The short version
- Search NHK's public broadcast records, the NHK Chronicle, for Vangelis and you get 69 entries between 1987 and 2026.
- From 1988 to 1993 the name that comes up most is a satellite programme called "オーディオグラフィック", Audiographic. It appears 11 times.
- The entry for 24 November 1988 lists "Chung Kuo", "The Long March" and "The Dragon": the first three tracks of the 1979 album China, in the same order.
- The records stop at titles and performers. They don't say what was on the screen.
Thursday 24 November 1988, 10 a.m., NHK's first satellite channel. The title field in the broadcast record reads "オーディオグラフィック（大和の仏―４）": Audiographic, and in brackets, Buddhist statues of Yamato, part 4. The subtitle field holds three numbered track titles followed by "ほか", and others. 1, "Chung Kuo". 2, "The Long March". 3, "The Dragon". Under performers there's one name: Vangelis.
What we read
NHK publishes its records of past broadcasts as the NHK Chronicle. Each entry gives the date, time, channel, title, subtitle and performers. It's a catalogue, not footage or scripts. Search it for Vangelis and there are 69 entries, from December 1987 to May 2026.
The two earliest entries are the Stuttgart Ballet's Japan tour on NHK's education channel, broadcast at 7 p.m. on 26 December 1987 and repeated on 3 May 1988. The repeat lists three works in the subtitle field: 「パリのよろこび」, 「レクイエムからパ・ド・ドゥー」 and 「エナス」. Where Vangelis fits among them, the records don't show.
From 2009 on, most of them are a handful of films on the satellite channels. The one that turns up most is Blade Runner: The Final Cut, 14 times since 2017. The earlier years look different. Between 1988 and 1993, almost every entry with Vangelis's name belongs to a single programme.
Eleven entries for Audiographic
Audiographic appears 11 times in the records, from November 1988 to May 1993. Each title carries a theme and a number in brackets: Buddhist statues of Yamato, part 4, once; Antiques, part 2, six times; Kumano, part 1, three times; Fantasy paintings, part 1, once. The name puts sound and graphics together. What pictures were on screen, the records don't say.
The first two went out at 10 a.m. on the first satellite channel. From June 1989 on, all of them were on the second satellite channel, and mostly in the dead of night: 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5.01 a.m., 2.05 a.m. There's also one each at 8 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon and 9 at night.
Antiques, part 2, was repeated six times over more than four years, from April 1989 to May 1993. From the October 1990 airing on, the subtitle names two tracks: "For All We Know", credited to Vangelis, and Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again". The two 1989 airings also list the Italian group PFM, Premiata Forneria Marconi, among the performers.
Kumano, part 1, went out in July 1989 and in February and August 1992. The February 1992 entry lists three tracks, "REVE", "Friar Park" and "White Road" (白い道), with Vangelis, Ravi Shankar and YAS-KAZ as performers. The second track on Vangelis's 1979 album Opéra sauvage is called "Rêve", but the record doesn't say who wrote which of the three.
Fantasy paintings, part 1, aired once, at 5 p.m. on 6 November 1992. Its subtitle and performer fields are empty. The same entry also comes up in a search for Tangerine Dream.
Three tracks in album order
Back to that first entry from 1988. Vangelis's 1979 LP China opens with "Chung Kuo" and goes on to "The Long March" and "The Dragon". The 1, 2 and 3 in the record follow that order exactly. Together the three come to almost 12 minutes. Whether someone simply played the album from the top, or picked the tracks and happened to land on the album's order, the record doesn't say. Nor does it say what the "and others" were.
The theme in the title field is Buddhist statues of Yamato; the album in the track field is China. That's as far as the entry goes.
On the morning of 4 July 2022 the FM programme 音楽遊覧飛行 ran a Vangelis collection as part of its world tour of film music.
One entry from February 2007 is a different kind of thing. It's the NHK FM programme 私の名盤コレクション, "My collection of classic records". The subtitle field has Vangelis's "Alpha" (アルファ), and the performer is Keiko Terada. "Alpha" is also a track on Albedo 0.39, which has its own review.
How to listen
Play China from the first track to the third without stopping, the order in the 1988 record. "Chung Kuo" runs about five and a half minutes, "The Long March" 2, "The Dragon" about 4. Headphones on, lights down. Let your breathing settle each time one track hands over to the next. If Vangelis is new to you, the Vangelis guide sets out an order.
If you send a friend one track, make it "The Long March". It lasts 2 minutes, and it's the second title in the 1988 record.
Where to get it
China first came out on LP on Polydor in 1979, as POLD 5018 in the UK and 2344 131 in continental Europe, and has been reissued on CD many times since.