J-pop act Mrs. Green Apple spikes ‘Columbus’ video after viewer backlash - One of the most successful bands in Japan, Green Apple, deleted due to a huge backlash a music video "Columbus" where they depicting themselves as explorers/conquerors and the native people they meet along the way as monkeys

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
Link | Archive

Full music video:


1718367539638.png
Mrs. Green Apple has posted an apology on its official website after backlash over a music video that portrayed explorer Christopher Columbus in a charming way. | SCREEN GRAB TAKEN FROM MRSGREENAPPLE.COM

Popular Japanese rock-pop band Mrs. Green Apple removed the music video for its new song, “Columbus,” from YouTube on Thursday, following claims of racism and ignorance leveled at the clip from users of social media. The video was online for less than a day.

“Columbus” found the three members of the group dressing up as famous individuals from throughout history, including the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, encountering characters resembling apes. Mrs. Green Apple then educates and seemingly controls the ape-like men, having them pull the trio around in carts and saluting them.

“Columbus” the song came out at midnight on Wednesday, with the video arriving later that night. Criticism came quickly. Users sounded off in the clip’s comments section and on social platform X, decrying the video as ignorant and bordering on racist.

The main problem appeared to be how this portrayal of Columbus, traditionally viewed as the navigator who discovered North America but who also brutalized indigenous communities of the continent, was grossly inaccurate. Others noted how the treatment of the apemen resembled colonization, and played into racist stereotypes.

Others went further, questioning whether the apemen characters were meant to be the “primitive” communities of other lands.

Around 3 p.m. on Thursday, Mrs. Green Apple removed the clip for “Columbus” from YouTube. The band posted a statement on its official website shortly after, apologizing for the video and explaining that its original intent was to present historical figures having a “fun house party.”

The planning director for the “Columbus” video was Mrs. Green Apple vocalist Motoki Ohmori. The song and video were part of The Coca-Cola Co.’s “Coke Studiomusic initiative, which finds famous artists creating original songs and videos, often featuring Coke products in prime spots.

Mrs. Green Apple formed in 2013 and in recent years has become one of the biggest J-pop acts around. The trio consists of Ohmori, guitarist Hiroto Wakai and keyboardist Ryoka Fujisawa. They have sold out stadiums nationwide and appeared on NHK’s year-end “Kohaku Uta Gassen” music extravaganza, and the group has provided the theme songs to multiple popular anime series. The group’s song “Lilac” is currently the No. 1 song on Japanese streaming charts.

Mrs. Green Apple has expressed interest in taking its music overseas, and to that end the band established a company called Project-MGA in conjunction with Universal Music Group with the intent of expanding its activities to the rest of the world.
 
They discovered the most optimal way to suck Chinese dick for 2000 years, British dick for 45, and American dick for 80
The islands really look like a golf ball through a garden hose from above.

He wasn't. The Spaniards were in fact more compassionate than their former leaders. Black legend needs to die already.
Columbus and Cortes did some pretty bad stuff but they weren't genocidal maniacs, and what they did was hardly any worse than what other colonial powers did in subsequent centuries.

People always forget it wasn't Cortes and a few hundred Spaniards that conquered the Aztecs, it was them and 100,000 native infantry from tribes and kingdoms that utterly hated the Aztecs for their brutality and oppression. Plus, as the Spanish colonies developed a lot of these wrong practices ended thanks to the efforts of the Catholic Church in particular.
 
Last edited:
As a japanese, People here says "is this some sort of thing shown in south park or something?"
Many are very confused why no one stopped it since it was for coca-cola ad and can cause damage to artist's reputation from western audience sperging.
Notably, leftist and right is having a same reaction of "what the fuck" because we usually don't want to cause any shitstorm regardless of ideology and that was exactly shitstorm-maker.
Would you mind translating the lyrics for us?
 
The Japanese are so fucking weird. Still, no little cartoon boys buttfucking each other or squid doing improbable things with their tentacles to milfs/little girls/Kurt Eichenwald, so that's good.
 
It's a bunch of guys dressed like historical figures playing with other guys dressed like monkeys. What's the problem here?
 
Disregarding everything else, this was for a Coca-Cola ad. The band was probably just having fun but I can't believe a soulless corporation like Coke somehow let this slide for something attached to their brand.

Also, asked my Japanese husband about it (he actually sent it to me with the line "lol it's the political correctness you love so much") and he mentioned that he tends to associate monkeys with Asians more than anything else. I'm gonna go ahead and say this is about Koreans more than Africans. He also said that if you see the video and automatically assume they're making fun of black people then maybe you're the racist 🤔🤔

Didn't a kpop girl group have a controversy like this a few years back? They wore a bunch of different traditional costumes from around the world and got whacked for cultural appropriation or something.
 
There's monkeys native to Japan. It's possible this is just a bunch of historical figures playing with snow monkeys. It's a silly pop song. Shit ain't that deep.
 
Back