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Association of Japanese Intellectual History
Public Symposium
First Day (1 pm., Saturday, October 29, 2016)

Symposium on “Magazine” Media in Intellectual History
OSA Shizue*
When considering the spatiotemporality of the latter nineteenth to earlytwentieth centuries in terms of the arena of intellectual history, it should beacknowledged that the work of scrutinizing the state of discourse and thought
centering on “‘magazine’ media,” which includes in a narrow sense its adventand process of popularization and commodiﬁcation, has possibilities for creating new
methodological opportunities in interdisciplinary trends, thus temporally broadening thematerial and subjects of research in intellectual history today. At our symposium today,
we will focus on the historicity and versatilityof methods of discourse analysis of “media”
as the message. Through individual concrete
examples ﬁlled with new information andcreativity, we will attempt new questions
focusing on the object and methodology ofintellectual history.
The word “media” has a short history as
an academic term. The original meaning of theword carries the connotation of intermediary
action as in intermediation, or mediation.
According to Marshall McLuhan (1911* Symposium Committee, Association of Japanese Intellectual History
OSA Shizue 長 志珠絵, Professor of Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, KobeUniversity120

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 8 20171980), “media” that includes a relationship with the environment and the body
is a polysemic concept that creates a body and world structure. In recentyears in social sciences and the humanities, there have been titles such as “asmedia” or “media such as” prefacing academic programs. These are probably
attempts to redeﬁne and broaden the target of the range of the issue, and byadding new discoveries, inquire into existing intellectual and scholarly horizons of consciousness. At our 2003 symposium, entitled “Media that RelatesThought: The Case of Early Modern Japan,” we examined the link betweensocial and intellectual history based on the critiques of premodern readers andthe body of publication history. However, the historical phase of publication
culture had a greatly diﬀerent role and function than the socio-historicalcontext to which it conforms. In particular, for research on virtual history andintellectual history in the early modern and modern eras, publication media
was inseparably linked with “discourse” in terms of a clash in the relationship from the beginning between individual thinkers and society. Or,
discourse itself went beyond the power to change interpretation; it had anexistence that transcended “mediation” that was even unrelated to the content
of that discourse. The task of questioning “magazine media” re-addresses thetargets and methods of intellectual history anew. It is thus an important taskin perspectives on discourse analysis. In our 2016 symposium entitled“‘Magazine’ Media in the History of Thought,” we have considered how
media in the narrow sense is systemized by limiting the time frame to thenineteenth to twentieth centuries and restricting discussion to the characteristics of the two periods of early modern national formation and popularization.

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Further, I asked two of our presenters, who have discussed the length andbreadth of thought and media in that era, to formulate questions that include
inquiries into methodology through the following types of subjects: the intellectual history environment in which magazine media is situated and theexceptional diﬀerences in quality of each actor in that focus, what questions
they brought to the debate, and how such debate developed. In terms of theproceedings in the symposium, we will have the commentator and moderator
both pose questions. We have also prepared panels on early modern religious
history. We are looking forward to the participation of all of our members fora fruitful and profound discussion.

Symposium Presentation 1“Magazine” Media in Research on Early Modern Intellectual History:
Magazine Journalist Miyake Setsurei
NAKANOME Tōru†
It is said that the ﬁrst magazine publication in Japan that was consciously
like a Western magazine was Yanagawa Shunsan’s (柳川春三) 1867 Seiyōzasshi (西洋雑誌). From that time, magazines, along with newspapers,
continued to develop as distinctive type-print early modern media “periodicals.” To sum up the history of magazines in very sweeping terms, the styleof the magazine was established with subsequent publication of Meiroku
zasshi (明六雑誌), which indicated true development of the genre of themagazine in the 1880s. With Taiyō (太陽), which began to be published after
the ﬁrst Sino-Japanese War, there was further generalization, and after theRusso-Japanese War, genres that in a sense continue to this day, such as
general magazines, magazines for the masses, women’s magazines, children’smagazines, and specialty magazines, were established. In this presentation, I
discuss how magazines in early modern Japan functioned as instruments ofintellectual development. After considering how to understand, evaluate, andcriticize intellectual movements using the medium of the magazine inresearch on intellectual history, I focus on Miyake Setsurei (三宅雪嶺; 18601945), who worked his entire life as a magazine journalist. I examine thehistorical aspects of the characteristics of magazine media, journalists† NAKANOME Tōru 中野目 徹, Professor of History and Anthropology, Universityof Tsukuba

122Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 8 2017(editors) who transmit magazine content, and the readers who are the recipients of that content. I conclude with a methodology for research in intellectual history.

Symposium Presentation 2Research on Magazines that Challenges the Collective
Un-intellectualism of “Media People”SATŌ Takumi‡
The most important aspect of magazine media is its medium (intermediate)quality. As you know, the word media is the plural of medium; all types ofmedia have the essence of intermediacy. In terms of the media situation formagazines in the twentieth century, however, intermediacy was conspicuous.
For example, magazines remained between books and newspapers in terms of
temporal constraints and permanence. Before the war, there was a press law
and newspaper law, but no magazine law. Instead, there were “press law
magazines” and “newspaper law magazines.” It is possible for a stock ofbooks to become “classics” through time, but newspapers tend to be an
information medium that is only read on the day of publication. Because
newspapers for a long time were not considered material for intellectual
history, at the beginning of the twentieth century, newspaper studies or
Zeitungswissenschaft (communication studies today), were established atGerman universities. That is, it was research on magazines, and on neither
books nor newspapers, which became the intermediary area that linked media
studies with history.
I myself began my research on propaganda of the Social Democratic Partyof Germany (doctoral dissertation, Propaganda Myths) by examining comicmagazines. I translated The Nationalization of the Masses by George L.
Mosse, who delineated Nazi history anew from the “wastebasket of intellectual history,” thus adding my name to “media studies.” For this reason, I haveadopted an approach that diﬀers from intellectual history even in my researchon magazines. If intellectual history entails “public opinion, theorists,scholars, and books on culture and education,” then I have given my attention
to “popular opinion, censors, editors, and utilitarian texts.” In my presenta‡ SATŌ Takumi 佐藤卓己, Professor of Graduate School of Education, Kyoto
University

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123tion, I discuss an approach to media history called “CollectiveNon-intellectualism in Premodern Japan” by using material from my Tenka
muteki no media ningen (天下無敵のメディア人間, published by Shinchōsensho 新潮選書). I analyze Noyori Hideichi (野依秀市; 1885 1968), publisherof Jitsugyō no sekai (実業の世界) and Teito nichinichi shinbun (帝都日日新聞),
in which the name of Miyake Setsurei appeared on the ﬁrst page of everyissue.