Photo/Illutration A list of municipalities DHC Corp. signed comprehensive partnership agreements with (Captured from the official online shopping website of DHC Corp.)

Some municipalities are moving to terminate their partnership agreements with DHC Corp. over its chairman’s comments slandering ethnic Koreans in Japan posted on the company’s official website.

DHC, a Tokyo-based retailer of popular beauty and health products, signed comprehensive partnership agreements with 21 cities and towns to provide supplements to them in the event of a natural disaster, according to the company’s website.

Three of the municipalities have expressed their intention to cancel or freeze their agreements, saying the chairman’s messages amount to racial discrimination.

Yoshiaki Yoshida, chairman of DHC, used a racial slur to describe ethnic Korean residents in Japan in a post issued in November last year on the company’s website to claim his company’s supplements were superior to those by rival companies.

In another message posted in April, he bashed Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) using discriminatory expressions after the public broadcaster aired a TV program themed on companies and human rights.

In an additional post issued in mid-May, Yoshida wildly claimed that ethnic Koreans held most of the key posts in Japan, such as judges and bureaucrats, and warned that such a situation was “extremely dangerous” for the country.

He also tried to have similar messages run in ad inserts from newspapers and TV commercials, but multiple advertising agencies refused to run them, according to the company.

All the comments were posted under Yoshida’s title as DHC chairman.

Nankoku, Kochi Prefecture, is one of the municipalities that signed partnership agreements with DHC.

At a city assembly session in March, some members called on the city to review the agreement, saying the company has a clear, malicious intent to incite discrimination. In April, the city told the company that it wanted to terminate its agreement.

Koshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, told DHC in April that it will freeze its partnership agreement.

“The messages (by the DHC chairman) constitute racial discrimination,” a Koshi city official said. “We concluded that we should take action to avoid giving the wrong impression that we are approving those messages and to gain the understanding of local residents. As a municipality promoting human rights, we can never tolerate such comments.”

Sukumo, Kochi Prefecture, another municipality that has the partnership agreement with DHC, asked the company to delete the discriminatory messages. The company told the city on May 20 that it revised the comments, according to a city official.

The first post disappeared from the company’s website. But the city plans to terminate its agreement with DHC, saying the website still has discriminatory comments.

The Asahi Shimbun conducted a survey of the remaining 18 cities and towns until May 14 on how they intend to respond to the DHC chairman’s comments.

Seven of them said they were considering their response to the matter or plan to do so. Nine cities and towns said they have no plan to review their partnership agreements with the company. Two towns said they wished to refrain from answering the question.

A DHC representative said the company has nothing to say about the move by some municipalities to terminate their partnership agreements with DHC.

Asked why the company deleted some of the messages on its website, the official said it would take several days to respond to the question.

(This article was written by Hidemasa Yoshizawa, Naoko Kobayashi and Takaaki Fujino.)

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