Departures of note

Yutaka Aida was a celebrated Japanese television documentary director who spent 39 years at NHK before becoming a freelance filmmaker and university professor. Born in 1936 in what was then Japanese-occupied Korea, he joined NHK in 1960 after graduating from Waseda University.

Aida became renowned for his ambitious documentary series, including the award-winning "Electronic State Japan's Autobiography" (1991), which traced the history of semiconductor development, and its sequel "New Electronic State" (1995-1996). He also created "Money Revolution" (1998) and maintained a decades-long project documenting Brazilian Japanese immigrants through his "Passenger List" series, revisiting the same families roughly every ten years from 1968 to 2018.

His distinctive on-screen style, appearing alongside announcer Tamio Miyake in studio discussions, became a hallmark of his work. Aida received numerous honors including the 1992 Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts and the 2000 Medal with Purple Ribbon. After retiring from NHK in 1999, he served as a professor at Keio University's Faculty of Environment and Information Studies and continued producing documentaries, including a widely praised 2013 film documenting his eight-year care of his mother with dementia.