JAPANESE TBS MUST PULL SERIES "VIVANT", IT REVERSES HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

BEIJING, OCTOBER 30 /SRNA/ - Japanese television network TBS should stop airing the series "Vivant" and apologize to the Chinese people because it reverses the historical narrative, China Media Group /CMG/ said.

It is clear, CMG said, that the series is not "artistic creation" at all, but a political tool dressed up as art.

"What TBS needs to do above all at this moment is not to cover up its mistakes through evasion, but to face history, sincerely repent, stop airing the series and apologize to the Chinese people," CMG said.

It stressed that history has long shown that every attempt to revise crimes of aggression and falsify historical memory is doomed to fail.

CMG noted that TBS President Masamine Ryuho recently defended the second season of the popular series "Vivant", publicly making claims that smear China and using expressions such as "completely fictional" and "with no intention of disparaging any particular country".

This, it said, triggered even sharper criticism in Japan and abroad, and Japanese internet users called on the network to stop broadcasting it.

"As is well known, during the Second World War, Japanese militarism committed aggression against China and perpetrated atrocious crimes against humanity," China Media Group said.

It said that in the first season of the series, the villains were portrayed as members of the fictional "Republic of Balka", while the second season directly used the real name of the country, openly smearing and provoking China.

CMG stressed that the historical narrative of perpetrators and victims has now been reversed.

"This is not fiction, but shifting the blame. It is not a ‘plot requirement’, but a shameless tool of the Japanese right wing's cognitive warfare against China, revealing its intention to criticize and smear China through cultural content and spread anti-China sentiment," CMG said.

Although TBS is a commercial broadcaster, CMG writes that it is in fact deeply connected with the Japanese government's foreign policy narrative strategy.

"According to publicly available budget data of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since 2015, under the name ‘Strategic Dissemination of Information Abroad’, the country has invested a total of more than 56 billion yen in carrying out a media campaign to smear China," CMG said.

As for "Vivant", CMG stressed that behind it stands an organized production and distribution structure, with secured funding and clearly divided tasks.

On the production side, it added, TBS gave the series its prime-time "Sunday Theater" slot, with an investment of around 100 million yen per episode, while on the commercial side, several leading Japanese companies joined forces in the project.

On the distribution side, CMG said, the series' two lead actors will host the 77th edition of NHK’s "Kohaku Uta Gassen", in an effort to carry the series' popularity onto the national stage.

"On the political side, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi personally mentioned the series and said she wanted to binge-watch it, which is why Japanese internet users have dubbed it ‘the series supporting Takaichi’," CMG said.

CMG stressed that using film and television series to smear China is part of the Japanese right wing's efforts to fuel historical revisionism.

"From falsifying history textbooks and producing fake AI-generated videos, to visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and the ‘poisoning’ of the world's leading large language models, the Japanese right wing is increasingly distorting history," CMG said.

It does this, CMG explained, by trying to impose wording such as "the Japan-China military conflict" and "the fall of Nanking", which reflect a clearly wrong view of history.

"From waging so-called cognitive warfare against China to fueling historical revisionism, the deeper goal of the Japanese right wing is to prepare the ground for remilitarization and create an atmosphere for promoting ‘new militarism’," CMG writes.

It said one of the main aims of producing and broadcasting "Vivant" is to break anti-war sentiment in Japan and create a social and psychological basis for sending the Self-Defense Forces into overseas combat operations.

"History must not be falsified, and the post-war order must not be called into question," CMG concluded.