Anti-vaxxer and anti-masker Japanese politician fathers child with junior high school student
A 40-year-old political candidate has allegedly fathered a child with a junior high school second grader.
Masayuki Hiratsuka, who is the head of the Popular Sovereignty Party and advocates not wearing masks (quite something in a culture like Japan where wearing masks is already ingrained, especially during flu or pollen allergy seasons) and not getting the Covid vaccine, ran for governor of Tokyo in the July 2020 election with a striking campaign declaring that the “coronavirus is just a cold.”
Though he attracted a mere 0.15% of the vote, he has continued to campaign online on his YouTube channel and to make speeches in Shibuya against mask-wearing and the vaccines, and to hold “cluster festivals,” most notoriously “hijacking” the Yamanote Line with unmasked passengers. He was arrested at the headquarters of the Japan Medical Association in December 2020 for failing to leave the site.
Police searched his home a year later, in December 2021, but only recently has the true reason come to light. He faces possible charges of violating the Child Welfare Act and Juvenile Protection Ordinance.
A few days prior to the police raid on his home in December 2020, his child was born. The mother was at the time a junior high school student, reports Flash, so would have been 13 or 14 (we couldn’t find an exact age in initial media reports).
Hiratsuka apparently met the girl at a firework party in a park in September 2020. She is the daughter of a local assembly-member, whose wife is a strong supporter of the Popular Sovereignty Party. Hiratsuka reportedly started a relationship with the student and she became pregnant a few months later.
Needless to say, his relationship with the girl’s parents has soured immeasurably and they are now considering a lawsuit.
When contacted for comment by Flash, Hiratsuka denied being the father, saying the paternity of the child is not clear. (This would seem to contradict his own announcements on social media a few months ago that he had become a parent.) He also refused to commit to marrying the girl when she turns 18.
The age of consent in Japan is 13, though prefectural ordinances often increase this to 16.
5 Comments
politicians
no matter where they’re, where they from, what their backgrounds
always full of this kind disasters
He will now join the newly minted Tortoise party with the slogan
We get ours before the hair
oops I mean
We get there before the hare
I bet the only vaccine he’s had an issue with is the Wuhan vaccine, but you call him “anti-vaxx” like he is against all vaccines. And what does him having issues with the Wuhan vaccine (which isn’t working as advertised) and him being against masks (which never worked) have anything at all to do with his having a kid with a high schooler???
@ShepardRahl
Nothing directly per se, except that he has been one of the most prominent faces of the anti-mask and anti-vaccine movement in Japan, so this incident is just the latest episode in his — if you will excuse the word — notoriety. It’s certainly not the job of this blog to stoke the already very intense flames of the culture war surrounding the pandemic, but this individual has seemingly made it in his mission to do so. Not mentioning his campaigning would be burying the lede.
Please also keep in mind that face mask culture is very different in East Asia, and people commonly wear masks in Japan regardless of a pandemic simply due to having a cold or suffering from pollen allergies (which are widespread at certain times of the year), so his opposition to masks is not quite the same as it would be in another country. People in Japan heeding official advice to wear masks is like doing what they do anyway during certain seasons, but just doing it more habitually.
Incidentally, the child was a junior high school student, not a high school student.
Heart attacks among young people is the new normal. Conciendetally only to the mRNA vaxxed.