Research on TV Producers NEO ‹Attachment to the Locality› [Part I] Takeshi Yoshizaki, NHK (1/2)
Minamata: Meeting with “A Child with Profound Soul”
2019 Volume 69 Issue 7 Pages 64-88
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2019 Volume 69 Issue 7 Pages 64-88
The “Research on TV Producers” series that started seven years ago focused on individuals involved in TV productions and explored their internal process of making a string of distinct programs. This fiscal year, the series re-opens with a new title “Research on TV Producers NEO,” targeting working TV personnel to delve into their ways of life in a more organic manner, taking a closer look at their actual production sites, and through livery conversations with them, which we aim to make as candid as possible, and involving their senior colleagues or staff members who helped their productions, while conducting analysis of the programs just as we did in the former series. This fiscal year will be dedicated to producers who have their focuses fixed on a locality and have been weaving programs within the climate and the history of each area. Part I of the series features Takeshi Yoshizaki in two installments. Yoshizaki, Chief Director of NHK, aged 58, has been making programs on Minamata over 28 years. The first chapter for the July issue follows how Yoshizaki, who started his carrier at NHK in 1989 and assigned to Kumamoto—his hometown, rapidly became obsessed with Minamata, triggered by a coincidental encounter with fetal Minamata disease patients through work. Yoshizaki recalls that he had no interest in Minamata back then, which was mere history for him, but he realized as he stepped deeper in the area that a bunch of problems were yet to be solved. Since then, Yoshizaki has long been committed to Minamata. Twenty-five-year-old Yoshizaki got hooked on Minamata three years after he joined NHK. How was it started? Why? Who encouraged him to go forward? To unravel the mystery, the author deciphers three programs made by a young Yoshizaki, including Shashin no naka no Minamata (Minamata in photos) that follows the process of holding an exhibition of photos taken by a fetal Minamoto disease patient.
