US-based Jewish rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center has demanded music channel MTV Japan apologize for airing an interview with a rock band dressed in Nazi-style uniforms.
The Japanese unit of MTV Networks said in response that it had taken the footage and related images off the air and off its website.
"We never intended to offend anyone," the channel said in a statement.
The six members of J-pop band Kishidan wore SS-like uniforms during a February 23 broadcast of the show "Megavector", said the Los Angeles-based group, expressing its "shock and dismay".
"There is no excuse for such an outrage," said rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in his protest to MTV-J, Sony Music Artists and management company the Avex Group.
Sony Music said it was preparing a statement in response to the protest.
"As someone who has visited Japan over 30 times, I am fully aware that many young Japanese are woefully uneducated about the crimes against humanity committed during World War II by Imperial Japan in occupied Asia, let alone about Nazi Germany's genocidal 'Final Solution' against the Jews in Europe," Cooper said.
“But global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better." The group -- whose members usually wear school uniform style outfits -- wore dark military uniforms with Nazi-associated insignia such as the Iron Cross, the Totenkopf (death skull) and eagle, but no visible swastikas.
MTV Japan said it had a "long history of raising young peoples' awarenessaround tolerance and discrimination through award winning campaigns such as 'Fight for Your Right' and 'Free Your Mind' and we take this matter very seriously."
Cooper said "such garb like the uniform worn by Kishidan is never tolerated in the mainstream of any civilised country outside of Japan".
"In spite of all the efforts made by democracies to combat bigotry, racism and hate crimes, there are young people who are attracted to a racist ideology and the symbols of Nazism like those that inspired the uniforms worn by Kishidan," he said.
The group urged the band and all entities involved to apologize.
It said it was ready to bring a Holocaust survivor to Japan "so that MTV Japan can interview someone who spent their teen years suffering starvation, depravation and torture and seeing their families being murdered for the 'crime' of being born Jewish".