Shibuya McDonalds Sets New Sales Record (Edit: We Love Mr James)

[IkemenTommy]

[omae mona]

[quote="james"]agreed]

I think the "in this case" part can't be emphasized enough. This is the first time in a while where Debito's outrage-of-the-week didn't make my eyeballs roll. I think he may have a point this time, and I think his campaign actually could accomplish something this time. The last time I thought Debito was onto something useful, it was when he got upset about the Gaijin Crime Files magazine a few years ago.

Like IkemenTommy, I wasn't terribly offended by the McDonald's campaign at first, but it started to bother me a bit, particularly after Debito summarized some of the problems in his letter.

[IkemenTommy]

Us gaijins in Japan usually don't have the knee-jerk reaction like other races in say... the US. This will not make the evening news but it has it's own merits.

I think this Mr. James Idiot is a sell-out for signing with McDipshits and getting himself into this.

[Mike Oxlong]

This probably speaks to how deeply dysfunctional I am, but these sorts of vids take the edge of gags like James-kun and his ilk...

[yt]NewqTCakQ3Q[/yt]

[Catoneinutica]

I was standing on the train during lunch and had to face a nasty "Mr. James" sticker on the door. I really can't imagine WTF is the thinking behind the ad campaign. Don't you want to associate your product with sexy, attractive images? ""Mr. James" is doughy and pale, like a fungus, or a genital wart. The greasy, special-ed-style hair completes the effect. If I'd been part of the test market for the campaign, I'd have written on the comment card: "mildewy socks."

-catone
-I wonder if "Mr. James" is a Canuck? Not that it matters, mind you...

[Mike Oxlong]

Did the genital warts give his nationality away?

[Taro Toporific]

I give Mr. James about a month before his holiday visa expires and he has to return to wherever he is from.

According to his blog, he lives in Tokyo with his daughter, Jennifer (after his wife ran off with 'Donald' McDonald)[url="http://so-net.web.transer.com/url_trans_sn.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmcdonalds.dtmp.jp%2Fblog%2F&eid=CR-JE]....


(machine translation makes it more believable)[/url]

[james]

that link seems to be dead, perhaps it doesn't allow direct hits?

[Taro Toporific]

that link seems to be dead, perhaps it doesn't allow direct hits?

[floatl][/floatl]
Sorry, the Mr. James blog offers it as "permanent link" but McDonalds chickened out when the Mr. James beef started.
Now they only allow a link to Mr. James' post via the top level of the blog unless you can find this URL to 2009.08.16, "[B]Show my house]" functions.

[Catoneinutica]

Okay, Ohio...that's almost Canada, isn't it AO?

@Taro: "the best death" - heh!

[Greji]

Okay, Ohio...that's almost Canada, isn't it AO?

@Taro: "the best death" - heh!

We people from the midwest have been trying to get Ohio moved to Canada, or failing that, Mexico.

The is a major movement that began when AO went home....

[Taro Toporific]

Has anybody seen the "anti-Mr. James group on Facebook"?

"....some foreigners in Japan upset about the ads, even going so far as to make an anti-Mr. James group on Facebook."

via J-List side blog:
Mr. James, the McDonald's Hawking Gaijin Parody

[FG Lurker]

I don't generally get too bent out of shape over shit like this but I really have to wonder...WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING!? Looks like McShits only hires the best. Stupid fuckers.

[IkemenTommy]

I don't generally get too bent out of shape over shit like this but I really have to wonder...WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING!? Looks like McShits only hires the best. Stupid fuckers.

You really ought to think that the McTurds hire new college grad butt-monkeys with no sense of imagination or any sort of innovation for their PR and Advertising staff.

[Mulboyne]

Huffington Post bloggers call out Debito. This piece originally appeared on the Disgrasian site

Huffington Post: In McDonald's New Japanese Ad Campaign, The Wacky Foreigner Joke's on Americans
Put on your glasses or pop in your contacts and get a good look at the picture below, because this is what karma looks like:



Meet "Mr. James," new face of a McDonald's ad campaign in Japan. Mr. James is a Wacky Foreigner in Japan who speaks broken Japanese, wears the archetypal nerd uniform of glasses, a short-sleeved shirt with a tie, and ill-fitting khaki pants, has bad teeth, and--we're only guessing here--is probably someone who's never gotten laid. Sound familiar?



Oh right. Usually THAT GUY has slanty-eyes.

