An essay criticizing the abnormal structure in which anonymous NHK commentators, untouched by economic hardship and never entrusted by voters, lecture the public on energy liberalization. It exposes the moral and political distortion behind Japan’s long-term policy discourse.

2016-03-23
What NHK broadcast after midnight the night before last was a program in which five NHK commentators appeared to discuss electricity liberalization.
Among the Japanese people, no one knows the commentators who appeared here, except for their relatives.
Of course, they are by no means politicians who have won elections by asking the people to entrust them with issues directly related to the nation’s fate and prosperity, namely the question of energy sources.
On the contrary, they are people who have continued to work as salaried employees at NHK, a company in Japan that provides some of the most stable high incomes, social security, and job protection.
They are people who never lost their jobs or saw their salaries reduced even during the period when Asahi and others’ acceptance of a strong yen brought about an excessively strong yen and plunged Japan into the kind of long-term deflation now loathed like a plague by countries around the world.
They are people who looked on while Japan’s long-term deflation created the reality in which one in six children grows up in households earning less than 1.8 million yen a year, making even meals and compulsory education difficult to obtain.