NHK News Watch 9
Yesterday I sat down to do some afternoon work in the office when the phone rang out of the blue. It was someone from the Ichou Festa office. They started with “IT’S AN EMERGENCY.” The story was that an NHK news crew had departed the Shibuya NHK headquarters fortress at 13:00 to come ask us about our changing (not-changing, to be precise) ginkgo leaves.
A modus operandi of news programs in Japan is to decide that a phenomenon exists and then find (or drum up) and then broadcast supporting evidence for its existence. A news producer (using that term literally) at NHK yesterday decided that the cold(er than before) weather of the recent few days is surely not entirely lamented in society, but in fact desired by some. And by dint of being held during the time that the gingko trees turn golden along four kilometers of Koshu Kaido through Hachioji, our festival was identified by NHK personnel as likely to welcome the cold weather.
This was kind of true, I suppose. Golden would be better than less-golden, and the leaves are indeed three or so weeks late at getting golden. The full truth, though, is that good weather—no rain, specifically—is the main thing we hope for, so people will come. People do not not come simply because of the leaf color. They come for food and the various component events and generally something to do, and what will stop them from doing that is rain. The Cold November Rain™️.
I wanted to get work done, but I also love a good distraction, so I went to the festival office and awaited the crew’s arrival. They came and described their need for evidence of the existence of people who want the weather to get colder. I communicated to them that I would oblige, so very pliantly, because why not promote our festival for free on a nationally broadcast news program?
I showed them the best pedestrian overpass from which to film a nice stretch of trees. I also supplied them with precisely dated photographs of that exact location from past years as evidence of the delayed color change. You see, I used to take photos of the color change more or less daily and post them in a Twitter thread entitled “Ginkgo Leaf Watch.” Although I was loathe to reward the practice of seeking out evidence to support a predetermined news hypothesis, the producers were also correct, after all, and it happened that I had taken and shared with all of Planet Earth literally hundreds of photos of ginkgo leaves in hopes of interesting the world in their goodness. From that perspective, as a person who happened to be a foremost expert on the subject they wanted to discuss, I could not pass up the opportunity.
They interviewed me on the overpass. Having had experience in this realm, I made a pithy comment so eminently usable to their singular end that the crew was visibly taken aback. I said, “I’ll be delighted if it gets nice and cold once or twice, so that the ginkgo leaves quickly change color.“
“Okay, that…is…exactly what we need,” stammered the surprisedly sated director. Sure, I could have played hard to get, but I wanted to get back to work.
I made the exception from my Nikkei-print-edition-only Japan news consumption to watch the broadcast. Mercifully, the segment ran within the first 10-or-so minutes. Messages and phone calls then poured in for the next 20 minutes. The nine-o’clock national NHK “News Watch 9” broadcast is quite widely viewed, it turns out. Clients who have no idea what I do locally contacted me in some disbelief. Local people called me up, essentially to say, “I know you, and you were on the news.” This always happens when I make an appearance on national TV, every two or so years for whatever random reason.
Me on the broadcast, with my name and title on the right, and a subtitle that says “"What approximate percentage (have the leaves changed color)?”
By far, the most satisfying thing was seeing how the segment got edited and broadcast. My name and position as 実行委員長 / Steering Committee Chairman were shown on the screen. There was no reference to or discussion of my country of birth, or why I am in the position. They did ask me to indicate how many years I have been chairman (around eight, by my count). To me this is the best kind of social progress: The implication that people who do not look and are not named in traditionally Japanese ways are just out there in society doing stuff, and this is normal enough that no particular discussion of it is needed. When people see that a news broadcast included such a scene without that discussion of nationality or otherness, it changes their perceptions more than any explicit discussion would. The way I envision it (wishfully, sure; indulge me), a viewer who would have expected that discussion wonders internally, “Hmm, they didn’t even mention this dude’s clear otherness. Maybe it’s getting common enough for non-traditional-looking people to simply do stuff that TV programs don’t discuss it anymore. Huh.” That is why I like to do community things, and to be on TV in this way.