著者

片桐 早紀

出版者

日本マス・コミュニケーション学会

雑誌

マス・コミュニケーション研究 (ISSN:13411306)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.87, pp.157-175, 2015-07-31 (Released:2017-10-06)

参考文献数

26

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This is a study on jukeboxes in kissatens (coffee shops, cafes, and teahouses in Japan) during the 1960s and 70s based mainly on interviews with jukebox collectors, former employees of major jukebox manufacturers in Japan, self-employed engineers and salespeople, and kissaten owners. Since jukeboxes force others to listen to music that someone has chosen, I assumed that the experience of playing jukeboxes would be different from that of playing records at home or going to concerts. So, applying the basic ideas of musicing and auditory culture, this paper focused on how a particular kissaten, jukebox, and music were selected - rather than what was played on jukeboxes - in the following three phases: 1) What distinguished ordinary kissatens with jukeboxes from other music specific cafes like jazz-kissa and how did people choose to go there?; 2) Why were jukeboxes chosen in kissatens where other means of playing music, like cable broadcast services, were available?; and 3) What was it like selecting songs on jukeboxes - i.e., the touch of the buttons, the designs, and gimmicks that fascinated the audience? By examining the interviews, this study found that when it comes to jukeboxes, the standards for selecting music are ambivalent. That is, on one hand, people were so mesmerized by the jukebox's colorful lighting and the sound and sight of the record picking mechanism inside, that, at some point, the music itself did not matter. On the other hand, the music they chose represented what they wanted to say or do, using jukeboxes as a way to convey messages to others - a boy asking out a girl he just met there, for example. Therefore, jukeboxes can be described as a unique media that provided two very opposite kinds of experiences - sensuous and personal, or contextual and social.