Even a comparatively competent NHK anchor appears unaware of the dangers posed by electricity market liberalization.
This essay revisits the political origins of Japan’s reckless nuclear shutdown policy and criticizes public broadcasters for forgetting the essential role Japan’s power companies have played in providing world-class electricity.

2016-02-04

On last night’s NHK News Watch 9, even the anchor—far more reasonable than most female announcers—seemed unaware of the harmful consequences that electricity liberalization is likely to bring.

The immediate and total shutdown of nuclear power plants was an idea beneath the level of kindergarten thinking.
It was something that even the current Secretary-General of the United Nations acknowledged at the time to be a mistake.

Why, then, was such a policy adopted.
Eighteen-year-olds who now have voting rights probably know nothing about this.

At that time, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, arguably the worst prime minister in postwar Japan, was facing overwhelming public demand for his immediate resignation.
On the very morning of March 11, the Asahi Shimbun published a major scoop revealing that Kan had received illegal donations from a resident Korean, something prohibited by the Constitution.
That was the day Asahi itself effectively abandoned him.

Kan exploited the Great East Japan Earthquake as a means of political survival.
I was the first to write that this was one of the major reasons Fukushima became “Fukushima.”

Mizuho Fukushima, who could be described without exaggeration as one of the greatest traitors in postwar Japan, gave him the idea that prolonged his political life.
That idea was the immediate shutdown of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant.

Masayoshi Son then joined in, carrying a Geiger counter to Fukushima, despite having secretly acquired a solar power company beforehand.
Local government leaders and Diet members followed suit.

They shifted all blame onto TEPCO, which was desperately engaged in recovery efforts, while concealing their own incompetence and failures.
In doing so, they turned all of Japan’s electric power companies—companies that had consistently supplied the world’s highest-quality electricity—into villains.

Unfortunately, that NHK anchor does not know this history.
Has NHK forgotten what truly matters.
If so, it can no longer be called a news organization.

It would be no different from the biased reporting of commercial broadcasters affiliated with Asahi.

Such conduct is unacceptable for a broadcaster that claims to serve the nation and its people.

This article continues.