Even before the storm raised by new NHK Chairman Katsuto Momii's Jan. 25 remarks on such issues as Japan's wartime use of sex slaves, the state secrets law and the role of NHK's international broadcasts has had a chance to die down, two of the public broadcast organization's 12 governors have made headlines with equally repugnant statements of their own.

On Feb. 3, novelist Naoki Hyakuta asserted that the 1937 Nanjing Massacre never took place while making a campaign speech for former Air-Self Defense Force Gen. Toshio Tamogami, a candidate in the Feb. 9 Tokyo gubernatorial election.

Michiko Hasegawa, a philosopher and professor emeritus at Saitama University, wrote an essay praising Shusuke Nomura, a rightist who committed suicide inside the Asahi Shimbun building in 1993.