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.