Embassy: No human meat consumption in Japan
Posted February 28, 2018 9:01 am.
Last Updated February 28, 2018 9:41 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WASHINGTON – There is no Tokyo restaurant offering human meat on the menu, and cannibalism has not been legalized in Japan, despite a false story circulating online.
Thomas Mattingly, a spokesman at the Japanese embassy in Washington, said in an email that the story is untrue.
The worldtruth.tv post presents as news the false claims the restaurant is called Edible Brother, that an unnamed Argentinian tourist has sampled the meat and that young people are making deals to sell their bodies in return for payments to their families.
The embassy says the current story may have developed from a 2016 piece on a satire website that has many of the same details.
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This is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.
