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.
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