Issue:
October 2024 | Cover story
A Chinese reporter’s on-air protest during a recent NHK radio program has left Japan’s public broadcaster red-faced and exposed a growing chasm over wartime history
A 20-second unscripted outburst by a Chinese reporter during a live NHK radio show has underlined the deep and widening rift between China and Japan on how they report the past.
NHK, which already mandates robust guidelines for what can be broadcast about Japan’s wartime misdeeds, has fired the reporter, accepted the resignation of a board director and further tightened rules over its live broadcasts.
Nobuo Inaba, NHK’s president, was forced to apologize to the Diet on August 22 after what he said amounted to a “hijacking of the airwaves”. He is among four executives who have voluntarily returned half of their monthly salaries.
During an August 19 broadcast on NHK radio’s international service Hu Yue urged his listeners in English not to forget the 1937 Nanjing massacre, wartime “comfort women”, and Unit 731, Japan’s infamous biological and chemical warfare program.
He added (in Chinese) a statement on the Senkaku Islands, saying: “Diaoyu Dao and its associated islands have been Chinese territory since ancient times. I protest NHK’s history revisionism and unprofessional work.”
Hu speaks fluent Japanese and had worked at NHK on contract for over two decades, in addition to working freelance for Phoenix TV, a Hong Kong and Shenzhen-based broadcaster. He was reading a story about a small graffiti attack on the war-linked Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo when he made the unscripted remarks.
Now back in China, Hu says the row was triggered by a dispute with his NHK editors over the script, which failed to make clear that the graffiti, on a stone pillar at the Yasukuni entrance, included the word “militarism”.
“To my mind the main purpose (of the attack) was missed,” Hu told the Number 1 Shimbun. “The script only said that the word written in Chinese characters was ‘toilet’. I protested but they refused to add the word ‘militarism’. I said this is against basic journalistic standards. You are lying to Japanese people and they are paying money so you will tell the truth.”
Hu says his editors eventually proposed to cut the line describing what was written on the monument, but he viewed that as censorship. “The reason why I did this was very clear: I wanted to protest against historical revisionism. Of course, I knew I’d be fired. I am one individual against such a huge institution backed by the entire nation.”
NHK terminated Hu’s contract two days later and has threatened to file a claim for damages and possibly even launch a criminal complaint, according to the Japanese media. Hu says he initially intended to stay in Japan but death threats from online trolls and the attentions of plainclothes police forced him to leave.
“I was followed on the way to my lawyer and on the train,” he claimed. “I think they wanted to pressure me to go abroad. They clearly followed me and monitored my house. I went to the airport with one small bag and left everything behind. There were at least four (detectives) at the airport. I knew then I couldn’t stay in Japan – I thought I might be arrested. It was like I had become the enemy of Japan.”
The National Police Agency declined to comment on Hu’s claims.
Japan’s conservative media have fulminated about NHK’s shoddy vetting since the outburst. The Yomiuri Shimbun said the role of international broadcasting is “to communicate Japan's government views and culture to foreign countries and Japanese nationals living abroad”.
“This is NHK's primary mission stipulated under the Broadcasting Law, and government subsidies are provided for its international broadcasting. The man's remarks are extremely inappropriate, and they go against the purpose of broadcasting,” it added.
Akiko Iwata, a former NHK journalist widely considered close to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said people from countries such as China with “issues” against Japan “may be influenced by patriotic legislation in their own countries so we must keep this background in mind” when concluding outsourced employment contracts.
Hu denies being driven by patriotism. “My main motivation was to speak out. They are trying to portray me as a nationalist because they want to avoid facing what I said. They want to make a story that will be believed by the Japanese public.”
He added that he had watched in alarm at what he called “NHK’s gradual degradation into a state propaganda machine” over the last decade. “Scripts used to say ‘Senkaku Islands’ and ‘Diaoyu’, giving both the Japanese and Chinese names. I thought this was fair but they cut this.”
“Scripts now say ‘comfort women’, not ‘forced’ or ‘army-affiliated comfort women’. In Chinese, wartime laborers (forced or cajoled into working for wartime Japanese corporations) are called ‘forced labor’. NHK only allows us to say’ labor’. The ‘Nanjing massacre’ is the ‘Nanjing incident.’”
