Osaka: “If You Have a Tattoo, Your Values Are Messed Up!”

The mayor of Osaka has once again been voicing his disgust at the fact that the city has employed people with tattoos, and has demanded the creation of a special taskforce to root them out and sack them.

Mayor Tooru Hashimoto’s anti-tattoo witch-hunt was prompted by the discovery that a city employee at a child-care facility not only had a tattoo but went so far as to intimidatingly show it to a small child.

Although he was punished over the incident, it was found he could not be sacked merely for having a tattoo, outraging the mayor.

Hashimoto has since been ordering city departments to set up investigatory teams to stamp out the evils of tattooed employees, which saw him angrily berating them in a press conference:

“People who got tattoos in the past for whatever reasons and are trying to reform themselves are different [but] getting tattoos after being employed is weird. To get paid out of taxes and then fool around getting tattoos, there is something messed up about all this.

“There are suspicions that a great many of our employees have tattoos, as an organisation it is necessary to get to the bottom of this.”

“There are reports of city employees showing each other their tattoos, the atmosphere of their workplaces is strange.”

“We must hold an emergency assembly of supervisors, and I’d like to tell them their values are pretty messed up!”

“I’ll act in place of the citizens and rigorously check them, and I’ll keep sacking any city employees who don’t comply.”

The mayor indicated he wishes to set up a special team to prevent further scandalous behaviour by civic employees, and to root out employees with tattoos and sack them if possible.

Other targets of his wroth included insufficiently harsh bans on smoking in the workplace and commuting to work in privately owned cars.

There is a widespread conviction amongst Japanese that only criminals get tattoos, something which is as readily evident online as it is from their politicians.