You might have heard about the controversy surrounding the Japanese mobile phone company that used a monkey politician running under the banner “change” that Barack Obama fans took offense to. I’m not sure what to make of this myself — I think it’s a little far fetched, because it assumes that the writers not only speak English, but are closely following the Obama campaign. That said, the company probably did the smart thing in pulling the ad.
Here’s a short opinion piece from Blackamericaweb.com asserting that “the steady drumbeat racializing Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has gotten increasingly louder” with the ad’s release. Also, check out the blog Black Tokyo, which carries the banner “News and discussions on Japan and Asia from an Afro perspective!”
5 responses so far ↓
1 Simon Currie // Jun 30, 2008 at 4:56 pm
It’s kind of ironic because the Japanese were referred to as “yellow monkeys” by the very same Americans during the war.
And the monkey was chosen to counter the dog in rival carrier SoftBank’s ads.
But you can’t deny that the ads are stylized to look like presidential politics, so it was a smart decision to pull the ad. The monkey had been throwing punches at the dog and SoftBank up until now in a series of kinda funny ads from both sides, but all that is lost in this mess.
2 DannP // Jun 30, 2008 at 6:14 pm
“The steady drumbeat racializing Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has gotten increasingly louder.”
Right, especially when people say he’s black instead of mixed race.
3 Joel // Jun 30, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Come on, lets not go there. He looks black. Why do people try to argue this?
4 Shinsano // Jun 30, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Hmm. Must be an election year.
5 Marky Mark // Jul 3, 2008 at 8:07 am
You are all fools to think that this add of “change” does not relate to Obama’s campaign. What other major political campaign is positioned towards the notion of “change”. There is no other possibility. Hence, this add was completely directed at Obama. It is quite clear that all Japanese people want to be white (twinky syndrome) and, with regards to the truly educated individual, any knowledgeable person knows that, even during the war, Japanese people would look at black people and even go so far as to figure out if they had tails or not. A professor of mine went to Japan for some reason during the second world war and found himself in the shower with other Japanese people. They proceeded to individually, in somewhat sneaky manners, go behind him to determine if he had a tail. Japanese people are very bright people. However, having been literally crushed via the predominantly white America thereby concluding their position in world war II (Hiroshima) and the subsequent mercy of the U.S. in giving them our economy (technology, these people have since had an ever present want to be Caucasian. Just examine the highly popular surgery here in the U.S. offering Japanese people the ability to widen their eyes to look more “normal”!
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