Thanks mainly to a first-person "biography" written by former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, there is renewed interest in disgraced former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. NHK is presenting a series of special programs, some of which are dramatizations, about the scandal that brought Tanaka down: the Lockheed bribery incident.
The documentary, "Lockheed Jiken Document 40-nenme Shogeki no Scoop" ("Lockheed Incident Document 40th Year Shocking Scoop"; NHK-G, Sun., 9 p.m.), will present new materials about the case that started with Tanaka's arrest in 1976. These materials were recently uncovered in the U.S. and reveal previously unknown circumstances that connected the scandal to America's Cold War strategy.
One of the most enduring characters in Japanese pop culture is the wandering loner, fashioned after the classic Hollywood Western "Shane." "Yassan" (TV Tokyo, Fri., 8 p.m.) is one such character, based on the character in a novel by Koichi Hara.
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