This collaborative research project aims to explore the pulse of the Japanese masses during the latter half of the 1960s through research on the history of the activities of the Tigers, (SAWADA Kenji, KISHIBE Osami, MORIMOTO Tarou, KAHASHI Katsumi, HITOMI Minoru and KISHIBE Shirou) a popular music group active from the latter half of the 1960s until the beginning of the 1970s. The Tigers was the representative group of the Group Sounds, popular music boom in the latter half of the 1960s. Through research on their activities, we wish to discover the secret of their popularity and why the electric sound influenced by the Ventures and the Beatles held so much appeal. We also wish to understand what kind of significance this group had amidst, on one hand, the economic expansion seen in the mass consumer society, as represented by the proliferation of television, and on the other hand, the political movements from the student movements in 1968 to the conflict on the US-Japan security treaty in 1970. Ever since the 1960s, historians IROKAWA Daikichi and YASUMARU Yoshio had erected the genre of popular history as the center of historical studies. Their work to uncover the history of agricultural society in Japan-the pleas of the populace and the activities of the government-continues up to this day. Ironically, the 1960s was also the period wherein Japanese agricultural society was conclusively abolished. The full-scale effort to historically describe agricultural society had the crucial role of recording a form of the Japanese populace that was in the process of disappearing altogether. After that, in the 1970s the historian AMINO Yoshihiko developed the research on the history of society, such that not only farmers but all the various people who had gone unrecorded-craftsmen, mountain peoples-and their histories were clarified, in opposition to the existing view that Japanese history was primarily one of rice crop agriculture. However, in the present 21st century, if we are to describe the history of the transnational masses and general public under the influence of global capitalism, a history that widely grasps the sympathies of people cannot merely be a history of agriculture or mountain people. Perhaps we need a history that touches upon the roots that people living in the present capitalist society feel affinity to. This is where rock music, represented by the Beatles in the 1960s, makes its appearance. This phenomenon exceeded the bounds of England, Great Britain, and the western world, and exerted a tremendous influence even on teenagers in Japan and the rest of the non-western world. Electric sound was not just music that people listened to, but as British Cultural Studies have shown, this phenomenon aroused resistance to society, self-emancipation, aspiration toward western culture, and thus greatly shaped the way of life and thinking of young people. Moved by the stimulus of the music of the Beatles, it was the Tigers who took to the stage in Japan, as a group to correspond to the Beatles.By choosing a research topic like popular music, the academic focus is no longer merely on an abstract concept, but on something akin to what Gilles Deleuze refers to as the problem of emotions or affects. The Tigers were managed by a major artist producer called Watanabe Pro., and while they were able to achieve tremendous success and popularity within Japan, the activities of the members both as musicians and as celebrities were complex, and fissures crept into their relationships with each other. Eventually members withdrew, and in the end the group was disbanded. Considering this, the problems surrounding their music cannot simply be reduced to the quality of their music. Within the logic of capitalism, how can one attain popularity? Questions like these fit well within the frame of social and cultural research. Also, Watanabe Pro. began their business managing jazz music productions for US-occupation forces during the occupation period. When the occupation forces left Tokyo, Watanabe Pro. shifted its target to a new audience-the young Japanese generation. This strategy persisted beyond the 1960s, leaving its mark on Japanese popular culture during the postwar transitions. As such, by developing the argument along the points of view of emotions and affects (the masses and musicians) as well as the logic of capitalism and the issues in the world of music (the relationships of musicians with each other and with producers), this research hopes to open up a new approach to the research on postwar Japanese popular history.

Research Representative	磯前順一	国際日本文化研究センター・准教授
Organizer	井上章一	国際日本文化研究センター・教授
Team Researcher	浅尾雅俊	音楽家
〃	飯田健一郎	同志社大学大学院神学研究科・博士後期課程
〃	小野善太郎	えとせとらレコード・店主
〃	金谷幹夫	（株）ホーム社・常務取締役
〃	黒崎浩行	國學院大学神道文化学部・准教授
〃	中村俊夫	トシ・コミュニケーションズ・プロデューサー
〃	永岡　崇	南山大学南山宗教文化研究所・研究員
〃	藤本憲正	同志社大学大学院神学研究科・博士後期課程
〃	松本　清	音楽評論家
〃	水内勇太	同志社大学大学院文学研究科・博士後期課程
〃	倉本一宏	国際日本文化研究センター・教授
〃	細川周平	国際日本文化研究センター・教授