Interestingly, there are some foreigners and non-natives in Japan riled up about this humiliating depiction of themselves, going so far as to compare Mr. James to Stepin Fetchit. Because there aren't enough positive depictions of beautiful and sophisticated foreigners selling things to the Japanese, apparently. Arudou Debito, née David Aldwinckle, an American who's become a naturalized Japanese citizen, writes:

"I think a strongly-worded letter from registered NPO FRANCA to McDonald's USA HQ regarding the issues of stereotyping here would be warranted. Hell, you think McD USA would start putting up a full-body "ching-chong-chinaman" with funny glasses and protruding teeth, saying 'Me likee McFlied Lice.' You think that would fly over there? If not, it shouldn't be allowed over here."

Guess he hasn't seen this Six Flags commercial, which began running last year, or this KFC commercial for their new Grilled Chicken, which has been running all summer.

Karma's one wacky bitch, isn't it?

[Taro Toporific]

Huffington Post bloggers call out Debito. This piece originally appeared on the Disgrasian site

In defense of Debito( ), he closed off discussion when the HuffPost article was picked up by the 2-Ch crazies and his site's bandwidth was hammered with more hits than he could afford (like the FG's Janet Jackson Titty Catastrophe).

However, poor Debito has had two major stumbles in the past 30 days: Mr. James and the seeming fake 74-year-old American tourist 'jailed' for a swiss Army knife.
Notice how the both the Japan Times and Debito did not have any follow up or retraction on the 74-year-old American tourist story.

[Kuang_Grade]

One of the variants of the US KFC commercial in question
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Although it is worth noting that they are only a part of a multi-racial cast in the commercial....although their behavior is a bit odd (nor are most US folks going to clue in on that they are sushi chefs). The guy from heroes is a bit dorky, but there other dorks in the show, and future hiro was a badass with scar. I don't know about the asian six flags guy, since they only run ads with a super, super creepy old guy with slightly molten looking ski in my market area
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And the other guy is the J host of ABC's TV 'I survived a Japanese Game Show'

[Greji]

However, poor Debito has had two major stumbles in the past 30 days: Mr. James and the seeming fake 74-year-old American tourist 'jailed' for a swiss Army knife.
Notice how the both the Japan Times and Debito did not have any follow up or retraction on the 74-year-old American tourist story.

James aside, Debito did post a disclaimer on the tourist swiss kniver and state the guy who was the source of that article and Debito's web blog posting, was acting strange and the incident could not be verified in that detail. He called the source flakey and apologized for not further checking out the story before going with it.

[IkemenTommy]

[pheyton]

Meet "Mr. James," new face of a McDonald's ad campaign in Japan. Mr. James is a Wacky Foreigner in Japan who speaks broken Japanese, wears the archetypal nerd uniform of glasses, a short-sleeved shirt with a tie, and ill-fitting khaki pants, has bad teeth, and--we're only guessing here--is probably someone who's never gotten laid. Sound familiar?

Well at least we know they're making fun of the Britts for a change.

[Mulboyne]

[hundefar]

[Taro Toporific]

[floatr][/floatr]Today on the official blog of Mr. James, MacDs is asking for Mr. James look-a-likes!

2009.08.26 --
[SIZE="4"]Do you look just like it?
[/SIZE]
...It is to have found Homo sapiens looking just like me!
Do you look just like me? ?...

[Doctor Stop]

2) The character is called "Mr. James" (again, in katakana), promoting the stereotype that foreigners must be called by their first names only (standard Japanese etiquette demands that adults be called "last name plus -san"), undoing progress we have made for equal treatment under Japanese societal rules.

James is a common surname.

[Mulboyne]

James is a common surname.

I've always wondered why Debito himself is happy to go by his first name when he's quoted in the press. His family name Arudou would be more formal. Perhaps he isn't happy but can't change it now that he has debito.org as his website and hardly anyone uses Arudou.

[IkemenTommy]

Good point, Mulb.

[Mike Oxlong]

Maybe Mr. James is a super-freak!

[Mulboyne]

SF Gate: McRacism in Japan?

