Listening to the NHK coverage of several wars that are going on around the world, I’m wondering whether the people at NHK haven’t taken a hint from Fawlty Towers in reporting of war events. They certainly are reluctant to “mention the war,” and that includes numerous things going on in the world that are clearly and correctly referred to as wars every day by respected news sources around the world.
Wars in places such as Ukraine are referred to by NHK (in Japanese) as invasions, situations, conflicts, fighting, and other things, but almost never does NHK use the W-word.
To be fair, NHK does seem to allow non-NHK people who are being interviewed in somewhat uncontrolled and perhaps difficult-to-edit situations to use the W-word, but I have never heard it uttered from an NHK mouth in their news, and that W-word prohibition appears to extend to people who are being interviewed in an NHK studio, and who might be somehow connected to NHK, albeit via things other than NHK news; university professors come to mind. They are presumably asked to tow the non-war line, and tow it they do.
In a few online places where NHK reports the news in English, however, I have seen them use the W-word. It’s rather like “immigration,” the Japanese word for which is never used with regard to people coming to Japan to live, even permanently, although Japan has traditionally referred to its having an Immigration office. This could be the result of an unwarranted fear of the distaste the thought of immigration could evoke from the general populace.
Japanese is the only language that has any official standing in Japan. If something is said in English, it hasn’t been said, aguably doesn’t matter, and in any event can be denied by pointing to the officially recognized Japanese rendering or explanation. Japanese is the governing language, and English is provided only as a convenience; and the arrangement of deniable English is certainly convenient.
I think NHK needs to get real. Avoiding the use of the word war to describe what Russia is doing in Ukraine is not going to get Japan back its Northern Territories from Russia, and Japan was granted special permission from the the US to continue purchasing fuel from Russia in spite of the sanctions resulting from their war on Ukraine. NHK really needs to get real. It won’t cost anything, other than perhaps the loss of their reputation for being excessively careful even if it results in silly war-avoidance news coverage.