This series elucidates the production method of Nihon no sugao (Japan Unmasked) (1957-1964) that built a foundation of Japanese TV documentaries. The third part of the series quantitatively analyzes the entire existing film texts of 193 episodes whose videos and audio are both stored in the archives, focusing on the relations between image and language. From the findings, the author extracts the following five points that are presumed to be most important.
(1) There was an almost constant increase in verbalization (the use of language accompanying image) during the six and a half years of production and broadcasts. In 1961, the verbalization reached a level that is commonly seen in today’s TV documentaries.
(2) Utilizing interviews, the series departed from the cinematic techniques of contemporary documentary films.
(3) The expository mode using narrations stands out throughout the series. This mode made Nihon no sugao enlightening, both methodologically and technically.
(4) There was a methodological shift in 1961: the use of subjects’ voices including interviews, which had driven the verbalization of the series, reached a plateau. Narrations increased thereafter, which served as the main factor for the further verbalization of Nihon no sugao and made the series technically more expository and enlightening.
(5) The final stage of the series generated unprecedented film texts by the heavy use of spontaneous voices captured through synchronized recording. This technique possibly influenced the production methods of NHK’s post–Nihon no sugao TV documentaries.