contemporary social subjects. Th is succinctly indicates the extent to which “the people”
is a discursive and historical construction.
In this chapter, I will analyze the discourse surrounding, as well as the policies impact- ing on, social education and popular recreation as articulated by the bureaucrats and associated intellectuals of the Ministry of Education in the 1920s and aft erward. In so doing I will discuss what constituted their imagined concept of the people, in what sense they identifi ed the people with movie audiences, and what social issues this identifi ca- tion involved within its historical context. I will examine the era stretching from the Taisho democracy until the total war regime of the 1930s and early 1940s. Th e social education and popular recreation of the time have been examined extensively, but, as education scholars have dealt with the former and sociologists and historians with the latter, the themes have tended to be explored only separately. 7 Th is tendency thus has left unexplored the crucial reality that the Ministry’s policy of social education positioned the people, cinema, and audiences on the intersection of education and amusement. 8
As early as the 1910s and 1920s, when the Japanese policy of social education was estab- lished and developed, it refl ected attempts to incorporate in education new types of amuse- ments, like cinema, that had become prevalent in the social space that shaped the public’s everyday lives. It follows that the Ministry strove to organize the production and distribu- tion of cinema so as to serve education. Bureaucrats and intellectuals regarded as immature the people who typically fl ocked to such amusement sites as movie theaters. But, at the same time, the intellectuals associated with the Ministry thought that if the people could come to appreciate educationally improved amusements or movies, this would enable them to develop willingly—not forcibly—into the ideal subjects of a harmonious society that would uphold the imperial state. It is at this junction that movie audiences came to be seen as “the people,” and this view was retained in the fi lm policy of the total war regime in the 1930s and early 1940s. Yet, we should also keep in mind that the genealogy of the social education policy in the 1920s and later years was neither simply a linear progression nor a reactionary regres- sion, but rather it was a complex process entailing contradictory social and political relations.
As many scholars have explored, movie audiences are confi gured by their direct inter- action with fi lms, screen images, movie theaters or other sites of viewing, technologies, geography, and other physical, sensory, and/or signifying conditions. But it is equally important to acknowledge that they are always being defi ned and redefi ned by a variety of discourses that relate to and negotiate with each other in intricate ways. My argument is an attempt to grasp movie audiences as a discursively constructed social category and to examine it in relation to its historical context by investigating Japan’s policy of social education in the interwar era as a case study.
subjects of what they were attempting to formulate as shakai or “society.” In order to explore the issue of the audience, it is crucial to look at how the Ministry’s bureaucrats and associated intellectuals were trying to handle the concept of the people in relation to that of society.
Th e Ministry’s policy-related conception of the people dramatically changed when a new generation of bureaucrats such as Norisugi Kaju emerged and began to use the phrase “social education” in their offi cial documents. 9 In June 1919, when the Fourth Department, the department in charge of education outside of schools and universities, was founded inside the Ministry’s Bureau of Normal Educational Aff airs, Norisugi, at the age of forty-one, was appointed its director. He and other bureaucrats advocated social education, diff erentiating it from the hitherto used term “education popularized for the general public” or “ tsuzoku kyoiku .” Th e Ministry offi cially launched education popularized for the general public in May 1911, when they established the Board for Research into Education Popularized for the General Public. Th e Ministry continued to use the phrase even aft er the foundation of the Fourth Department. Th e term “social education” gained currency in the 1920s when it replaced the term “education popular- ized for the general public.” Th is is evident when we look at the Study Group for Social Education, which Norisugi and other staff of the Department launched in October 1920 and their journal Shakai to kyoka (Society and Edifi cation), which was fi rst published in January 1921 and renamed Shakai kyoiku (Social Education) in January 1924. Th e bureaucrats also brought out their own books on social education and popular recre- ations. Th ese include Ehata’s Practical Research on Social Education (1921), Norisugi’s Th e Practice of Social Education (1923), and Nakata’s A Study of Recreation (1923). 10
As advocated in this context, social education had two vital aspects. First, while edu- cation popularized for the general public signifi ed that the government and intellectuals would intelligibly convey and impart knowledge to the lower classes, social education meant that the people were not being prodded, but had to voluntarily involve them- selves in learning, or more precisely that the government and intellectuals should lead them to feel as if they had voluntarily taken up learning. In the second place, educa- tion popularized for the general public simply designated the diff usion of morality and knowledge conforming to the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (1889) and the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890); however, with social education the new genera- tion of bureaucrats set as their ultimate goal the “overhaul” or “ kaizo ” of the society as a whole. Notably, kaizo was a word in vogue at the time, extensively used by intellectuals with diverse political standpoints ranging from the left ist journal Kaizo (launched in April 1919) to the extreme nationalist Kita Ikki’s General Principles of Drastic Change for Japan (which was launched in the same year). Th ese works argued for structural change aff ecting the entire society, although in diff erent ways.
