The mayor of a Japanese town, Minokamo, issued an apology following an incident where the deputy speaker of the Minokamo Municipal Assembly allegedly made an inappropriate gesture towards the adult daughter of the Mayor of Dubbo, Australia, during a karaoke afterparty. The senior official, Norio Nagata, was reported to have taken the microphone and held it towards the lower stomach of the Australian mayor's daughter, a gesture deemed as inappropriate by Mayor Dickerson.
The mayor of Minokamo, Hiroto Fujii, acknowledged the inappropriateness of the action and sent a letter of apology to Mayor Dickerson, expressing regret for the discomfort caused to the Mayor, his family, and all event participants. Despite the incident, both Mayors affirmed that the relationship between the two towns, which have been sister cities since 1989, would remain unaffected by the incident.
In response to the incident, a majority of council members in Minokamo agreed that the deputy speaker, Cr Nagata, should resign from all council positions due to his inappropriate action that was deemed untenable for his position. Despite resigning as deputy speaker, Cr Nagata refused to step down from the council, expressing regret over the incident and attributing his actions to being drunk while trying to liven up the karaoke event. Additionally, discussions within the council highlighted the need for measures to prevent such harassment from occurring again in the future, although the council decided not to release the video of the incident publicly.