A Japanese rock band has pulled the music video for its new song “Columbus” after drawing flak for scenes that depicted Christopher Columbus with ape-like men.
The video shows three historical figures teaching the ape-like beings to do various things, like how to ride on horses and play musical instruments.
The video swiftly sparked a backlash after it was released on Wednesday - it was removed just a day later.
The band, Mrs Green Apple, apologised on Thursday, saying the video “contains expressions that lack understanding of historical and cultural backgrounds”.
Japan is still a fairly insular nation, especially in regards to the topic of history. During the Meiji restoration they basically rewrote their own history, which also kinda requires you to ignore or reshape everyone else’s history to suit your perspective. As a result, I doubt world history is very well covered in their public education.
I can understand the individuals not getting it.
But the fact that nobody at the production company has the role of checking off on whether a music video is likely to cause backlash is baffling.
Well, tbf they probably went to the same schools. It really is a problem that spans the width of the whole society. Even the universities promote historical revisionism, and will back out of international studies that end up not supporting their hypothesis.
I think a lot of people forget that unlike Germany, after world war two the social and military elite of Japan were not prosecuted or insulated from the controls of the new government. So while they adapted to a new economic and governmental hierarchy, the culture and societal mores remained largely unchanged. It’s fairly evident once you realize the majority of the heads of state since ww2 have been war criminals, or the children of war criminals.
I could also imagine the missionaries that were coming over described the American Indians in such a way and it just kinda went from there in collective memory.