| Popis: |
During the 1930s, “the national populace” (“kokumin”) was redefined and gained precedence over and gradually replaced the “the people” as the paradigmatic social subject of the period. This chapter clarifies how the meaning of “the national populace” was restructured through the incorporation of characteristics of “the people” and “the masses.” It also describes how the development of mechanical reproduction technology from the mid-1920s changed the understanding of cinema from that of a site-specific “popular entertainment” to that of a medium closely associated with other reproducible media like print, radio, and records, thereby creating a new media ecology that can be best described as a transmedial consumer culture. Based on these analyses, the chapter argues that the total war political regime and its related discourses attempted to take advantage of the new consumer culture to construct an ideal national subject that could be set to their purposes. The chapter also reveals that while “the national populace” was idealized as a set of homogenous and equal actors, this very term functioned to simultaneously encompass and conceal conflicts and contradictions concerning social class, region, gender, and numerous other social factors. |