NHK employs hundreds of foreign editors, translators and journalists for its international broadcasts, including NHK World, its English-language service. In most cases, scripts are written and vetted by NHK staffers before being edited, translated and read by contract workers like Hu.
Hu’s colleagues said he had been with NHK since 2002 but had grown increasingly frustrated at what he saw as the public service broadcaster’s peddling of the official government line on historical and territorial issues.
“He was unhappy there in the last five to ten years because there are many stories about the Senkaku Islands that take no account of the Chinese position,” said one Tokyo-based associate who requested anonymity. “It was risky for him to read them out because he was a Chinese national. People knew who he was.” Hu had been a reliable and hard-working reporter at Phoenix TV before the incident, the colleague added.
According to NHK’s stylebook, “Japan controls the Senkaku islands. China and Taiwan claim them. The Japanese government maintains the islands are an inherent part of Japan’s territory, in terms of history and international law. It says there is no issue of sovereignty to be resolved over them.” International media outlets typically include the Chinese name for the islands (Diaoyu) and highlight the fact that China disputes sovereignty.
During the Abe era (2012-2020), NHK also mandated stricter formulae for describing wartime events disputed by China and Japan. NHK reports typically use quotation marks around the “Nanjing Incident” and state that many civilians were “allegedly” killed. It says it is “difficult to determine” the correct number of deaths.
This elliptical description contrasts sharply with China, which not only mandates teaching the Nanjing Massacre, in which it says 300,000 people were killed, as part of the national educational curriculum, it commemorates it nationally every year on December 13.
Hu has published a series of follow-up posts on Weibo, one of China’s largest social media platforms. “Japanese media not only cover up the truth of history, but also desperately try to cover up the real development of China at the present time, which leads to a lag of at least ten years, or even fifteen years, in the perception of China by the general Japanese public,” he wrote on August 29.
By contrast, Chinese social media has overwhelmingly supported Hu. “Ha Ha, well done. A courageous Chinese reporter living in Japan,” said one comment. Most internet users have applauded him as a “hero” and “a true patriot”.
The fallout from the incident at NHK has been “huge”, said one contract employee. A lengthy mea culpa was read out over the air and all Radio Japan foreign language programs must now be prerecorded.
Two more executives of NHK Global Media Services, the company that employed Hu and other dispatch workers at NHK, voluntarily returned part of their executive compensation.
But Kenji Sobata, an NHK executive who resigned after the Hu incident, was rehired a week later, Kyodo quoted a source close to the matter as saying.
NHK told the Mainichi Shimbun that a review body headed by the broadcaster’s vice president, Tatsuhiko Inoue, would be set up to “investigate the cause of the incident, hold officials and other employees involved strictly accountable, and formulate measures to prevent a recurrence”.
Guidelines circulated internally to NHK staff in September reminded them to read scripts verbatim, adding that the purpose of international broadcasting “is to accurately inform people in foreign countries of Japan's current situation and important policies in order to deepen their understanding of Japan and promote international exchange.
“When covering international disputes or issues of conflicting interests among countries, the claims and national conditions of the countries concerned shall be objectively reported. In handling such issues, Japan's position, as well as trends in public opinion, shall be taken into consideration,” the guidelines said.
An editor at NHK, speaking anonymously, said managers had tightened up script vetting.
“I can’t usually add info that used to be fine to add (from Reuters, AP, press releases), and people are even twitchy about cutting stuff that doesn't belong in an international script, the editor said. “Twice I've had editors say they know there's a mistake in the script but the mistake was in the original so they want to keep it.”
Hu has rejected criticism that he was wrong to single out censorship in Japan, given that China regularly polls near bottom in international press freedom rankings.
“Japanese media operates under pretext that Japan is a country where they have freedom of speech and an independent media," he said. In China, the system is different. The authoritarian versus free systems are competing. They’re different systems and shouldn’t be compared.”
David McNeill is professor of communications and English at University of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo, and co-chair of the FCCJ’s Professional Activities Committee. He was previously a correspondent for the Independent, the Economist and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
