Research Catalog

Title

Electrified voices : how the telephone, phonograph, and radio shaped modern Japan, 1868-1945 / Kerim Yasar.

Author

Yasar, Kerim

Publication

• New York : Columbia University Press, [2018]
• ©2018

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xv, 277 pages : illustrations; 23 cm.

Summary

Long before karaoke's ubiquity and the rise of global brands such as Sony, Japan was a place where new audio technologies found eager users and contributed to new cultural forms. In Electrified Voices, Kerim Yasar traces the origins of the modern soundscape, showing how the revolutionary nature of sound technology and the rise of a new auditory culture played an essential role in the formation of Japanese modernity. A far-reaching cultural history of the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, radio, and early sound film in Japan, Electrified Voices shows how these technologies reshaped the production of culture. Audio technologies upended the status of the written word as the only source of prestige while revivifying traditional forms of orality. The ability to reproduce and transmit sound, freeing it from the constraints of time and space, had profound consequences on late nineteenth-century language reform; twentieth-century literary, musical, and cinematic practices; the rise of militarism and nationalism in the 1920s and 30s; and the transition to the postwar period inaugurated by Emperor Hirohito's declaration of unconditional surrender to Allied forces--a declaration that was recorded on a gramophone record and broadcast throughout the defeated Japanese empire. The first cultural history in English of auditory technologies in modern Japan, Electrified Voices enriches our understanding of Japanese modernity and offers a major contribution to sound studies and global media history.

Series Statement

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Uniform Title

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Subjects

• Mass media and culture
• Sound recordings > Social aspects
• Japan
• Communication > Social aspects
• Nationalism
• Mass media and culture > Japan > History
• Sound recordings > Social aspects > Japan > History
• Japan > History > 1868-
• Japan > Civilization > 1868-1945
• History
• Since 1868
• Communication > Social aspects > Japan > History
• Civilization
• Nationalism > Japan > History

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-261) and index.

Contents

Introduction : all that is solid melts into sound -- Vocal cords and telephone wires : orality in Japan, old and new -- Sound and sentiment -- The grain in the groove : inscribed voices, echoed temporalities -- Imagining the wireless community -- Ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds : early Japanese radio drama -- Sound and motion -- Coda-Oke.

Call Number

JFE 19-1270

ISBN

• 9780231187138
• 0231187130
• 9780231187121
• 0231187122

LCCN

2018012328

OCLC

1029087989

Author

Yasar, Kerim, author.

Title

Electrified voices : how the telephone, phonograph, and radio shaped modern Japan, 1868-1945 / Kerim Yasar.

Publisher

New York : Columbia University Press, [2018]

Copyright Date

©2018

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-261) and index.

Chronological Term

Since 1868

Research Call Number

JFE 19-1270