Japanese news agency Jiji Press said Friday that a photo it sent out Thursday night purporting to show Britain's Prince William turned out to be a statue from a famous New York wax museum.

The photo was distributed with a report on the prince's plan to visit Japan for the first time in February. Jiji said the employee who handled the photo had overlooked a caption noting it was a wax figure. Another employee noticed the error Friday.

"It's a very embarrassing mistake," said Naoto Takamura of Jiji's editorial department. "We apologize to our subscriber newspapers and readers."