B ACKGROUND – NHK, B IAS , AND P ROTEST A CTIVITIES

NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai) is Japan’s national broadcasting organization.

Much like Britain’s BBC, NHK is a publically-owned corporation that is funded through the nationwide collection of license fees from television owners.

NHK is required by law to maintain political impartiality in its programming.

In principal, this means that NHK should maintain editorial independence and not allow political pressure from the government or private groups to influence the content it produces.²⁵⁴ However, in recent decades, NHK’s adherence to this principal has been challenged by both liberal and conservative groups in Japan.

254 Zorana Kostic, "The Challenges of Digital Broadcast Media: NHK (The Japanese broadcasting corporation), internet, mobile technologies and the future role of the public broadcaster," Paper presented atANZCA09 Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship. Brisbane, July 2009.

In its news coverage, NHK has been criticized by progressives because they see its news department’s reluctance to present strong political criticism as favoring the government. The result is, according to Ellis Krauss, “a cautious, noninterpretive indirect bias toward the government.” However, Matsuda Hiroshi of Ritsumeikan University has argued that the production department of NHK creates documentaries with “very liberal” views that often contradict government positions.²⁵⁵ In his study of war memory in postwar Japan, Philip Seaton

examined NHK’s programming about historical issues, concluding that NHK has an “overall progressive leaning stance.”²⁵⁶ William Underwood has also

documented how NHK acted as a “redress advocate” in the 1990’s for former wartime Chinese forced laborers by criticizing the response of the Japanese government and Japanese corporations.²⁵⁷

Members of Japan’s assertive conservative right tend to agree that NHK presents a left-leaning view of history. Conservatives have been publishing attacks on the NHK since at least the 1980’s. Seaton has argued that “the sustained ferocious criticisms of NHK by nationalists” are indicative of NHK’s overall left-leaning stance.²⁵⁸ He points to Okada Shinichi’s 1983 book

Questions for Biased NHK, which is highly critical of NHK’s coverage of the 1982 history textbook dispute, accusing the network of “ignoring the national interest”

255 Reiji Yoshida, Ayako Mie, and Eric Johnson, "Momii's Rise Tests NHK's Reputation," Japan Times, February 2, 2014.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/02/national/momiis-rise-tests-nhks-reputation/ - .U9cK6PmSxe4.

256 Philip A. Seaton,Japan's Contested War Memories: The 'memory Rifts' in Historical Consciousness of World War II (London: Routledge, 2007) p. 105

257William Underwood, "NHK's Finest Hour: Japan's Official Record of Chinese Forced Labor,"JapanFocus, August 6, 2006, http://www.japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/2187.

258 Philip A. Seaton,Japan's Contested War Memories: The 'memory Rifts' in Historical Consciousness of World War II (London: Routledge, 2007)

pp. 104-105^.

and “distorting the facts” as well as being “traitorous” through its violation of broadcasting law.²⁵⁹The conservative magazine Seironhas also attacked NHK, running a monthly column called “NHK Watching” since 1997. The column’s author, Nakamura Akira (a supporter of Channel Sakura), has frequently called out NHK’s war-related reporting as biased. One example cited is a criticism of nightly news coverage of the 1997 Ceremony for Remembrance of War Dead, which Nakamura argues was selectively edited by NHK to emphasize

condolences to victims of Japanese “aggression” over condolences to Japanese who died in the war.²⁶⁰

The most well-known case of a dispute over NHK’s impartiality took place in 2001. It involved the airing of “Questioning Sexual Violence in War,” a

documentary that addressed the “comfort women” issue as a war crime. The documentary, the second part of a 4-part series on war responsibility, featured footage of a mock war crimes trial – the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal. The tribunal was organized by the NGO Violence Against Women in War Network Japan (VAWW NET Japan) and declared in its ruling “that Japan's military sexual slavery, known as the comfort women system, was not only a war crime, but a crime against humanity; they found the Showa Emperor Hirohito guilty, and the Japanese government to have incurred state responsibility."

However, when NHK aired the documentary about the tribunal, VAWW NET was angered by what it saw. The final verdict was not included, and scenes of the tribunal were "cut in an unnatural way, so that the line of argument they wished to

259S. Okada,Henko NHK E No Kokai Shitsumonjo (Questions for a Biased NHK)(Tokyo: Sanko, 1983), 4-6. in Seaton Ibid.

260Nakamura, Akira. "NHK Uocchingu (NHK Watching)."Seiron, November 1997, 184-89. in Seaton Ibid.

present was not communicated to the viewers." Moreover, NHK added an

opposing viewpoint of the tribunal from a conservative historian. In a protest letter to NHK, VAWW NET complained that the documentary was “completely different from what we were expecting” and did not present what they considered "a fair and balanced account" of their activities.²⁶¹

The general topic of the documentary had been known in advance, so during the editing stage of film product, NHK faced a "state of semi-siege, as rightists mobilized and sound trucks circled the NHK building blaring hostile messages and employees were jostled and abused as they entered or left the premises."²⁶² Left-leaning critics of NHK allege that the pressure from these protests led NHK to change the documentary, adding an opposing viewpoint in the form of an interview with conservative historian Hata Ikuhito, a well-known advocate of the view that “comfort women” were not systematically coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. Hata, who had attended one day of the tribunal’s proceedings, criticized it as a one-sided endeavor that lacked a proper defense on behalf of the accused war criminals.

