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Aug 24 2008 5 Comments

Sumo insensitivity?

Having just returned from my summer hiatus in the homeland, it’s rather surprising to find that an admittedly not particularly good but fairly prominent poster campaign by HSBC, is bothering some of the more sensitive members of Britain’s Japanese community.

HSBC sumo

A problem that has even prompted Godfrey King, director of the Anglo-Japanese Society of Wessex, to provisionally peek out from his posterior and claim that the ad has, “Insulted the honour of a nation. The fact that the picture depicts a sumo wrestler who is not actually a sumo wrestler but has been made up to look like one would be considered a high insult to the Japanese community.”

A comment that it has to be said could well be seen as somewhat on the sensitive side.

Japanese foreigner

Happen even hypocritical.

Japanese blu-ray

Categorized: Culture, Sports

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. feitclub says

    8/24/2008 at 5:41 pm

    “Would be” offensive or “actually is” offensive? That might not be an actual wrestler (although for all I know, it is some amateur) but it looks reasonably like one. There’s no apparent mocking or disrespect shown in the image. Even if that’s not a Japanese man, at this point the number of non-Japanese wrestlers is significant, so that’s a non-issue. I can’t believe anyone would be offended by this.

    Reply
  2. Neil Duckett says

    8/24/2008 at 6:25 pm

    People with too much time on their hands banging on about stuff for the sake of it.

    Welcome back anyway Lee, i hope the trip to the mother land was all you hoped.

    Reply
  3. uktokyoite says

    8/24/2008 at 8:19 pm

    It would have to be Britain! So politically correct that they’ve over-corrected and no-one has a clue anymore about such things as humor etc. Whatever happened to some good old common sense!

    Reply
  4. Lee says

    8/24/2008 at 8:34 pm

    I know, I totally agree. There’s one of these billboards near my parents place, and while it may not be an especially convincing sumo wrestler (if indeed it is meant to be), it’s far from offensive in my opinion. And certainly not an insult to the honour of the Japanese nation!

    Thanks Neil! Yeah, it was good to go back again and meet up with my family and friends. The only downside being the weather was especially ‘British’….

    Reply
  5. an englishman in osaka says

    8/25/2008 at 1:52 am

    Well, it’s hard to take Godfrey’s comments seriously when he’s a member of a ‘Wessex’ society, a place which ceased to exist about a thousand years ago. Then again, I just watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics and was outraged by the horrendous paper-mache attempt they made of David Beckham atop a plastic fake not-at-all-genuine double-decker bus. CGI I guess….

    Reply

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