Image of artwork showing humans in blender taken out of schoolbooks

A photograph of a controversial work by a Japanese artist showing people in a blender will be removed from a primary school physics textbook, the Education Ministry said on Friday.

The painting, by artist Makoto Aida, has been in the sixth-grade textbook for nearly 10 years, but no teachers, pupils or parents appeared to notice that the blender in the image – which is featured in a section of the book on mixtures – contained human bodies. The authors of the book said they found the image on an official website and had not noticed the tiny people. The ministry said it would remove the photo from the electronic version of the book immediately and from the hard copy as soon as possible.