Sunday, October 04, 2009

Mr. James


McDonald's Japan came out with a new ad a few months ago that has raised the ire of some white residents living in Japan. The new ad campaign features a character named Mr. James, who promotes a new series of burgers called the Nippon All Stars. The character, while not readily identified in ads as American, is indeed so. However, to know that you have to access his blog through McDonald's. In the ads Mr. James speaks poor Japanese and on posters uses poor Japanese combined with katakana, the writing system for foreign words (even though Mr. James is speaking Japanese, however poorly, his words are rendered in katakana).

Some of the foreign white community in Japan have taken offense to these ads for a number of reasons.

I have to agree. While the community outside Japan may see this as no big deal I do and I am offended by this ad. I wish that McDonald's would stop this ad and I have not eaten there since the ad began and will not until it is stopped.
Unfortunately in Japan people have little idea of what an actual foreign person is like. This is part of the reason I am here. I am here to be a foreign person, any person not of Japanese decent, in my community. There are 6,000 people in my town, they are all Japanese. When ad campaigns like Mr. James give reason for the people in my town to apply ideas to me I am not happy. I have spent the past 2 years here trying to break those ideas down, to show the people in my town that I am an individual and part of their community. Although I think this man said it best in an editorial on the blog of Arudou Debito, a foreign man with Japanese citizenship.

"The people complaining about this ad live in Japan, pay taxes here, and in some cases have naturalised and become Japanese citizens. Of course from the outside it doesn’t seem like a big deal -it isn’t going to affect your lives or the way your children are treated in school or on the street.

We find this campaign reinforces unwelcome stereotypes that affect our lives here. I have been denied housing, bank loans, and even entry to businesses specifically because of my race/nationality. By pandering to the ‘hapless foreigner’ stereotype, McDonald’s is reinforcing the idea that non-Japanese cannot speak Japanese or conduct themselves properly in Japan.

A multinational corporation like McDonald’s should be more careful about the subliminal messages they put out, and we are just trying to bring that to their attention."

I hope McDonald's, regardless of what they originally thought was a good ad campaign, will now realize how insensitive they have been and stop their ads.

7 comments:

JapaneseJ9 said...

here here

Mom said...

I agree. How stupid. But could it be an opportunity for you to teach your students about stereotypes?
Mom

dtc said...

I feel like the best way to break down those barriers would be to carry a katana around. Not only would it make you look even scarier, but then leave people wondering how much you know about the way of the samurai! Unless being a samurai has to do with a class system and then you should be a ninja! Fight the power!!!

Kevin said...

I actually brought this up one day when I was having lunch with a group of 6th grade students. We just happened to come on the topic of McDonald's and so I thought it would be a great opportunity to bring up Mr. James and see what they said. I was pleasantly surprised that while they knew the ad and thought it was a little funny they did not make any associations with me or ask me an silly questions like, "do you know Mr. James"

veryshuai said...

Dude, think of all the offensive media portrayals of every possible racial stereotype in the US, including the photograph obsessed, nerdy japanese tourist, sniffing underwear and reading cartoon porn, barking orders at his subservient wife who just takes it. While its your prerogative to be offended, is the ad really worse than the kind of thing you would see anywhere?

p.s. I realize that you mentioned that it won't seem like a big deal if you aren't in Japan. I'm not in Japan.

Kevin said...

Dave, that is true, but not exactly. McDonald's is a, well, one of the biggest multinational companies in the world. So Yes, it is worse than things that I would see elsewhere. I am offended by the ad, yes, but I am more offended that this large chain decided to run the ad. There are thousands more examples of racism here in Japan, but they really aren't worth bothering about because there are very small and don't really get any attention. I would wager that most of the media portrayals that you can see in the US are in the same direction, odds are that the entity that paid for it is rather small or that there IS a protest against it. But McDonald's? Please.

Kevin said...

Besides Dave, the Japanese are anime loving panty sniffers.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIAu5p3KyYk