Japanese service in 'RRI' attracts listeners
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The same soft but firm voice opens each Japanese Service broadcast at state radio station RRI with the words, "Kocira wa Indonesia no ko desu (This is the Voice of Indonesia)". The service has been broadcast around the world every Monday and Friday at 6:30 p.m. for much of the last three decades.
The voice belongs to 75-year-old Machiko Katagiri, the Japanese-born broadcaster who has hosted the service since September 1977.
The Japanese Service is one of nine foreign language services that make up RRI's Overseas Service, also called the Voice of Indonesia. The other foreign language services are English, Spanish, German, French, Korean, Malay, Thai, Mandarin and Arabic.
Katagiri broadcasts not only the news, but introduces listeners to Indonesian music and language as well.
Among the Japanese Service's various programs, Katagiri said the 20-minute Hito to Krasi (People and Life), which looks at daily life in Indonesia, was the most popular.
"Japanese listeners are interested in the lives of Indonesians, especially ordinary people. Their stories touch the hearts of listeners because they tend to communicate the magnificent life principles held by poor Indonesians," she said, adding that she was also responsible for the reporting and scriptwriting for the show.
Katagiri is married to an Indonesian and has taken Indonesian citizenship. She believes the service helps counter some of the bias of foreign news reporting on Indonesia that reaches most Japanese around the world.
"We want to tell the Indonesian side of stories. We want to explain the cultural and historical backgrounds of a news story," she said.
The coordinator of the program, Haruyo Tadera, whose Indonesian name is Hariyati Prabowo, said the Japanese Service set itself apart from the other foreign language services.
"The other foreign services do not do the same thing as us; they do not do field reporting," said the 62-year-old.
However, the future of the Japanese Service is in doubt because of the difficulty in finding replacements for Katagiri and Hariyati.
"It is very difficult to find a Japanese native speaker to replace me because RRI only offers a small honorarium," Katagiri said.
Hariyati said the monthly operational budget for the service was Rp 500,000 (US$45), which was not enough to attract Japanese native speakers to host the program.
Katagiri has suggested that when she and Hariyati decide to retire, they be replaced by the Indonesian staff who have helped shape the service rather than by native speakers.
"This program has successfully attracted thousands of Japanese listeners around the globe .... When it first went on the air, we received thousands of letters every month. Since the Internet era began in the 1990s, the number of listeners has fallen to only a few dozen. But it is still the most popular program compared to other foreign language services broadcast by RRI," she said. (006)