was a Japanese

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

noted for his research and commentaries on

popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

Biography

Born in what is now part of

Takatsuki, Osaka is a city in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It is located in northern Osaka's Hokusetsu region. As of 2020, the city had an estimated population of 347,944 and a population density of 3,300 persons per km². The total area is 105.31 km². The c ...

, Japan where his father was a soy sauce brewer, Ōya showed an early interest in social issues, and after dropping out of the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

, he became involved in the Japan

Fabian Society The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. T ...

(a gradualist Socialist group). He was also active as a literary essayist and founded the Mass Communication Juku (マスコミ塾, literally the "Mass Communication Workshop"). His legacy includes the Oya Soichi Nonfiction Award, which recognizes the contributions of young journalists, and the Ōya Sōichi Library, a library that is the major archive in Japan collecting popular publications that most institutions ignore. Most of his literary works are included in the ''Ōya Sōichi Zenshū'' (大宅壮一全集) published by Sōyōsha (蒼洋社). He was praised "as an iconoclast and hailed for the 'heckling spirit' he had cultivated throughout his career," but he has also been criticized for his critical attitude towards

new religions A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or th ...

Notes

External links

Ōya Sōichi Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oya, Soichi 1900 births 1970 deaths People from Takatsuki, Osaka Japanese journalists Japanese non-fiction writers Social critics 20th-century journalists