Please let me add some words to Gavin Bantock's comments on the year-end "Kohaku Uta Gassen" TV show in the Letters section in the Jan. 10 issue.
Bantock's strong criticism of the extreme obtrusiveness of the stage presentation is quite heartily agreed with by this writer. Let us look at the problem from another angle, from the viewpoint of a person who has lived for quite a long time enjoying the gorgeous event each year-end since I was a young man.
This season comes only once a year and it is a most precious time for a person like me to reminisce things that occurred not only in the year just passing but also the decades that many other octogenarians and nonagenarians experienced before, during, and after the war.
Now Japan is a rapidly graying society, and the wishes and desires of these people deserve a little better treatment and consideration. In this sense, why not spare just 20 or 30 minutes out of the long two-odd hours and present some footage of good old singers, now gone, from around 1930 through the 1940s. Then maybe more people might decide to switch on and watch.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.