Television in Japan was introduced in 1939 . However , experiments date back to the 1920s , with Kenjiro Takayanagi 's pioneering experiments in electronic television . Television broadcasting was halted by World War II , after which regular television broadcasting began in 1950 . After Japan developed the first HDTV systems in the 1960s , MUSE/Hi-Vision was introduced in the 1970s . A modified version of the NTSC system for analog signals , called NTSC-J , was used for analog broadcast between 1950 and the early 2010s . Between 2010 and 2012 , the analog broadcast was replaced with digital broadcasts using the ISDB standard ( which was introduced in 2003 ) in three stages : a technical trial occurred on July 24 , 2010 in which analog translators ceased operation in northeastern Ishikawa Prefecture , the analog transmitters in the rest of Ishikawa and 43 other prefectures were shut down on July 24 , 2011 , and those in the prefectures of Iwate , Miyagi , and Fukushima ceased transmission on March 31 , 2012 , as a result of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
Television in Japan