the inside story of the "22-second incident" that shocked japan
2024-09-23
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in response to a chinese employee of the japan broadcasting corporation (nhk) who reported "diaoyu islands are chinese territory" in chinese without a script, the japanese ministry of internal affairs and communications issued an "administrative guidance" punishment to nhk on september 11, and nhk also announced the results of the handling of the senior management. kenji koda, the director in charge of nhk's international broadcasting, resigned on the same day. at the same time, four management personnel, including nhk president nobuo inaba and vice president inoue shuhiko, will voluntarily return 50% of their one-month salary.
recently, @树语treetalk (pen name hu yue), a chinese employee who has worked at nhk for 22 years, accepted an interview with changan street governor.for the first time, the film reconstructs in detail what happened at the time of the incident and deeply analyzes the rampant historical revisionism in the japanese media and the deep-seated reasons behind it.
hu yue revealed how the japanese media, especially nhk, has become a tool to whitewash history and cover up the truth under the influence of the japanese government. he further explained that this kind of historical revisionist media propaganda is serving the contemporary japanese right-wing forces and pushing japanese society towards extremism, which makes people worry that japan will use the pre-war ideology promoted by the yasukuni shrine to return to the old path of the pre-war militarist system.
the four words nhk dares not mention
governor:according to previous reports by japanese media, when you were reporting on the news of the discovery of graffiti at the yasukuni shrine, you mentioned that the stone pillars at the entrance of the yasukuni shrine had words such as "death to militarism". nhk admitted that these words were written on the stone pillars, but they were not written in the script. your full speech also included "protesting nhk's historical revisionist propaganda and unprofessional actions" and "don't forget the nanjing massacre, don't forget the comfort women, don't forget unit 731". what happened at that time? can you restore the scene for us?
hu yue:there was a piece of news that day.someone wrote words such as "death to militarism" and "toilet" on the stone pillars of the yasukuni shrine, among which the words "death to militarism" were written in the center.however,however, nhk chose to cover up this fact in its domestic news release.the graffiti on the stone pillar was described as "symbols similar to letters such as toilets written on the stone pillars of the shrine." nhk world chinese broadcast was going to translate and broadcast it according to the domestic news release. i objected to this on the spot.
i think that the reason why nhk retained the word "toilet" and concealed the word "militarism" is to try to characterize the incident as "indecent behavior", which is obviously not the main appeal of the graffiti artist. the practice of nhk international department is not only a deception to the public, but also violates the principle of objective reporting of news media, and is also an operation with ulterior motives. as a chinese, i firmly oppose the broadcast of such content.
therefore, before the program started, i explicitly asked the editor-in-chief to make changes and add the content clearly written on the stone pillar, "death to militarism", to the program manuscript.in order to deal with my objection, the editor-in-chief would rather delete the word "toilet" than add the content "death to militarism".
the words engraved on the stone pillar of the yasukuni shrine. nhk did not mention "death to militarism", but emphasized the word "toilet" and lied that there were the letters "sb" on the stone pillar. source: nhk
during the live broadcast, i first added the content of "death to militarism" without a script. then, in order to prevent the signal from being cut off, i first broadcast "diaoyu islands and its affiliated islands have been chinese territory since ancient times". the second part was a protest against the historical revisionism of the japanese government and nhk, and a criticism of the unprofessional behavior of the media. the third part was a declarative content broadcast in english, calling on the world not to forget the nanjing massacre, the issue of comfort women and the crimes of unit 731.
this is the only chance to resist.
governor:at that moment, what encouraged you to insist on telling the historical truth?
hu yue:the immediate trigger for the unscripted broadcast was that the situation had become irreconcilable, forcing me to make a temporary decision.the root cause is that the japanese government and news media deny the history of aggression and glorify militarism through visits to and offerings to the yasukuni shrine. this behavior of burying the historical truth is unacceptable.
there have been many cases of foreign and japanese employees resisting historical revisionism at nhk. my "22-second incident" is just a continuation of such resistance.
as early as 2014, the british newspaper the times reported that a whistleblower provided the new york times with a secret internal document of nhk, which showed that employees of nhk's english channel were forbidden to mention the nanjing massacre and military comfort women, and that "military comfort women" could not be translated as "sex slaves" but had to be translated as "comfort women" to weaken its coercive nature. similarly, the word "forced conscription" could not be used to refer to forced labor. this blatantly reflects how nhk engages in historical revisionism in the wording of its english channel news.
