December 2014
Audio Documentary as the Origin of Broadcast Documentary in Japan
Akira Miyata
This is the second part of a series that explores the characteristics of documentary programs in the early days of television, represented by Nihon no Sugao (Japan Unmasked), in the context of the “systematization of the real life”—a large steam of Japan’s post-war modern period. This article focuses on audio documentary programs for radio broadcasts (societal programs using recorded sounds and interviews) from 1945 to the beginning of the 1950s, which the author positions as the earliest form of broadcast documentary in Japan, to review its characteristics and history. At the earliest stage of broadcast documentary, there was a contrasting pair of trends of how to perceive the “fact.” One is that producers tried to represent “mere facts” as much as possible by eliminating their own contrivances. The other is that producers tried to use “facts,” in some limited way, in order to underpin “what they had originally wanted to convey” (e.g. philosophies, causes). The author depicts the rise and fall of these two trends, which had an immense impact on subsequent documentaries, in relation to the “systematization of the real life.”
This report traces the genesis of Japan’s broadcast documentary by investigating the audio documentary that was established shortly after WWII. Using some rare materials of radio programs, on which not much research has been done to date, the author elucidates the path traveled by Japan’s broadcast documentary, which is like a string twined from competing “facts” of the subjects and “intention, i.e., cause” of the producers.