August 2014
Akira Miyata
This article will be a five-part series that investigates Nihon no Sugao (Japan Unmasked), TV documentary serial (306 episodes in total) produced and aired by NHK in the early days of television from 1957 to 1964, by delving into the archived content. The research aims to explore Nihon no Sugao (Japan Unmasked) and Japan’s postwar modern era in an integrated manner through basic research on each episode of the series in the context of society and history underlying the program. Based on the study, the author attempts to find a small answer to a large question “What is TV documentary?”
In this first part, the author takes a methodological stance that all 306 episodes should be explored as reference, and reviews preceding studies on the program and overviews the program by tabulating the state of reference and summarized content of each episode. The topics of the program tell that what was mainly depicted by this documentary serial was modernization, or various aspects of real life that was transformed by the encounter with the flourishing modern system. The author proposes a hypothesis that TV documentary in Japan was invented as a media form for depicting and passing on the “reality that became content” which was generated by “systematization of real life.”