{"id":5485,"date":"2009-04-28T19:38:34","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T19:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=5485"},"modified":"2009-05-20T10:36:05","modified_gmt":"2009-05-20T14:36:05","slug":"witlife-36-creative-commercialization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2009\/04\/28\/witlife-36-creative-commercialization\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #37: Creative Commercialization"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WITLife<\/a> <\/strong>is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith<\/a><\/strong> (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together w<\/em>ith her own observat<\/em>\"\"ions.
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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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Apparently the famous Johnny’s jimusho<\/em> 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.\u00a0 SMAP fans are worried that Kusanagi’s escapade could lead to a dissolving of the group, but the agency assures otherwise.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 An enterprising t-shirt company called Club T (http:\/\/clubt.jp\/<\/a>) has taken advantage of this memorable soundbite for its own financial gain.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Another politically themed big seller was Obama’s YES WE CAN shirt, of which 5000 have sold.<\/p>\n

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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”).\u00a0 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.”<\/p>\n

Source: Daily Sun Japanese newspaper (April 28, 2009)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*************************************************** WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter\/Translator\/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).\u00a0 Recently she\u2019s been watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Since the recent shattering of the boy band’s SMAP’s clean-cut image with the arrest of member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (34) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,7,40,26,30,15,3,18,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articlejournalism","category-blogs","category-books","category-celebrity","category-japan-trends","category-jetaa-chapters","category-jobs","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t