NHK's "Year-End Special 2025" documentary program "Document 72 Hours" (General) aired from 12:15 PM to 8:42 PM on December 30th (with occasional interruptions for news coverage), and announced the top 10 programs of the past year, as selected by viewer vote. Following last year's ranking, the top choice, chosen from over 110,000 viewer votes, was "Nagasaki University Hospital Cake Shop on Christmas Eve," which aired on January 31, 2025. Coming in second and third were "Close Coverage! A Huge Hospital Move," which aired on February 7, 2025 (the full version will air on March 5, 2025), and "Multinational Student Dormitory: Days of Youth," which aired on June 6, 2025. We also spoke to the program's chief producers, Ayako Okabe and Kazunori Sakurai, about their impressions of the voting results.
◇ This year's "Year-End Special" has expanded its broadcasting slot and is now broadcast in the G band
The program is a documentary program that sets up a camera at a single location each time and monitors the various human dramas that occur there for 72 hours. It listens to the stories of people who meet by chance and captures the current era. In the "Year-End Special 2025," Goro Yamada, Osamu Suzuki, and Kazue Fukiishi looked back on the top 10 chosen by viewer vote.
This year, the show will be broadcast in an expanded time slot, even in prime time. It will feature live coverage of the episodes that ranked in the rankings, as well as a trial project in which viewers will submit posts saying, "I want to see 72 Hours in a place like this," and turn them into a program. Fans of the show, including Akira Kawashima of Kirin, Utadamaru of RHYMESTER, and Haruka Minowa of Harisenbon, announced their top picks in a video clip.
Furthermore, passionate fans of "Document 72 Hours" gathered in the studio from all over the country, and each showed off their own way of enjoying the show.
◇Hospital episodes were a popular choice in the past 72 hours
Regarding the results of the viewer vote, Okabe said, "The first and second places were taken by episodes set in a hospital, but over the past 72 hours, there has also been a lot of interest in 'hospital episodes'. They have a strong connection to everyone's life, whether it's yourself or a family member or loved one who has fallen ill, and they make you feel very strongly about them. I feel that there is a very wide range of empathy for them."
Okabe added, "I think that the episodes that made it into the top 10 are the ones that featured characters that made a strong impression on viewers. It's not just that they thought, 'I saw a lot of different aspects of life,' but there were also a lot of comments like, 'It moved me to tears.' I think that reflects how strongly they resonated with the characters that appeared."
Coming in third place was "Days of Youth in a Multinational Student Dormitory," and Okabe speculated, "For most people, living in a dormitory like this is not their actual experience, but it brought about surprise and realizations like, 'Oh, really!' Perhaps it was a discovery that there are places like this in Japan, and that these young people think like this and live like this."
Sakurai commented, "Basically, '72 Hours' is set in many open locations where anyone can come and go, but there are also occasional closed locations like a 'multinational student dormitory.' I think that surprisingly, many viewers are impressed by these kinds of places. I like the parts that are not as '72 Hours-like' as I felt as a viewer."
◇ "I don't know if it reflects the current state of affairs," but...
Sakurai has focused on the episodes related to "food" that made it into the top 10. The fourth-place "Kishimen shop on the Shinkansen platform in Nagoya," the fifth-place "At a prefabricated soba restaurant in Tsugaru," and the ninth-place "Beyond the drive-thru in Niigata in winter" are likely to be included.
"Even if people don't actually eat at the places where the story is set, I think each person has their own memories related to food and the universality of the act of eating. In the 'Kishimen' episode, a woman said that she had more memorable memories of everyday places like this than fancy, special restaurants, and I thought that there must be many viewers like that, and that each of their own memories would come back to them," he says.
Regarding the top 10 ranking results, Sakurai once again stated frankly, "It's not a program that deals with current events, so I don't know if it reflects the current state of society." Nevertheless, Sakurai said that he felt something like "a gentle universality" from the overall results, and Okabe summarized, "The number of votes (for each ranking) is close, but I think the general trend is that it reflects things like 'I empathized,' 'I made a very memorable discovery,' or 'What this person said in this episode resonated with me.'"
The viewer voting results are as follows:
1st place: Nagasaki University Hospital Cake Shop on Christmas Eve (broadcast on January 31, 2025) 2nd place: Close-up! Moving a huge hospital (broadcast on February 7, 2025; the full version will be on March 5, 2025) 3rd place: A multinational student dormitory in the days of youth (broadcast on June 6, 2025) 4th place: A kishimen noodle shop on a Shinkansen platform in Nagoya (broadcast on July 25, 2025) 5th place: A prefabricated soba restaurant in Tsugaru (broadcast on June 13, 2025) 6th place: A 10-yen swimming pool in midsummer in Ehime (broadcast on August 29, 2025) 7th place: A bus terminal in August in Nagasaki (broadcast on September 12, 2025) 8th place: The "last" newspaper stand in front of Shibuya Station (broadcast on August 1, 2025) 9th place: Beyond the drive-thru in Niigata in winter (broadcast on January 24, 2025) 10th place: A supermarket in a heavy snowfall area in Iwate (broadcast on February 21, 2025)
*The program will be available on NHK ONE until January 6, 2026
