Barack Obama press conference in Japan
Ｃomedy group “The News Paper” (seen earlier in this post) held a press conference in Tokyo following Barack Obama’s inauguration. The event featured impersonations of the Obamas, Taro Aso, Yasuo Fukuda, and Hu Jintao.
Here are two clips from Fuji TV / NTV coverage of the event:
In this clip, the Obama impersonator starts off his speech with a few well-known lines of Obama speeches, but he soon exhausts his English. Struggling to think of something to say, he stumbles and says “Remember Pearl Harbor.” He then asks if it’s okay to speak Japanese, getting some lulz out of the reporters.
After his speech, Taro Aso shows up wearing an Obama mask and declares that he has “changed.” In between a couple jokes about how he can’t read kanji, Aso offers Barack a choice between a box of Taro Aso manju and Ichiro Ozawa manju. Obama is not particularly fond of either, and picks a Junichiro Koizumi manju box instead.
The next clip also contains the limited English gag. When a reporter asks a question in Japanese, an interpreter puts it into English for Obama. Obama then answers the question in perfect Japanese.
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James, you were very clear in your other post that blackface was bad but you don’t say so here. Is that because you don’t think it is worth repeating or is it because you are less certain that this instance should be condemned?
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I’ve written so many posts about the issue in the past that I really don’t feel like boring readers with repetition. But if you bring up the last post, I suppose I’ll share my opinion about there being a significant difference between the kind of crude blackface we saw at Obama Onsen and this kind of Obama impersonator.
Obama Onsen’s guy just smears brown paint on his face to make himself a generic “black man,” attempting to imitate the race, not the individual. I imagine he would do the exact same thing if he wanted to impersonate any black person.
The News Paper guys often employ make-up in their impersonations of Japanese politicians, and in this case they seem to be trying to copy the actual appearance of Barack Obama as an individual. They’ve used make-up to alter his skin tone, but I wouldn’t exactly call it “blackface.” I can tolerate impressions like that. (I’m not really sure I can say the same about their Michelle Obama impression).
In both cases they are not trying to offend or be racist, they are just ignorant of the possible foreign reaction to their use of face paint. If you want to educate them, I’ve linked to their official site in the post. I am sure there is a contact e-mail listed.
Is there contact information for you, or any of the other people who run this site? It might be a browser problem I’m having, but whenever I click on the contact section, nothing turns up.
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Just checked and I see the contact form plugin isn’t quite working at the moment. Just updated the page. Thanks for letting me know!
Oh great! Thanks very much James, I see the information now. ^_^
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At least this guy sort of looks like President Obama.
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So many years studying English and this the best they can do….
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What if the Japanese don’t care if some foreigners in Japan do get offended or not? Foreigners are a very small minority in Japan after all.
Going back to the Carricature issue which happened in Denmark. Muslims demanded an apology from Denmark. They said to draw a picture of Allah was prohibited and the way they drew it was just unacceptable behaviour on the Danes. But the Danes never did apologize and said this was a freedom of expression. Basically the Danes said that they can draw the prophet in any way they please and there is nothing Muslims can do about it.
In any case. I do hope James or someone do get comments from Obama Onsen and others and if some do get a response I would very much like to read it on this nice blog. I did infact write a mail to Obama Onsen too.
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Are the Japanese more obsessed with Obama then us Americans??
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I agree with James on this. Putting on black make-up does not equal “blackface”. The old minstrel shows used blackface to portray some generic ‘negro’ who was inevitably a buffoon. When the context is very different from this it’s not “blackface”.
I also find it Ameri-centric to think (as has been suggested in related threads) that the rest of the world (including Japan) should naturally be aware of the minstrel show blackface tradition and its legacy, and that failure to do so is somehow tantamount to ignorance.
And of course it is always amusing to listen to white people tell non-whites how to be more racially sensitive and what they should or shouldn’t be offended by.
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