The political, social and cultural contexts of television documentaries produced

by local stations are multi-layered. The contents are determined by not

only regional but also national agencies. This paper will focus on documentaries

on the great fire of Itoigawa, geishas in Furumachi and marginal settlements,

all of which are produced by one of Niigata’s local stations, TeNY. Comparing

the original version and a variant broadcast as content for the NNN documentary

series on a national network, we will analyse the process through which

the contents are reorganized.

The author is a researcher and a person in charge of content production.

In recent years, there has been an increase in content that intentionally serves

regional development and an increase in content that contemplates the establishment

of local sacred sites. By taking the content that the author was in charge

of directly as subjects for fieldwork, the structure and the achievement of the

four types of content work are reported, and the merits and demerits of all four

are analysed. The four types include the centre-to-region delivery type, the selfhelp

support type established through investment, the region-centre linked

type, and the central production plus regional capital type. Moreover, as conclusions

are drawn from the field data, the basic model for regional development is

presented with the following components: a） tourist attractions to be provided

as regional contributions, b） human resources to be supplied regionally （e.g., a

creator such as a cartoonist located in a regional area whose talent was discovered

through a contest, and the business producer who set up the contest）, c）

capital to be offered by regional areas, and d） a central area that spreads

regional information, using central media and production capabilities as filters

（e.g., to produce content such as movies based on regional information, and to incorporate them in central media）. As a result, this paper discusses and concludes

that the ultimate potential of regional communities lies in their role as

‘the place to locate talent and to deliver and supply them to the central community’.

　The comics market （fanzine exhibition and sale） known as ‘Gataket’ that

started in Niigata in 1983 can be described as a typical local business. Since

1983, various local manga and anime businesses developed, such as the ‘Niigata

Manga Competition’, which is an innovative local government-led business, and

the founding of the ‘JAM Nihon Anime Manga Training School’. Gataket has

deepened its ties with such businesses every time. In 2011, ‘Gatafest’, a manga

and anime festival held by the Niigata-shi, JAM and ‘Gataket’ was established

and in 2013, the ‘Niigata Anime Manga Museum’ and ‘The Niigata City Manga

House’ were established. These undergird the changeover of Niigata’s manga

and anime business, and highlight how the cooperation among the industry, academia,

and the government has become the foothold for business expansion.

This is the fruit of collaboration and wide connection within the anime and

manga industry, which has been fostered through the accumulation of knowledge

and skill seen in Gatakketto’s 34 years of history and cooperation among

local businesses. Therefore, for a business featuring local content originating

from regional areas, a steady and persistent effort like that of Gataket can play

a significant role.

　This paper pertains to the symposium ‘Media culture of Niigata Prefecture:

The crisis and potential of local contents’ held at the Japan Society for Studies

in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in the spring of 2017. Here,

the population problem of the region was quantitatively analysed, as it is

regarded as a crisis that affects numerous fields, such as politics, the economy,

daily living and culture. This was achieved by referring to specific discussions

that other academics have developed on the topic of Niigata’s media and

regional culture.

　　Firstly, in order to investigate the actual situation of the progressive aging

and decreasing population in the region, an age structure index—more specifically,

the relationship between the total population and the dependent population（

non-working-age） population, and the relationship between the child population

index and the aging population index, which are both subdivisions of the

dependent population—was analysed.

　　Secondly, to examine the relationships among each region located in rural

and central areas of the metropolitan, the correlation between the outflow and

the inflow population was explored, as it is assumed to be plainly reflecting various

maldistributions of capital, including cultural capital.

　The aim of this paper is to examine the Deliberative Organ （or Council）

for broadcast programmes （Bangumi Shingikai）, a statutory advisory body

established by each TV and radio station in accordance with Japan’s broadcast

act. Together with Programme Standards, the Deliberative Council is a significant

part of ‘Japan’s Regulation Model for Broadcasting’ that ensures the appropriateness

of the broadcast programmes. Designed to be self-regulatory, the

council enables broadcasters and audiences with high esteem to discuss the

quality of the programmes and consider whether they are appropriate for

broadcasting. Despite its importance, little research attention has been given to

the practice of this system. In reflecting upon the history of the system and the

gender and occupational ratio of committee members, this paper focuses on

how terrestrial commercial broadcasting stations have managed the council.

