popular Karate Kid series starting as the Hollywood film released in 1984. We can watch the Cobra Kai series on Netflix as Karate Kid contents. In a nutshell, these films and TV series tell the story of a young boy’s encounter with karate and growing, and it is hard to deny that they have contributed to the spread of karate throughout the world and its popularity over 40 years.

    However, this paper focuses on the fact that some academic studies have analysed these contents and found educational value. This paper aims to examine why multidisciplinary researchers have paid attention to Karate Kid contents and what educational value they have found. Although these are academic analyses, it is indispensable to consider these as examples of reading and discussing the social acceptance of karate worldwide. This paper recognises them associated with how the global propagation of karate overlaps with the discourses of popularisation worldwide.

    The studies that acknowledged the educational value of karate kid contents varied in terms of the extent to which they considered it necessary to focus on the ideological background. The paper discusses the possibility that the ability to consistently find educational value while allowing for such diverse readings supports the popularity of Karate Kid contents and, in turn, contributes to the propagation of karate.

    In the history of Japanese television, the 1970s and 1980s are a time when educational and cultural programs on hobbies thrived. While it has been explained as a shift from social education programs to lifelong learning programs, the meaning of "hobbies" as a subject matter itself had not been clarified. Therefore, this study attempted to characterize the content of these programs by using the analytical concept of serious leisure and focusing on the characteristic representation of hobbies. Specifically, the program footage, textbooks, and newspaper advertisements for "Introduction to Fishing" and "Introduction to Camera Techniques," two programs that aired in 1980 on NHK Educational TV’s "Hobbies and Skills Course," were analyzed. As a result, it was found that the programs explained fishing and camera techniques under the learning view of "learning for enjoyment." The self-directed activity of "enjoyment" as the goal made the content structure of the program more restrained in terms of education, and some brokering discourses that leave education to hobby communities were found. So far, lifelong learning programs have been characterized by individuality in terms of viewing format and subject matter. In contrast, the results of this study suggest that individuality also contributes to the structuring of program content and that lifelong learning programs embed opportunities for connecting to group activities.

    Since Tuchman’s (1978) analysis of newsroom routines, related case studies have been accumulating in the United States for over 40 years. Many studies have employed ethnographic methods to examine how news workers gatekeep news. In recent years, Mari (2016) has attempted to describe a social history of the newsroom, furthering its contextual understanding.

    This research tried to describe the social history of the "photographers" who belonged to major Japanese newspaper companies after World War II, using the Shinbunkenkyu as the source material and extracts the dominant factors and contexts in postwar Japan.

    The following are the extracted factors and contexts.

    1) The first factor is education: Higher education influenced the rise of the photographers’ status in Japanese newsrooms. Professional education in photography had a short-lived impact and was replaced by higher education as general education. In the United States, it was professional education in higher education that elevated the status of photographers, contrary to Japan’s case.

    2) The second factor is technological advancements: In Japan in the 1990s, the spread of electronic cameras, the ease of sending photos electronically, and the systematization of newsrooms limited the rise of the photographers’ status in newsrooms. Whereas in the United States, this elevated their status. The difference between Japan and the United States arose from the combination of other technologies.

    3) The third factor is labor unions: Japanese labor unions aimed for uniform treatment in newsrooms, and the unintended consequence was curbing the differentiation of news workers. In the United States, where weekly wages were set for each type of job, labor unions promoted the differentiation of news workers.

    4) The fourth factor is specific coverage area and news sources: The lack of specific coverages areas and news sources has had significantly impacted their status in newsrooms.

    This study aimed to examine the transformation of a private-owned newspaper into a Party newspaper, focusing on the ownership conversion of Xinminbao in the 1950s, in Shanghai.

    Xinminbao was first published in Shanghai on May 1, 1946 and underwent ownership transformation into joint public and private management in 1953. Previous studies have suggested that public capital investments served as bailout measures for private newspapers owing to the socialization process in the 1950s. However, this study used a mixed approach to the case study based on the archives and content analysis for the news coverage of Xinminbao, concluding that public capital investment transformed the private-owned newspaper into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) newspaper.

    The case study used secondary sources and the archives of the Shanghai Databank. When Xinminbao came under joint public-private management, CCP invested public capital and appointed Party-related people to crucial positions on the editorial board. Subsequently, in 1957, CCP decided to establish a Party group, and on April 1, 1958, Xinminbao became publicly owned. The content analysis in this study used 3,911 articles that were published biennially from 1946 to 1966. News articles were classified into three categories: news source, location, and genre. Findings revealed that the percentage of articles in the domestic political genre distributed by Xinhua News Agency increased in 1950. Moreover, Xinhua’s articles accounted for a high percentage of the articles on the domestic economic and social genre from 1954. The results confirmed that CCP influenced the article content in Xinminbao by investing public capital in it. Therefore, this study concludes that the CCP established control over newspapers through joint public and private management. Finally, the continuity with respect to newspaper control in China at present is discussed.

    While striptease, known as "strip" in Japan, has been performed in various forms for over 70 years, the presence of female spectators for strip has become increasingly visible through the media in recent years. However, female spectators were present, although in small numbers, even in the early history of striptease in Japan. This study aims to examine the discourse regarding female spectators of early striptease in post-war Japan to clarify how women accepted early striptease, and to examine the social context in which this acceptance occurred.

    This study surveys newspapers and magazines from the National Diet Library and employs critical discourse analysis as a methodology to explore elements that appear inside and outside the discourse of female spectators. It covers the period from 1947-when the "Gakubuchi-show," regarded as the origin of "strip", began-to 1953, when the boom of striptease reached its peak.

    During this time, female spectators either praised the beauty of the dancers’ bodies or expressed embarrassment "as members of the same sex" at the display of nudity. This study regards this reaction as identification with the dancers, and argues that it occurs as a result of female spectators "looking at" their own bodies in the performance form, where the dancer and the spectators both exist in the same space. Additionally, the nature of this identification varies depending on the social background of the spectators, which is closely related to the social situation of post-war Japan. Furthermore, negative discourse on striptease by female spectators may have been common because their statements were made in the presence of male journalists and male spectators.

    Research on the relations between multiracial Japanese (commonly known as hāfu) and their media representation has been growing with the increasing ethnic and racial diversity in Japan. While past studies have focused on the racial inequalities in mass media image and identity politics in the name of hāfu on social media platforms, it remains unclear how multiracial people themselves participate in social media expression and how these opportunities are distributed. This study addresses this gap by investigating the characteristics of multiracial individuals expressing their experiences and identities as hāfu on TikTok, a social media platform for creating and sharing short-form mobile videos. By utilizing exploratory content analysis on TikTok videos with the hashtag Hāfu-Aruaru, this study examined the creators’ gender, race, and nationality and compared these values to those of the Japanese population. The findings revealed that the creators were more likely to be women than men. In terms of race, European, African, and Hispanic individuals were over-represented, while Asians were significantly under-represented. Regarding nationality, Asian individuals-, particularly East Asians-, were less likely to participate than other groups. These findings suggest that the gender, racial, and national inequalities that have been observed in mass media representations of hāfu may be reproduced in social media; in addition social media may provide multiracial people with alternative opportunities to express their racial identities and experience.