| Abstrakt: |
“Turning the Japanese people into a 100 million idiots (ichioku-sō-hakuchi-ka),” as insisted by Soichi Oya, is the most famous phrase critical of TV at the earliest stage of TV broadcasting in Japan. Thus far, little attention has been given to the logic of this theory. In this paper, we analyze Oyaʼs texts and try to reveal what kind of logic is used in the theory. As a result, we reveal that Oyaʼs texts are organized according to the following methods: (1) To place people, culture, and media technologies in a ranking order, (2) To assume a positive correlation between these ranks, and (3) To interpret a certain vulgar TV program as an actual appearance of the underlying pattern of problems facing Japanese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
