Category: Current Events

Japan Today had this the other day:

TOKYO — Cosmetic maker Mandom Corp has stopped airing a TV commercial containing an expression mocking black people, company officials said Tuesday.

In the commercial for face blotting paper for men, several black people wipe sweat off their faces with the paper, while a chimpanzee with a curly hair wig and a multicolor outfit imitates them and wipes its face besides them.

The commercial had been on air since March 28, but a human rights group criticized it for putting black people on the same level as apes.

After consulting with lawyers and advertising agency officials, the company stopped airing the commercial June 9 and has also stopped using a printed version of the ad in magazines, saying it “lacked an international sense of ethics.”

Motonobu Nishimura, a company executive, said, “We are very sorry. We apologize to viewers and other people who felt offended.” (Kyodo News)

Here’s a characteristically nonsensical reaction from 2-channel, Japan’s virtual men’s room stall:

You can’t blame them. If you ever see a black smiling in a high-class car you can’t help but think they’re a drug dealer. Who’d buy such a car?

But Japan’s population is smaller than the number of blacks in the world! (tr: ie: We’re the minority!)

It wasn’t right to treat blacks as badly as we treat the Koreans.

What would happen if a few white people wiped sweat from their faces and then some blond ancient Greek with dark skin started mimicking them?

It should go without saying that this is totally unacceptable so I won’t say anything more about it unless someone comments. And I mean the racism, not the fact that they are marketing makeup to men, though I’m not a big fan of that either.

Here’s an excerpt from a protest letter, signed by Debito, who was involved in the movement against the commercial:

I find this advertisement to be highly offensive, particularly the use of a chimpanzee mimicking the actions of the Black men portrayed in the commercial. Visually equating Black men as “apes” or “monkeys” is a particularly egregious racial slur due to the fact that for hundreds of years, Black men have been referred to as apes in an effort to dehumanize and degrade them. Much of the anti-Black racist literature has claimed that Blacks are more akin to apes than to human beings, and the image of the ﾒBlack bruteﾓ has been used to associate Black men as dangerous ape-like savages.

Furthermore, dreadlocks in the colors of red, gold, and green are Rastafarian religious symbols. The dressing up of a chimpanzee in such garb would be akin to dressing it up as a Buddhist monk or a Shinto priest. It is highly offensive to members of a particular religious group, one that is particularly identified with Blacks of Caribbean origin, and should be avoided.

The use of a chimpanzee mimicking the behaviors of Blacks, in addition to its use of religious symbols as a costume, is, at the least, an extremely insensitive and tasteless attempt at humor. At the worst, it can be construed as a blatantly racist and degrading portrayal of Blacks. We request that Mandom Corporation terminate the broadcasting of this commercial immediately. Furthermore, we request that Mandom Corporation show greater sensitivity when portraying Blacks in future advertisements.

As someone living a sheltered life in the multicultural and liberal DC area, I’m curious to see examples of other countries (like China — scroll to the bottom to read about Condi’s treatment there) regarding black people with the same casual disdain that the above commercial revealingly portrays. Because outside of areas with large African populations, I suspect that it’s pervasive. At the Korean grocery in Virginia there’s an oreo ripoff cookie called “Black White” or something like that and on the cover are a cute cartoon white person and a grotesque, big-lipped black person cartoon. I was kind of shocked but then I thought Korea can’t be too different from Japan where comments like, “I wouldn’t want to eat food prepared by a black guy because it’s dirty,” are uttered as small talk, though perhaps not around the gaijin-san.

UPDATE: Shimizu4310 has an interesting take on the issue:

[Quoting from the apology letter] “Blacks are similar to apes,” that’s just too precious. Next we won’t be allowed to make jokes about afros! No more Danceman, Karaoke UGA (click the bottom link to see a HUGE afro), or Sergeant Afro? Human rights groups (Who are they and where did they come from anyway? They certainly aren’t the people from the commercial.), please tell me!

[Re: the protest letter] Umm… just looking at the ad, let me say a few words. Why are they using black people in their ads? Because black people are cool! This is a country where gyaru exclaim, “I wanna be black!” lest we forget.

If they intended to make fun of blacks OR apes, I seriously doubt they would make an ad like this. (I don’t know about the home country of Mr. “thoughtful denizen of Japan”, though! [tr: a dig at Debito I’m sure]).

