Short answers, pulled from the story.
NHK is Japan's public statutory broadcaster, operating television, satellite, and radio services. It is funded primarily by a compulsory television license fee paid by any household with equipment capable of receiving NHK; for annual credit card payers without discounts, the fee is 12,765 yen per year for terrestrial reception and 21,765 yen for terrestrial plus satellite. Its international service, NHK World-Japan, is funded by the Japanese government.
NHK traces its origins to a radio station founded in 1924 under Count Gotō Shinpei. Three stations in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya merged into the first incarnation of NHK in August 1926. Television broadcasting began on the 1st of February 1953.
Yes. NHK was the first broadcaster in the world to broadcast in high-definition, using a technology called Hi-Vision, and also the first to broadcast in 8K. Its NHK BS8K channel launched on the 1st of December 2018.
By fiscal year 2023, 1.66 million people were refusing to pay the NHK license fee. The number first surpassed one million in 2006 following a series of NHK scandals including an accounting one. The Broadcasting Act specifies no punitive action for nonpayment.
NHK has been criticized for strict neutrality and self-regulation in government coverage, documented by scholar Ellis S. Krauss as a pattern through at least the 1990s. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, NHK was criticized for downplaying radioactive contamination risks. In 2014, reports alleged internal documents banned any reference to the Nanjing Massacre in English-language broadcasts.
A reporter at NHK's Metropolitan Broadcasting Center died of congestive heart failure on the 24th of July 2013. In May 2014, the Shibuya Labor Standards Inspection Office certified the death as karōshi, meaning death from overwork. The information was not made public until October 2017, and NHK Chairman Ryōichi Ueda later visited the reporter's parents to apologize.