Two weeks ago I received a message from a reader who asked me to ask NHK why the public broadcaster had changed the name and the hair color of the female protagonist of its new daily 15-minute asa-dora (morning drama series) "Massan," which is based on the life of Masataka Taketsuru, the first person to make whisky in Japan, and his Scottish wife.

Rita Taketsuru's name in the series is Ellie and her brown hair has been bleached blonde. It's common for producers to take true stories and alter them for dramatic purposes, and at the March news conference where American actress Charlotte Kate Fox, who plays Ellie, was introduced to the media, it was announced that some of the tale would be fictionalized.

NHK is a public broadcaster and has a policy of not using the names of actual commercial enterprises in its dramas. The writer, Daisuke Habara, saw fit to change the main couple's family name from Taketsuru to Kameyama, and since Nikka, the company that Taketsuru eventually founded, makes a type of brandy named after Rita, it might violate NHK protocol to retain such an association. The same goes for the character representing the man who would become the founder of liquor giant Suntory. His name has been changed from Torii to Kamoi — tori being a homonym for the word "bird" and kamo meaning "duck."