It is clear that the bureaucrats’ campaign of social education was inextricably linked with their awareness of the geopolitical situation that had unfolded from the Sino-Japanese War through World War I, as well as various social issues generated by the growth of capitalism. On the one hand, adopting an imperialistic standpoint, the bureaucrats insisted that the people nurture their responsibility as the nation so as
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to uplift the international status of the state to a level where it would be able to rival America and Europe. 11 On the other hand, they were explicitly or implicitly apprehen- sive about labor problems (including unemployment, harsh working conditions, and labor disputes), poverty, riots (such as the Hibiya Riot in 1905 and the Rice Riot in 1918), and what they saw as problems relating to thought and ideology (particularly democracy, socialism, and communism), hence their call for the drastic overhaul of the entire society through education. 12
What, then, was the society they attempted to construct? In his 1923 book, Norisugi defi ned his view of society: “A society is a group constituted by individuals who have a mutual understanding in mind ( seishin-teki kotsu ).” 13 He also puts it another way: a soci- ety “is an organic group constituted by persons of integrity who share a common goal.” 14 Here, we can sense a nuance that is not simply reducible to emperor-centered national- istic thought. In fact, the society Norisugi advocated had mixed implications vis-à-vis such large-scale political, economic, and ideological trends of the time as democracy, socialism, and capitalism. As already noted, there is no doubt that, positioned within an imperialist context dominated by Europe and the United States, the offi cials felt that society should serve to strengthen the state and its power. 15 Th is ran parallel to the gov- ernment’s belief that Japan’s imperialist expansion and acquisition of colonies was an antidote to the social problems inside the country. 16 In this sense, democracy, or the idea of prioritizing citizens over the state, was not what the offi cials promoted. Th ey even more clearly rejected socialism. According to Norisugi, the Ministry was at fi rst reluctant to use the term “social” precisely because they were afraid that the word would evoke socialism. 17 Th e offi cials (at least outwardly) regarded socialism, together with democracy and communism, as dangerous strains of thought that would destabilize the status quo authorized by the Constitution of the Empire of Japan and the Imperial Rescript on Education. 18 Capitalism was not so openly discussed in the offi cials’ dis- course, but it is obvious that they endeavored to incorporate certain of its principles into their measures for social education. Echoing both the Campaign for Lifestyle Improvement the Home Ministry promoted and the “modern life” ( kindai seikatsu ) or
“cultural life” ( bunka seikatsu ) trends that became fashionable in the 1920s, the offi cials oft en suggested that people make their everyday life “effi cient” ( noritsu ) and produc- tive. Th ey cautioned against wasting time while recommending rational scheduling and punctuality. 19
Despite these eff orts, however, it is not diffi cult to see that the bureaucrats, albeit implicitly, appropriated certain ideas from democracy and socialism while trying to defend the nation against capitalism. Th ey oft en emphasized “independent will and autonomy” ( jishu jiritsu ), “public-mindedness” ( kokyoshin ), “cooperation” ( kyodoshin ), and “equal opportunities” ( kikai kinto ) as the most important goals for constructing their ideal society. Th rough independent will and autonomy, Norisugi expected people to willingly work as members of the nation-state without depending on guidance by the state power. 20 Taking on this responsibility as a nation, in turn, would allow them signifi cant freedom even in a monarchy like Japan, he added. 21 But he also implied in his book that independent will and autonomy are crucial for people to become aware
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of being members of society and to actively help each other. 22 Here, we see a mixture of somewhat democratic and socialist ideals, tied up with the other stated goals such as the move toward public mindedness and greater cooperation. Th ose goals, furthermore, were seen as countermeasures against the seeking of self-interest, the desire for pleasure, and an indiff erence to one’s neighbors, all of which were likely consequences of the rise of capitalism as a system. 23 Th e idea of equal opportunity was also grounded in the view that unlike school-based education, which allowed only a limited number of children to proceed to advanced schooling, social education would off er educational opportunities to people from every class. 24 In short, the society and social education the bureaucrats envisioned were neither completely for nor completely against capitalism, democracy, and socialism. Nor were they completely subjugated by state power.
