NHK, also called the Japan Broadcasting Corporation and shortened from Nippon Hs Kykai, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.

NHK operates two terrestrial television channels (NHK General TV and NHK Educational TV), four satellite television channels (NHK BS1 and NHK BS Premium; as well as two ultra-high-definition television channels, NHK BS4K and NHK BS8K), and three radio networks (NHK Radio 1, NHK Radio 2, and NHK FM).

NHK also provides an international broadcasting service, known as NHK World-Japan. NHK World-Japan is composed of NHK World TV, NHK World Premium, and the shortwave radio service Radio Japan (RJ). World Radio Japan also makes some of its programs available on the Internet.

NHK was the first broadcaster in the world to broadcast in high-definition (using multiple sub-Nyquist sampling encoding, also known as Hi-Vision) and in 8K.

Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. In many countries of the world, funding comes from governments, especially via annual fees charged on receivers.

Public broadcasting may be nationally or locally operated, depending on the country and the station. In some countries a single organization runs public broadcasting. Other countries have multiple public-broadcasting organizations operating regionally or in different languages. Historically, public broadcasting was once the dominant or only form of broadcasting in many countries (with the notable exceptions of the United States, Mexico and Brazil). Commercial broadcasting now also exists in most of these countries; the number of countries with only public broadcasting declined substantially during the latter part of the 20th century.Public-sector media (state-funded) is not to be confused with state media (state-controlled), which is "controlled financially and editorially by the state."