Media watch: New tax plan’s acceptance in doubt because no one understands its real effects

Posted on November 17, 2024 by philipbrasor
Yuichiro Tamaki

The Democratic Party for the People (DPP) did well in the recent general election, increasing the number of seats it held in the lower house from 7 to 28 (11 constituent + 17 proportional). The party with the most number of seats, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has said it will work with the DPP on the latter’s legislation, since one of the main reasons for the DPP’s success (6.17 million proportional votes, or 2.5 times the number it received in 2021) is its pledge to help low-income workers increase their take-home pay. Currently, workers who make up to ¥1.03 million a year don’t have to pay national income tax. The DPP’s plan would raise that ceiling to ¥1.78 million.

The problem for the LDP, which while short of a majority still runs the government at the moment, is that the finance ministry (FM) hates the DPP’s proposal, since it could mean an estimated loss of ¥7.6 trillion in tax revenue for both the central and local governments. In fact, this enmity was so pronounced that last week, after a weekly magazine revealed that DPP head Yuichiro Tamaki was involved in an extra-marital affair, a rumor circulated claiming that it was the FM that leaked such intelligence, though there seems to be absolutely no evidence to that effect. Nevertheless, a lot of people are voicing serious concerns about the tax threshold policy, saying that it not only would deprive the country of much needed tax revenue, but that the whole proposal is based on “an enduring economic myth,” in the Japan Times’ words. The problem, however, is that many aren’t completely clear about the math of the proposal. In the simplest terms, the DPP wants lower income workers to keep more of their pay, which they will thus spend more freely and help stimulate the economy—and, in turn, generate more tax revenue. Moreover, the received wisdom about the current tax ceiling is that the part-time workers who make up the vast majority of the people to whom the ceiling applies tend to limit their work hours in order to make sure their annual pay does not exceed the ceiling, thus causing problems for employers who require more labor, not to mention the workers themselves, since it restricts their ability to earn. Those who object to the proposal mainly have an issue with this latter belief, saying that very few workers actually limit their work hours for tax reasons, because even if they break through the ceiling the tax they have to pay is so minimal that it makes no real difference. 

Financial planner Hiroko Ishikura explains on her blog that the situation is more involved than the media has let on, and that, in fact, explaining the various dynamics at play is difficult, since disposable income is determined by a number of factors beyond one’s basic pay, including social security premiums and the worker’s status as a dependent. When you include all these other factors it’s not so clear if the proposal has much meaning as either a stimulus of or a drag on the economy. It’s true that the tax ceiling in question probably doesn’t affect most workers’ final decision as to how much they will work in a year, but there are other ceilings that might.

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Review: Gladiator II

Posted on November 15, 2024 by philipbrasor

Though I don’t expect much hard history when I take in a historical drama, I always appreciate it more if I leave it knowing more about the past than I did going in. Ridley Scott’s latest epic, a long-simmering sequel to one of his most successful films, not only failed to give me anything historically significant to chew on, but mostly contradicted the small amount of knowledge I thought I possessed about the Roman Empire. I could attribute this failure to either a patent disregard for actual facts or weak storytelling that didn’t make the historical aspects credible on their own merits. It’s probably the latter, since the plot, as simple-minded as it is, tracks its own internal logic as a movie spectacle, and if there is any history that must be reckoned with its the one plotted in the first Gladiator, where Russell Crowe’s Maximus almost single-handedly revived democratic longings as he helped bring about the destruction of a tyrant. Gladiator II attempts to do pretty much the same thing, which makes me wonder if either of these heroes really knows what he’s fighting for. Even those of us who never read Gibbon understand what the title of his famous opus refers to. 

