SEOUL, Jan. 25 -- The president of NHK, Japan's public television network, resigned Tuesday following a series of scandals, including allegations that top politicians had pressured the network to censor a program about the use of sex slaves by Japanese troops during World War II.
Katsuji Ebisawa, 70, president of the network, one of the world's largest, had been under pressure following a string of embezzlement scandals in which one person was arrested for fraud and 12 others were internally disciplined. The pressure mounted after several articles in Japan's Asahi newspaper this month alleged that politicians close to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had used their influence to soften a provocative documentary on "comfort women," mostly Koreans, Chinese and Indonesians, who were taken into bondage by Japan's former Imperial Army.
Both Ebisawa -- who linked his resignation to a broader lack of public confidence in the network -- and the politicians involved have strongly denied the charges. But the allegations have nevertheless rekindled ongoing controversy over the playing down of Japan's war crimes.
In a teary-eyed confession two weeks ago, an NHK producer conceded that political interference had led to key footage being removed from the documentary, which was aired four years ago. Survivors among the women charged that their harrowing testimony was purposely edited out, while air time was given to a scholar who claimed that most of them had been willing prostitutes. After the program was broadcast, a Japan-based women's rights group filed a defamation lawsuit.
Critics say the accusations are evidence of a growing strain of revisionism in Japan, where influential politicians have sought to whitewash the nation's past war crimes.
"The alteration of the NHK program is not just a problem of the Japanese media," said Rumiko Nishino, chairwoman of Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan, which is suing NHK over the program. "It is part of a political movement to revise history and deny what Japan did in the past."
World War II is a constant source of anxiety in Japan, along with patriotism and the role of the military during the war and now.
Leading lawmakers, spurred in part by the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea, are advocating the alteration of Japan's U.S.-drafted constitution, which renounces the right to wage war. Japan has already dispatched noncombat troops to Iraq in its largest military-related operation since World War II.
Many characterize the changes as part of Japan's overdue reemergence onto the world stage as it seeks a global role commensurate with its enormous wealth. But others -- particularly Asian neighbors with harsh memories of the war -- are troubled by what they view as an accompanying trend to defend Japan's wartime ambitions.
The latest allegations of political interference concerned the tens of thousands of women taken into bondage during World War II, whose history was explored in one in a four-part series addressing the issue of international war crimes. The charges against NHK, which holds a place in Japan comparable to the BBC's in Britain, have affected its reputation. Many critics are charging NHK with kowtowing to Japan's conservative ruling party.
"This has revealed the politics of yes men that exists at NHK," said Keiichi Katsura, professor of journalism at Taisho University in Tokyo. "It shows that NHK is beholden to LDP politicians rather than to its viewers," he said, referring to the governing Liberal Democratic Party.
Even before Ebisawa's resignation, public anger at the network was mounting, with more than 100,000 viewers withholding their subscription fees in protest. Ebisawa admitted Tuesday that the number of viewers who had stopped paying the fees was growing and could reach half a million by March. As a result, NHK is cutting executive salaries by as much as 15 percent.
Ebisawa's departure was expected to ease criticism, but analysts said questions would linger about the network's ties to the Liberal Democrats.
"NHK is facing an unprecedented crisis," said Yasushi Kawasaki, an academic and former NHK political editor. "And the exit of Ebisawa is not going to easily fix it."
NHK's president is named by a board of governors appointed by the prime minister and approved by parliament, but the network says that it is editorially independent of the government. NHK has denied giving in to political pressure over the content of the 2001 program and has said that the accounts of the network's own producer, who spoke out last week, as well as the reports in the Asahi newspaper include "numerous inaccuracies."
An NHK spokesman, who declined to be named citing the company's corporate policy, said that the significant last-minute edits of the comfort women program were intended to provide journalistic balance. Footage of an elderly female survivor and a former Japanese soldier giving testimony at a mock trial held in Tokyo, for instance, were cut because there were "no facts to prove their stories," the spokesman said. In the accompanying interview, the academic's comments were added "in the interest of being neutral and fair."
Many Chinese and Koreans insist that Japan has never fully atoned for its wartime actions. The allegations of high-level pressure to blunt the accounts of the comfort women have reignited the debate. "The truth about Japanese politicians has been revealed through this NHK scandal," said Kang Chang Il, a congressman from South Korea's ruling Uri Party.
Special correspondent Sachiko Sakamaki in Tokyo contributed to this report.