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Mobile Phone Monkey Business: A Japanese Primate Plays Obama
This presidential election has already generated unprecedented interest overseas, and if this week's events in Japan are any sign, that interest will only increase, along with all of the cultural baggage, misunderstandings and mashed up references that come with it.
The ethnic tensions stretched taut by the campaign and that have roiled U.S. culture for the last half year rippled across Japan when reports surfaced that a television ad for Japanese cellular telephone provider eMobile starred a monkey as Barack Obama.
In the spot, a large crowd at a political rally is surrounding a speaker, who is firing up the crowd from a podium. Members of the crowd excitedly cheer and hold up placards with the word "change" emblazoned upon them. The speaker, leading the chants at the podium and dressed in a nice blue suit, is a monkey.
The response from black people in Japan and others, once news of the ad spread, was swift. Cries that the depiction was raw racism and an insult to Obama and all Blacks drew a denial of any knowing wrongdoing from eMobile. Spokespeople for the company assured the press that there was no racist intent on the company's part and it meant in no way to demean Obama or Black people. The company pulled the ad within hours after the story broke.
One of the first outlets to key on the ad was the website and blog Black Tokyo, which is edited by Zurui, a Black American who has lived in Japan for many years. "While change is good, having the candidate depicted as a monkey is not!" he wrote soon after the ad first aired:
In an update:
...Am I crazy to think that the monkey is supposed to represent Barack Obama? Given the track record for companies in Japan that use monkeys and blacks or monkeys as blacks in advertisements...maybe not!...It is in poor taste to use the monkey in a parody of Senator Barack Obama's election campaign. Even the guy in America that made the 'racist' buttons and t-shirts (he lost his venue with the Republican Party) understands this. At the end of the day, a monkey will still be equated to representing a Black male. If a few in the Republican Party get it, maybe a few Japanophiles will too!
eMobile defended itself by pointing out that it had used the monkey in previous commercials. It added that some of the flap might be accounted for by cultural misunderstanding.
"We had no bad intentions but this is a cross-cultural gap issue and we have to accept it," eMobile CEO Sachio Semmoto told the British Telegraph.
The monkey in the ad is the snow monkey and is actually considered a holy animal by some Japanese. Popiular American TV show Animal Planet reports that "Snow monkeys play a prominent role in Japanese culture; they are considered to be messengers of the Shinto gods and symbols of success and good fortune."
One poster at "Animal New York" named Aaron, who claimed to be familiar with Japanese culture, wrote that
Barack Obama is well-liked in Japan...the Japanese are not at all conscious of anti-black racism or European-American born stereotypes against those of African descent. That is not to say that here is a lack of racism in Japanese culture, because there certainly is toward non-Japanese in general, but rather to insist that the manifold racist connotation of monkey/black is entirely of Western origin, and that association would be entirely lost on the vast majority of Japanese citizens...
Others commenting on the site, as well as comments from people on the street done by CNN indicate there is some truth to his comments. Many of the Japanese stopped on the streets in Japan seemed to make no link between Obama and the monkey. Indeed they were surprised when informed of the outcry linking the two.
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Culture barrier can lead to disaster. This is why with Obama we might have a chance to close the gap and begin to educate America about the world we are living in once and for all. In the future ignorance wont be a power-tool for excuses but a lack of culture and intelligence. The world lies before our eyes what do we learn from it now?
It is a shame that we are being slammed with so much garbage.. To confuse and divide perhaps. If we all put our anger aside and think about what we are being told from around the world and our own country. We can be human and see that Greed will do anything to erase common sense. When it comes to voting we make up our own minds.. Just never forget about common sense.. The more you read about bad things of a person you know is good.. Then you will figure out who is in control of the Greed Machine..
eMobile uses this monkey in ALL of their ads. It's practically their mascot.
Here: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=0WG5jaL1bzI&feature=related
People in Japan think the monkey is cute, and there's nothing else to it. It's just as if Spuds Mackenzie or the Taco Bell Chihuahua had been used for an ad.
I guarantee no one at eMobile was thinking about anything other than "let's use the cute monkey we always use for our new ad."
To all those who seem incapable of understanding that Japan has a different culture than ours and looks at things in a somewhat different way, perhaps the solution would be to have EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL made in Japan for a Japanese audience veted by US "advisers". Heck, why not -- we try to run the world as it is. Might as well extend that into everyone's media, even if it's not even seen here.
