Published on August 24, 2019. This article introduces a Shukan Bunshun report on NHK’s coverage of the “audience records” between Emperor Showa and Tajima Michiji, which NHK presented as the result of its own reporting, while criticizing the broadcaster for insufficiently acknowledging the facts already revealed sixteen years earlier by Kato Kyoko in Bungei Shunju and her book Emperor Showa, Tajima Michiji, and Yoshida Shigeru, and for showing a lack of respect toward prior research.

August 24, 2019.
These facts had already been made clear sixteen years ago by the critic Kato Kyoko in Bungei Shunju and in books such as Emperor Showa, Tajima Michiji, and Yoshida Shigeru.
Around the Obon period, the people who control NHK’s news department began, unbelievably, to use the Emperor politically by putting together special features on the seven o’clock news and Watch 9, a fact well known to viewers of insight.
When announcers such as Arima said, at the start of this special feature, “through NHK’s own reporting…”
I thought, “NHK’s lies have begun again.”
They are truly incorrigible people.
Last year, during that lowest and worst government attack in Japanese political history by fake news from the Asahi Shimbun and NHK, Arima also,
with a straight face, lied by describing the materials that that Maekawa! had brought to the Asahi and NHK as “materials obtained through NHK’s own all-out reporting…”
As I have mentioned several times, to this day there has not been a single word of apology for that.
Yesterday, in the waiting room of a clinic, I was reading this week’s issue of Shukan Bunshun.
The following article was printed there.
Needless to say, I thought, as expected.
The people who control NHK’s news department, along with Arima and Kuwako, were also proving that the following latest book by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, is a mass of facts.
NHK’s “discovery of new materials” on Emperor Showa was a disguised scoop.
“Is this really NHK’s own exclusive scoop?”
The person tilting his head in doubt is Hara Takeshi, professor at the Open University of Japan and author of books such as Reading the Official Record of Emperor Showa.
NHK announced that newly discovered materials, the “audience records,” had been found, in which Tajima Michiji, the first Grand Steward of the Imperial Household Agency, had written down in detail his conversations with Emperor Showa over five years.
It extensively featured the contents of eighteen notebooks and pocketbooks described as “top-class materials secretly kept by the family.”
“It has been learned that at the 1952 ceremony commemorating independence, Emperor Showa had prepared a draft of his ‘words’ in order to express to the people his feelings of deep remorse and reflection, but that a passage was deleted because of opposition from Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru at the time.”
This was reported as an “exclusive” as the top story on News 7 on the 16th.
On News Watch 9 and on the following day, the 17th, on NHK Special, NHK also reported in detail the contents and changes of the draft of the “words,” which contained phrases such as “we lost human lives and reduced the territory…remorse and grief.”
But—
“These facts had already been made clear sixteen years ago by the critic Kato Kyoko in Bungei Shunju and in books such as Emperor Showa, Tajima Michiji, and Yoshida Shigeru.
Judging from the series of reports, I received the impression that, in broad outline, they merely reinforced what Ms. Kato had written,” said Hara, quoted above.
Kato’s article “Emperor Showa: Draft Imperial Rescript of Apology to the People—Reading the Sealed Draft Rescript,” published in the July 2003 issue of Bungei Shunju, drew a major response and won the Bungei Shunju Readers’ Prize.
Borrowing from the family the diaries and notes that Tajima had written in twenty-five small pocketbooks from 1944 until his death in 1968, Kato described in detail, in her book, hidden stories concerning the issue of Emperor Showa’s abdication and the relationship between the Emperor and Yoshida Shigeru.
Hara questions NHK’s reporting posture.
“It is true that the detailed exchanges between Emperor Showa and Mr. Tajima were newly made public, but NHK’s reporting appeared to stand on the premise that ‘the new materials are a scoop that rewrites the history known so far.’
The stance of not properly mentioning Ms. Kato’s prior research and giving the impression that there had been a completely new discovery as an ‘exclusive’ is not fair, and it shows far too little respect for previous research.
If the same thing were done in an academic paper, it would be a complete ethical violation, and it would not be strange if the author were dismissed.”
We asked Furukawa Takahisa, professor at Nihon University, who explained the research results on the program.
“This time, the nuance is that the concrete circumstances leading up to that point became clear in detail.
Although prior research was not mentioned, I said on Watch 9 that ‘what various scholars had studied was confirmed,’ and at the end of the NHK Special, Ms. Kato’s name was given as a research collaborator.
I respect Ms. Kato’s research, which first reported the facts.”
According to Ms. Kato’s side, “People from NHK came to her home and asked where the Tajima materials were, but she answered, ‘I returned them, so I do not know.’”
Regarding the series of reports, NHK replied, “‘The audience records’ are a new discovery through our own reporting, and we judge that Emperor Showa’s statements and feelings, as well as his detailed exchanges with Tajima, are facts newly revealed this time.
We do not answer questions regarding the production process.”
Since history is being handled, they should have shown respect for prior research.
The above is from this week’s issue of Shukan Bunshun.