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Courtesy of Hiroshima prefectural police A screenshot from a video warning against fraud featuring officers from the Asaminami Police Station
The Yomiuri Shimbun
10:55 JST, November 23, 2024
HIROSHIMA — A video clip made by officers of the Asaminami Police Station in Hiroshima to warn against romance and investment scams on social media is attracting attention online. In the video, police officers dance as a song is sung by nursery school children with original lyrics set to the folk song “Turkey in the Straw.”
The number of total views of the video on X and other social media platforms surpassed 10 million within only a week after being uploaded on Oct. 7, with the police officers’ dancing being called “surreal.”
The song in the video, “Sagi no Uta” or scam song, warns against, for example, romance scams in which perpetrators exploit individuals emotionally to trick them into sending money with lyrics such as “I love you is a phrase to mislead you.” Nursery school children, who are offscreen, cheerfully sing as five police officers dance matter-of-factly in the 1 minute 15 second clip.
Kazuha Kanbara, 42, a sergeant at the police station, created the video to spread awareness to as many people as possible. She wrote the lyrics, choreographed the dance and edited the video, with the entire process taking about two months.
The editing of the video, which has the police officers suddenly shine in psychedelic colors or splinter into multiple officers as the backdrop changes, is one of the reasons for the video’s popularity. But Kanbara said that was the result of editing in order to cover up out-of-focus footage.
Kanbara asked children at the local nursery school to sing the song because, “I thought that children’s voices would convey messages more easily to the elderly.”
The nursery school children were excited to be on YouTube. They learned the lyrics swiftly, Kanbara recalled.