Surveys were also conducted among these stations in 2016, and the results indicate that the system is not fully regarded as a system of self-regulation among

broadcasters, although it is generally valued from the point of programme

improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the perspective of Niklas Luhmann’s

mass media theory through interpreting his works. Luhmann constructed

a mass media theory which described mass communication as a social

system. Some previous studies have paid attention to the significance of his

theory and attempted to apply it in different empirical studies while others

have criticized his theory because he abstracted and confirmed the practical

problems of journalism. However, it has yet to be shown what problem in

media studies Luhmann himself attempted to solve. This paper analyses the

perspective of Luhmann’s theory by focusing on the relationship between his

theory and radical constructivism. Radical constructivism is an epistemological

media theory that has been popular in German media studies since the 1990s,

and Luhmann also frequently referred to it in his works about mass media. As

a result,（ 1） this paper clarifies that the radical constructivism theory criticized

journalism practices in terms of epistemological problems, and thereby hindered

journalism and its social function. Thus, media theorists who sympathized with

radical constructivism attempted to fill this divergence of the radical constructivism

theories and practices of journalism. In addition, （2） this paper argues

that Luhmann also attempted to solve the problem. He avoided the epistemological

and normative discussion of journalism and redefined the function of

mass media in the theory of a functionally differentiated society. In conclusion,

this paper demonstrates the significance of the social theory in media studies

by interpreting the perspective of Luhmann’s media theory.

　Digital games occupy a big position in today’s media culture. The early

Japanese culture of home digital games partly developed with content intended

to scare the player. The frightening experiences that are involved in playing

such games have been often talked about by the players, even if the games were

not necessarily of the horror genre. However, conventional Japanese digital

game studies cannot explain these social facts of the frightening experiences

sufficiently.

　　The purpose of this paper is to deal with the theoretical problem mentioned

above. By considering the frightening experiences in Japanese games

concretely, this paper submits a novel and effective theoretical and cultural

interpretation of the experience in digital games as media. It is a ‘fear not to

fade away’ arising from gaming practices that this paper notices in particular.

　　This paper is written with the following method and procedure. Firstly,

this paper checks the framework of the conventional theory of experiences in

digital games（ Section 1）. Secondly, the problem of this framework is examined

in detail by way of discussing the frightening experiences（ Section 2）. Then, in

order to manage this problem, this paper considers the concrete cases of playing

AVGs（Adventure Games） and RPGs（Role Playing Games） in the Japanese

game culture （Section 3）. Finally, conclusions are derived from the previous

discussion and considerations（ Section 4）.

　　The conclusions of this paper are as follows. Firstly, the media theory of

experiences in digital games should pay attention to the player’s mental, bodily

and sensorial self-transfer to the media. Secondly, in Japanese society around

1990, the cultural development of digital games with many narrative elements

（in particular in AVGs and RPGs） necessarily produced the possibilities of

“being shocked” experience.

In this paper, I will analyse the news over the caricature of Muhammad

drawn on the cover of the special edition of Charlie Hebdo in 2015, and consider

whether the Japanese newspapers played a role as leaders of ‘freedom of

expression’.

　　In Japan, three of the seven main newspapers did not publish the caricature

and one of the four that published it was protested by Islamic groups and

published an apology article.

　　When I analysed the articles of the seven newspapers by using a text-mining

approach, I found three problems. Primarily, the contents and attitude of

the newspapers did not necessarily emphasize ‘freedom of expression’. Secondly,

the evaluation process for the caricature and the criteria for publication or nonpublication

of the caricature were not shown. Thirdly, the newspaper that apologized

for publishing the image did not clarify the reason for the apology, and

the other newspapers did not report the news that instigated a discussion over

the rightness or wrongness of the publication. For these reasons, it is hard to

say that Japanese newspapers played the role.

　　In addition, it can be pointed out that the three newspapers which did not

publish the caricature either do not have a certain criterion or did not apply the

criterion. Finally, with respect to the newspaper that published the apology

article，the phenomenon known as atrophy of the news was seen.