The blogosphere has been aflame over the last month as a group of marginalized and disenfranchised (and mostly Caucasian) individuals have fought back against a juggernaut that has, in their eyes, compromised their personal rights and cast aspersions upon them. No, I'm not talking about health care reform protestors or tea party organizers. These angry activists are in Japan, not the U.S. -- and the monolith they're fighting against isn't the federal government, but an entity whose worldwide influence is possibly even more potent: Global burgermeister McDonald's. Last month, Mickey D's began an advertising campaign for four new Japan-only burgers it dubbed the "Nippon All-Stars." These include the "Tamago Double Mac" (two all-beef patties, bacon, mushrooms, a fried egg and instant cardiac arrest), the "Tsukimi Burger" (a one-story version of the Tamago), the Chicken Tatsuya (battered chicken sandwich, heavy on the mayo) and the Gracoro (a cheesy, saucy deep-fried croquette on a bun). But it's not the taste or the health implications of the sandwiches that has led to this backlash -- it's the marketing.

That's because the national face of the Nippon All-Stars campaign is a happy, dorky, bespectacled white tourist named "Mr. James." Clad in regulation nerd uniform -- red short-sleeved shirt, mismatched tie, rumpled khakis and a permanently stunned expression -- Mr. James shouts about the deliciousness of the burgers in broken Japanese on commercials that have saturated TV, the Internet and print publications. "What's the matter [with this depiction]? Put the shoe on the other foot," wrote foreigner-rights advocate Debito Arudou (nee David Ardwinckle) in a column for The Japan Times. "Imagine McDonald's, a multinational that has long promoted cultural diversity, launching a McAsia menu in America, featuring a deep-bowing, grimacing Asian in a bathrobe and platform sandals saying, 'Me likee McFlied Lice!' or, 'So solly, prease skosh honorable teriyaki sandrich?'"

McHatin' It

Of course, in the past, McDonald's has essentially done just that. During last year's Olympics, it unveiled a commercial featuring two Chinese kids engaged in high-flying wire-fu combat in an ancient temple, dueling it out with fists and feet and chopsticks over the last McNugget in the pack. Seeing that ad brought back memories of McDonald's limited-edition "Shanghai" Chicken McNuggets, which briefly appeared on menus back in 1986. Served in a red takeout box stamped with cartoon-Chinese lettering, they came with a fortune cookie, chopsticks and three absurdly non-Shanghainese dippings: "duck sauce," hot mustard and ... teriyaki sauce. Worst of all, to complete the pseudo-Sino experience, the chain's employees were forced to wear conical McCoolie hats -- a bit of irony given their minimum-wage status -- while commercials ended with mascot-clown Ronald McDonald throwing a karate chop to faux Asian music.

Lame, ignorant campaigns like this one may seem innocuous. But they give people license to mock and exclude people based on racial or cultural difference, which in turn can lead down a slippery slope to more troubling outcomes. (My own private Shanghai McNugget trauma came when I found myself pelted with them by a bunch of leering, gibberish-spouting fellow high schoolers while quietly eating a non-oriental menu item. Although I wouldn't exactly assign the experience hate crime status, the pointier, vaguely Indiana-shaped nuggets could have put an eye out, and had things gone McBad escalation might have led to my getting a Quarter Pounding -- or even a full-on Big Mac Attack.)

Given that, two decades later, offensive images of Asians are still common in American media, it's understandable that some Asian Americans have reacted to the outcry against the Mr. James campaign with "turnabout is fair play" schaudenfreude rather than sympathy. I'll admit that my own initial reaction wasn't far from that of the authors of the blog Disgrasian, whose gleeful post included the line "karma is a b*tch." But upon further reflection, it's not clear how the depiction of white stereotypes in Japan is appropriate payback for media abuses against Asians in the U.S. Besides, asks James S., founder and editor-in-chief of the popular Japan-based blog Japan Probe, "Are we in some kind of race to win last place in the stereotyping Olympics? Foreign residents in Japan shouldn't be held accountable for bad things other people in their country of origin are doing. Arguing about which countries have worse stereotyping accomplishes nothing."

(Continued in next post)

[Mulboyne]

(Continued)

Here and There

Even if who-has-it-worse debates are unproductive, as James S. suggests, a comparison of cultural landscapes is an illuminating way of providing context around our own experiences. America's diversity of race, origin and belief, and the standards that protect us against discrimination via those categories, are unique among nations. They're at the core of our democracy, and they're the foundation of our national identity. Japan, meanwhile, is a largely homogenous society with certain factors that have contributed to a very strong "insider-outsider" sensibility. "There's undoubtedly a strong distinction between Japanese and non-Japanese in Japan, largely due to Japan's history of isolation, its island geography, and the population itself, which is largely Japanese," says Gen Kanai, a veteran blogger who writes about Japanese cultural and technological trends. "These aren't factors that can or will change quickly, so I believe this distinction will stay with Japan for the foreseeable future."