Our hero this time is Lucius (Paul Mescal), a farmer in a North African province that is invaded by the Romans. Lucius and his wife join in the fight to protect their way of life from the Roman general Acacius (Pedro Pascal), but cannot withstand the huge onslaught. Lucius’s wife is killed in battle and Lucius taken prisoner and enslaved. In Rome, he is selected to fight in the Colosseum after being vetted by the gladiator broker Macrinus (Denzel Washington), who encourages Lucius’s desire for retribution in order to make him a more exciting combatant in enclosed conflicts, and he’s right. Lucius vanquishes both man and beast in the arena, satisfying the blood lust of the psychopathic brother emperors, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracella (Fred Hechinger), but, more importantly, stimulating the hoi polloi, who, as they did with Maximus, take his side and spur him to rebellious action. However, the real dramatic focus is on Macrinus, a former slave himself who, in Washington’s hilariously on-point enunciation, declares himself a “friend of politics,” meaning someone skilled in the arts of transactional manipulation. Just as he gets the most out of Lucius’s rage in the arena, he puts that rage to supplemental use by steering it toward those who stand in his way to greater personal power. 

It’s already been said that Washington is the main, if not the only, reason to see Gladiator II, but it’s because he imbues Macrinus with more wit and fire than any one else in the movie does with their characters. Just as the history of the Roman Empire gets lost in the copious, CG-enhanced action set pieces and rote narrative development, the actors are subsumed by their generically conceived characters. Mescal rarely is given a chance to calm down. Connie Nielsen, reprising her role as the daughter of Marcus Aurelius (who is granted the kind of hero-in-hindsight stature of a dead Kennedy) and lover of Maximus, mostly frets and pouts. The other gladiators are nothing more than an attitude branded on raw meat. At least in the first movie a few were given personalities. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Gladiator II home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Paramount Pictures

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Review: The Devil’s Deal

Posted on November 14, 2024 by philipbrasor

Cynical to the point of nihilism, this 2023 Korean box office hit is touted as a political thriller, though it’s really just another bloody gangster fable that happens to take place against the background of the 1992 general election. Politics simply provides the craven excuse for everybody to act on their worst impulses. At the center is Jeon Hae-woong (Cho Jin-woong), an earnest Busan city assemblyman whose ambition is to be elected to Parliament representing his district of Haeundae, which is undergoing a contentious redevelopment. Those with a stake in the project would rather have a candidate who’s firmly in their pocket and rig the election so that a rookie gets the nomination for the Democratic Party, which always wins in this district. Undeterred, Jeon launches a campaign as an independent after bribing a city hall insider to make copies of the redevelopment plan, which he then passes on to a crooked gangster-developer, Jang-ho (Kim Min-jae), who can use it to invest in the targeted land before the plans are made public. In return, Jang-ho promises to bankroll Jeon, but when the local Democratic Party fixer, Kwon Soon-tae (Lee Sung-min), gets wind of Jeon’s machinations, he goes all-out to steal the ballot boxes in order to guarantee his man gets elected.

From that point, Jeon, whose dreams of political ascension are now considerably fueled by his desire for revenge, turns a corner and never looks back, and as a protagonist the character is a convincing portrait of unalloyed ambition in the form of a seemingly inept operator, which fools his adversaries, including Kwon, into thinking that he’s a pushover. Lee Won-tae’s witty and streamlined script has just enough surprises to keep the viewer sufficiently distracted from his hackneyed direction, and most are provided by the supporting characters, including Pil-do (Kim Mu-yeol), the local loan shark who prefers to think of himself as a simple “hooligan” and provides Jeon with the appropriate “muscle” for his scheme; a cagey female newspaper reporter (Park Se-jin) whose carefully measured blend of journalistic principle and ruthlessness makes her almost a match for the wannabe alpha males who stray into her orbit; and a bunch of prosecutors who think they’re hot stuff but can never keep up with the bad guys. 

In fact, it’s exhausting trying to parse motives since no one has any redeeming traits, and the only people who could be considered “innocent” either die miserably or are relegated to less-than-nothing status. This is dark shit, and in order to extract any conventional entertainment value from the amoral proceedings you have to choose which bad guys to root for. If this were a European production, there would be all sorts of existential insights served up with the atrocious behavior, but this is Korea, where the audience simply gets off on it. 

