ABSTRACT
The popularisation of tape recorders enabled ordinary people to copy sounds from mass media and mass productions. Furthermore, it opened opportunities to create an original sound product for amateur audiophiles. They recorded various favourite or ordinary sounds around them and edited the recordings to produce their own works for fun. In Japan, amateur sound-recording contests in the 1960s and 1970s could be considered as a remarkable example of this. This article considers several aspects of amateur sound-recording contests to understand the history of postwar sound technology culture in Japan. The contests show the close relationships among various actors, technologies, and contexts in the culture and the diverse creativity of amateur audiophiles.