The insider-outsider distinction is integrated into Japan's very language, as Kanai points out. "In Japanese, all non-Japanese words are put into their own writing system, katakana," he says. "And the adjectives gai -- outside -- and nai -- inside -- are often used to indicate whether an idea or product is from Japan, or from elsewhere." Or, for that matter, a person: The term "gaijin," a casual shortening of the more formal "gaikokujin," is Japan's default expression for foreigner -- to the dismay of activists like Debito Arudou, who has publicly argued that gaijin is as offensive a term for non-Japanese as "n*gger" is for blacks. Debito's point is that the term reinforces a dismissive, permanent "alien" status that allows foreigners to be offhandedly discriminated against, by both institutions and individuals.

"Gaijin is not a nice word, and I have not modified my opinion that it is akin to 'n*gger' in application," says Debito. "Is that stance confrontational? That's a matter of opinion, but people are debating the issues and that's what matters in the end." Debito has spent much of the quarter-century he's lived in Japan pushing for such reactions. His most famous campaign remains his 2001 lawsuit against a hot spring resort in the small village of Otaru, which displayed a "JAPANESE ONLY" sign at its entrance; the resort's operators indicated that the policy against non-Japanese guests was due to previous problems with "drunken Russian sailors." Debito and two co-plaintiffs won their anti-discrimination suit, each receiving $25,000 in damages.

His latest cause has been challenging the "gaijin cards" that foreigners in Japan must keep with them at all times, noting that the IC chips within the cards could be used to track non-Japanese "like the aliens in 'Aliens 2.'" (He acknowledges that there's a "tinfoil hat" aspect to his concerns, but as with most of his causes, he believes that doing something is always better than doing nothing.) These flamboyant initiatives and contentious pronouncements in the pages of The Japan Times have not won him unalloyed support even among his fellow expatriates.

"I can't really say I agree with the causes Debito chooses or many of the tactics he uses," says Japan Probe's James S. "His methods lead to the lumping of all foreign residents together, creating an 'us versus them' mentality for the Japanese. I think that any approach to fighting discriminatory practices needs to include the Japanese in the movement." As sympathetic as James S. is to Debito's fight to win open access to hot springs resorts, he points to more serious concerns foreign residents in Japan face, such as housing discrimination. "It is common for landlords to absolutely refuse to rent apartments or houses to foreigners, regardless of employment status, language ability, or type of visa," he says. "It is not a fun to have a real estate agent tell you that he or she must phone a landlord to 'check if gaijin are okay' before you can view an apartment."

That's a situation that might shock Americans, who've grown up with the expectation that all residents of our country have equal protection under law. And though it's not always easy, much less automatic, anyone can become an American citizen, and once you're a citizen, you're an American, period. At least, officially. One of the things that's troubling about the state of political discourse in this country is that Americanness has become less and less absolute. Politicians of both parties, but especially the Right, have taken to reflexively invoking the concept of "real" Americans, with a greater degree of realness ascribed to those upholding their standards of religion (Christianity), residency (rural and smalltown Midwest and South), place of birth (the mainland U.S.), and class (blue-collar and working class). It's a terrible trend, and its consequences are toxic.

Japan, driven by demographic imperatives, is slowly lowering its "outsider/insider" firewall. As its society ages and fewer children are born -- Japan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world -- welcoming foreigners in may be critical to maintaining a productive society. And with newly elected Yukio Hatayama poised to become the first Prime Minister from the reformist Democratic Party of Japan, which won a shocking landslide victory this week to break the conservative Liberal Democratic Party's decades-long stranglehold on power -- it's thought that the new regime might be open to revisiting of Japan's absurdly restrictive immigration policies. "I'm hopeful for the future," says James S. "I think that Japan will gradually become more open and diverse."

Meanwhile, America seems headed in the opposite direction, with backlashes against immigrants, a return to isolationism and even questions about the legitimacy and birth status of the President becoming surprisingly mainstream. Red-meat issues for some -- but for the idea of America, a recipe for disaster.

[IkemenTommy]

SF Gate: McRacism in Japan?


(Continued in next post)

Homo SFgate Mother Fuckers failed to mention FG. What a bag of shit.