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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My interest in NHK television news began when I touted its neutral broadcasting of information about policy making to an American friend visiting me in japan in 1975; after watching it for a while, he pronounced it boring. We were both right. In 1983, thanks to a japanese friend, I gained access to the NHK News Center to explore why it had those characteristics. Gradually the research expanded into a book. Its completion was delayed through (and because of) 15 years that encompassed publishing several edited books and numerous articles on related and unrelated subjects, two transcontinental moves, a divorce, and other large and small "distractions"; throughout, it remained an important, if too often subordinated, professional interest. In a separate article I've described the whole process: initial interest, access, methodologies employed, and delayed publishing gratification, and their trade-offs and lessons. 1 The primary and secondary materials I used in researching this book are voluminous, but only part of all that has been written about NHK The description and analysis of the news process itself, particularly chapter 3, was initially based on intensive field research in 1983 and 1985, including interviews with and observation of NHK reporters and executives at the News Center and in reporters' clubs, and on many shorter subsequent follow-up visits and discussions up until 1995. To encourage frank and detailed imparting of information in my interviews, I promised anonymity to most of the respondents. I generally refer to them by the initial of their