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The story
At an agricultural corporation in Kyogoku, Hokkaido, a sitting town councilman and his family are alleged to have repeatedly assaulted and sexually harassed Myanmar workers employed under the “Specified Skilled Worker” visa program. After the labor union that rescued the victims held a press conference, the story sparked a huge reaction on 5ch, with users debating everything from the state of Japan’s foreign worker system to the standing of the alleged perpetrator.
At an agricultural corporation in Kyogoku, Hokkaido, a sitting town councilman and others are alleged to have repeatedly assaulted, verbally abused, and sexually harassed Myanmar women working under the “Specified Skilled Worker” visa. The labor union protecting the workers, who barely escaped with their lives, held a press conference revealing the harrowing details of the abuse.
“Specified Skilled” foreign workers allegedly abused — six men and women rescued from Kyogoku farm
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Source: newsdig.tbs.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
"If it's hot, take off the raincoat. Drink water. Did you? Did you take the raincoat off? When did you take it off? You probably kept it on right until you got a headache, didn't you."
Honestly the content of that quote is actually kind of caring lol
Right? Not taking off the raincoat, not drinking water?
He's literally telling them to take heatstroke precautions
He just sounds like a decent guy
Posting that one line over and over doesn't really prove anything…
The yelling was bad enough to make me sick to my stomach
I feel ill
To think there are Japanese people like this…
That was just normal back in the Showa era lol
No wonder Kiichi Nakai ended up playing roles like that" (referencing the actor's part in the Burma-set war drama "The Burmese Harp")
There are three "masters," and they're father and sons, so they distinguish them as Master A (the father) and Masters B and C (the sons)
Isn't the UN going to come down on them for this?
Before that, it violates Japan's own Constitution
Stories like this have come up before, but Japanese people are seriously trash
Well, there are foreign workers who slack off too.
Though hitting them with a stick is a bit much.
If you paid Japanese workers a proper wage, they wouldn't slack off either
Doing that to a woman is a bit much though
Even if she's slacking off, there must be other ways to handle it
This is just some rural old guy — foul-mouthed and rough, sure — but isn't he just using "your Japanese master" to mean "boss/employer," to someone who barely understands Japanese?
They're probably workers who don't listen and slack off
The way everyone closes ranks to protect the local "big shot" (lol) — that solidarity really is something else, Hokkaido
He should just get arrested at this point
Has anyone actually filed a police report though lol
Looks like the Sapporo regional labor union is just demanding the agricultural corporation immediately stop the assault and abuse, that's all lol
In the end, it's not just the foreigners who are the problem
There are "people like this" who bring them over in the first place
Same issue as the zaibatsu and the land reforms GHQ got furious and cracked down on
Japan's biggest problem is its rich people
Stop coddling these hick farmers
Same as the Iizuka case (the elderly ex-bureaucrat let off easy after a fatal crash) — they go soft on the elite
I've been saying all along that they need to build a real system to manage and regulate foreign employers
but somehow the penalties always get lighter when it's landowners and rich people involved
Bringing foreigners into Japan in the first place was a mistake
Sadly, Japanese people do have this tendency to look down on other Asians
Are you an idiot? lol
The fact that a labor union is involved means it's a labor law violation lol
No way a Japanese person would work at a place this messed up, right? lol
This has nothing to do with the LDP lmao
Background and Key Points
The “Specified Skilled Worker” (Tokutei Ginou) visa, created in 2019, lets foreign nationals work in labor-short sectors like agriculture, but workers are still tied to a single employer in ways that echo the older, notoriously abuse-prone Technical Intern Training Program it was meant to supplement. Hokkaido’s dairy and vegetable farms rely heavily on this labor, and Kyogoku is a small rural town where a family running the farm can also hold local political office — the alleged perpetrator is a sitting town councilman, which is why posters kept noting how insulated “local big shots” are from consequences. Labor unions, not the police, are typically the first responders in these cases because isolated foreign workers often don’t know how to reach authorities themselves.
The thread split over how to read the leaked audio: some posters heard straightforward abuse — the shouting, the collar-grabbing, the iron bar — while others fixated on one relatively benign quote about telling a worker to remove a raincoat and drink water in the heat, arguing it showed the employer wasn’t purely malicious. That disagreement doesn’t square easily with the printed allegations of groping and beatings, which the “he was just doing heatstroke prevention” posters didn’t address.
What the thread leaves out: as of the union’s press conference, no criminal complaint had been filed — the union was only demanding the company halt the abuse, not seeking arrest, so the “he should be arrested” comments are ahead of any actual legal process. Readers should also know the visa’s employer-tied structure, not individual cruelty alone, is what critics say enables this pattern to recur across Japan’s farms.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread ““Who’s Your Master?”: Town Councilman and Family Assault Myanmar Workers — Groped, Grabbed by the Collar, Beaten with an Iron Bar at Hokkaido Kyogoku Farm.”
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