The Kagawa Prefectural Government has halted sales of a deck of karuta (Japanese playing cards) amid allegations that one card bears an inappropriate slogan.
The cards are part of an effort to promote sales of udon noodles, a local specialty. The prefectural government created a set of 46 cards each bearing a phrase starting with hiragana.
The card in question bears the message Tsuyoi koshi irojiro futome marude tsuma, which translates as "strongly textured, light complexioned and a bit chubby — just like my wife."
Prefectural officials said Tuesday they plan to reconsider the phrase after receiving a complaint Monday about one of the cards after releasing them at an event this month before they went on sale.
The phrases on the cards were selected from entries submitted from across the nation.
The prefectural government printed 2,000 sets which was expected to be put on sale Tuesday and made them available as free downloads at a website promoting udon. It has now halted both initiatives, the officials said.
"We thought the cards expressed the good points of udon, but we will reconsider the phrase because we don't want to harm the image of udon," one of the officials said.
In October, the prefectural government withdrew invitations to a selection event for a woman to be featured in a campaign to promote rice from Kagawa Prefecture, because of claims that a phrase used in posters and leaflets — looking for "a light-complexioned woman with a nice figure" — is inappropriate.
Local people eat twice the amount of noodles compared with the national average, and the local newspaper has a special udon section on its website.