screenshot of the times report
in addition, some foreign employees were fired for deliberately using words that did not meet nhk's "standards" on its english channel, resulting in nhk only being able to use japanese or japanese-american anchors with poor english skills.
richard lloyd parry published an article in the british newspaper the times, in which he disclosed an internal nhk document called the "orange book". source: the times
i had always been resisting nhk's absurd disregard for historical truth, until the day when nhk's serious violation of journalistic ethics and its blatant historical revisionist propaganda actually happened to me.
nhk also mentioned in its subsequent investigation report on this incident that i was so angry at the time that the on-site director even called the company i signed with to discuss a temporary replacement of the anchor. although the on-site director did not make the call in front of me,but at that moment, i clearly realized that this was my only chance to resist. if i didn't do it that day, i might never have another chance in the future.
at that moment, a strong urge to speak for the countless victims and humiliated during the war of aggression against china, an inner strength to stand up for national justice, seemed to be pushing me to make this decision - to speak without a script. i must take this opportunity to protest nhk's historical revisionism and unprofessional news operations. i must let the japanese people and people around the world know more about the truth and the thoughts of ordinary chinese people, and conduct friendly exchanges based on historical consensus.
nhk has gone further than the japanese government
governor:what is the relationship between the japanese media and the government?
hu yue:although nhk is a public media organization, it often lacks basic fact-checking in its international news reports. it has become the mouthpiece of the japanese government, following the japanese government's lead on the narrow path of historical revisionism.
judging from the news from nhk and other japanese media reports on this matter, they are all one-sided statements, ignoring the truth. when it comes to news that is beneficial to china, they will choose to conceal it, blatantly abandoning journalistic ethics and insisting on covering up history.in its multiple statements and investigative reports following the incident, nhk did not mention the core fact that the word "militarism" was covered up in the press release during my on-site protest.
once upon a time, nhk was a china-friendly media, willing to promote exchanges between china and japan. however, since former japanese prime minister shinzo abe took office again, nhk's important personnel arrangements have been manipulated by the government in various forms. abe's favorite nhk president katsuto momii once claimed that "comfort women exist in every country" and japan should not be criticized alone, which aroused public anger. nhk management committee member naoki momota, who has a close relationship with abe, also publicly denied the existence of the nanjing massacre in a street speech. nhk's attitude towards china's narrative has changed dramatically in recent years. for example, the report on the graffiti at the yasukuni shrine this time, in terms of specific operations, sometimes even went further than the japanese government's position and was almost out of control.
nhk also has many media people who respect historical facts and are unwilling to produce such content. nhk knows very well that its actions violate historical facts and journalistic principles, so they throw these difficult things to us outsourced employees.as foreign employees of an outsourcing company, we cannot bear such a heavy responsibility, not to mention that the content of these reports is completely contrary to our personal positions.
in this incident about whether to broadcast the words "death to militarism", i insisted on reporting the words "death to militarism" that were covered up. this is not only a news fact, but even the japanese government has not denied that the yasukuni shrine promotes militarism, but nhk deliberately avoided the word "militarism". what's even more ridiculous is that nhk did not even dare to mention the dispute about "militarism" in the investigation report issued afterwards.
it can be seen that nhk is accustomed to "guessing" the position of the japanese government, and sometimes even goes further than the japanese government.
governor:what do you think of the phenomenon of historical revisionism in japanese society?
hu yue:the contract i signed with the outsourcing agency contained brief guidelines for promoting japan’s position, but did not specify the specific operation methods. for example, the word “comfort women” was prohibited in reports on military service, and when referring to the nanjing massacre, the official statement of the japanese media was “the nanjing incident.” this opaque statement was not written into the contract, but was conveyed verbally during the news compilation process.
after the "22 seconds incident", nhk announced that its international broadcasts would be changed from live broadcasts to recorded broadcasts and ai broadcasts, which also exposed that nhk was engaged in historical revisionist propaganda without confidence, did not dare to face up to the content of the broadcast, and did not trust frontline employees. from the subsequent handling, nhk did not learn any lessons and seemed to be going all the way to the end.
nhk also uses the group obedience psychology that is common in japanese organizations to silence dissenting voices. this kind of organizational repression sometimes even goes beyond the law in japanese society and is called "coordination pressure." it infringes on individual rights through group pressure and makes individuals afraid to speak out. because of this, many people believe that japan is experiencing a "pre-war return" and that society has gradually slipped back to the state before world war ii.
