Japanese company pulls ads featuring blue-eyed, big-nosed foreigners

Photo via Japan Probe

Japanese distiller Choya has pulled a TV advertisement for its Kokuto Umeshu in which a Japanese woman "transforms" into a foreigner by growing a giant nose.  After the ad was featured on Japan Probe some readers of the blog complained.

Those who complained in English received a letter stating:

"The product in the commercial is Kokuto Umeshu, a major characteristic of which is its smooth and velvety texture, or 'torori' in Japanese. To communicate this to the public, we had the idea of making a play on words of calling someone who likes this 'torori' a 'tororisuki (torori lover)', and suggesting that you will gain like-minded . . . (friends) by drinking the product. Because of the sound of the word 'tororisuki', we introduced the word as a foreign character, and thought up the story of three female Japanese friends drinking Kokuto Umeshu and becoming 'tororisuki friends', and therefore foreigners, themselves. The first two characters do transform into 'tororisuki', but in the performance of the commercial, the third character failed to turn into a tororisuki. Instead, her theatrically oversized 'blue eyes' and 'eminent nose' illustrate that she has not been able to become a tororisuki. In other words, the theatrical 'blue eyes' and 'eminent nose' represent that she has failed to turn into a tororisuki and are not an attempt to portray an actual foreigner. It is certainly not a case of making fun of any particular country, race or person.

Watch the original video below:


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