Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said Monday that an image of him smiling at a press conference immediately after a major earthquake in February posted on Twitter was doctored.
The government asked Twitter to delete the altered image, which had been removed as of Monday.
The quake in February caused tremors of upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7, mainly in Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures. The doctored image of Kato smiling at the press conference spread on Twitter with comments such as, "It's inappropriate."
"It could confuse and mislead the public," Kato said about the image.
The original image was a cutout from TV footage, but there was no scene of him smiling in the actual broadcast.
An expert commissioned by The Yomiuri Shimbun evaluated the image and found that Kato's facial expression was highly likely to have been altered.
"This [image] caused very uncomfortable feelings among people in the affected areas [of the earthquake], and it's not acceptable and can't be overlooked," Kato said at a press conference on Monday.
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