China-Japan disputes spill into BBC studio with ambassadors separated
Interviews with ambassadors to Britain held separately to avoid risk of heated exchanges
Growing tensions between Japan and China spilled over into a BBC news studio when the countries' British ambassadors were interviewed on live TV.
The envoys were kept apart because producers and embassy staff feared a heated exchange between the diplomats over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's December 26 visit to the Yasukuni shrine, which honours "Class A" war criminals among others, and over disputed islands. Both have recently appeared in British newspapers likening each other's government to Lord Voldemort, the villain in the Harry Potter stories.
After interviewing Japan's Keiichi Hayashi during Wednesday's edition of the Newsnight programme, presenter Jeremy Paxman went to another studio set to conduct his interview with China's Liu Xiaoming on the same topic. This was a marked departure from the regular structure of the nightly programme, which interviews guests together, face-to-face.
Watch: BBC's Newsnight programme on island dispute
"It is fair to say this was an unusual way for the programme to conduct an interview," a BBC spokesman told the South China Morning Post.