spat
NHKのあの大晦日の歌番組に、韓国勢がいないことが話題になっています。
赤字の単語は英検二級レベルの単語なのですが、いかにも皮肉な表現ですね。spatは「けんか」の中でも、程度の低いものを表したりします。informalな表現で、"a short unimportant quarrel"とLDOCEには定義されています。竹島や尖閣の問題は、欧米諸国から見たらこのような感覚になっているのでしょうか。(Minnesota)
TOKYO — Japan’s widely-watched year-end TV show will feature only Japanese acts this year, with popular South Korean performers left out of the line-up amid territorial frictions with Seoul.
Taxpayer-funded broadcaster NHK insisted politics had played no role in the selection of performers for the New Year’s Eve broadcast watched by up to 40% of the nation’s TV audience.
Korean girl groups KARA and Girls’ Generation and male group Tohoshinki (TVXQ) were among the headline acts last year on “Kohaku Uta Gassen” (Red and White Song Contest).
Viewers are drawn from a wide cross-section of society on an evening when Japanese families traditionally gather at home, often around a television set.
NHK officials told a press conference that Korean performers were dropped after reviewing how popular they were over 2012, and after looking at support for them among Japanese fans.
They denied speculation that the spat over the sovereignty of a pair of islands in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea, had played any role in the decision.
