I really did not want to write about this; however, it happened and has to be reported.
On November 1 Morning Musume members Kamei Eri, Tanaka Reina, and Michishige Sayumi made some blog posts that created an international scandal. The blog post featured the three mimicking the eyes of Koreans .At first thought based on the original blog posts they were not trying to make fun of Koreans only in some very wrong way trying to pretend to ,well on second thought I am not going to say that , the photos were very wrong and showed a lack of maturity and cultural understanding , regardless of their harmless reasons for posting them.
The effects were immediate and wide spread ,not only did it make news in Japan ,it made news in Korea and Taiwan.
Morning Musume quickly went from the cute fun loving idol group , to being viewed as racist and with Eri saying in the post "This is my impression of Koreans" started a fire storm of anger among not only Koreans , but Chinese and Japanese fans and non fans .
It was a complete lack of maturity on their part and their agency to allow the members to post photos of them doing a 'slant eye' gesture .
This is not the first time H!P have slipped up ,remember in their 4 minute TV show when a not so respected world figure was used in a segment .
I have seen several Western based fan boards with comments saying ,"what is the big deal" , "hey any publicity is good publicity" ,in this case that is not true . For a group looking to expand across Asia ,this was by far the stupidest thing they could have allowed to happen.
Yet it is something they can make right and recover and move forward through. After the photos attracted the attention of news outlets , H!P management removed the photos from the blogs and a few hours ago both Sayu and Reina made formal apologies through their blogs . Sayu`s apology only briefly touched on the subject , mostly she talked about her feelings of not getting to blog and letting her fans down.
Reina was well Reina ,Reina wrote the following “At the time I put an inappropriate expression in my blog, it made people uncomfortable, and that is inexcusable. From now on I will not make such entries. Thank you for your support.”
Management also offered apologies to put this event to rest .
There was reports that the members involved would not be allowed to post for a while ,they did not for a couple of days . If that is the punishment handed down ,that may not be enough to calm some anti feelings ,when other agencies have been known to suspend blog privileges for a year for talent mistakes.
This is not a one year type punishment ,but an in -house punishment will come and both will grow from this . It is unfortunate that this episode happened to Morning Musume, when looking at the bigger picture ,they made a mistake based on poor judgment and each will grow into better idols from this.
Hold you head up Morning Musume and supporters as they move forward from this unfortunate mistake .
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I thought it was dumb. Specially when they are Asian and have slant eyes themselves.
ReplyDeleteI think they were just being anti-kpop in Japan.
@lebird
ReplyDeleteSome japanese people are anti korean especially against kim yuna. I don't know why though... Anyway it looks like more reports are saying that they were just fooling around but although im a fan of theirs, they should know what they can or can't post. seriously it was a FAIL for sayumi and reina for posting it.