What should I wear with my tape-recorder? Aurality, mobility and sound technology in postwar Japan
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- Djam Lecture Theatre (DLT)
About this event
Dr Martyn Smith (University of Sheffield)
Abstract
This talk provides an introduction to the hobby of sound hunting ( Namaroku ) in Japan. The boom in popularity of sound recording as a hobby began in the late 1960s and faded out by the early 1980s. Yet, drawing on efforts since the 1950s to create documentary sound and produce sound effects, as well as a growing fascination for recording the sounds of nature, everyday life and modern technology, the ‘Namaroku boom’ took the amateur enthusiast beyond the domestic realm where the capturing of music and conversation had been the focus of sound recording culture up to the late 1960s. In magazines, handbooks, and manufacturers’ advertising campaigns young Japanese were urged to go out and about with a tape recorder to find, research and create ‘real sound’. This was part of a broader global transformation that saw the consumption and control of sound through technological mediation gradually taken out of the hands of experts. The promotion of ‘sound hunting’ tied the consumption of sound to consumer society and created a mediascape that emphasised individualism, mobility and experimentation in relation to the everyday soundscape. This paper explores the wider social and cultural contexts within which sound and sound recording technology resonated in postwar Japan and offers an important case study for the role of technology and consumerism in sound studies.
Speaker Biography
Martyn Smith is a historian of modern and contemporary Japan and completed his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2014. In 2018, he was Visiting Assistant Professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and he joined the School of East Asian Studies at Sheffield in August 2019.
Registration
If you would like to attend the event please register. Online registration
Organiser: SOAS Japan Research Centre
Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk
Contact Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4893
