Narrative Analysis Of The Oral History Documentaries Of NHK's Soldiers' Testimonies Series

The Japanese Broadcasting Association NHK has set up a website called "Archives of War Testimony",which is part of the NHK war testimony project.Therefore,in order to facilitate people to understand the background of each testimony,NHK has released a series of documentaries of "War Testimony" based on interview testimony,hoping to use the most direct audio and video materials to tell history.The Public Library of NHK Television Station has a database of oral history,and it broadcasts oral history documentaries in prime time.The "War Testimony" series documentaries are also part of it.The development of modern science and technology,such as audio recording and video recording,makes it possible to record,preserve and disseminate the voice of the oral narrators truly and completely.It enables the rapid development and dissemination of oral history and accelerates the combination of oral history and documentaries which are essentially the same in seeking truth.In recent years,the oral history documentary which mainly completes the main narrative of the documentary through the oral narration of the event witnesses with the characteristics of storytelling and detail has gradually been accepted and recognized by the audience.Researchers in related fields have also begun to regard Oral History Documentary as a documentary type to study its theme selection,narrative characteristics,value and controversy.The “War Testimony” series documentaries include “Testimony Records the War of Soldiers”,“Testimony Records the Wars of Citizens”,and “NHK Special Program”.This paper mainly focuses on the documentary series “Testimony Records the War of Soldiers”.Based on the theories of communication and narratology,this paper studies the narrative characteristics of the serial documentaries of the oral historical documentary “Testimony Records the War of Soldiers” from four aspects: narrative perspective,narrative structure,narrative language and narrative value.Through watching and analyzing the documentaries,it explores the war in the memory of Japanese veterans,and supplements the understanding of that war from the side.This paper mainly consists of six parts.The first part of the introduction mainly introduces the research background,research purpose and significance,research status,research methods and innovations;The second part explains the core concept of oral history documentary;The third,fourth and fifth parts respectively study the series documentaries of “Testimony Records the War of Soldiers” from four aspects: narrative mode,narrative perspective,narrative structure and narrative language;The sixth part analyses the narrative value and problems of the documentary series “Testimony Records the War of Soldiers” and the thinking of the oral historical documentary.Documentary series “Testimony Records the War of Soldiers” adopted oral narration as the main narrative method and combined multiple narrative perspectives.Through different narrative structures inside and outside as well as a variety of narrative languages,the documentary series finished the huge narration about Japan's world war ii,but there are also problems of replacing the whole truth with part truth and lacking reflection on the war.