Choya Pulls Giant Gaijin Nose Commercial After Receiving Complaints
A couple days ago, I blogged about a Choya Umeshu commercial that put a giant fake nose on a Japanese woman (similar the Hello Gaijin-san nose). Some readers of this site followed the links to Choya’s homepage and used their contact form to complain about the commercial, and the company has read those comments. The commercial is now dead!
Here is a copy of the reply that Choya sent to people who contacted them in English:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you very much for sharing your views with us. We sincerely apologize
for any discomfort about our television commercial that you had.Please allow us to explain in more detail the scene in question.
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 “tororisuki no hito” (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.However, we do take your comment very seriously, and after internal
deliberations the company has decided to change the commercial. We ask for
your kind understanding.Choya Umeshu strives to delight our customers with our products, and we are
making every effort to ensure our advertising and marketing delight as well.Best regards,
Masa Kondo
CHOYA
And here is their Japanese message, which says something similar:
こんにちは、チョーヤ梅酒ホームページです。
この度のメールとご指摘、有難うございました。
ブログ拝見させていただきました。
ＣＭの演出上の表現でございまして、決して海外の方や特定の国、
人種を揶揄したり差別するものでは無いのですが、ご意見、ご指摘を
真摯に受け止め、社内で検討の上、ＣＭの作り変えも考えたいと思って
おります。この度のご指摘本当に有難うございました。
弊社と致しましてもこれからも皆様に喜んでいただける製品造りはもちろんのこと、
広告制作におきましてもより喜んでいただけるよう努力する所在でございます。
今後ともご指導ご鞭撻の程賜りますよう宜しくお願い申し上げます。
A quick check of the CM archive section of Choya’s site shows that the commercial is question [とろける黒糖梅酒 トロリスキー友達篇] has been completed deleted. The same product now has a new “tororisuki” commercial that does not use rubber noses.
[hat tip to Joseph Tame and odriew]
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