Japan's public broadcaster was the first anywhere to air high-definition and 8K
NHK began as three radio stations in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya that merged in August 1926, deliberately patterned on Britain's BBC. It went on to carry the Emperor's surrender broadcast in 1945, build a broadcast centre for the 1964 Summer Olympics, and become the first broadcaster on Earth to transmit in high-definition and later in 8K.
The oldest ancestor was the Tokyo Broadcasting Station, set up in 1924 with Count Gotō Shinpei at its head. It went on air in 1925 alongside separate outfits in Osaka and Nagoya, and the pre-war Ministry of Communications oversaw their fusion into NHK. A second radio network followed in 1931 and an FM third network in 1957. Shortwave experiments in the 1930s became regular English and Japanese programmes in 1935, first aimed at people of Japanese descent in Hawaii and along North America's Pacific coast; the overseas arm was officially renamed Radio Tokyo in 1941.
War turned the broadcaster into a mouthpiece. From November 1941 the Imperial Japanese Army took control of every public news agency, and all bulletins became statements of Imperial Army headquarters. NHK aired the Tokyo Rose programmes and, in August 1945, Emperor Hirohito's surrender address, known as Gyokuon-hōsō. The following month General Douglas MacArthur's occupation authorities halted its international service and gave some of its facilities to the Far East Network. The Japanese-American broadcaster Frank Shozo Baba helped rebuild the schedule, and Radio Japan returned in 1952.
A Broadcasting Act passed in 1950 made NHK an independent corporation supported by its audience while also letting commercial rivals in. Television arrived in 1953, an educational channel in 1959 and colour in 1960. The Shibuya headquarters grew from that Olympic broadcast hub and became the main base in 1973. Satellite channels began experimentally in 1984 and 1985, digital service started in December 2000, and analogue signals were switched off on 24 July 2011, except in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, where they lasted until 31 March 2012 after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Licence fees pay for most of it, though NHK World for foreign audiences is government funded. The Diet of Japan approves the annual budget and appoints a twelve-member board of governors, while a president, an executive vice president and seven to ten managing directors run daily operations. Among its affiliates is the NHK Symphony Orchestra, founded on 27 April 1942 as the Japan Symphony Orchestra.
Source: NHK
