Takenaka Labor -- Between Entertainment and Power -- 1974

Takenaka Labor -- Between Entertainment and Power -- 1974

Takenaka Labor is one of the leading critics of postwar Japan, and his writing style has always been sharply focused on the contradictions of the system and society. He received particular attention for his advocacy of the national singer Hibari Misora, who in the early 1970s was the subject of a complex interplay between entertainment and gangster influence, and there were reports of incidents in which Hibari's family was suspected of having ties to gangsters. Many in the media were critical of her, but Takenaka made his position "Protect Hibari Misora" clear in the midst of all this, positioning Hibari not merely as an entertainer, but as a singer who carried the sentiments of the common people of Japan.

In an era of rapid economic growth, when television and weekly magazines dominated the public's entertainment and information, the image of entertainers became commercialized while at the same time easily exposed to scandal. Against this backdrop, Takenaka viewed the entertainment industry as "an industry subordinate to power and capital," and problematized the structure in which entertainers working in the entertainment industry are sometimes subjected to unjust bashing and discrimination. His defense of Hibari Misora was not merely a defense of a single singer, but an attempt at a critique that questioned the very relationship between the entertainment industry and society.

The 1970s was also a time when, after the failure of the student movement, the energy of society was shifting toward culture and consumption. Takenaka, while critically observing this trend, believed that the truth of society would emerge in the performing arts, where the emotions of the common people reside. He positioned the sympathy of the masses for Hibari's singing not as a "fiction" divorced from social reality, but as an expression of the resistance and pathos that lay at the bottom of popular culture.

Takenaka Rō's stance had a profound influence on later criticism of the performing arts. Rather than denouncing the relationship between entertainers and gangsters from a blanket perspective, his approach shed light on the social structure and popular psychology behind such relationships, a critical spirit that was unique to him. His words in defense of Hibari Misora were an attempt to free entertainment criticism from mere gossip and to push it into a language that speaks of society.