YOKOHAMA ¨C On Sept. 22, as tennis great Naomi Osaka was delighting fans with her victory at the Pan Pacific Open in Osaka, a two-woman comedy act called A Masso was performing at an event in which they made racialized jokes about the athlete¡¯s skin color. The duo¡¯s jokes suggested Osaka¡¯s naturally brown skin needed ¡°bleaching¡± and was the result of being ¡°too sunburned.¡±
In the wake of some apparently unexpected criticism of their remarks, the comedians, Aiko Kano and Ai Murakami, and their management company, Watanabe Entertainment, issued apologies two days later for making ¡°inappropriate, hurtful remarks.¡± Good for them. And on Sept. 29, Osaka tweeted a response to the joke that deftly plugged one of her sponsors: ¡°Little did they know, with Shiseido anessa perfect uv sunscreen I never get sunburned,¡± she wrote. Game, set, match!
When I first got wind of this story, I actually felt optimistic about the outcome. That¡¯s because, unlike earlier in the year when noodle company Nissin found itself in hot water for ¡°whitewashing¡± Osaka in an animated ad campaign ¡ª a problem that had to be brought to the company¡¯s attention by non-Japanese people (yours truly among them) ¡ª this time around the initial outcry against A Masso¡¯s set came from Japanese participants at the event where the performance took place. To me, that felt like progress. I¡¯m a firm believer that the only way this country will solve its diversity and discrimination issues is if the Japanese people themselves ¡ª not the minority non-Japanese population ¡ª come to understand how these kinds of things can be detrimental to societal progress and harmful to Japan¡¯s image abroad.
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