NHK censorship case

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

There have been reports in the papers (albiet rather small ones) and on 
other lists about a case of NHK buckling under right-wing pressure and 
changing the content of a documentary dealing, in part, with the "comfort 
women" issue.  I forward two posts from H-JAPAN about the subject.

Aaron Gerow

*****


---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
Date:        02.18  0:11 AM
Received:    02.22  9:16 PM
From:        H-Japan Editor, rshiba at ge.oit.ac.jp
Reply-To:    h-japan at h-net.msu.edu
To:          H-JAPAN at H-NET.MSU.EDU

                                    H-Japan
                                February 17, 2001

From: Earl Kinmonth <ehk at gol.com>

An article in the Japanese weekly magazine Shukan shincho suggests that 
the
Japanese state television network caved in to right-wing pressure and
censored a program concerning "comfort women" shortly before it was 
broadcast.

On 30 January NHK broadcast a prime time programme entitled "Senso to 
josei
e no boryoku" (War and violence against women) as one in a four part 
series
"How to judge [look at] war."

According to the Shukan shincho article, a formal protest has been filed
against NHK for the content of this programme.

Specifically, those involved in a "court" that "tried" Japan for crimes
against women during the so-called Pacific War were outraged by the 
content
of this programme.  While the NHK programme did deal with the "trial" of
Japan for its (alleged) outrages against women during the Pacific War, the
programme, as actually aired, failed to present the "decision" of the
"court" -- that Japan, and its leaders, including the Emperor, were guilty
of outrages against women.

Instead, the programme spent an inordinate amount of time presenting the
counter arguments of Hata Ikuhiko, an academic known for his right of
centre, if not overly right-wing opinions.

According to the Shukan shincho article, several right-wing groups visited
NHK in a show of muscle shortly before the airing of the programme and
resorted to the usual right-wing tactic of mega-decibel attacks from sound
trucks circling the NHK building.

The Sukan shincho article makes a prima facie case for self-censorship on
various points including

1) Only this segment in the four-part series was 40 minutes.  The other
three segments were 45 minutes.  Nothing significant happened on the 30th
to warrant chopping this particular segment to 40 minutes.  Presumably 
five
or more minutes that were already part of the programme were cut after
right-wing protests.

2) Hata Ikuhiko was included in the programme only on the 27th, hard to
explain for a programme several months in the making unless there was a
last minute sense, perhaps heightened by 20-30 potentially violent looking
types milling about in the NHK Shibuya headquarters, that the programme
ought to give more time to "the other side."

3) When specifically questioned by Shukan shincho reporters, the NHK PR
office has given extremely evasive answers.

NOTES

I describe NHK as a "state television network" in the Soviet-era sense of
this term because when NHK has been sued in American state courts on
defamation and other issues, its lawyers have successfully argued that it
is an agent of the Japanese government and NOT subject to US laws.

Explaining the discrepancy between the status that NHK claims when sued in
the US (agent of the Japanese government) and the status NHK claims in its
domestic PR statements (independent agency) are not entirely the same 
thing
thing, is left to the reader as an exercise.

Those wishing to check out the article I refer to should see Shukan 
shincho
(01.02.22): 34.

I happened to see this programme but I did NOT pay close attention to it.
I was surprised that NHK even dealt with the subject and did feel that 
Hata
Ikuhiko was presented as shield against the religious right-wing.

At the same time, I should note that I share several of Hata's criticisms
of the "tribunal" concerning Japan's "crimes against women" --

1) if you're going to convene a "court" and call it a "tribunal," you
should follow either a) internationally accepted juridical principals
accepted at the time the alleged crimes took place or b) contemporary
internationally accepted juridical procedures.  Otherwise, you look like a
kangaroo court, precisely the sort of thing that one would associate with
1930s-1940s Japan.

2) there is more than a little element of VICTORS JUSTICE when you get a
primarily American/European "judiciary" coming into Japan more than fifty
years after the fact to "try" Japanese for "crimes against women."  This
case can be made even without asking questions about the American military
in South East Asia....

EHK

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---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
Date:        03.03  10:33 PM
Received:    03.03  10:58 PM
From:        H-Japan Editor, j-edit at mail.h-net.msu.edu
Reply-To:    H-NET/KIAPS List for Japanese History, H-JAPAN at H-NET.MSU.EDU
To:          H-JAPAN at H-NET.MSU.EDU

                                  H-JAPAN
                               March 3, 2001



From: "Jonathan M. Hall" <jmhall at gol.com>


Dear H-Japan Listmembers,

Below you will find a description, written by Lisa Yoneyama, of the
controversial NHK censorship of a recent television program addressing
Japanese military sexual enslavement.  Because Professor Yoneyama was one 
of
the commentators on the heavily censored program that has been a recent
topic of debate here on H-JAPAN, her description of events should be of
interest to those following the thread.  Professor Yoneyama has written a
public letter of protest to NHK and is looking for supporters, especially
from the Japan studies community, willing to add their names in support.
For a copy of the protest letter or to add your name, please respond
directly to Professor Yoneyama at lyoneyam at ucsd.edu

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan M. Hall

***************************************************************************
*
********
March 1, 2001


Dear Friends,

I am writing to ask for your support in lodging a protest against NHK 
(Nihon
Hoso Kyokai), the Japanese public broadcasting agency, for its censorship 
of
a recent television program that aired on the second night of the ETV 2001
series, Senso o Do Sabaku ka (How Should We Adjudicate Wars?).

