An in-depth critique of an NHK program on electricity deregulation, exposing how unelected, unknown commentators manipulate public opinion on national energy policy while avoiding inconvenient historical and political facts.

2016-03-22
Late last night, after midnight, NHK aired a program in which five NHK commentators appeared to discuss electricity deregulation.
No Japanese citizen knows the commentators who appeared in this program, except for their relatives.
Of course, they are not politicians who have won elections by asking the public to trust them on issues that determine the fate and prosperity of the nation, such as energy resources.
On the contrary, they are people who have spent their careers as salaried employees at NHK, one of Japan’s most stable companies, with high salaries, comprehensive social security, and guaranteed status.
Even during the prolonged deflation caused by the yen appreciation tolerated by Asahi and others—a deflation now loathed worldwide and which created a Japan where one in six children grows up in poverty with household incomes under 1.8 million yen—they never lost their jobs or had their salaries reduced.
They are people who watched passively as long-term deflation produced the reality that many children struggle even to eat properly or attend compulsory education smoothly.
Journalism is about conveying facts thoroughly, and when discussing electricity deregulation, the first priority should be to explain when, by whom, and how it was proposed.
Power companies that supplied electricity of the world’s highest quality for many years, that never created a public suffering from high electricity costs as is claimed today, and that restored power faster than any other country in this disaster-prone nation—what exactly was wrong with them?
That Fukushima became “Fukushima” due to the once-in-a-thousand-year earthquake and tsunami was first and foremost rooted in GE’s design.
The United States learned through domestic accidents that there was a problem with the placement of emergency power supplies needed to keep reactors cooled during unforeseen events.
Therefore, the U.S. government issued notices to countries that had adopted nuclear plants built on the same designs as Fukushima.
The one who ignored or failed to notice this was Prime Minister Koizumi.
The morning when the once-in-a-thousand-year earthquake and tsunami struck was also the day when Asahi, the newspaper that had elevated Naoto Kan to prime minister, ran a massive front-page headline about his fatal scandal—at a time when the entire nation wanted his immediate resignation.
That this prime minister was incapable of sound judgment is now a historical fact, and as described above, he was in no condition to make rational decisions. He used the unprecedented tragedy of Japan and its people to prolong his own administration.
Moreover, he pushed policies such as a 10% consumption tax increase, while the head of a telecommunications company, whose investments in the United States had failed, secretly moved to acquire major renewable energy companies, targeting the electricity sector where people inevitably consume and pay.
After that, he loaded a Geiger counter into his car and headed for Fukushima, a region with which he had no connection.
He did not go to rescue anyone or search for the missing.
He went in order to portray nuclear power as evil and the renewable energy company he had acquired as good, and to persuade Naoto Kan to cover the disaster area with solar panels produced by that company.
In 2011, while I was hospitalized with a life-threatening illness, I watched on the television in my hospital room as this man stood arm in arm with then-President Lee Myung-bak at a “Green Forum” he had inexplicably convened in Seoul, South Korea.
What he said there was, “Japan’s nuclear power is bad, but South Korea’s nuclear power is good.”
That I wrote in fury after witnessing this scene from my hospital bed is something readers already know.
In last night’s program, not a single commentator mentioned that electricity prices in Germany—where deregulation began—have continued to skyrocket.
One woman among them appeared to have the same ideology as Yayori Matsui; though she spoke gently, I perceived that her essence was little different from Matsui’s.
The other men were no different from the unpleasant-looking individuals who appeared on TBS’s Reportage Special.
That people who have never undergone the harsh public judgment of elections, who are merely NHK employees guaranteed high pay, status, and secure retirements, use public airwaves to guide citizens with superficial moralism—without fulfilling the journalist’s duty of exposing hidden facts about an issue that determines national destiny—this attitude itself is totalitarianism and fascism. It is something both they and the Japanese people who have trusted them without question should recognize.