Word: japanned
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...elsewhere, Mr. James, dressed in his buttoned-up red polo shirt, tie and khakis, is seen as playing to Japan's xenophobic tendencies. Annoyed expats have described the character as "white, dorky" and speaking "mangled Japanese." The chair of the Foreign Residents and Naturalized Citizens' Association of Japan, Arudo Debito - a naturalized Japanese citizen born David Aldwinckle - has officially protested the Mr. James campaign with a letter to McDonald's Corp. headquarters in Illinois. Soon after the ads started to roll out, somebody set up an "I hate Mr. James" Facebook group, which now has 67 members...
...lice, please eato,' we'd have the same sort of antidefamation league speaking out and saying this is disparaging to Asians or Japanese," says Arudo. He says the campaign's portrayal of non-Japanese as "unquestioningly supportive and culturally ignorant" will only make life more difficult for foreigners in Japan. (Read about Japan and immigration...
...McDonald's Japan spokesman Junichi Kawaminami says there is no official response to criticism of the Mr. James campaign. He does, however, explain the story of the character, which appears in the first commercial. "Mr. James' daughter was determined to go to Japan and study, and so he looked at maps and got excited to go with her," says Kawaminami. "Once he found out that McDonald's was offering the Tamago Double Mac, it became the deciding factor." Why? It was on the McDonald's Japan menu years ago and became Mr. James' favorite when he was a student...
...unclean." If we're going to look at the clothing choices of fast-food icons, it seems fair to point out that Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders have been wearing their famous uniforms for half a century. There's no doubt that the spectacle of the foreigner in Japan is an everyday occurrence in media. A foreigner's response that he or she can use chopsticks or enjoys raw fish is met with smiles and amazement because - in some ways - affirmation of Japanese culture is stronger when it comes from outside, or is a non-Japanese perspective. But there...
...cute and unthreatening" American who eagerly returns to Japan with his daughter and is driven by a hunger to eat the same burger he ate in his youth - basically a double Big Mac with an egg on it - is as much an affirmation of Japanese food by McDonald's Japan as it is unbelievable and unrealistic as a narrative. That's why it's a commercial campaign. To protest Mr. James as a stereotype of a minority population in Japan because the Ohio native fails to speak or write Japanese fluently, dresses like a nerd and blogs about burgers only...