The latest national drama

Aaron Gerow gerowaaron
Sun Mar 27 20:21:34 EST 2005


Just to clarify a few things.

> It soon became apparent that the target was actually Fuji TV network, 
> which is majority owned by NBS.

It's more complicated than this. What is very complex about Fuji Sankei 
Group is that it is quite literally a group: there are literally over 
70 companies and they all own stock in each other. Thus while NBS had 
22% of the stock of Fuji TV before all this mess started, making it the 
leading stock holder in Fuji TV, Fuji TV owned 12% of NBS (and now owns 
more). That's one reason why it's hard to say where the "Fuji Sankei 
Group" fits in all this.

I think this makes this quite different from the analogy of someone 
trying to buy Fox News. Murdoch's New Corporation is much more 
centralized and virtually headed by an individual. Also, while it is 
certain that some arms of Fuji Sankei have a disturbingly right-wing 
coloring (especially the publishing arms like Sankei Shinbun and 
Fusosha), nothing here is evenly colored. Consider Fuji TV: personally 
I think their morning wide show, Tokudane, is the best of all the wide 
shows and did a lot of very critical and damning reports about the Iraq 
war. And Toei has distributed a lot more right wing films that Pony 
Canyon has.

It is quite a mess, though, and I for one feel I need to study a bit 
more about Japanese corporate structure.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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