This article analyzes the genre of jinbutsu hyoron [articles written about notable figures], specifically during the surge of its popularity in Japanese journalism during the early 1930s. By this time, the democratization of the publication industry that began in the late 20s had reached its peak and the journalism had fully matured. These developments, however, spurred editors toward an unprecedented reliance upon the celebrity of those who wrote for their publications, a policy that was also in line with efforts to make commentary more appealing and accessible to the general reader who lacked basic knowledge. As a result, it could be said that the reader in turn consumed not the content of the text but the very name of the author who wrote the text. At the center of this article is an analysis of this form of consumption, which I refer to as "name consumption." Jinbutsu hyoron became popular as a genre that manifested this motive for publication. This analysis gathers samples of jinbutsu hyoron that have hitherto been ignored, as well as samples of related discourse, from literary magazines, mass magazines, and newspapers of the time and, while comparing them against each other, demonstrates the reality and the perceptions surrounding the representations of notable figures. First, I delineate the basic format and stances of works of jinbutsu hyoron. Next, taking into account the linguistic context of the reader, I analyze the conditions of reception of these works by relating them to the publication environment at the time. Lastly, by also taking a look at cartoon articles, which were equally popular during this period, I attempt to establish a more multi-faceted understanding of "name consumption." Overall, this article seeks to shed light on the way celebrity was a driving force in the structure of journalistic discourse in the 1930s.

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This paper aimed to explain the transition of Hideki Noda’s style through the analysis of Hideki Noda’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1992, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Noda has been an active playwright, director, and actor from the 1980s. Previous studies have indicated that Noda changed his style when he dissolved his theatre company, Yume no Yuminsha. Hideki Noda’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was produced three months before the dissolution of the company. Noda reconstructed the Shakespearean original, altering it in two major aspects. First, Noda’s version was set in Japan. Second, Mephistopheles, the demon of Goethe’s Faust, made an appearance in the play. Mephistopheles contributed catastrophic aspects to the play, creating an episode out of the original story composed of the stolen words from the characters who had dissatisfaction in their minds. Due to the destructive power of the episode by Mephistopheles, the forest where fairies live, fell into crisis. To avoid the crisis, Soboro, originally Helena, created the new episode of reviving the forest, incorporating the catastrophic episode as a part of it. As the episodes were integrated into an inclusive story, the order of the forest was regained. The multiple episodes and their competitive relationship were the subjects of the play. Because the competitive relationship between the episodes inside the story was put in the foreground, this multi-layered structure may be called metafiction. The reason for creating this adaptation can be inferred from the fashion of occultism of the 1970s, particularly the prophecies of Nostradamus that predicted the end of the world in 1999. In this paper, I interpreted the production as an opposition to the eschatological atmosphere at the time. In examining the transition of Noda as a playwright, the metafictional structure is remarkable. During the 1980s, Noda’s works comprised bold images. In these plays, the images are not intended to be integrated at one point. On the contrary, after the dissolution of his theatre company, many of Noda’s works set clear themes, such as national borders and the Emperor. Hideki Noda’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was unique in the feature that the multiple episodes were integrated by the metafictional structure of the play and such a structure itself was set in the theme of this play. In this respect, it is possible to understand a part of Noda’s tradition trying to construct a story integrated into one point as well as the criticism of contemporaries.

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This paper explores Hideki Noda's view on the state through an analysis of Nodaban-Kokusenyakassen (The Battle of Coxinga, Noda Version, 1989), which is an adaptation of Kokusenyakassen by Monzaemon Chikamatsu. Based on the original play, Kokusenyakassen, Noda recreated the third century national founding story of Yamato in Nodaban-Kokusenyakassen. He created many works related to the nation state, and Nodaban-Kokusenyakassen is one of the earliest of these works. Despite its significance, this work has not been a subject of much analysis.

The play offers two perspectives. While Noda created a story to build the origin of the state, he also emphasized that the origin of the nation was insubstantial and that the national founding story was fictional. I consider the meaning of this structure, based on materials from Noda's diary and interviews and comparisons with his other works. It becomes clear that Noda felt that the Japanese were unable to share a common image of the nation and needed a national founding story to look back to the origin of their state. I argue that Noda may have realized that the origin of the state could only be reconstructed as fiction at that time. Moreover, there are indications that he intended to make people look back to the origin of the nation, even though it was insubstantial.

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