　In March 1954, when the United States tested a hydrogen bomb over the

Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a Japanese fishing

boat, was exposed to the radiation. The crews of the boat suffered from

‘acute illness’, such as burns or loss of hair, within a short period of time, and

one of them died from leukaemia in September same year. This tragedy was

widely reported by the radio, the newspapers, the newsreels and the photo　

journalism magazines, and ever since has been known as ‘the Daigo Fukuryu

Maru Incident’ in Japanese society. Yet, other Japanese fishing boats, the residents

of the Marshall Islands and the US soldiers who participated in the 1953

tests were also exposed to ‘nuclear fallout’ at that time. In such cases, the physical

effect of the radiation started to emerge much later, in the form of diseases

such as cancer. These effects, unlike the ‘acute illness’ of the Daigo Fukuryu

Maru crews, had been overlooked for decades by most of the media, with the

exception of very few TV programmes which documented their suffering. However,

these cases came to receive public interest after the Fukushima Daiichi

Nuclear Power Station Accident in 2011 and the following radioactive contamination

of large areas. It is in this context that the handful of past TV programmes

on the subject became important; in hindsight, by confronting the

‘delayed effect’, they were already describing the wider context of the radiation

exposure of the ‘the Incident’. In that sense, these TV programmes, stored

and now open to the public as part of the archive of television; are important

resources not only for the re-examination of the incident; they also provide

significant implications for post-2011 Japanese society.

This paper examines the reception of early television in rural Japan through

Sai village in the Aomori prefecture. While the first television station in Aomori

was founded in 1959, most Aomori residents had previously accessed the television

signal from NHK Hakodate（ Hokkaido）, established in 1957. The small fishing

village, Sai village, had the highest television penetration rate in Aomori at

that time and was known as a ‘TV village’. Why did the people of Sai village

want television? What effect did this desire have? This paper aims to answer

these questions by tracing the evolution from the first arrival of television in

Sai village in 1957 to the wide spread availability of television in Aomori in

1959.

　　Interviews and archival documents show that educational motivations, and

specifically the desire to show the outside world to the children, were funda

mental to their choices. Through television education in school, the children’s

education flourished and developed into television reception that went beyond

educational purposes. Matsunoyama village in Niigata prefecture also had a

similar television reception as Sai village. Sai village represents a key point of

reference for television reception in rural Japan in that its remoteness preserved

television’s function as an educational visual aid. This paper goes beyond

the urban-centred narratives about early television reception by accounting for

the fact that villagers saw a potential for television beyond leisure in education,

and by exploring how the affirmation of television as leisure also opened up

children to outside worlds.

　　The children’s reactions were in line with a McLuhan-esque view of television

and what happened in Sai village points to the key potentials of television.

This paper shows how rural areas had a rich television reception during the

early days of television. In addition, this paper represents the first steps

towards understanding an era in which television reception forms were still

mixed.

　Our task here is to analyse the remarks of Iwasaki Akira（ 1903-81）, a film

critic, as a case study of the historical investigations into the problem of how

the images of ‘mass’ were formed and what role aspects of media like films

played in the course of formation of mass society in Japan.

　　In Chapter 1, we point out that Iwasaki was a person who had been working

on the ‘mass’ problems throughout his life, who had also been regarded as a

man of resistance from wartime to the period of occupation.

　　In Chapter 2, we analyse Iwasaki’s pre-war view of ‘mass’ and made it

clear that he recognized mass as a target capable of enlightenment for social

reform.

　　Chapter 3 throws light on the early post-war views of Iwasaki’s ‘mass’ and

made his sense of enlightened obligation clear.

　　Section 1 of Chapter 4 treats Imamura Taihei’s critical comments on the

proposals of Iwasaki to enlighten the ‘mass’, which can be seen as a transitional

view to the phrase ‘mass as the core’ by Tsurumi Shunsuke and Matsumoto

Toshio. In Section 2, we compare Tsurumi’s thought of the mass （neither passive

nor monolithic） with Iwasaki’s pre-war sense of obligation towards mass

enlightenment. In Section 3, we make a comparison of Iwasaki with Matsumoto,

who talked of the possibility of anti-establishment movement among mass society,

and pointed out that Iwasaki saw negative inclinations towards Fascism in it.

　　To conclude: Iwasaki never stopped talking about the ‘mass’, the images of

which were successively questioned and revised by succeeding generations of

polemicists like Imamura, Tsurumi, Matsumoto. Iwasaki’s works thus performed

should be one of the factors in developing the image of the responsible

mass at the time of the advent of Japanese mass society.