WIT Life #37: Creative Commercialization
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WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03). Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observat
Since the recent shattering of the boy band’s SMAP’s clean-cut image with the arrest of member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (34) on public indecency charges, the fallout has been pretty well contained. Kusanagi held a press conference on the 25th to apologize, and his agency has suspended all his activities indefinitely and declared a ban on alcohol for him. Apparently the famous Johnny’s jimusho is advising all of its high-profile clients to be mindful of their celebrity status when they are out for a night on the town and drinking is involved. SMAP fans are worried that Kusanagi’s escapade could lead to a dissolving of the group, but the agency assures otherwise. In light of the fact that another SMAP member, Goro Inagaki (35) was arrested in 2001 on charges of obstructing policemen from performing their duty, chances are they will bounce back from this one as well.
In an interesting twist on the situation, Kusanagi’s quote from right before he was arrested of “What’s wrong with being naked?” has become the go-to phrase marking this whole debacle. An enterprising t-shirt company called Club T (http://clubt.jp/) has taken advantage of this memorable soundbite for its own financial gain. It made a shirt with Kusanagi’s quote and a stamp with the second character of his last name, and was flooded with orders when it came out on the 23rd. Club T has sold at least 11,000 shirts in the several days since, surpassing the previous record-holder, a shirt with former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s uncharacteristic quote of “I’m different from you” bearing the man’s cartoon image. Another politically themed big seller was Obama’s YES WE CAN shirt, of which 5000 have sold.
Communications Minister Kunio Hatoyama, whose ministry had featured Kusanagi in its campaign to promote the 2011 start of nationwide terrestrial digital broadcasting, has officially had him removed and replaced with a character called “Chi Dejika” (a combination of the Japanese for “terrestrial digital” and “deer”). He made his debut on Monday flanked by female announcers, and as reported in Japan Probe, “The government hopes that the mascot will live a life free of drunken nudity.”
Source: Daily Sun Japanese newspaper (April 28, 2009)
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