I became involved in this incident because I was asked to appear as one of
two principal commentators on the second and third nights of the series. 
The
second night's program considered the issue of the Japanese military's
sexual enslavement of women and the Women's International War Crimes
Tribunal on Japan?fs Military Sexual Slavery (December 2000, Tokyo).  The
third night's program covered the more general topic of sexual violence
against women in wars. However, I was surprised and angered to learn that
the final content and emphases of the second night's program differed
radically from what had originally been planned. Critical comments by many
individuals, including me, had been extensively purged, truncated in
misleading ways, or replaced with statements denying the facticity of the
"comfort women's" testimonies and the legality of the Women's Tribunal.

In what follows I will describe the contents of the original and revised
programs and the process by which changes were made to the programming,
apparently as a result of political pressure from the far right. (For a
comprehensive perspective report on the incident, please refer to Honda
Masakazu's newspaper article in the Asahi which will appear within the 
next
few days.) I ask you to join me in protesting NHK's actions by signing the
letter that I have drafted below. To be sure, NHK's ETV 2001 made the only
attempt to cover the Women's Tribunal extensively on television. And in
lodging this protest, it is not my intention to demean the efforts of
conscientious and socially conscious individuals within NHK. However, the
program that aired on January 30 barely reflected the responsible
perspectives that had gone into the original plan for the program. My hope
is that a letter collectively signed by concerned scholars outside of 
Japan
will send a strong signal to NHK that it has an ethical duty to make
knowledge about the Japanese military's sexual enslavement of women
available, and that as a public agency it is legally obligated to resist
censorship.

If you agree to support this collective protest, please send me a note
(lyoneyam at ucsd.edu) indicating that you would like to be included on the
letter as a signatory, preferably by Friday, March 9. Please include your
full name and institutional affiliation. I would appreciate any comments 
you
might have about the letter or any suggestions about further actions we
might take. If you are a member of relevant list-servers, please feel free
to forward this message.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this long message, and 
for
your support. 

Sincerely, 

Lisa Yoneyama
Department of Literature
University of California, San Diego



***
(1) The Incident
Last January, NHK's educational television channel (ETV) aired a four 
night
series on recent attempts throughout the world to address and redress acts
of violence and injustice that have never adequately been prosecuted under
the category of  "crimes against humanity."  The ETV series titled "How
Should We Adjudicate Wars?" contained testimonies on many ghastly 
incidents
of the twentieth century. These included pan-European participation in the
Nazi Holocaust, mass rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the French war against
Algeria, sexual violence and torture in Guatemala, the Japanese military's
sexual enslavement of women, and South African Apartheid. By exploring
memories of these atrocities, the program sought to show how the concept 
of
"crimes against humanity" had been critically challenged and reconfigured 
in
such ways as to help communities remember, to make reparations for, and to
determine accountability and to atone for racial, gender, ethnic, sexual,
colonial and other forms of violence and injustice. NHK subcontracted the
series to a small, socially conscious video production company, 
Documentary
Japan (DJ).

I participated on the second and third nights as one of two studio
commentators. The second night's programming was heavily censored. This 
part
of the series was originally supposed to cover the "Women's International
War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery" that had been held
in Tokyo last December. As I will describe in further detail below, the
Women's Tribunal was an transnational people's court that utilized
international law to try individuals within the Japanese military, 
including
Hirohito, for their alleged involvement in the sexual enslavement of 
women.
However, what aired on January 30, 2001 as the program titled, "Wartime
Sexual Violence" ("Senji sei boryoku") differed drastically from the 
version
that was filmed on December 27, 2000.

The third night's program covered the Public Hearing organized by the
International Criminal Court's (ICC's) Women's Caucus, which was held in
conjunction with the Tribunal. Included were testimonies of gender 
violence
in on-going wars and conflicts in different parts of the world, such as
Guatemala, East Timor, and Burundi. This program was not extensively 
revised
or censored.


(2) The Tribunal
While there were a number of feminist and other progressive grass roots
groups and NGOs that organized the Women's Tribunal, the three primary
convenors were the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military 
Sexual
Slavery by Japan, the Asian Centre for Women's Human Rights (ASCENT) of 
the
Philippines, and the Violence Against Women in War-Network (VAWW-NET),
Japan. More than seventy survivors of the "comfort stations" and other
wartime violence gave testimonies. Among the most important International
Law experts who participated were Patricia Viseur-Sellers and Gabrielle 
Kirk
McDonald, who respectively served as chief prosecutor and presiding judge.
They had both been centrally involved in considering gender and sexual
violence at the former Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal.