In Korean. Opens Nov. 15 in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

The Devil’s Deal home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Plus M Entertainment and Twin Film/B.A. Entertainment

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Review: Weekend Rebels

Posted on November 13, 2024 by philipbrasor

The latest in a series of German movies on the theme of neuro-divergency was a box office hit in its native land, and it’s easy to see why. Clearly a mainstream effort, Weekend Rebels is based on a popular blog-turned-bestseller that approaches autism with disarming frankness leavened by a comic touch that’s obviously designed to acclimatize viewers to the behavior of people on the spectrum. In that regard, the filmmakers deserve props, but the production itself exudes a kind of harmless predictability, as if the story’s development had been structured as a power point presentation. In fact, in one scene a character says to another that his explanation of how he deals with his son’s autism sounds like “a TED talk.”

The character in question is Mirco (Florian David Fitz), the father of ten-year-old Jason (Cecilio Andresen), who has Asperger’s, a condition that mostly manifests in extreme OCD tantrums. To the casual outsider, Jason’s behavior is that of a very spoiled child, and thus Mirco and his wife, Fatime (Aylin Tezel), are subjected to withering looks whenever Jason acts out in public. Explaining that Jason is autistic does little to encourage tolerance, which is probably an anti-PC way of looking at the issue anyway, so both parents learn to cope with these situations the best they can, but Fatime has to address the problem on an almost constant basis since Mirco’s job as a national sales manager for a fast food chain keeps him on the road almost constantly. Eventually, Fatime has a kind of breakdown and Mirco is forced to confront his employer with an ultimatum, which she miraculously gives in to, offering Mirco not only a management position that allows him to go home at 5 every day, but also a pay raise. With his weekends now completely free, he endeavors to spend more time with Jason and quickly realizes what his wife had to deal with, including battling with the public education system to prevent Jason from being transferred to a school for students with “special needs.” The thing about Jason is that he understands his condition, as well as the cultural atmosphere surrounding it (“I’m not Rainman,” he screams at one point), and in his inherent stubbornness refuses to surrender to the social slot in which the establishment, regardless of how well-meaning its intentions, tries to place him. Since the same OCD tendencies that make his parents’ lives difficult also focus his energies on certain interests, mainly astrophysics, once his attentions are engaged he is willing to negotiate his behavior in order to pursue those interests. When a classmate asks what his favorite football team is, he is stumped, and Mirco uses this dilemma as a basis for bonding. They will attend games for all 56 German football clubs so that Jason can decide which one will be his favorite.

As a promotional medium for German professional football, the movie works extremely well, though those of us who aren’t necessarily into the niceties of the sport may also find the scenes of boisterous fans (which freak out Jason at first) and complicated explanations of regional sports peculiarities less than engaging. But the premise lends itself to the high drama that often marks interactions with people on the spectrum, since the visceral experience of attending live soccer games intensifies the problems that many people with Asperger’s have in public situations. However, in the movie these effective dramatic moments are often spoiled by the peppy pop song soundtrack and a style of montage-heavy editing that reduces everything to a bland porridge of sameness. As Jason himself states at one time while describing how the universe was formed, “chaos is now accepted by scientists as part of nature,” and it might have been more to the movie’s benefit had the filmmakers themselves adopted that credo.

In German and English. Opens Nov. 15 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015).

Weekend Rebels home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Wiedemann & Berg Film GMBH/Sevenpictures Film GMBH

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Media watch: Three countries stake their claim on Okinawa

Posted on November 9, 2024 by philipbrasor
Still from “Longiness Remix” video

Our column this month in the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan’s Number 1 Shimbun is about the government purposely neglecting to report two sexual crimes allegedly perpetrated by U.S. military personnel stationed on Okinawa to the Okinawa prefectural government. The point of the piece is to discuss Okinawan women’s inferior status in the eyes of both the U.S. military, which considers the island “spoils of war,” and the Japanese government, which thinks of Okinawan women as something it can sacrifice for the sake of national security. Both views indicate the colonialist mindsets of the two countries. 

Now we want to add a third country that shares this outlook, even if China’s claim on Okinawa is, ostensibly, at least, purely cultural. In her occasional column for the Asahi Shimbun, University of the Ryukyus associate professor of international political history, Akiko Yamamoto, writes about a video by the Okinawan rapper Awich that has become very popular on the Chinese website Bilibili, which is fashioned after the Japanese video site Niconico Douga. On both platforms, viewers can submit comments on the video they’re watching in real time and have those comments appear in the video in a fleeting manner. The music video in question presents the song “Longiness Remix,” a reggae-inflected hip-hop tune in which Awich and three other Okinawan rappers express pride in their Okinawan identity using language and references specific to Okinawan culture. 

