The Yokohama Board of Education has admitted that a 13-year-old boy's payments to classmates were the result of bullying when he was attending a local elementary school after evacuating from Fukushima Prefecture to escape the 2011 nuclear disaster.
Yuko Okada, the board's chief, reversed her previous stance on the incident and apologized at a news conference Monday, following criticism of her earlier statement that she could not determine whether the payments were related to bullying.
The boy surrendered a total of around ¥1.5 million to classmates, according to his family.