Th e subjects of a society characterized in this way were what the Ministry’s offi cials and its associated intellectuals attempted to guide “the people” to become. In this vision, the people were understood on two levels. One level was the recognized current state of the people and the other was an idealized prospective state the people could reach.
Both states were presupposed to be inhabited by all social classes except the dominant class the writer-bureaucrats themselves belonged to. Th eir conception of “the people”
centered on urban residents and factory laborers but also included local farmers. Th e bureaucrats considered the current state of the people to be “ setsunashugi ” (the prin- ciple of living only for the present), “individualism” ( kojinshugi ), “hedonism” ( kai- rakushugi ), and “egotism” ( rikoshugi ). Th ey came to the conclusion that if the people became involved in a riot or a labor dispute, they would turn into a mob similar to the
“crowd” Gustave Le Bon described, a group of people readily excited by certain kinds of stimulation, evincing a lack of logical thinking, and easily losing their tempers. 25 In opposition to this state, the envisioned ideal was one where the people would consti- tute a society that was based on their “organic relationships” under an economic and ethical consensus based on “effi ciency,” “public mindedness,” “mutual support,” “soli- darity,” and “independent will,” among others. It is worth noting here that this ideal- ized conception of “the people” signifi cantly diff ered from Yanagita Kunio’s “ jomin ” or
“folk,” Kracauer’s “the masses,” and Habermas’s “citizens.” Unlike Yanagita’s “folk,” con- ceptualized as imbued with traditional manners and customs, “the people” were set up as modern subjects. Yet, in presupposing that they existed in an organic relationship, the concept of the people is also marked off from that of the masses, which was seen as an assemblage of individuals functioning as parts of the capitalist system. Th e people also diff ered from citizens in that, although they were expected to nurture a “rational” criti- cal mind uninfl uenced by “foreign thought,” they were not encouraged to engage in free and open-minded discussions among themselves. 26
Still, the concept of the people was also not exactly synonymous with that of the nation ( kokumin ), the emperor’s subjects ( shinmin ), or the imperial subjects ( komin ), all of which offi cials and intellectuals oft en used to refer to the constituents of Japan and/
or imperial Japan, including its colonies. Certainly, the people were under pressure to be a nation that could sustain the state under the geopolitical conditions of a world domi- nated by imperialism and they were prohibited from expressing any antinationalist
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thoughts. However, the bureaucrats oft en emphasized the importance of individuals’
happiness and mutual support. Norisugi remarked, “We should understand that the group life on which our society and state are based is the foundation for any individual happiness, and thus we should make an eff ort to vitalize our spirit of social cohesion and public-mindedness.” 27 Th is suggests that the new generation of bureaucrats did not simply insist on fostering a nation allegiant to the state but also saw society as mediating the relationship between the people and the state and aspired to turning the people into its subjects. In short, the people were conceptualized as the potential members of a soci- ety that had ambivalent implications vis-à-vis democracy, capitalism, socialism, and nationalism. Th is notion of the people as the members of a society would be unthink- able without the infl uence of discourse issuing from the Taisho democracy, for example the work of Yoshino Sakuzo, but because of limited space, I will not be able to discuss this aspect in more detail here.
Th e idealized concept of the people that this new generation of bureaucrats advocated during the Taisho democracy was, as it were, an eclectic mix of capitalist, democratic, socialist, and nationalist ideas. “Th e people” was conceptualized as a group of homoge- nous social subjects and was premised on the seeming dissolution of diff erences in class, race and ethnicity, gender, generation, and geography. Th e bureaucrats’ primary goal was to overcome the people’s current diff erences through such practices as mutual sup- port. One might say that “the people” in this social education policy were congruent to
“the people” targeted by the popular magazine King (launched in January 1925). Th is magazine tried to appeal to a cross-section of readers irrespective of diff erences in age, gender, and occupation. But, as we have seen, it is not clear whether advocates of social education attempted to promote the people’s consumption as King did. On the other hand, the bureaucrats’ idealization of the people could be seen to echo criticism the left - ist philosopher Tosaka Jun voiced in his 1937 essay looking back at the boom of “the people” in literature of the 1920s, insofar as both attempted to evade or even eradicate their possible political skepticism about the imperial state. 28