Kyoto gov'ts request deletion of abusive posts targeting school
The move follows a similar request made by the governments last year after Kyoto International high school faced a spate of racist and slanderous online posts when the school in the city won one of the country's most prestigious baseball championships for the first time.
Discriminatory remarks at that time included references to the school's Korean-language anthem, prompting the local governments to request the Kyoto District Legal Affairs Bureau delete seven malicious posts.
The school opened in 1947 as a junior high school for Korean children in Japan, but has operated as a general junior high and high school since 2004.
Since the local governments stepped up monitoring from August, when this year's baseball championship is being held, they have identified more than 2,000 posts mentioning the school on X and other social media.
After the school won its first-round game on Wednesday, they found posts containing content that could encourage discrimination and ostracization, the prefecture said.
Based on a law aimed at eliminating hate speech, the prefectural and city governments deemed that three such posts could not be overlooked on human rights grounds and filed the request with the bureau on Thursday. They also made a request to the service providers.
"We expect that online posting will intensify going forward, so we will continue to closely monitor the situation," a prefectural government official said.
The national high school baseball championship, held annually at Koshien Stadium in western Japan, is one of the country's most popular sporting events.
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