Transnational Voices or Self-serving Activists?: The Portrayal and Legitimation of Public Intellectuals in Japanese Newspapers Author:

Abstract: The primary concern of this study was to analyze how the Japanese print media portray modern-day public intellectuals, and subsequently treat them as legitimate or illegitimate. Furthermore, I examined the underlying factors that affect this portrayal. After selecting four case studies of present-day public figures/groups (Murakami Haruki, Miyazaki Hayao, Chim↑Pom and Aida Makoto), I collected primary data from the news coverage of recent events involving these figures in three leading Japanese newspapers: the Asahi Shimbun, the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Sankei Shimbun. A theoretical framework based on the concept of legitimacy, the media’s role as legitimators and the intellectual’s perceived role was used to analyze the data by discourse analysis. The analysis found that the newspapers’ ideological stance influenced underlying moral ideas of “the proper intellectual”, these ideas being mutually exclusive across the studied media. Furthermore, an ideological divide significantly influenced the portrayal of public intellectuals discussing topics relating to Japan’s unresolved wartime history.