Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

Last month, I mentioned the below ad was racist using monkey as OBAMA in presidential election campaign.

The company that uses the ad, EMOBILE admitted the commercial was offensive to Afro-Americans considering the historical fact that monkey character had been used to portray Blacks as inferior creature to other people. Then early this month, they announced they would not air the commercial on TV and pulled the ad. However, they said they never meant to insult Black people by this ad because monkeys has been their maskots in their company's products.

I've mentioned this issue last month on this blog, see this article posted on June 21. I also mentioned on Japan's well-known internet newspaper, JANJAN. This is the article (in Japanese.) Some people object my view because I seem to make extreme interpretation of the ad concept. There are a lot of commercials that use animals to portray human characters.

But as a result, I was right. EMOBILE received so many complaints from Americans living in Japan. CNN covered this story. I knew that would happen because I used to live in the U.S. and learned so much about history of racism. I took Black Studies course.

Well, that helped. Most Japanese are ignorant about this issue because our society is much less diverse than the U.S. in terms of race and ethncity.  

EMOBILE wasted so much ad budget but they learned good lesson. So did many Japanese citizens.

I've bought a DVD of that show a few years ago. I've watched it many times. I highly recommend all the people on the earth to watch it.

The show was produced amid the fear of coming war in Iraq by Alliance Atlantis. It caused controversy because the show featured Hitler as living man not just as evil guy.

Maybe the producer was worried about the atmosphere in the U.S. after 911 was like the one in Nazi-Germany.

Focal point of the film is indifference of ordinary people of that time. People did not want to care about politics because they were too tired of hearing serious news.

But the result of such indifference was Auschwitz.

In the show, there was a journalist who became counterpart of Hitler. His name was Fritz Gerich. He established the newspaper "Straight Path" to criticize Hitler's Nazism. But at the end, he was murdered in Dahau concentration camp after Nazi regime took over all the authorities of Germany.

Fritz wrote letter to his wife, it said "Urge others to speak up even what they say is unpopular."

That impressed me a lot. That may be most difficult thing on the earth but necessary to change things better.

The other thing that impress me was a leader of Storm Troops, Rohm was gay. Rohm was Hitler's long time comrade and Hitler knew Rohm was gay. Interestingly enough, Nazi murdered hundreds of thousands of gays in concetration camp along with Jews and Roma (Gyspsies).

I will visit Berlin and Auschwitz soon. I will telll you what I feel about the sights and their histories.

I found such an ad in Tokyo train.

It says "CHANGE to Emobile phone." This monkey might look like one of US presidential candidates.

I think it is racist. They couldn't post the same postar in the U.S.

I don't like it. They could use human actor (Japanese or Afro-American guy) instead of a monkey.

Last Sunday, one news shocked Japan and even the world.

25 year old man drove into Tokyo's busiest square. It was holiday's pedestrians paradise area where anyone can get on the driving roads which are normally used only for automobiles. He ran over 3 people by rented truck and then stabbed 14 people on the square including a policeman. As a result 7 people were murdered.

He was typical kind of psychopath who would do such a thing just like other guys who committed the same kind of crimes like Virginia Tech University and Columbine High School. He has been frustrated with his status. He has been worried about losing his job which was very unstable temporary worker's status. He had no girlfriend or friends whom he could talk with about his problems. He wanted to show his anger to the society.

Many people want to analyze the cause of this mass-murder incident. But after all this guy was one of millions of frustrated citizens in Japan. This case shouldn't be treated as symbolic event that represents Japan's social issues.

Number of Japan's homicide cases of last year was record low in postwar era. Japan is still safe. Of course there are things we should change and cure to make this society better.  

The below photo is floral tribute stand on the corner of square which the incident occurred.