It was 1982 when Woody Allen, who would not have been caught dead, as they say, at the Oscars or even on TV, agreed to do a commercial for Japanese television.



The Spartan and reasonably dignified print and television campaign was for Seibu, one of Japan's largest and best known department stores. It simply showed Allen holding up a small sign with these two Japanese words: "Oishii Seikatsu" - literally "Delectable Life". In a way, it was very "Woody", and the comic and writer should surely have had no regrets about it. Nevertheless, the sponsor agreed that the ads would never appear outside Japan.

Since then hundreds of Western stars have appeared in Japanese TV spots. Japanese advertising has a specific style and idiom all its own, and even the most stellar Hollywood luminaries easily defer to the demands of their hosts.

The performers seem more not to care than not to know that they frequently look and sound a mite foolish. You see, Japanese society puts huge stock in its advertising, and like most things public and private in Japan there is a sense of ceremony about it. So foreigners have to look like foreigners to the average Japanese viewer. When they are asked to pronounce a few words in Japanese, the more off-kilter the reading, the greater the charm.

The English they are given to read must sound right to the director, who likely doesn't understand a word of it. It simply has to have the mouthy drawl that Japanese people associate with English (the phrase "mouthy drawl" sounds perfectly American to a Japanese ear). As a result the line readings often sound, to a native speaker of English, incredibly sloppy and amateurish. This writer's first exposure to the foreign presence in Japanese ads was hearing the unmistakable sexagenarian brogue of Sean Connery snarling "My arm will eat your hand...". The line, I later found out, was "My heart, with Ito Ham." (Sylvester Stallone eventually assumed the mantle as pork product spokesperson, giving greater faith, no doubt, to those with belief in a higher power.)

Testosterone levels score well in this arena,

with plum endorsements over the past several years having gone to Arnold, Sylvester, Sean, Jean-Claude, Christian, Kevin, Charlie and Mickey (Rourke. Mouse has also been a perennial favorite, but mostly with the kids). On the other hand there are actors such as Harrison Ford and Whoopi Goldberg, whose performances project a genuine warmth and humanity. Ford even reprises his "put-upon man" persona to portray a lowly office worker in a recent series for Kirin Lager beer.

At the same time, the Japanese ad industry is an elephant graveyard for many a once-promising starlet. Diane Lane and Jennifer Connelly remained the best-known American faces in Japan throughout the long period of fallowness that followed their youthful debuts — a time when they couldn't, in the parlance, get arrested in Hollywood. The Japanese audience is remarkably undemanding in this regard. These are icons, with the power to defy the ravages of diminished fame.

What follows is a sampling of television, recorded casually off the air in Japan, as well as print ads and product labeling right off the shelves. We want to emphasize that these images may not be reproduced or reused for any purpose other than strictly educational, and that we are not promoting any products or companies. We merely offer them as another illuminating aspect of the complex and powerful Japanese advertising industry.




Sadly, the clips can no longer be downloaded
from the original site.