Long before karaoke’s ubiquity and the rise of global brands such as Sony, Japan was a place where new audio technologies found eager users and contributed to new cultural forms. In Electrified Voices, Kerim Yasar traces the origins of the modern soundscape, showing how the revolutionary nature of sound technology and the rise of a new auditory culture played an essential role in the formation of Japanese modernity.

A far-reaching cultural history of the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, radio, and early sound film in Japan, Electrified Voices shows how these technologies reshaped the production of culture. Audio technologies upended the status of the written word as the only source of prestige while revivifying traditional forms of orality. The ability to reproduce and transmit sound, freeing it from the constraints of time and space, had profound consequences on late nineteenth-century language reform; twentieth-century literary, musical, and cinematic practices; the rise of militarism and nationalism in the 1920s and 30s; and the transition to the postwar period inaugurated by Emperor Hirohito’s declaration of unconditional surrender to Allied forces—a declaration that was recorded on a gramophone record and broadcast throughout the defeated Japanese empire. The first cultural history in English of auditory technologies in modern Japan, Electrified Voices enriches our understanding of Japanese modernity and offers a major contribution to sound studies and global media history.

"A delightful and insightful narrative that weaves vivid human examples into a theoretical discussion of the meanings of media and sound." - Pacific Affairs

"With Electrified Voices, Kerim Yasar provides a brilliant and stimulating analysis of the role of sound media (telephone, phonograph, radio, and early sound films) in the transition of Japan to modernity." - Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television

"Electrified Voices is a well-researched book, which looks at the early days of Japan’s telecommunications, recording, radio and film industry." - Radio Enthusiast

"This is an ambitious and wide-ranging study of Japan’s modern auditory culture at a time of great changes. The book lends itself well to use in the classroom and will be helpful to historians who wish to provide a different perspective not only on Japanese history but also on the history of technology." - American Historical Review

"Insightful and informative, Electrified Voices opens up important new paths for thinking about cultural, social, and political praxes in modern Japan. . . . The voices that Yasar reveals help us, in short, to hear history anew." - Monumenta Nipponica

"Electrified Voices represents a valuable and highly accessible contribution to the global history of technology and sound as well as to our understanding of the cultural history of modern Japan, and it deserves a wide readership." - Journal of Japanese Studies