Cartoons on nuclear crisis cause outrage in Japan

Japan voiced outrage over cartoons published in a French newspaper that took aim at the decision to award the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo despite the ongoing nuclear crisis at Fukushima.

Satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine published a cartoon depicting sumo wrestlers with extra limbs competing in front of a crippled nuclear plant, which said the disaster had made it a feasible Olympic sport.

Another cartoon showed two people standing in front of a pool of water while wearing nuclear protection suits and holding a Geiger counter, saying water sport facilities had already been built at Fukushima.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the satirical jabs give the wrong impression about Japan. The government has repeatedly claimed the accident and its waste water problem are under control and should not affect the Olympics.

Japan is traditionally sensitive to opinions about it expressed in foreign media and is angered a crisis that brought such human tragedy has become the subject of caricature.

“These kinds of satirical pictures hurt the victims of the disaster,” Suga told a news conference.

The government will lodge a protest with the French weekly, Suga said.

The incident comes after a case less than a year ago in which French media made light of the nuclear disaster and its effects.

TV channel France 2’s We’re not lying programme showed a doctored photo of Eiji Kawashima, the Japanese national football squad goalkeeper, with four arms.

The show explained that it was the “Fukushima effect” that had allowed Kawashima to keep goal so effectively in Japan’s shock defeat of France.

The TV station subsequently expressed its regret for the gag and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has reportedly apologised.