The mayors of two towns in central Japan each announced their resignations Thursday over their respective harassment scandals.
Mayor Kenji Imata of Togo, Aichi Prefecture, was found by a third-party committee including lawyers to have continuously engaged in "power harassment" and sexual harassment against several town employees since he took office in 2018. The committee recognized several inappropriate remarks by Imata, such as telling someone to die and asking another, "When will you get big boobs?"
"I want to apologize to the employees," Imata, 57, said at a news conference Thursday, after submitting his resignation to the town assembly the previous day. "I am ashamed that I was ignorant."
At the same time, the mayor said, "Strong guidance is different from harassment. It is important to give guidance that gets through to people, and I learned the importance of the process."
Meanwhile, Mayor Kazuo Okazaki of Ikeda, Gifu Prefecture, submitted his resignation to the town assembly on Thursday after another third-party committee released a report the previous day recognizing his sexual harassment of 15 town employees.
The committee found that Okazaki had been touching the hands and chests of female employees and asking them if they were going to marry, for about 20 years. It concluded that the mayor should resign.
"I took seriously the (committee's) view that I deserve to resign," Okazaki said at a news conference. "I must admit (the acts of sexual harassment) because the employees felt that way."
Okazaki was first elected mayor of Ikeda in 2003. He had been serving his sixth term.
