Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine Nakai Masakazu's theory of communication and media technology. Looking at Nakai's philosophical research on communication and cinema, how he envisaged cinema as the technology to enhance the transindividual possibility of communication will be considered.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the theoretical discussion on communication and media technology by Nakai Masakazu (1900-1952). Although Nakai’s academic career was formed under the strong influence of so-called Kyoto School, his concern was more focused on leftist or socialist criticism of modern capitalist society. He thought, as capitalism developed, the mode of production and communication became collective, and behind this collectivization, the development of technology played the key role. In other words, capitalist industrialization was the strong driving force to establish the management system of labors in which each individual was controlled according to the mechanized production process as a whole. Therefore, Nakai pointed out that in the mass society emerged as a result of capitalist collectivization the human spirit itself was subject to mechanization (seishin-teki kikaika) and became crowd oriented (zokushu-ka). However, he did not criticize these characteristics of mass society, but rather grasped them as the auspice to (re)form mass as a collective or, transindividual subjectivity. For Nakai, the most crucial problem was found among individuals who recognized themselves as cultural, because they were not willing to admit that they were also subject to mechanization. Criticizing such a spiritual aristocracy (seishin-teki kizokushugi) among intelligent people, Nakai argued that what was needed was to appropriate the collective mode of production and communication by mass as collective/transindividual subjectivity, and mass culture (taishu-bunka) was the concrete example of the practice of such an appropriation. To consider the possibility of the above discussion by Nakai, this paper will look at his representative work on the process and logic of communication titled “The Logic of Committee” (Iinkai-no-ronri), and his aesthetic researches on cinema, particularly the one included in the book titled An Introduction of Aesthetics (Bigaku-nyumon). Through this consideration, this paper will elucidate that Nakai understood cinema as the mass-cultural media technology to enhance the transindividual communication that was crucial for forming collective/mass subjectivity.