FUKUI—A local cable television station quietly dropped a high school drama club’s anti-nuclear play from its annual broadcast of a theater festival after deciding the content was too sensitive to air.

The performance has proved controversial for expressing sentiment against nuclear power plants and for a historical reference that uses a disparaging expression referring to people with disabilities.

Normally, the cable company broadcasts all the plays performed by local high schools in Fukui Prefecture’s annual fall drama festival, but when it aired the festival performances this past December, one was conspicuously absent.

The play in question, titled “Tomorrow’s Hanako,” was performed by Fukui Norin High School, a public school that specializes in agriculture and forestry.

It portrays the history of how Fukui Prefecture became home to many nuclear reactors and explores the mixed feelings residents have about the facilities through exchanges between two schoolgirl characters.

Nuclear power generation is a major industry in Fukui, which hosts the most reactors of any prefecture in Japan--15 including those currently being decommissioned.

The play was one of 12 entries in the festival, held between Sept. 18 and Sept. 20, all of which were performed without an audience due to the coronavirus pandemic.

When school officials at Fukui Norin told drama club members after the festival that their play could not be broadcast, they were devastated that practically no one from the wider community would be able to see it.

“A play becomes a play only after it is seen by an audience,” said one member. “I was so disappointed.”

Another member expressed total disbelief.

The script was written by Toru Tamamura, a former adviser to the drama club, and it was chosen over other options by club members through a vote in July.

“I found it most interesting because the play has many jokes while addressing the historical theme,” one member said of Tamamura’s script. “I did not know anything about nuclear plants before, but I learned a lot from this play.”

But a day after the school’s performance, an official with the broadcaster approached the festival’s organizer, the drama committee of the cultural association for prefectural high schools, to ask if it could broadcast the play despite the use of a discriminatory term.

The term is a derogatory reference to people with disabilities and was used in the play while explaining why the prefecture originally wanted to attract nuclear facilities.

The pejorative was used in a speech in 1983 by the then-mayor of Tsuruga, which hosts four reactors, in support of the construction of a nuclear plant based on the area’s economic needs.

Using the term, the mayor said, “Some children could be born with disabilities due to the effects of radiation, but we should attract a nuclear facility so that we can receive state grants.”

The mayor’s comments were criticized as outrageous.

Tamamura, 60, defended his decision to include the offensive term in the play.

“I included the expression to accurately reproduce what the mayor said,” he said. “I covered his comment in the context of criticizing it and have no intent to discriminate” against people with disabilities.

Advisers to the association’s drama committee discussed Fukui Norin’s play on Sept. 20 and Oct. 8.

Yoshihide Shimada, who heads the drama committee and is a principal at Maruoka High School, said he conveyed his concerns about airing it to the broadcaster.

“If the play was to be broadcast as it is, students who performed in the drama and teachers involved in it could face criticism and name-calling,” he said.

But, he added, he also relayed that it would ultimately be up to the broadcaster to decide whether to air the play.

CONCERNS RAISED OVER SPONSORS

The TV company gave a different story.

The broadcaster decided in October to show all the dramas except the production by Fukui Norin.

In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, an official with the TV company cited a specific request made by a representative of the advisers to the drama committee to not air it.

Shimada explained the committee’s advisers and company officials shared an understanding during their talks that it would be difficult to air the drama.

The broadcaster said it would have considered the possibility of airing the work and censoring the discriminatory term had the committee made such a request.

One of the officials who attended the Sept. 20 meeting of advisers to the drama committee said during the Asahi interview that “one attendee called for caution, citing the possibility that a company related to the nuclear industry may be among the sponsors of Fukui Cable TV.”

The official also said another had pointed out that the cultural association for prefectural high schools receives support from a power company.

But Shimada denied that the play’s anti-nuclear theme would pose a problem.

He said the drama committee conveyed its concerns to the broadcaster due to the use of the derogatory term in the play.

Genden Fureai Foundation, which was set up by Japan Atomic Power Co., the operator of a nuclear plant in Tsuruga, provides subsidies to events organized by the cultural association for prefectural high schools every year.

In fiscal 2021, the foundation gave 600,000 yen ($5,200) in subsidies to the association.

After the broadcaster’s decision not to air the school’s drama, Tamamura and others launched an online signature campaign against it in November and published the script online.

More than 10,000 people signed the petition.

The association’s drama committee moved in December to allow only school officials and members of drama clubs associated with the festival to watch Fukui Norin’s play through a website.

(This article was written by Hayashi Yanagawa, Kenji Oda and Kazuhiro Nakata.)