Photo of Japan former leader's killing misused as 'PM Kishida after eating Fukushima fish'

Published on September 8, 2023 at 08:50
3 min read
By Zoe LOW, Tommy WANG, AFP Hong Kong

A photo of a person on a stretcher has been viewed tens of thousands of times in Chinese social media posts falsely claiming it shows Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida rushed to hospital after eating fish from Fukushima on August 30. But daily logs in Japanese media detailing Kishida's activities since then until September 8 show no record he had been hospitalised. The picture actually shows the country's former leader Shinzo Abe after he was shot in 2022.

The false posts surfaced shortly after Kishida ate what he called "safe and delicious" fish from Fukushima following the release of wastewater from the area's crippled nuclear plant into the Pacific.

"Japanese media report that Fumio Kishida was rushed to the hospital not long after he ate delicious food from Fukushima, could it be that he is in danger?" reads a post written in simplified Chinese on Weibo on September 2.

The thumbnail of the accompanying video, which has been viewed more than 52,000 times, shows a person being carried on a stretcher.

Chinese text overlaid on the thumbnail reads: "Japanese media report Fumio Kishida was rushed to the hospital, there are still doubts, could it be linked to nuclear radiation?"

The video contains stock footage of Kishida, seafood and power plants. A narrator can be heard repeating the same claim in Mandarin.

Screenshot of the false post, taken September 7, 2023

Kishida's office released a clip on August 30 showing him and three other ministers eating seafood from Fukushima.

It was designed to promote products from the area 12 years after a huge earthquake and tsunami that triggered one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.

China had earlier banned all seafood imports from its neighbour.

Similar false posts were also shared on Weibo, Facebook, X -- formerly Twitter -- Chinese video streaming site Bilibili, as well as Chinese news aggregator sites NetEase and Toutiao.

Kishida not hospitalised

However, multiple keyword searches found no report in Japanese media saying Kishida was sent to hospital after he consumed Fukushima seafood, contrary to the posts.

Major news outlets in Japan, including the Asahi Shimbun publish a log of the prime minister's activities daily. A review of the entries from August 30 to September 8 found no mention he had been sick or hospitalised (archived link).

According to Japan's public broadcaster NHK, Kishida arrived in Indonesia on September 5 to attend an ASEAN summit and is expected to travel on to India for the G20 summit (archived link).

On September 6, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs published photos of Kishida at the ASEAN summit alongside other world leaders on its website (archived link).

Further keyword and reverse image searches found the photo in the false posts published on July 8, 2022 by Getty Images media agency (archived link).

The photo, credited to Asahi Shimbun, is titled "Former PM Abe Shot While Making Election Campaign Speech".

Abe was gunned down in broad daylight while giving a campaign speech in western Japan, targeted by a man allegedly angry over the former leader's links to the Unification Church.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo shared in the false posts (left) and the one published by Getty Images (right):

Photo in the false posts (left) and on Getty Images (right)

Keyword searches on Google found similar photos of Abe on a stretcher published in Asahi Shimbun on July 9, 2022, as well as a similar video by Japanese broadcaster TBS News published on its official YouTube channel on July 8, 2022 (archived links here and here).

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