Tokyo, 25 January, /AJMEDIA/
The Japan Innovation Party said Monday it will seek an apology from another opposition party after one of its members, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, likened the JIP’s founder to Adolf Hitler in a Twitter post.
“Such comments would not be allowed under international law. What sense of human rights does he have?” Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura, who is deputy chief of the JIP, said to reporters. “He is a former prime minister and still holds a position of responsibility in the party. His remarks are taken seriously.”
Kan, who currently belongs to the largest opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, tweeted Friday that JIP founder Toru Hashimoto’s “knack for eloquent speech” reminded him “of Hitler when he took power of a chaotic Germany after World War I.”
Osaka Mayor Ichiro Matsui, who heads the JIP, officially protested the comment on his Twitter account the following day.