March 2015
An “Engineer” Who Has Documented the Era of Showa and the Family
Mamoru Ito
At the age of 78, Yutaka Aida is actively working as TV producer. It is still fresh in our mind that he made a documentary for the NHK Special seriestwo years ago, Ninchi-sho happyaku-mannin jidai: Haha to musuko sanzen-nichi no kaigo kiroku [the age of 8 million-dementia patients: mother and son—a record of 3000 days of nursing care] based on footages that documented his own experience of caring his mother. Aida’s works that were produced when he was NHK’s regular employee include NHK Tokushu: Kaku senso go no chikyu (Projections by World Scientists: Nuclear Holocaust) (1984), NHK Tokushu: Jidosha: Nichibei no kobo [automobile: rise and fall of Japan and the U.S.] (1988),and NHK Special: Denshi rikkoku: Nihon no jijoden [electronic nation: autobiography of Japan] (1991). These works symbolize the days when NHK Tokushu evolved into NHK Special and became the underpinning program of NHK’s documentaries. The author finds how each of his works is, without exception, constructed with an unhackneyed, fresh style. In Projections by World Scientists: Nuclear Holocaust, Aida visualized the holocaust of Tokyo and other mega-cities in the world, using special effects which could vie with that of Tsuburaya Productions. In Denshi rikkoku, the producer himself performed radio gymnastics in tights in front of a chroma key screen and lectured in a traditional “kodan” storytelling style in order to deliver a popular TV show with easy-to-understand explanation of the complicated electronic world. The author of this article, Professor Mamoru Ito of the Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, focuses on his way of producing TV programs as if he was an “engineer.” Professor Ito assumes that young Aida’s engineering spirit, with which he built a recorder by assembling parts purchased in Akihabara to make radio programs while he was still at university, led to the creation of new expressive methods for TV documentaries as well as to the ten-year recording of caring his mother with his own camera and editing equipment. Ito’s another focal point is Aida’s approach to the history of Japan: the producer’s eye has always been on “family,” a minimum unit of humans, to review the trajectory this country has taken. Aida experienced Japan’s defeat in the war at the age of nine in then Manchuria and fled to Japan with his mother and younger brother for dear life, which, the author deems, served as the engine for the production of NHK Tokushu: Showa no tanjo [the birth of showa] (1977) and for the continual documenting of immigrant families to Amazonia for more than three decades since his 1968 documentary, Josen meibo AR-29 [boarding list AR-29].
The author delves into the philosophy of the filmmaker who expanded the range of expression of TV programs by “developing methods” based on an interview with Mr. Aida and analyses of his works in the 1960s and the 1970s, which the legendary producer brought to perfection as he had kept refining his expressive skills in TV program making.