A radio documentary produced by a high school broadcasting club prompted the Imperial Household Agency more than a decade ago to change the long-standing rules for its annual New Year's poetry reading event.

The documentary featured an 83-year-old former Hansen's disease patient, poet Akio Tanigawa, who resides at Nagashima Aisei-En in Setouchi, Okayama Prefecture, the first national sanitarium for Hansen's sufferers.

The poet, who contracted the disease in his teens in Hyogo Prefecture, was unable to attend the official 1993 ceremony in Tokyo due to his physical disabilities. For the ceremony, prizewinning tanka are normally read out in the presence of the Emperor and Empress.