Using double quotation So, in a NHK news article I encountered the following sentence: > > With this is the prime minster talking about himself and his instruction to the officials, and is the said by the News caster to quote what he stated as a whole?

This is parsed like:

> (1)(2)
> Prime Minister Suga pointed out "(1)" and told "(2)".

And the two quotes are:

> 1.
> This is going to be an unusual event held under the emergency declaration
> 2.
> I have always said (to you, the media) that we are willing to go without an audience if we declare an emergency
>


I could not find the original NHK article, but if it really says **** , it should be a mere typo for ****.

is a humble verb which never appears in the main body of a news article. Thus we can assume is inside a quote even without explicit quotation marks. Besides, as a humble verb, is used to raise the status of the listener. Here the "listener" is the media that has interviewed the prime minister, not his subordinates.