VAWW NET filed a lawsuit against NHK and the subcontractors that created the documentary, claiming that the parties had violated their trust by bowing to right-wing pressure and making fundamental alterations to the program without prior consultation or explanation. VAWW NET demanded 20 million yen in damages. In 2001, a Tokyo District Court ruling found that a subcontractor

261 Yayori Matsui, "Statement of Protest to NHK: VAWW-NET Japan,"Deutsche Ostasienmission, March 2, 2001.

http://www.doam.org/index.php/projekte/menschenrechte/trostfrauen/nhk-tribunal/275-pr-mr-cw-nhk-vaww.

262 Gavan McCormack, "How the History Wars in Japan Left a Black Mark on NHK TV (Their BBC)," History News Network. February 7, 2005. http://hnn.us/article/9954.

had committed a violation of trust, and ordered that 1 million yen in compensation be paid. The same ruling upheld NHK’s freedom to edit programming and

concluded that the edits had not been made as a result of political pressure. The defendants appealed to the Tokyo High Court. In the interval between appeals, the Asahi Shimbun ran a story based on interviews with an NHK whistleblower, alleging that the edits had been a direct result of political interference. According to the whistleblower, two conservative politicians, Nakagawa Shoichi and Abe Shinzo (at that time deputy chief cabinet secretary), visited NHK’s offices before the documentary’s airing and pressured the network into making changes. The final edits, such as the removal of the tribunal verdicts, were made after that meeting.²⁶³ Abe acknowledged that the meeting took place and that he had voiced his concern about NHK upholding its commitment to unbiased programming, but denied that he had pressured NHK into censoring the documentary. The Asahi Shimbun eventually announced that its article had contained “uncertain” information.²⁶⁴

In January 2007, the Tokyo High Court issued a ruling that found both NHK and the production companies at fault for failing to provide an explanation before editing the documentary. The defendants were ordered to pay 2 million yen in damages. The case was then appealed to the Supreme Court, where a final decision was issued in 2008. The Supreme Court favored NHK’s

263 Norma Field, "The Courts, Japan's 'Military Comfort Women,' and the Conscience of Humanity: The Ruling in VAWW-Net Japan v. NHK,"JapanFocus, February 10, 2007.

http://japanfocus.org/-Norma-Field/2352?rand=1395130360&type=print&print=1.

264 PhilipA.Seaton,Japan's Contested War Memories: The 'memory Rifts' in Historical Consciousness of World War II (London: Routledge, 2007) p. 108

explanation that broadcasters have the right to freely edit their productions, and that trust and expectations of the plaintiffs were not subject to legal protection.

The Court saw no reason for financial damages because NHK had not placed

“enormous burdens” upon VAWW NET.²⁶⁵ Although it was a legal loss for VAWW Net, its supporters did not treat the outcome as a complete defeat because it raised awareness about important issues. As Kingston writes, "it is only because of the censorship scandal that many Japanese actually became aware of the tribunal's finding and the degree to which NHK is politicized."²⁶⁶

Critics on the left saw the 2001 NHK Affair as an example of a public broadcaster being pressured by rightists into “censoring” a documentary that focused on Japanese war crimes. It has been alleged that it ended up silencing NHK and Asahi coverage of the “comfort women” issue.²⁶⁷ Morris-Suzuki saw it as an example of how calls for "fair" and "balanced" reporting can be used to intimidate and hinder journalists who criticize the status quo or report on controversial topics.²⁶⁸

However, to critics on the right, it represented a minor blip in a long history of biased and unfair NHK programming. The edits made to the documentary were a shift towards what conservatives such as Abe Shinzo see as “fair and

265 Akemi Nakamura, "NHK Censorship Ruling Reversed," Japan Times, June 13, 2008.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/06/13/national/nhk-censorship-ruling-reversed/ - .U9cqtfmSxe4.

266 Jeff Kingston,Contemporary Japan: History, Politics, and Social Change since the 1980s(Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

267 Kamila Szczepanska,The Politics of War Memory in Japan: Progressive Civil Society Groups and Contestation of Memory of the Asia-Pacific War(London: Routledge, 2014) p. 91

268 Tessa Morris-Suzuki,The past within Us: Media, Memory, History(London: Verso, 2005)

neutral viewpoint.”²⁶⁹ The politicians and protesters had reminded NHK of its duty to produce ideologically balanced contents. They did not see it as censorship. After all, their concerns that NHK would produce a “biased”

documentary were precisely what had prompted their protest activities. Despite the incident, NHK remained “progressive-leaning on war issues,” so the right continued to feel that the struggle against “biased” NHK programming was far from over.²⁷⁰

When the 2001 NHK Affair came to a conclusion with the 2008 Supreme Court Ruling, the stage was set for a new round of contention. It had been shown that protests against the public broadcaster had the potential to influence its programming. In addition, the progressive organization that had filed the lawsuit against NHK had demonstrated the potential benefits of legal action – both in terms of putting pressure on NHK and in terms of drawing public attention to issues of political bias.