Two days ago it was reported that an appeal by former Superfree leader Shinichiro Wada has been rejected, and his previously imposed 14-year sentence for gang rape will be upheld. This case first broke in 2003, while I was in Japan, and was easily one of the most significant news stories of the entire time I was in Japan. As in the media worldwide, there is a certain voyeuristic pleasure taken in reporting horrible crimes, in this case a multi-year campaign of highly organized gang rape carried out by members of a social club named Superfree under the personal direction of their leader Shinichiro Wada, but even for this case received an unusual amount of media attention. There are some interesting reasons why I think this case became such a public spectacle, but before discussing that it is important to summarize the grimly fascinating details of the entire long incident.

Superfree was a very unusual difficult to catagorize organization. In many ways it reminds us of the worst stereotypes of the American college fraternity, and in other ways of both a cult and a pyramid scheme. Its only existence as a legal organization was as a student organization at Waseda University, which was used by Wada as a front for all of his various activities. Superfree began as a Waseda organization, but eventually contained affiliate members at other prestigious universities throughout Japan. Despite this official existence as a Waseda University organization, it was really the personal domain of its leader Shinichiro Wada, who seems to me a classic egomaniac.

Wada first enrolled in Tokyo’s Chuo University in 1993, but aspiring to attend the more prestigious Waseda University, continued to study for that school’s entrance exam for a year while being a Chuo student. He was finally expelled from Waseda after his arrest in 2003. Wada, in his late 20s, was himself only just barely a student at Waseda, nominally enrolled in whatever part time non degree classes required the least amount of effort to keep his Waseda ID and continue to use the school ‘circle’ to recruit new members to the real Superfree club, which was organized outside of the school. When Wada was expelled from university, official recognition of the club was also withdrawn, but by then it had a life of its own.

Superfree’s primary activity was organizing parties in Tokyo nightclubs, particularly in the nightlife heavy Roppongi district. Wada was the primary organizer. He would distribute tickets to his trusted friends and high ranking members, who would pass the tickets on to their own network of lower level cronies and affiliate members, generally much younger university students, who looked upon the older Superfree members with a kind of stupid awe. The tickets were ultimately sold to the public, primarily other university students. With a long history of throwing such parties behind them, demand for Superfree entrance was high and they had no trouble making a significant profit on their events, the bulk of which filtered back up to Wada. He was reported to have made 10 million yen (currently the equivalent of about US$100,000) per year, easily enough to support a very comfortable single lifestyle, even in Tokyo.

Profit was not the only goal however; while money was key, the other goal was to attract as many attractive, young, and most importantly impressionable and naive, women as possible to the parties. This was hardly a difficult feat. Many young women in Japan, particularly those who were only able to attend lesser quality universities, are easily impressed by the name of a a top-rank university such as Waseda. The tenuous, yet official connection to Waseda was key to their ability to recruit vulnerable girls.

A Japan Times article from April of last year explained the Super Free system in these words.

Judge Sugiyama said that when Wada, a Waseda University student, became Super Free leader in 1995, a hierarchy was established that classified members as “first string,” “reserves” or “boys.” Each level was allotted quotas for selling tickets to parties organized by the group.

Wada is believed to have made more than 10 million yen a year from ticket sales. The parties sometimes drew more than 1,000 people.

Judge Sugiyama said it was under this power structure that group members began to routinely gang-rape young women attending their parties. The judge alleged that Wada encouraged members to rape with comments such as “gang rape creates solidarity among members” and “those who do not participate in gang rapes are not members.”

At the Superfree events the club members would scout out likely targets, and invite them to more private after-parties, usually held at a kind of Japanese pub known as an izakaya. As the organizers of the event, they were able to easily find someone willing to join them later on. At the afterparty they would give the girls alcoholic drinks until they “were no longer able to resist” and then have sex with them, sometimes individually, sometimes in a group. There were reports of Superfree gangrapes taking place inside izakaya, outdoors on stairwells or alleys, in hotels, and in the home of the group’s leader, Wada-and possibly the homes of other members as well. There were also reports that in some cases where alcohol was not enough, drugs were used to render the girls unconcious.

That’s enough for tonight. Tomorrow or the day after I will write the second half of this piece, summarizing the criminal cases brought against specific members of Superfree, culminating in last week’s final appeal by Shinichiro Wada himself.