The purpose of this paper is to understand the so called "Iwanami Culture" of reading. More particularly, I focus on the reception of the widely circulated Iwanami-Bunko pocket sized edition during World War II. This analysis utilizes Chartier's approach to the practice of reading. Until now the Iwanami-Bunko edition has been considered a vehicle for self cultivation(kyoyo). By focusing on personal accounts in reader's journals, this research came across another aspect of cultivation, national cultivation(nihon shugitekina kyoyo). Iwanami-Bunko's popular pocket sized classic series thus encompassed national as well as personal cultivation.
This article aims to describe the viewing experiences that white-collar women living in Tokyo go through when watching the American TV series "Sex and the City". The ethnographic approach used in cultural studies in the 80's has been adopted to analyze the subject. The audiences extract a realism from the textual world, and adopt a viewing position that aligns with their own life stage. Furthermore, the experience of viewing is linked to their life history and reflexively updates their self-identity. This article presents an alternative approach which discusses TV viewing in terms of diachronic experience of audience.
The purpose of this study is to make characteristics of the ban on Japanese popular culture in Korea clear and to examine roles of mass media such as newspaper and television broadcast in the system of the ban. This study indicated that the ban which has been practiced and maintained in ambiguous and complex contexts was 'convention' not 'law'. Particularly, it emphasized Nationalism discourse in Korean society after World War II and economic interests of the media industry system as important conditions. And roles of media were contradictory in the system of the ban as 'convention'.
In the early 1950s, Himeji City aimed to establish a radio broadcasting station managed by the city. It was very unique in the history of Japanese broadcasting. Actually, however, this movement was not successful. Its failure was caused by the following factors: a political change in the broadcasting bureaus of Japan; technological constraints; and conflict of opinions between the local residents and the local bureaucrats leading the movement. By analyzing the movement, this article tries to elucidate the process that eliminated the possibility of diversification in the development of Japanese broadcasting industry.
The aim of this article is to examine the social function of the editorial cartoon. It has been said that the editorial cartoon is a means of social control. Cartoons define the situation for eveyday readers, shape their prejudices, depict their fears and create stereotypes. This research analyzed cartoons that were published in Japanese newspapers during the time of the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War to observe how cartoons accomplish this function of social control. As a result of the analysis, it became apparent that actually many cartoons justified the war. This is also a result of the fact that the editorial cartoon at the time was an important component of journalism.