Yamamoto explains that the song adheres to classic hip-hop protocols as set out by the original Black crews who launched rap in the late 70s: pride in one’s roots and community, loyalty to friends and family, and a drive to make life better for oneself and one’s children. (Of course, these aren’t the only themes that hip-hop pioneers covered back in the day, but they’re the ones that Yamamoto is using to advance her thesis) However, the message that has gotten through to Chinese fans of the video and Awich’s music is a bit different. Many of the positive comments floating by on the Bilibili screen as the song plays cheer for Okinawan independence, an issue that Awich is certainly cognizant of but doesn’t address at all. Of course, viewers might interpret some of the lyrics as advocating for Okinawan independence. Awich encourages the “passing down” of Okinawan mores from generation to generation and embracing Okinawan culture to withstand outside pressure for change, entreaties that could be inferred as supporting independence from Japan, but the song doesn’t seem to carry any overt political message. 

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Review: The Animal Kingdom

Posted on November 8, 2024 by philipbrasor

I already started having problems with the premise of this horror-fantasy in the first minutes, despite how masterfully conceived the opening scene is. A father, Francois (Romain Duris), and his teenage son, Emile (Paul Kircher), are sitting in a Paris traffic jam, locked in a heated argument, when an ambulance nearby starts shaking and a bird-man pops out and starts threatening people before fleeing. The episode introduces the “disease” that is at the heart of the story, a condition that slowly transforms humans into seemingly random animals. As it turns out, Francois and Emile are on their way to the hospital to visit Francois’s wife and Emile’s mother, Lana, who is herself changing into what looks like an ape. During the movie we see other changelings patterned on lizards, wolves, and seals. The wide variety of species seems somewhat arbitrary and saps the film of coherence, even as a parable; but, more importantly, it indicates the script’s lack of focus, even as it offers up set pieces that are quite effective in making isolated points.

Lana is transported to a small town in the countryside where a “treatment facility” has been built for these “patients,” though as it turns out many have already left society and are living in the wild. The idea of the facility is that these creatures (or “critters,” as many citizens derogatorily call them) are considered dangerous and must be locked up. During transport, Lana escapes, and Francois spends much of the rest of the film looking for her as he and Emile start a new life in the town without letting their new neighbors know why they are there. As it happens, Emile starts showing signs of his own transformation that he at first keeps from his father, and as he tries to adjust to his new school and new friends, his dilemma becomes doubly terrifying. 

Thus The Animal Kingdom works on several allegorical levels: as a coming-of-age tale with queer overtones; and as a comment on racially charged prejudices about the “other.” For me it works best as a straightforward family drama, mainly because Duris and Kircher work so well together. Since emerging himself in film as a kind of awkward youth several decades ago, Duris has become one of France’s most versatile performers, and Kircher, who was so extraordinary in Winter Boy, can switch easily between panicked terror and goofball wiseguy without losing sight of the basic personality of his character. But Thomas Cailley’s direction can’t control the sudden shifts in tone, from comedy to horror to action to melodrama, as easily as the actors do and it’s often difficult to get a purchase on what he’s trying to achieve. When Francois berates a police officer for saying that the creatures must be locked away or killed, he yells that “in Norway” they’ve figured out a way for humans and changelings to live together in harmony. The joke falls flat because the scene is so charged with anger and frustration. It probably would have been hilarious if told in a different context. 

