So, there’s been this disheartening ad campaign in Japan, that I won’t link to. Suffice to say that it used a long-standing ’spokesthing’, a monkey, in an ad touting “Change”. The monkey is dressed in a suit, making a ’speech’, in the midst of supporters. Was it a deliberate parody of Sen. Obama? I’m not sure that I believe the intent was racist, but the result was disturbing. I thought at first that it was a parody of the popular show about the travails of a young Japanese prime minister, played by one of those SMAP people. But, whether it was or not, whether the company meant the campaign to be racist or not, it’s at very least an insensitive piece that needed to be pulled (and actually shouldn’t have run in the first place).

A well-known performing artist here, Ms. Brenda Vaughn used her press contacts to call attention to the campaign, and excellent online resource Black Tokyo lit a fire under this, and helped lead to mainstream Western media coverage. Many thanks to them both, and all who spoke out and wrote letters on this issue.