Japanese TV Show Apologises For Editing Chinese Woman’s Interview To Suggest “China People Love Eating Crows”

The next time someone approaches you for a street interview, consider this a cautionary tale.

Popular Japanese variety programme Monday Late Show recently came under fire for a misleading interview segment that aired on March 24.

In the episode, a Chinese woman was seen showing the crew photos of crows alongside captions like "You'd almost never see crows in China", "There are so few because they've all been eaten" and "Basically people just cook and eat them".

The show's hosts, Japanese cross-dressing columnist Matsuko Deluxe and singer Shingo Murakami, were also seen laughing at her remarks.

After the show aired, the woman’s comments sparked heated discussion on Chinese social media.

Clips of the show spread online, with many angrily pointing out, “We’ve never heard of anyone eating crows," and accusing her of deliberately smearing China.

The woman became a target of online harassment and doxxing — until she took to social media to set the record straight.

She accused the show of malicious editing. She recounted that the crew asked her about "the things that shocked her after going to Tokyo", which prompted her to reply,"Tokyo has more crows and they often snatch clothes away."

She then showed the crew photos of crows on her balcony, before saying that she rarely sees crows in China or other countries. 

The conversation then shifted to other topics, where she mentioned that in China, people eat squabs, aka pigeons, and joked that maybe the reason there are fewer pigeons in China compared to Japan is that “they’ve all been eaten.”

When asked what she usually eats at home, she replied that she enjoys eating nabe (Japanese hot pot) because it’s convenient — just throw ingredients in and cook.

The woman expressed shock and frustration over how her words were taken out of context and edited together maliciously.

In response to her post, Monday Late Show released an official apology on March 27, admitting their wrongdoing.

They acknowledged that they had deliberately edited the interview to create a false narrative and stated that "a TV show should never condone such behaviour". 

They apologised to the interviewee and their audience, promising to thoroughly review their production process to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.