In French. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

The Animal Kingdom home page in Japanese

photo (c)2023 Nord-Ouest Films-Studiocanal-France 2 Cinema-Artemis Productions

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Review: Robot Dreams

Posted on November 7, 2024 by philipbrasor

Straightforwardly a film about loneliness and the search for connection, Pablo Berger’s animated feature, based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, eschews dialogue for a rich sound design that complements its colorful, densely built 2D visuals. The setting is Brooklyn in the mid-1980s, which is populated by animals of all species and ethnic peculiarities, not a human among them. Our protagonist is Dog, a seemingly under-employed canine living in a nice studio apartment overlooking a busy street. Despite the clamor and constant movement that goes on outside his building, he mostly sits around eating processed food and watching television alone. One day he sees a late night ad for companions and orders one. What arrives is a generic silver-colored robot, which requires some assembly. Without much ado, Dog now has a friend, who we assume is programmed for such a task, and yet genuine affection is equally offered on both sides. 

The idyll is spoiled by an accident of timing. The two friends go to the beach at Coney Island, and after Robot unwisely enters the water his parts rust up and he can’t be moved by Dog, who goes home to fetch tools and manuals, returning the next day only to find the beach closed for the season. Unable to enter he goes home crestfallen, leaving Robot to dream about someday being found and/or reunited with his friend, as Dog tries in vain every trick in the book to make those dreams a reality. The kick here is the dreams, which range from all-out fantasy to musical numbers to old Hollywood-style melodrama. As Robot lays under the accumulating sand, Dog gets on with his life, forges other friendships that fade in due time. When the season begins again he rushes to Coney Island and finds that Robot is gone, the only evidence of his existence a piece of his hand. The viewer knows, however, that Robot has been picked up by an illicit metal scavenger who has sold what’s left of him to a scrap yard, which, in turn, sells the parts to a hobbyist who endeavors to put him back together with other parts cannibalized from different devices. 

The story, whose inertia has more to do with vibes than with plotting, doesn’t necessarily go where you expect it to go, and while the the movie is steeped in non-realism, the situation that unfolds is not only believable, but sublimely affecting because it makes so much sense emotionally. At once heartbreaking and humane (despite the fact that there isn’t a human in sight), Robot Dreams is the kind of movie that gives sincerity of purpose a good name.

Opens Nov. 8 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya 03-5468-5551).

Robot Dreams home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Arcadia Motion Pictures S.L., Lokiz Films A.I.E., Noddles Production SARL, Les Films du Worso SARL

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Tokyo International Film Festival 2024

Posted on November 5, 2024 by philipbrasor

Here are links to the articles I wrote for this year’s TIFF website. Thanks to Karen Severns and Fumi Kawakubo.

Or Utopia Q&A

She Taught Me Serendipity Q&A

TIFF Lounge: Payal Kapadia and Hirokazu Kore-eda

The Englishman’s Papers Q&A

Lust in the Rain Q&A

The Unseen Sister Q&A

Teki Cometh Q&A

Sima’s Song Q&A

TIFF Lounge: Nippon Cinema Now directors’ discussion

Sammo Hung Masterclass

Bury Your Dead Q&A

Promise, I’ll Be Fine Q&A

TIFF Lounge: Kiyoshi Kurosawa Masterclass

In His Own Image Q&A

Adios Amigo Q&A

Traffic Q&A

My Friend An Delie Q&A

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Review: Gondola

Posted on November 1, 2024 by philipbrasor

The German director Veit Helmer is famous for shooting movies in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, though the locations seem to have less to do with thematic settings than with convenience. His latest is set in Georgia, and in interviews Helmer has said the only reason for shooting in Georgia was because they have interesting cable cars, the mode of transportation that sparked his imagination for this tale, which is about two female cable car operators, one a slightly cynical veteran, Nina (Nini Soselia), the other a new recruit with a more naive disposition named Iva (Mathilde Irrmann). If this gentlest of movies has any conflict, it’s between the two women and their boss, a stout, humorless man who doesn’t tolerate the kind of relaxed work ethic the women abide by. The cable car is an important means of public transportation in this sparsely populated corner of Georgia, and the two operators take advantage of its unique qualities to entertain themselves and their fares, much to the consternation of their supervisor. In one of the film’s many magical realist moments, the women install ropes on the gondola and use them to suspend an elderly man in a wheelchair below so that he can get a true bird’s eye view of the scenery, a segment that may trouble more thoughtful moviegoers: What kind of safety precautions did the film crew carry out, since the cable cars themselves look pretty old.

