Published on July 13, 2019.
This chapter criticizes the way NHK’s “watch9” reported on Bank of Japan policy.
It argues that the program tried to make Japan’s economic recovery and the BOJ’s policies, which were overcoming more than twenty years of deflation, appear as failures by presenting selected “ordinary citizens’ voices” to lead viewers toward criticism of the government and the BOJ.
It also refers to a similar method of impression manipulation used in U.S. coverage after Donald Trump’s election.

July 13, 2019.
It is exactly the same method as what Arima deliberately flew to the United States to do around the time President Trump was elected.
He prepared workers in a place like a café bar and had them criticize Trump.
The following is a chapter I published on July 31, 2018.
However, among the people watching NHK’s watch9 right now, at least every decent adult must be watching it with a feeling of nausea.
People like Arima and Kuwako, who stand at the exact opposite end from those capable of speaking about politics, diplomacy, finance, and of taking part in the management of the Japanese nation, criticize the Bank of Japan’s policy.
They do so as if the BOJ’s policy, which is finally overcoming Japan’s deflation of more than twenty years, the first long-term deflation in the history of advanced nations, a long-term deflation that Western countries detest like a venomous snake and scorpion and desperately wish to avoid falling into themselves, were somehow mistaken.
Not only that.
Arima, who is nothing more than a labor-union committee-man type, and the hopeless Kuwako, look down on the Bank of Japan and criticize its policy from a condescending position.
In order to criticize the Bank of Japan and the government by saying that people cannot really feel the economic recovery, they once again bring out one part-time working woman, apparently from a dual-income household, and have her say what the people controlling NHK’s news department want her to say.
It is exactly the same method as what Arima deliberately flew to the United States to do around the time President Trump was elected.
He prepared workers in a place like a café bar and had them voice criticism of Trump.
A friend of mine says that it is so absurd that he stopped watching watch9 long ago.
Recently, I too watch it only obliquely, and yet it is still this terrible.