Photo/Illutration Reiwa Shinsengumi head Taro Yamamoto urges voters to cast ballots for his party in this video posted to social media. (Captured from the X account of Akiko Oishi)

The head of small opposition party Reiwa Shinsengumi was accused of discrimination against foreigners after he posted a video of himself deliberately speaking broken Japanese.

Taro Yamamoto was sharply criticized on social networking sites for making fun of foreigners who are not adept in the language. Many people found the footage deeply offensive.

The video was posted Oct. 25, two days before the Lower House election, on the X and TikTok accounts of fellow Reiwa lawmaker Akiko Oishi.

In the video, Yamamoto made a point of speaking in different accents and making grammatical mistakes. The video was intended to urge voters to cast their ballots for Reiwa and party member Oishi.

Ironically, Reiwa’s basic policy platform calls for creating a society where everybody coexists and the “establishment of a legal structure that protects the rights of foreigners after eliminating discrimination against them.”

A storm of criticism arose on social media over the 60-second video with one person saying, “using broken Japanese as a way to gain laughs is discrimination against foreigners.”

Another person wondered why Japanese who are “in the majority are insulting foreigners who may not be fluent in Japanese.”

The video was posted by the office of Oishi, who won a seat in the Kinki bloc of the proportional representation part of the ballot in the Oct. 27 election.

The footage was retracted following the backlash and Oishi made a new post Nov. 1 in which she apologized for the earlier one and explained what led her office to edit and post the initial video.

According to the post, Oishi asked Yamamoto in September to appear in the video. Oishi’s office edited the video and posted it to her accounts. Their purpose was to mimic a popular Thai social media influencer who speaks in broken Japanese in criticizing various aspects of Thai society.

Oishi’s second post said the Thai influencer’s videos led to others by young Thais who parodied the original. The popularity of the Thai influencer led Oishi’s office to believe that a similar post in Japan would also be widely viewed.

The office did not initially consider that having Yamamoto speak in broken Japanese would constitute a form of discrimination against foreigners.

Once the dust began to settle, Oishi's office said, “We seriously accept the view that having a public figure parroting broken Japanese creates a different context.”

The non-governmental organization Korea NGO Center, based in Osaka, protested what it called discrimination against foreigners and issued a statement asking Reiwa to explain what it intended by the video.

The statement said, “Having the head of a political party urging voters to cast ballots while copying foreigners who have been shut out of Japanese politics can only be described as lacking in consideration and totally uninterested in the feelings and reality that foreigners living in Japan face on a daily level.”

A law passed in 2016 to eliminate hate speech bans discrimination against foreigners.

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