Following the Kumamoto quake, some yahoo spread a rumor via Twitter that a lion had escaped from Kumamoto zoo and was roaming the streets, sparking widespread panic quite unneeded at the time.
It turns out the yahoo’s a 20-year old guy from Kanagawa Prefecture. We know this as he was recently arrested for spreading malicious rumors, apparently the first time anyone has ever been arrested for such cause in Japan.
The article contains the word デマ, meaning lie, particularly a malicious rumor spread via social media, a word I’d never encountered, but apparently it comes from the German “demagogie.” I have no idea how the word ended up in the Japanese language. - William
