The TV audience for Wednesday morning's appearance by former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka before a Diet ethics panel hearing reached 11.7 percent in the Kanto region, a TV ratings company said Thursday.
The rating is high relative to that of usual Diet session broadcasts by NHK, Video Research Ltd. said.
The hearing by the House of Representatives Deliberative Council on Political Ethics, which is normally closed, was fully open to the news media and broadcast live by NHK for the first time, after the ruling and opposition parties pushed for an open session for the case.
The two-hour session, which began at 10 a.m., summoned Tanaka over allegations she misused the state-paid salaries of her secretaries in 1998.
Tanaka categorically denied the allegations in her testimony.
Other commercial broadcasting channels produced special programs for live broadcast at the same time, but only achieved audience ratings of 0.6 percent to 3.4 percent.