ASIA / PACIFIC
February 4, 2019
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 5
Nissin takes down ad after complaints on Osaka’s depiction
WHITEWASHED AD. Customers at a restaurant
in Tokyo watch the television monitor at the end of the
Australian Open women’s tennis final between Naomi
Osaka of Japan and Petra Kvitova of the Czech Repub-
lic. Osaka won the match. One of the tennis star’s
main sponsors has taken down an online ad campaign
that depicts her with pale skin after it was criticized as
insensitive. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
By Yuri Kageyama
AP Business Writer
OKYO — One of Japanese tennis
star Naomi Osaka’s main sponsors
has taken down an online ad
campaign that depicts her with pale skin
after it was criticized as insensitive.
Daisuke Okabayashi, a spokesman for
Japanese noodle-maker Nissin Foods
Holdings, said two animation clips that
went up in January were deleted from the
company’s online site.
“We as a company put human rights
first, and our stance of valuing diversity is
unchanged,” he said in a telephone
interview. “Whitewashing has never been
our intention.”
The clips showed a light-skinned,
doe-eyed woman in the trademark style of
Japanese manga, or comics. Critics said
the depiction does not reflect Osaka’s
biracial background — Osaka has a
Haitian father and Japanese mother.
Okabayashi said the ads were approved
by Osaka’s agent, but the company was
later asked to take them down. He said the
company continues to support Osaka and
did not want the flap to be a distraction.
Nissin became Osaka’s corporate
T
sponsor in November 2016, joining a list of
companies such as Nissan Motor Co. and
the watch brand Citizen hoping to cash in
on a level of stardom that’s rare among
Japanese athletes.
Osaka’s appeal has been growing in
Japan since she beat Serena Williams in
last year’s U.S. Open. She had been
topping daily news coverage during the
Australian Open, which she won.
China population rises 15.23
million in 2018, but rate slows
BEIJING
(AP)
—
China’s population rose by
15.23 million people in
2018, marking a continued
decrease in the growth rate
of
the
world’s
most
populous nation.
Numbers released by the
National
Bureau
of
Statistics
put
the
population at 1.395 billion
in 2018, marking a growth
rate of 3.81 percent over
the previous year.
The total included 30
million more men than
women, considered a long-
time outcome of the re-
cently abandoned one-child
policy under which boys
were favored over girls for
cultural reasons.
The government esti-
mates China’s population
will peak at 1.442 billion in
2029 before beginning to
decline the year after.
India,
the
world’s
second-most
populous
nation, has also been
experiencing
slower
population growth. Its total
population stood at 1.362
billion in January based on
United Nations estimates.
China added more than
17 million people to its
population in 2016 and
2017
following
the
scrapping of the one-child
policy, but the effect hasn’t
endured.
Care for the elderly is a
rising government concern
as the working-age popula-
tion continues to fall as a
percentage of the total.
Chinese
increasingly
enjoy better living stan-
dards,
education,
and
healthcare, but a yawning
gap between the wealthy
and poor has experts say-
ing the country will grow
old before it grows rich.
The government also
announced China’s 2018
economic growth fell to a
three-decade low, adding to
pressure on Beijing to
settle a tariff war with
Washington.
The world’s second-
largest economy expanded
by 6.6 percent over a year
earlier, down from 2017’s
6.9 percent, official data
showed.
China’s ruling Commu-
nist Party is trying to steer
China to slower, more self-
sustaining growth based on
consumer spending instead
of trade and investment.
But the deceleration has
been sharper than ex-
pected, prompting Beijing
to step up government
spending and order banks
to lend more to shore up
growth and avoid politi-
cally dangerous job losses.
This is not the first time Japan has been
criticized for insensitivity to diversity
issues, including race, nationality, gender,
and sexual orientation. Osaka’s visibility
and natural charm are seen as
contributions to Japan’s acceptance of
racial and other differences.
Baye McNeil, an American who has
lived in Japan for more than a decade, said
Japanese are often not aware of what may
Chinese model in derided
Dolce & Gabbana
advertisements apologizes
BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese model in
widely derided advertisements for
Italian fashion line Dolce & Gabbana has
apologized for her appearance in the
campaign.
Zuo Ye said on her Weibo microblog
that as a recent college graduate, she
hadn’t had time to consider the effect of
the ads, in which she was filmed trying to
eat pizza, spaghetti, and a giant version
of a cannoli pastry using chopsticks.
“I will grow from this experience and
will better display the character of a
Chinese citizen,” Zuo wrote in the post.
Following the criticism of the ads, the
Milan designers cancelled a Shanghai
runway show last year meant as a tribute
to China, as their guest list of Asian
celebrities joined protests.
Many Chinese social media users
called the advertisements racist and
based on outdated stereotypes.
upset a global audience. His commentary
in
The
Japan
Times,
a
local
English-language daily, was among the
first to express outrage over the Nissin ad.
“She looks totally like a white woman in
the ad,” said McNeil, who writes and
lectures about the problem of race in
Japan. “It was very whitewashed.”
Japanese companies need to take skin
color seriously and become more inclusive
if they hope to appeal to a global market,
he added.
“They are not thinking on that level,”
McNeil said. “It may be painful, but Japan
is going through growing pains right now.”
Nissin’s ad was based on a manga and
animation series called The Prince of
Tennis, created by artist Takeshi Konomi.
The ad showed characters from the work
and also characters meant to depict Osaka
and male Japanese tennis star Kei
Nishikori playing on a court.
China plans major cut in number of Everest climbers
BEIJING (AP) — China will cut
the number of climbers attempting
to scale Mount Everest from the
north by one-third this year as part
of plans for a major cleanup on the
world’s highest peak, according to
state media.
The total number of climbers
seeking to summit the world’s
highest peak at 29,035 feet from the
north will be limited to less than
300 and the climbing season
restricted to spring, the reports
said.
The cleanup efforts will include
the recovery of the bodies of
climbers who died at more than
26,246 feet up the mountain, they
said.
Parts of Everest are in China and
Nepal. Each year, about 60,000
climbers and guides visit the
Chinese north side of the mountain,
which China refers to by its Tibetan
name, Mount Qomolangma.
China has set up stations to sort,
recycle, and break down garbage
from the mountain, which includes
cans, plastic bags, stove equipment,
tents, and oxygen tanks.
On the Nepalese side, moun-
taineering expedition organizers
have begun sending huge trash
bags with climbers during the
spring climbing season to collect
trash that then can be winched by
helicopters back to the base camp.
Everest claims multiple victims
each year, often in the “death zone”
above 26,246 feet, where the air is
too thin to sustain human life.
In 2017, 648 people summited
Everest, including 202 from the
north side, according to the
nonprofit Himalayan Database. Six
people were confirmed to have died
on the mountain that year, one of
them on the north side.
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