For the first time in history, the Women's Tribunal tried the Japanese
military's sexual enslavement of women as a "crime against humanity," and 
it
found the late Hirohito, the Showa Emperor and the Japanese government
guilty. It also determined that initial responsibility for suppressing
knowledge of Japanese crimes committed against women from occupied
territories rested with the Allied Forces because, despite the weight of
available evidence, they had failed to pursue this issue at the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo War Crimes Trial),
and thereby allowed similar cases of violence against women to remain
uninterrogated in subsequent decades.

The Women's Tribunal does not possess the power to enforce its legal
decisions. Yet because the Tribunal was a formal trial authorized by
international law and because it was an event that conveyed the weight and
force of international opinion against the Japanese government's
unwillingness to face up to its war responsibilities  -- these factors and
others suggested the possibility that if knowledge about the Tribunal were
properly conveyed to the public, this could impact Japanese opinion and 
lead
to legislative measures for an official apology, reparations and 
eventually
healing.  It is therefore truly regrettable that NHK failed to capitalize 
on
the opportunity to report fully and honestly on the Tribunal's
accomplishments. (For an eloquent summary of the Women's Tribunal in
Japanese please refer to the conversation between Norma Field and 
Takahashi
Tetsuya in the March 2001 issue of SEKAI. Takahashi was a commentator
throughout NHK?fs ETV 2001 series.)


(3) Censorship
As far as I know, NHK significantly changed the second night's programming
in two stages. The first took place between December 27 and January 28, 
that
is from the time of studio filming based on an original script and a 
partial
re-recording that followed a revised script. My co-commentator, Takahashi,
participated in the re-recording on January 28. Further changes were made
between January 28 and the date when the final program aired, January 30. 
 I
was not informed of any of these revisions.

It is known that changes imposed during the first stage were in large part
the result of the tremendous pressure that an NHK executive applied on 
DJ's
producer, who is a woman.  I recently learned that during this stage the
program's emphasis shifted from the "Women's International War Crimes
Tribunal" to the theme of "crimes against humanity." I have also been
informed that the DJ producer resisted the demands for revisions and
subsequently withdrew from the program.

According to Takahashi, although the January 28 version de-centered the
Tribunal, it at least retained some extensive testimonies of survivors, 
key
statements by the Tribunal justices, as well as most of my commentary. 
(The
verdict declaring Hirohito guilty was apparently replaced by video clips
from overseas media reports on the Tribunal.) However, the disparity 
between
the January 28 and January 30 versions is so extensive that it is obvious
that the program received last-minute editing and revising in order to 
erase
almost every direct reference to and positive assessment of the Tribunal. 
My
comments and those of Takahashi on the empowering effects of the Tribunal 
as
a gathering of transnational grassroots organizations, on the significance
of the survivors' testimonies, and on the potential of the Tribunal's
findings to effect social transformations at various levels of Japanese
society, were entirely deleted. In fact, because I spoke primarily on the
Tribunal's significance, most of my statements were cut, my sentences were
shredded to pieces, and the few utterances of mine that remained did not
make sense because they had been lifted out of context.

Furthermore, at the time of the December 27 studio recording, the script 
did
not include an interview with Hata Ikuhiko, the conservative historian and
critic who has been actively denying the Japanese military's systematic
involvement in the "comfort station" system. Yet the January 30 broadcast
contained several minutes of a video recording in which Hata not only 
denied
the military's involvement in recruiting women for sex, but disparaged the
Tribunal as biased and fraught with technical shortcomings from the
standpoint of law. Moreover, in order to fill in the gaps created by the
deletion of our studio conversations, NHK had inserted extended and
irrelevant film footage from European wars, the signing of the San 
Francisco
Peace Treaty, the 1980s democratization of South Korea, and the like.
Still, the program came out four minutes shorter than the other three  (40
minutes as opposed to 44 minutes). More disturbingly, those of us involved
in the program have been receiving comments from viewers unaware of the
censorship that the program as a whole seemed to assess the Tribunal
negatively.

Reliable sources report that there have been a number of right wing 
physical
threats against NHK. It is also alleged that several members of the 
Liberal
Democratic Party threatened one of the NHK's executives with budget cuts 
if
they did not censor the program. This is despite the fact that by law the
government is not allowed to interfere in NHK programming.


(4) Issues
As you can imagine, I feel terribly violated personally. However, the 
issue
involves much more than simply freedom of speech and protection from
censorship. I do not by any means wish to privilege the question of the
violation of my legal rights when what are centrally at issue here are the
original acts of sexual violence that precluded even the right of women to
living lives with dignity.

The erasure and distortion of my statements are but symptoms of a larger
ideological configuration in which attempts to critically remember Japan's
past injustices are constantly marginalized or suppressed in public
discourse. It is also yet another instance in which invocation of the
abstract and universal notion of "humanity" tends to reduce the immediacy 
of
and the need to make reparations for specific acts of violence. 
Ironically,
this was a point that I had made in my book on Hiroshima memories.

NHK's failure to broadcast undistorted and accurate information about the
Tribunal should not go unquestioned. NHK owes those involved in the 
program
and the general public an apology, disclosure of accountability, and
compensation for damages.


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