Magazines and the Making of Mass Culture in Japan provides a detailed yet approachable analysis of the mechanisms central to the birth of mass culture in Japan by tracing the creation, production, and circulation of two critically important family magazines: Kingu (King) and Ie no hikari (Light of the Home). These magazines served to embed new instruments of mass communication and socialization within Japanese society and created mechanisms to facilitate the dissemination of hegemonic forms of discourse in the first half of the twentieth century. The amazing success of Kingu and Ie no hikariestablished and normalized participation in a Japanese mass national audience
a community which had previously not existed
but also facilitated the rise of Japanese mass consumer culture in the postwar years.
Amy Bliss Marshall argues that the postwar mass national consumer in Japan is foreshadowed by the mass national audience created by family magazines of the interwar era. This book narrates the development of such publications, one explicitly capitalist and one outwardly agrarian, based on missions with an overarching desire to create a mass audience. Magazines and the Making of Mass Culture in Japan highlights the importance of the seemingly innocuous acts of mass leisure consumption of magazines and the goods advertised therein, aiding our understanding of the creation and direction of a new form of social participation and understanding
an essential part of not only the culture but also the politics of the interwar period.
By:
Amy Bliss Marshall
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 159mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 520g
ISBN: 9781487502867
ISBN 10: 1487502869
Series: Studies in Book and Print Culture
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 14 March 2019
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
1. The Medium, the Message & the Masses: Understanding Japanese Family Magazines 2. The Splendid Power of Being in Perfect Harmony: How Two Publishers Made a Mass Japanese Audience 3. “We Came, We Saw, We Astonished:” How a Japanese Mass Was Won 4. Reading Together: How the Audience Participated 5. Learning to Consume: How Magazines Politicized Advertising
Amy Bliss Marshall is an assistant professor of History and Asian Studies at Florida International University.
Reviews for Magazines and the Making of Mass Culture in Japan
Amy Bliss Marshall's book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the formation of mass culture in modern Japan. It should also draw the attention of scholars working in the histories of nationalism, the media, and the urban-rural divide. - Mark Jones, Department of History, Central Connecticut State University
