The government will probe an alleged orgy involving hundreds of Japanese tourists -- including 288 people related to an Osaka-based construction firm -- and prostitutes at a Chinese hotel last month, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said Tuesday.
"The Foreign Ministry will research what really happened through interviews with (people related to) the relevant Japanese company," Fukuda told reporters.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the construction firm, Osaka-based Kooki Corp., said it does not plan to apologize for the alleged orgy.
According to Chinese media reports, the orgy took place at the International Conference Center Hotel in Zhuhai, a coastal city in Guangdong Province, on the evening of Sept. 17, and 380 Japanese tourists and 500 prostitutes were involved.
The Guangdong provincial government informed Tokyo through diplomatic channels Sunday that it has confirmed that the orgy took place, Fukuda said.
But it did not provide details about the allegations, he said, and thus the Japanese government will investigate.
"It would be regrettable" if the report from the Chinese local government is substantiated, he said.
Spokesman Koji Fukunaga of Kooki reiterated that while the 288 people, most of them employees of the firm, did stay at the hotel while on a company trip, Kooki was not involved in any "systematic prostitute buying."
Kooki "has no plans to apologize to the Chinese for what happened," he said.
Kooki has not been contacted by any Japanese government officials about the incident, he said, adding, "We'll cooperate if we're contacted."
Two days after the Chinese media reports surfaced Sept. 27, Yuji Kumamaru, minister with the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, was summoned to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and urged to take steps to instruct Japanese tourists to better obey Chinese laws and act with a sense of morals.