As for the monkey, we're looking at one ad, not a campaign, so we're not seeing this in context. And I'd much prefer to see how this fits into a much larger marketing strategy than making the rash, unwise, and quite possibly WRONG HEADED judgment call that it's *automatically* a racist insult.
I suppose if the monkey was to represent President Bush, you all would think that would be ok. You people are so hypocritical. I've heard many of you call him a monkey, evidently, that is ok.
He's referred to as the chimp, for a facial expression he often wears, and his absent mindedness. Referring to black people as monkeys has a LONG history of racist overtones that reflect what the truly racist (not just bigoted) people actually believe about black people, that they are animals, and therefore inferior to humans and able to be subjected by the superior white race. It's utterly disingenuous for you to claim hypocrisy on this when the name calling has utterly different meanings when applied to Bush and Obama. If one were to call Obama "Dumbo" for example because of his big ears (something I believe he said he was relentlessly teased for as a child) and people went crazy, I'd understand your feelings. But here, they are totally unwarranted.
Comparing Bush to a monkey is an insult to monkeys. Bush is the 21st century's most prolific war criminal and mass murderer. Who has killed more people this century?
I wish I could say it gets easier with time, but I can't. But I'm so glad that many of you sound like you've had enough of it, too. That really makes it easier to swallow. Thanks guys for showing compassion and understanding. There IS a change going on here and I like it :)
This "culture gap" argument is total bullshit. And so is reference ot Shinto.
I don't think an American company portraying the Japanese Prime Minister as a monkey would be view innocently or as a misunderstanding. No way.
There would be an outcry, it would be viewed as racist, and has whenever foreign media has portrayed Japan in a way they didn't like.
No... what's bs is your self-righteously definitive pronouncement that your opinion happens to be right and everyone else's is wrong. Why is the "culture gap" 'total bullsh*t" along with 'the reference to Shinto?' Would you care to explain for us how you know? How is your opinion more informed than mine? Have you ever lived in Japan? Are you familiar with their culture and traditions and folklore and mythology? Do you even speak Japanese? Did you understand what anyone was actually saying in that commercial? Even a little? Can you even read kanji or katakana? Do you even know what kanji or katakana are? (Or hiragana for that matter?)
In short, who the hell are you other than some ugly American who thinks they know everything about the rest of the world they've never even been bothered to be curious about?
Oh, and just as a hint, one of the lines of text says "(A) new candidate (for (your)) cell phone,..."
I've lived in Japan. And you are full a shid! Stop defending this crap as if they're your family. Mexicans and Japanese routinely portray blacks in terrible ways but if someone breathes a racial slur about them, then it's a international crisis.
So WHO da hell are you other than another ugly American hellbent on defending the inane and implausible because you simply have the same bias?
Dito!
Blacks have had to develop tough skin through the generations. Used to be that racial slurs were much more widely accepted.
Well this IS the country that brought us Jynx, the Pokemon.
Believe it or not, not everybody associates monkeys with black people. But after this election campaign I am sure everybody will. The cries of racism non-stop are going to leave longterm negative consequences.
Oh so we should stop calling out racism because it's going to have negative consequences? WTF kind of reasoning is that? You sound like one of those who think a little racism is ok and "not a big deal".
You really think that's true?
I don't buy the explanation. As much as I love Japan, it is a racist country/culture. True, that racism extends to all things that are not Nipponese, but it is racism nonetheless. The monkey-Black man connection isn't something that the Japanese are completely unfamiliar with as it was spread by White sailors and soldiers after WWII. Imagine being asked if you had a tail...
BEHusseinM777
Mark Penn didn't have that account did he?
Are we willing to denigrate a MAN just to sell a product. Why???
"denigrate" is a word rooted in racism...
H.A.T.E.
It's sad and appalling that people still think it's ok to represent a group of human beings as animals and that there should be no offense taken by such a representation. I hope that these types of bigoted images will only motivate Sen. Obama to work harder to achieve the opportunity to serve as President for the American people. He will not only be making history, he will be making a statement to the world that Black men are HUMAN BEINGS, not jungle animals here for your amusement or for you to look down upon, but that a Black man is a capable human being who can posses the intelligence, strength, and compassion for others that are required of anyone serving as President.
Their explanation is total BS.
Are we to believe they were LOST IN THE PACIFIC JUNGLES and no contact with civilization?
Japanese businesses are some of the most sophisticated in the world. The cultural gap is a fabrication.
Before any ad campaign is started, it is thoroughly vetted. This was no mistake.
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Posted July 3, 2008 | 07:25 PM (EST)