NHK Tags House After Man Refuses To Pay Fees

Above, if you have a television set, you technically have to pay fees to NHK. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Suppose you're sitting at home and a representative, or, rather, a bill collector from your area's Public Broadcasting System (PBS) station shows up on your doorstep asking you to cough up $136.00 in fees for being able to receive PBS's broadcasts on your television, computer or smartphone. What would you do?

Well, if it were me, I would tell him to go fly a kite and slam the door (since I rarely, if ever, watch PBS).

In Japan, their equivalent to PBS is NHK and they expect Japanese residents to cough up money to pay NHK's licensing fees. This was even upheld by a Yokohama court last year in which anyone who can receive NHK's signal, be it a television set, PC or a smartphone, has to pay. Or, at least they are supposed to.

According to an article in Japan Today, there is no penalty for non-payment, but the NHK collector may take other actions to try to shame someone into paying.

They wrote:

TOKYO —We’ve talked before about the oddities of how Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, goes about collecting its fees from ordinary citizens. Rather than sending you an official bill in the mail, collectors will come to your door and ask you for a stack of cash to cover the 13,600 yen residents are technically supposed to pay. 

However, many people refuse to pony up the money, since there’s no official penalty for nonpayment, and many feel that NHK’s programming is sub-par and rarely watch it. However, should you make one particular NHK collector walk away empty-handed, he just might mark your house for all to see, as he apparently did to one person we talked to.

This is like refusing to pay PBS and having one of their representatives spray paint your home in retaliation. Thankfully, this doesn't happen here. We just have to sit through PBS's droning pledge drives.

Thus far, I have not been harassed by anyone from NHK while staying at a television-equipped hotel or ryokan.

Yes, they do some things a bit differently in Japan.

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