May 20 (Japan Today) - In recent years, we've heard a number of disturbing accounts involving teachers hitting students at Japanese schools, and this week, another disturbing case came to light, when a foreign English-language instructor was seen slapping a two-year-old child during a class at a child daycare facility.
The incident occurred in March this year, at an unlicensed daycare facility in the city of Kitakyushu, in Fukuoka Prefecture. According to reports, the male language instructor, originally from Canada, was teaching an English lesson to a group of young students when he reached down and smacked a boy who appeared to be rolling around and tugging on another child's shirt on the floor.
The incident was captured on video, and submitted to a closed group on social media, where it's since been leaked online.
The video shows the instructor hitting the child, who was two years old at the time, on the lower half of his body. After hitting him, the teacher can be seen lifting him up and forcibly sitting him on the floor, as the boy begins to cry.
Immediately afterwards, the teacher can be heard saying, "Why did you do that?" and then "Are you okay?" which seems to be directed at the child next to the boy, whose shirt had been tugged on by the boy before he was hit.