In an extraordinary public confrontation that has shocked Japan’s political establishment, Yokohama Mayor Takeharu Yamanaka has issued a formal apology following damning harassment allegations leveled by the city’s own human resources director. The scandal erupted when Jun Kubota, the municipality’s top personnel official, held an unprecedented press conference to detail what he described as a pattern of abusive behavior from the mayor.
Kubota presented a disturbing catalog of alleged verbal abuses, claiming Yamanaka routinely deployed dehumanizing language including calling municipal staff ‘idiots,’ ‘human scum,’ ‘useless,’ and ‘low-spec’ employees. The HR chief further asserted that the mayor made inappropriate comments about subordinates’ physical appearances and compared them to animals in what workplace experts would classify as classic power harassment.
The most severe allegation involved Kubota’s claim that Yamanaka threatened him with ritual suicide demands, telling the official he would have to ‘commit seppuku’ if he failed to secure an international conference bid for the city—a remark that crosses into potentially criminal intimidation under Japan’s workplace laws.
Initially, Mayor Yamanaka denied all allegations through a statement on his personal website. However, facing mounting pressure, he subsequently acknowledged partial responsibility during a Friday press conference. ‘I want to frankly apologize for placing a psychological burden on the personnel director,’ Yamanaka stated, conceding he had used terms like ‘idiot’ and ‘human scum’ during personnel evaluation discussions.
While admitting to some verbal misconduct, the mayor denied other accusations including making comments about physical appearances. He announced that an investigation supervised by the deputy mayor was being considered, promising his ‘sincere’ cooperation should such a probe move forward.
Kubota immediately rejected the partial apology as insufficient, stating: ‘The mayor doesn’t understand anything. I cannot accept that as an apology. I want him to change.’ The public nature of this confrontation between a sitting mayor and his senior HR official represents a remarkable breach of Japan’s typically reserved bureaucratic culture, signaling potentially significant repercussions for municipal governance and workplace practices nationwide.