Leap in the Light: Junichi Ushiyama and the Era of the 100 Million Documentarists (1969)

Leap in the Light: Junichi Ushiyama and the Era of the 100 Million Documentarists (1969)

In 1969, as the new television medium was approaching the threshold of maturity, "documentary" using images was transforming itself beyond mere reporting of facts into an attempt to touch the depths of human beings and society. Junichi Ushiyama, a director at NTV, was at the forefront of this transformation, questioning what images are and how documentaries are made.

Ushiyama's concepts of "100 million documentarists" and "double cameras" were revolutionary at the time, and can be said to anticipate today's social networking age.

The "100-million-documentarist" concept was a proposal to free filmmaking from a privileged profession, and to allow everyone to capture reality through their own eyes. Ushiyama advocated opening the doors of visual expression not only within TV stations, but also to scholars, critics, playwrights, and the general public. Needless to say, this was an idea that anticipated the culture of personal video transmission that was to come, such as YouTube, Instagram, and vlogs.

Even more remarkable is the idea of the "double camera" he speaks of. For example, when a camera is brought into a primitive society such as that of the Western Irian Islands, the culture itself, which is the subject of the camera, begins to transform itself. In other words, the camera does not record the culture, but the culture is transformed by the camera. In order to record the process of cultural transformation - in other words, the "fluctuation caused by being photographed" - it is necessary to have "another camera" that also photographs the photographer. Ushiyama proposed this point of view and urged us to view the relationship between the record and the recorder in a meta-physical way.

This idea is realized today in the context of "meta-documentary," "self-documenting vlogs," "backstage footage," and so on. The viewpoint that the documenter is not a transparent entity, but that the act of filming itself influences culture, is now a fundamental idea in the ethics of documentary.

Ushiyama also states, "Documentary is not a theory of artwork, but a theory of auteur. The importance is not the beauty of the images or the skillful editing, but rather what the filmmaker saw and the attitude with which he or she faced reality. This approach is unique in that it positions video not as a mere means of reproduction, but as a philosophical practice that questions the creator's own "position" in the world.

Junichi Ushiyama's philosophy was not a conceptual idealism, but was actually put into practice within television. His productions such as "South Vietnam Battalion War Diary" had a cool-headed gaze that tried to look sharply at reality without being carried away by sentimentality. At the same time, he was not a simple realist in the sense that he expressed doubt about the "belief that there is truth behind reality," but rather he maintained an attitude of constantly reexamining the relationship between reality and himself.

The year 1969 was a time of great social upheaval, with the Vietnam War, university conflicts, and pollution problems. Television was a medium that recorded these upheavals, but at the same time, it was itself a component of society. Ushiyama's sincerity in "seeing" and awareness in "filming" were supported by the tension that emerged in this historical background.

Now, more than half a century later, we are living in the future as Ushiyama saw it. Smartphones are in everyone's hands, and images have taken the place of words in telling us about reality. Everyone speaks, everyone records, and everyone is both a "watcher" and an "observer." This situation may be the very society of "100 million documentarists" that Ushiyama dreamed of.

Junichi Ushiyama's words continue to shake the boundary between documentation and expression. This was the embryo of the visual culture of 1969, and the starting point for questions that continue to be asked today.