A 2016 episode of NHK’s Close-Up Gendai revealed a deep ideological distortion when commentator Genichiro Takahashi used Muhammad Ali to criticize contemporary Japan. This essay examines the moral and intellectual collapse within Japan’s public broadcaster and its alignment with Asahi-style ideological narratives.
June 13, 2016

I had not known that Close-Up Gendai on NHK at 10 p.m. would feature a special program on Muhammad Ali, so I welcomed it and began watching. However, I felt utterly dispirited when the commentator turned out to be Genichiro Takahashi, a rare species who now—indeed, still—serves as a compliant cultural intellectual for the Asahi Shimbun.

That a considerable number of individuals imbued with Asahi-style ideology continue to inhabit NHK only serves to diminish the broadcaster’s value. The time has long since come for NHK to recognize this fact.

I had, if anything, felt a certain degree of goodwill toward the female host (Sugiura), but that goodwill was largely blown away over the course of this evening.

Because, as expected, she allowed Takahashi to utter the following truly unforgivable and foolish remark.

All Japanese citizens must know that both the man who exploits Muhammad Ali to criticize the Abe administration and NHK’s posture in allowing this are truly despicable.

Takahashi, as if offering a concluding summary of the program, stated the following:

“It could even be said that things are worse now than in Muhammad Ali’s era…”

Had he been saying this about China or South Korea, it might have been understandable. But he was clearly saying this about present-day Japan—about our Japan today, a country that has achieved the highest level of freedom and intellect in the world, and that is the safest and most peaceful nation on earth.

He was saying this about Japan, the country in which women enjoy the greatest freedom and happiness in the world.

Yet the utterly incorrigible people represented by him—

people who never raise their voices in criticism against China, a nation that even elementary school children can recognize as the greatest state of speech repression of the twentieth century, a country that has trampled upon human freedom and intellect without pause and has now even begun to invade the territorial waters and lands of other nations—

have never, to my knowledge, immediately gone to China themselves to openly criticize the Chinese government.

The same, needless to say, applies to South Korea.

The time has long since come for all Japanese citizens to put an end to allowing Japan and its people to be continually mocked by individuals whose minds are filled with unspeakable nonsense, pseudo-moralism, a chaotic jumble of leftist ideology, and the editorials of Asahi Shimbun.