Black Tokyo’s post on the eMobile CM has made the Huffington Post. Mr. Earnest Harris in his article, “Mobile Phone Monkey Business: A Japanese Primate Plays Obama” wrote:
“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.
“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:
Click here to read the Huffington Post article.
Black Tokyo will now post commentary received from BT members as a way to present various discussions found on the BT Discussion Forum. The below commentary was submitted by Ruby Baby:
“All the commentary surrounding the E-mobile CM had me feeling a little down.
Why do I feel as though every time black people speak up about racism, there will be a significant number of voices raised to tell us, very basically, that we are merely seeing things? As a black man, I have to tell you that it’s extremely frustrating to have people challenge the legitimacy of my experience by adopting their strategies of denial.
The most pernicious idea I’ve encountered in discussions about race and racism, is the idea that racism, real racism, is something that is actually extremely rare. This is because the bar for what counts as racism has been set extremely high. Unless you’re a skin-head covered head to toe in swastika tattoos, and burning crosses on a regular basis in the front yards of black households, you’re not a racist. Racists have malice in their actions. Racist actions are violent, racist language is spewed forth in diatribes, and both are intended to cause harm. Claims of racism become tantamount to claims that someone has hatred for a particular racial group. If the incident you are talking about does not involve real racists with real hatred, then there can be no racism.
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I would like to say ARIGATO for the emails and posts submitted by the various bloggers from around the world (thank goodness for Google Translate). Needless to say, I was happy to see that CNN ran the story on my post questioning whether eMobile’s CM was considered racist: ”Obama is a Monkey in Japan?” It would have been nice for the CNN Japan reporter to acknowledge the website though. Speaking of acknowledgments, I would like to give a big shout out to Ms. Vaughn for voicing her concern on Metropolis Magazine’s MetPod. Also, kudos to the concerned citizens that appeared in the CNN Tokyo interview.
Here is a rehash on what I posted:
“Obama is a Monkey in Japan[?] (Notice the question mark) Well it SEEMS like the ugly head of racism has reared its big head again on Japanese television. E Mobile’s new cell phone commercial SEEMS to depict a presidential campaign with “red” supporters (red is E Mobile’s corporate color and not representative of the Democratic Party (blue) in this case) in the background holding signs the say “Change.” While change is good, having the CANDIDATE depicted as a monkey is not!”
I posed the question:
“Am I crazy to think that the monkey is supposed to represent Barack Obama?”
Then a statement:
“Given the track record for COMPANIES in Japan that used monkeys and blacks or monkeys as blacks in advertisements…maybe not!”
Now the responses from the blogosphere were very interesting, if not sometimes ignorant. Ignorant because some bloggers found it funny to correlate monkeys to Blacks while others felt that the Japanese would not understand the “Western” concept of things related to race and racist imagery. Many bloggers believe that my remarks stemmed from cultural baggage, whatever the hell that means.
The most telltale sign that some people were micturating in atmospheric equations of motion stemmed from the numerous claims of Blacks “screaming” of racism. I would like to believe that the voice on Black Tokyo has been reasonable, measured, and raised in a consciousness that reflects the spirit of those that do not need others to validate or approve of what is deemed racist in depiction or culturally insensitive.
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The Guardian and other newspapers have reported that the E-Mobile CM showing a monkey in a suit addressing an election rally was pulled. E-Mobile denies accusations of racism but has decided to pull the advertisement.
E-Mobile stressed it had used the macaque mascot in several other adverts and never intended to insult Obama but had decided to pull the “Change” ad in response to criticism in the blogosphere.
We at Black Tokyo applaud E-Mobile’s decision to remove the culturally insensitive advertisement. No matter what others think, this is not only a Japan issue nor is it an issue that is only important to Black Americans.
Some bloggers strongly disagreed with Black Tokyo’s decision to question E-Mobile’s advertisement. Sites such as Japan Probe believed that the average Japanese viewer could not make a connection between the E-Mobile CM and Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for Change. Instead, it was felt that the Japanese would draw a parallel to the Japanese television drama, Change, starring Kimura Takuya (Kimutaku).
According to UPI Asia Online, “83 percent [of the Japanese] were closely following the election coverage – slightly more than the 80 percent of Americans who took the same survey. Japan’s expat community on a popular blog mirrored the poll’s results: “Interesting how Americans could care less about who’s running for Japanese offices, but Japan is all over American candidates,” wrote one blogger. “America is the focus of attention quite frequently.”
E-Mobile’s chief executive, Sachio Semmoto, told Reuters: ”We had no bad intentions, but this is a cross-cultural gap issue and we have to accept it. There are African-Americans in Japan, so we decided to take prompt action and shut down the ad.”
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