Published on October 11, 2019.
This essay criticizes NHK anchor Takeda’s immediate annotation that a phrase used by Nobel Prize laureate Yoshino Akira on watch9 was a “discriminatory term.”
It contrasts ordinary Japanese usage with derogatory language toward Japanese people in Korea and anti-American expressions used in Okinawa’s anti-base protests, arguing that NHK’s response reflects sham moralism and a distorted reporting posture.

October 11, 2019.
It is a phrase that ordinary Japanese people use to mean “good for nothing” or “not worth taking up at all.”
I immediately remembered something that had happened at one time.
The son of an acquaintance of mine attends Kyoto University.
It was when I was having a meal together with that acquaintance.
When NHK’s “Close-up Gendai” came up as a topic, his son said this:
“What do you think of that announcer named Takeda…?”
Last night, watch9 announced at the end that Mr. Yoshino, who had won the Nobel Prize, would appear live, so I kept watching.
The son of another acquaintance of mine works at Asahi Kasei, so Mr. Yoshino’s Nobel Prize had a special meaning for me as well.
It was when Mr. Yoshino quite naturally said, “They called me stupid and good-for-nothing…”
It is a phrase that ordinary Japanese people use to mean “good for nothing” or “not worth taking up at all.”
I immediately remembered something that had happened at one time.
It was when I was still vigorously engaged in business.
There was a pachinko parlor in the middle of the nearby shopping street.
There was a period when I became very close with the third son of that family, a Kansai University student, after he saw our company’s advertisement and visited us.
He had transferred from Shinshu University to Kansai University.
“President, everything you say is something I have never heard before.
It is far above what university professors say.
Most university professors merely quote what someone else, for example an American scholar, has written.
What you say is completely different.
It would be a waste not to publish a book.
Why don’t you publish one?”
He was a scholarly type who said such things, and that made us become even closer.
We often went to Kita and had meals together.
Once, when I said exactly the same thing as Mr. Yoshino did last night, I was truly taken aback by what he suddenly said.
But just as with Mr. Yoshino last night, I instantly understood what the other person was trying to say:
the “chon” that we use to mean “good for nothing” or “not worth taking up at all” was being taken by them to mean “Chonko,” apparently a derogatory word for Koreans, and he was warning me about it.
Inwardly, however, I also thought, “Come on, if you go that far, I can’t even speak casually with you…”
The circumstances in which he, nevertheless, had a discriminatory consciousness toward a fellow Korean who ran an udon shop, far poorer than a pachinko parlor owner, to a degree that left me stunned,
are known to my readers, because the article about Tsujimoto Kiyomi that I discovered on the Internet remained by far the number-one search result on goo for a long time.
Now then,
last night, Takeda immediately added an annotation saying that it was a discriminatory term.
When I saw that scene, I immediately thought that this man named Takeda might not be a genuine Japanese.
Let us, even by giving him every possible concession, accept Takeda’s annotation.
But is there ever a day in South Korea when derogatory words toward Japan and the Japanese people are not heard?
It is because they obediently insert such worthless annotations that the Korean Peninsula looks down on Japan.
If NHK says that it is so sensitive to derogatory terms, then it must report, even once, how much Koreans in South Korea use derogatory language toward Japanese people and Korean residents in Japan.
Or else,
before saying anything, it should warn the Koreans and others participating in the anti-base demonstrations unfolding in Okinawa under the operations of China and the Korean Peninsula, who chant “Yankee Go Home,” that this is a derogatory and discriminatory expression toward Americans and must not be used.
To do none of those things at all, and yet deliver a lecture like last night’s, is what is called “self-serving hypocrisy,” and such people are called “sham moralists.”
This article continues.