The film has no dialogue, which intensifies the whimsical quality of the story. Nina and Iva, who pass each other on an almost half hourly basis during work shifts, eventually fall in love from a distance and strike up a romance, and the mute component of their relationship makes it feel even more precious than it normally would be. As the wheelchair episode illustrates, they are quite mischievous and one could infer that Helmer sort of looks at LGBTQ romances in that register, but except for some casual nudity Gondola, with its cartoony action and funny looking marginal characters (lots of grumpy but well-intentioned grandmas and grandpas), could easily pass for Saturday afternoon family fare. More interesting than the very slight story is the scenery, which is probably why Helmer really decided to film in this part of Georgia with its dramatic mountain ranges, friendly and cute livestock (which ride the cable cars as well), and gingerbread-house hamlets. The movie doesn’t attempt to engage with our modern world and thus qualifies as escapism of the purest sort. It’s a finely created confection that melts in your mouth before vanishing completely. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Cinema Qualite Shinjuku (03-3352-5645).

Gondola home page in Japanese

photo (c) Veit Helmer-Filmproduktion, Berlin and Natura Film, Tbilisi

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Media watch: NHK gets flak for its special about the Johnny Kitagawa scandal

Posted on October 27, 2024 by philipbrasor
Noriyuki Higashiyama (NHK)

Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.), has announced that it will resume hiring talent from the entertainment agency formerly known as Johnny & Associates, whose late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, had been accused of sexually abusing more than a hundred boys who worked for the company as idols since it was established in the 1960s. Last year, the company’s management acknowledged the abuse following the broadcast of a BBC documentary that covered the matter in detail. Subsequently, Johnny & Associates changed its name to Smile-Up Inc., which took on the task of compensating the victims of the abuse, while a brand new company, Starto Entertainment, took over management of the idols that formerly had toiled for Johnny’s. Like all broadcasters in Japan, NHK relied heavily on Johnny’s for on-air talent and stopped using the agency after the scandal broke. At the press conference on Oct. 16 where the announcement was made, NHK President Nobuo Inaba said that his company was satisfied that the two companies had clearly separated their business tasks, thus paving the way for NHK to resume using Starto’s actors and singers, a move the Asahi Shimbun said would “likely lead to other major networks again signing up those affiliated with the new talent agency.”

One of the core aspects of the scandal is that Kitagawa’s abuse of the boys in his charge continued for years despite being exposed fairly early on by some media outlets. The reason such exposure was muted and not covered by other media outlets was due to the company’s power within the entertainment industry, especially among broadcasters, which in Japan are invariably part of larger media companies. Because Johnny’s male idols were so popular, broadcasters and others who hired them felt they couldn’t compete without them and thus ignored Kitagawa’s crimes. That included NHK, despite the fact that, as a public broadcaster, theoretically NHK doesn’t rely on ratings for its financial solvency because it receives funding from mandatory subscriptions. But NHK has always paid close attention to ratings, especially since the turn of the millennium when the internet started eroding viewership for TV broadcasts in general. Since then, NHK has increasingly mimicked commercial TV programming, which depends greatly on popular talent, and so NHK also hired Johnny’s idols for dramas, so-called variety programs, and talk shows. Thus NHK was also indirectly complicit in Kitagawa’s crimes, since it kept using the company in full knowledge of those crimes. 

Coincidentally or not, four days after its announcement, NHK broadcast its own documentary about the Kitagawa scandal. Though in many ways redundant, given that the BBC’s documentary was originally aired in March 2023 (though its content had already been revealed two months earlier) and Japan’s mainstream media had subsequently covered every aspect of Kitagawa’s crimes, due to its unique standing in Japan as a media outlet NHK was able to put together a more incisive report about those crimes and how Johnny & Associates kept a lid on them for so many years. The program even addressed NHK’s responsibility, though not necessarily to the satisfaction of some viewers. Following the broadcast, many people complained online about some of the documentary’s content and even accused NHK of producing and airing it so as to let itself off the hook for its failure to acknowledge Kitagawa’s sins earlier and resume hiring former Johnny’s talent. The timing was a bit too conspicuous. 

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