Magazines and the Making of Mass Culture in Japan by Amy Bliss Marshall (review)

In her book Magazines and the Making of Mass Culture in Japan, Amy Bliss Marshall argues that commercial magazines with large circulations were the most impactful mass media in early to mid-twentieth-century Japan, and, as such, they participated in the formation of an increasingly unified mass culture. These magazines appealed to a variety of consumerist desires, of course, but, in doing so, they served as the vehicle by which national (that is, unificationist) ideology infiltrated the everyday lives of ordinary Japanese citizens. The author carefully targets the "transwar years" from the 1910s to the 1960s in order to understand the mechanisms that helped to form the continuities "present in the lived experiences of millions of Japanese." Marshall selects two mass magazines, both targeting families nationwide, prompting them to have the sense of a unified national culture. They are Kingu (King; published from 1924 to 1957) and Ie no hikari (Light of the Home; published from 1925 to the present). King was widely known for its highly commercialist approach to edifying readers on a wide range of cultural, social, and even political matters. On the other hand, Light of the Home has been published by an organization founded to support agricultural union members, gaining readers throughout Japan via subscriptions.

In the first two chapters, Marshall sets forth in lucid and accessible prose the theoretical framework and larger historical context for her study of Japanese mass magazines. In particular, she draws upon theorists of media and mass culture, including the usual suspects like Marshall McLuhan, Theodor Adorno, and Richard Ohmann, adding into the mix James W. Carey's notion of communication as "a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed … that not only represents or describes but actually moulds or constitutes the world" (as quoted by Marshall). She then devotes the rest of the book to in-depth analyses of the sharply defined body of evidence, with careful delineation of the strategies and mechanisms of communication employed by the publishers and editors. The author's main objective is to examine the cultural logic of the form – that is, of mass magazines – as "a medium for culture creation" rather than focusing solely on their content.

The significance of Magazines and the Making of Mass Culture in Japan, then, reaches beyond the disciplinary boundaries of Japanese studies, as it offers an excellent gateway for readers interested in the mechanisms of mass culture more generally. While Marshall keeps her attention tightly focused on just two Japanese magazines, her careful and meticulous archival research, historical contextualization, and textual analysis stand out as helpful models for those studying the role of mass media in the dissemination of ideology in other historical and cultural contexts. Additionally, this study invites us to widen the scope of our attention to include other contemporary mass media such as film, phonograph, and radio. After all, these other mass media forms arose alongside the large-scale commercial magazines that Marshall examines in such impressive detail. Their histories are deeply interwoven with that of mass magazines in an intricate web of mutual influence and response, as they collectively shaped the affective, psychological, social, and cognitive texture of everyday life for consumers across a range of contexts around the globe.