A Japanese record company is facing a backlash after announcing it would release a CD by a deceased singer that will include nude photographs of her taken privately.
The governor of Kumamoto region in southern Japan, where the singer Aki Yashiro was from, slammed the decision as an "unforgiveable" act in a blog post published Wednesday.
The CD is due to be released on Monday by the record company, which has announced that the product will feature two nude photos of Yashiro, who died in 2023 aged 73, as a "bonus feature".
It said the photos were taken by her then-partner when she was in her 20s.
"If this is not revenge porn, what is it?" Kumamoto governor Takashi Kimura wrote in a blog post, referring to the act of sharing intimate images without a person's consent.
Makoto Ono, a representative for the company that runs Yashiro's website, has also spoken out against the move.
"The announcement (of the nude photo release) is an extremely unpleasant event and absolutely unacceptable," Ono said in a press release this week.
Ono's company sent a letter to the record company in March through legal channels demanding that the release be called off, but no response has been received, the firm said.
The record company, based in the Kagoshima region, has told Japanese media they hold ownership rights to the nude pictures.
Social media users in Japan condemned the company with the hashtag "Protect the dignity of Aki Yashiro".
An online petition calling for its cancellation has received more than 7,000 signatures.
"Naked photos being published without permission after death... This terrible thing must not happen," one user wrote on the platform X.
Yashiro, who debuted in Japan in the 1970s, is a household name known as the queen of enka -- a genre of Japanese music. She was also a jazz singer.
Yashiro made a guest appearance at a concert in Japan by French pop star Sylvie Vartan in 2018.