Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)

Radio broadcasting in Japan traces its origins back to 1926, when the Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya stations merged to form the predecessor of today’s Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK). Television broadcasting followed suit in 1953. As of mid‑2025, NHK operates with a broad portfolio: two terrestrial television channels (General and Educational), three satellite TV channels (including NHK BS Premium 4K and BS8K), three radio networks, and an international arm, NHK World‑Japan, comprising NHK World TV, NHK World Premium, and Radio Japan.

Media assets

Television: NHK General TV, NHK Educational TV, NHK BS1, NHK BS Premium, NHK BS4K, NHK BS8K; NHK World-Japan

Radio: NHK Radio 1, NHK Radio 2, NHK FM

State Media Matrix Typology

Ownership and governance

Until 1950, the government held the reins on broadcasting. The Broadcasting Law of 1950 marked a turning point, forbidding governmental meddling in programming and formally establishing NHK as a public broadcaster. The law also paved the way for private broadcasters to enter the fray.

The Board of Governors, consisting of 12 members appointed by the Prime Minister and ratified by both houses of Parliament, oversees the corporation—tasked with appointing NHK’s president and green‑lighting its strategic direction, policies, budget, and programming. These plans are passed to the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications and ultimately reviewed by the government and Diet.

NHK’s Executive Board is led by its president, currently Nobuo Inaba, accompanied by an executive vice‑president and seven to ten directors. When Inaba took the helm of NHK in January 2023, he inherited a century-old institution at a crossroads. A veteran of the Bank of Japan and later an executive at Ricoh, Inaba brought with him a technocrat’s discipline and a reformer’s eye. From his first days, he set about steering the public broadcaster toward a leaner, more digitally agile future, overseeing a 10% cut in the reception fee in 2023 and pushing for online distribution to stand on equal footing with terrestrial broadcasting.

The Audit Committee, comprising at least three members appointed by the Board of Governors, audits operations and reports back to the governors.

Source of funding and budget

NHK remains fully funded by license (reception) fees, paid by households and businesses equipped to receive broadcasts. This model is widely viewed as a keystone of its financial autonomy.

In 2021, NHK had an operating budget of JPY 690bn (US$ 6.3bn), of which the license fee accounted for over 97%. The following year, NHK had a budget of JPY 689bn (US$ 4.8bn), of which about JPY 670bn (US$ 4.6bn) came from license fees. In 2023, the broadcaster operated on a budget of JPY 688 billion (USD 4.9 billion), of which license fees contributed roughly JPY 669 billion. Entering fiscal 2025, NHK projected a shortfall of around JPY 40 billion, or USD 270 million.

Editorial independence

The Broadcasting Law plainly forbids NHK’s Board of Governors from meddling in editorial decisions. For many years this shield appeared to hold firm, although whispers of state pressure under Shinzō Abe’s administration (2012–2020) began to erode confidence. Journalists reported that dissenting or critical coverage met resistance, ranging from dismissals to sidelining of sensitive reports, raising concerns that NHK was veering off its legally mandated independence.

Even after Abe’s departure in August 2020, the clouds of suspicion lingered. In June 2021, the NHK board drew fire for withholding minutes from contentious meetings, a move critics said smacked of opacity and possibly, covert agenda‑setting. The re-election of Shunzo Morishita as head of the Board in March 2021 drew particular ire, given his widely reported reputation for influencing editorial coverage. Independent journalists have frequently described such interference as “illegal,” arguing that it violates the very provisions designed to guarantee NHK’s editorial independence.

Over the past several years, incidents have emerged in which journalists were dismissed from their posts or in which sensitive reports were withheld from broadcast. In one notable case, NHK’s board of directors reportedly issued a warning to the corporation’s president following a corporate complaint about critical coverage. Such episodes have fuelled accusations that these actions constitute “interference with programming,” a direct breach of the Broadcasting Law.

At present, there is no independent body or formal oversight mechanism to verify NHK’s editorial independence. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is responsible for regulating this independence, and the minister holds the authority to suspend the operations of any broadcaster found in breach of the Broadcasting Law.

In the past year, no documented case has been identified of the government issuing direct orders to alter or suppress NHK’s domestic programming. Despite some ongoing indirect pressures, no formal censorship orders were uncovered in 2025. While NHK remains structurally vulnerable to government influence—through board appointments, statutory powers, and a media environment that encourages self-censorship—there is insufficient evidence in 2025 to conclude that NHK is under systematic, direct editorial control by the Japanese government. For this reason, we have reclassified NHK from the Captured Public/State-Managed or Owned Media (CaPu) category to the Independent State-Managed (ISM) category, which denotes the existence of editorial autonomy.

August 2025