NHK WORLD PRIME
6.4
2017
Documentary
NHK WORLD PRIME brings you a world of mainly documentaries, and more. Tune in to see special select programs on all sorts of topics and genres.
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Episode 25 : Finding My Mirror
December. 23,2023
Inmates at a prison in Japan record themselves reading picture books as a way to reconnect with their children. In the process, they make some life-changing discoveries about themselves.
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Episode 24 : The Falconer's Legacy
December. 16,2023
Matsubara Hidetoshi, one of Japan's last traditional falconers, resides in rural Tohoku with only the company of his birds. A sudden request by a young city-dweller may be key to retaining his legacy.
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Episode 23 : Piano Girl
December. 09,2023
Okinawa, Japan. Momoko loved the piano and attended a school that had one. Then the war arrived and she was drafted to work in an army hospital. Could she survive the war through the power of music?
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Episode 21 : Walking a Tightrope: The Filmmaker Yang Yonghi
October. 21,2023
Filmmaker Yang Yonghi is a second-generation Korean resident of Japan. Her internationally acclaimed films have focused on her family, torn between Japan and North Korea. Her parents, activists in a pro-North association of Korean residents of Japan, sent Yonghi's three brothers to live in North Korea when they were still in their teens. During the decades of separation that followed, Yonghi has used her films to explore conflicted feelings about her family. Her search for identity continues, striking a tenuous balance of love, politics and history.
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Episode 19 : Staging Shared Memories —Yu Miri and Young Fukushima Actors—
September. 09,2023
In 2015, novelist and playwright Yu Miri moved to Minamisoma City in Fukushima Prefecture and opened a book café and a small theater. In the summer of 2023, she decided to produce a play based on the effects on young people of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the nuclear power plant accident and COVID-19. She interviews local actors and high school drama club members about their experiences back then, and together they write and present the play.
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Episode 17 : The Unknown Master of Restoration Episode 2
June. 17,2023
Mayuyama Koji is thought by afficionados of fine Japanese ceramics to have "hands of god" able to restore the finest vintage pieces to pristine beauty. As an artisan first and foremost, Mayuyama has never before shown outsiders the workings of his craft. He has allowed NHK to observe his work on an early Edo period porcelain horse valued at more than 700,000 dollars from the famous kilns of Imari in Saga Prefecture. Koji and his son Yu are also seen restoring a vintage platter from Arita in the same prefecture.
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Episode 16 : Women on the Front Line: 15% of Japan's Politicians
June. 10,2023
Japan's local elections in April featured a record number of female candidates. Ranked 116th out of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index, Japan is now changing at the grass-roots level. We spent three months following two candidates: a woman in Ibaraki Prefecture busy raising children while campaigning on social media, and a single parent in Nagasaki Prefecture gathering local support. This documentary offers a rare glimpse of a local election system that has changed very little in decades, and what two women bring to that challenging reality. Will our two candidates win?
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Episode 14 : ISSEY MIYAKE: The Human Inside the Clothes
May. 27,2023
Issey Miyake, the world-renowned clothing designer, died in 2022 at the age of 84. As a child, he lived through the dropping of an atomic bomb on his hometown of Hiroshima. It was an experience he rarely spoke about, but those close to him say it was one of the reasons he decided to pursue a career in design.
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Episode 13 : Return to an Abandoned Village: 50 Years in Tsubayama
April. 29,2023
A family and a village, documented over the course of five decades. Tsubayama in Kochi Prefecture, a steep mountainside village, is said to have been settled by a defeated samurai of the Heike clan some 800 years ago. There, brush-burning agriculture and mountain worship were carried on for centuries. But the population aged, and the village was abandoned. Three years ago, a man returned and began living there alone. He cut the weeds, caught wild boar, prayed to the mountain. Memories of past generations filled his life. Soon, other former residents began to gather in Tsubayama. What does one's home village mean to the Japanese? The story is told against the backdrop of the traditional Taiko Dance.
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Episode 12 : A Director's War: Fighting for Ukraine from Japan
April. 22,2023
Kateryna Novytska is a Ukrainian caught between two worlds. Russia's relentless attacks threaten the lives of her family and friends back home, as she carves out a television career from the relative safety of Japan. Now, she's turning the camera on herself. This is her personal struggle, as she works out how best to help her war-torn country, thousands of miles away in a foreign land.
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Episode 11 : Voices of Tohoku: What We Want From Reconstruction
April. 22,2023
Just eight days after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, an NHK program began recording the messages of survivors. The program continues to this day, offering people a place to express their hopes and fears. We follow up with the survivors we've met over the years, and hear from people who were directly involved with the government's reconstruction policies. We examine what "reconstruction" means now, 12 years after the disaster.
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Episode 10 : Taiwan's Windy Frontline Islands
March. 26,2023
Located just off the coast of China, the islands of Kinmen and Matsu are rich in history and culture. Long exposed to strong winds blowing from the mainland, the islanders have experienced the fluctuating modern Chinese history of tension and calm. In this travelogue documentary, we visit the islands in spring, and observe the people celebrating Chinese New Year with hopes for peace.
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Episode 8 : Steve Jobs and Japan
March. 25,2023
Steve Jobs was a titan of tech. He masterminded the iMac and iPhone, and changed the world. He had a deep love of Japanese culture, from woodblock prints to ceramics, and the inner workings of electronics giant Sony. Here, close friends, colleagues and design experts shed new light on how this came to be.
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Episode 2 : The Red Way: The Making of a Third Term
February. 04,2023
The Communist Party of China rules the country's 1.4 billion people. At its 20th National Congress, held in October 2022, Xi Jinping was re-elected as General Secretary for an unprecedented third term. Why did so many Party members offer their support? We visit a regional Communist Party school to discover how training and guidance are used to reinforce loyalty to Xi and the Party.
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Episode 1 : Where Will Divided America Go from Here? US Midterm Elections 2022
January. 21,2023
The midterms are said to predict the next presidential election. Support for President Biden and the Democratic Party is starting to waver, and former President Trump's influence is strong within the Republican Party. We hear from senior citizens struggling with the rising cost of living in Oregon, members of Generation Z in Arizona, a famous swing state, and a family in Florida, shaken by the introduction of a law prohibiting LGBTQ+ education in schools. How will they vote?
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