Japandering

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A celebrity may be willing to do certain things for Money, Dear Boy, but they'll also have a set of standards for what they'll do. You may think it's reasonable that they have their principles, but you forgot that most successful celebrities sold their principles and sense of shame bundled with their soul and 92-year-old grandmother in a package deal made at a crossroads to a gentleman of considerable wealth and taste.

Deep down, not all successful celebrities believe that there is No Such Thing as Bad Publicity, instead they are able to recognize (or pay their agents to recognize) is that doing something embarrassing or "beneath" their standard for some short term bucks can become a Never Live It Down that harms their long term prospects and marketability. They will refuse crass or embarrassing uses of their time. The one exception: if it is done very far away where no one will see it. And by "no one", we mean "no one who speaks English", and by "very far away", we usually mean "Japan".

Some celebrities are also willing to do foreign commercials as a way of keeping themselves visible in that market, when they don't have a movie being released over there at the time. Doing talk shows and TV appearances in their home country is feasible since they don't have to travel very far. Doing talk shows in a hundred different nations every other month would be nearly impossible. With a commercial, they only have to shoot it once, and it will be aired fairly often.

A trope that exists in the behavior of celebrities (actors/singers/etc.), and is also picked up readily by those in the industry and reflected in the works they make: A celebrity goes over to Japan, possibly somewhere else, and then does a fairly embarrassing job clearly made only for the cash and in the belief that, due to the language barrier and the lack of appeal of a Widget Series, nobody back home will see it.

If it ends up on YouTube, it quickly becomes an Old Shame, which is why many have it written into their contracts that they can't have it be spread around. The term itself is a Portmanteau of "Japan" and "Pandering".

Compare Germans Love David Hasselhoff.

Examples of Japandering include:

Advertising

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger is practically the God-King of this trope, as he did more than 30 advertisements, from energy drinks, noodles and beer to cars, DirecTV and anti-piracy. Schwarzenegger was one of the first celebrities to take advantage of this phenomenon, and many others followed suit.
  • Ben Affleck did a L'Oreal ad in the UK that featured the line, "Here comes the SCIENCE!", which got discovered by Fark and became the Trope Namer (well it defined the form) for Here Comes the Science!.
  • Brad Pitt is an interesting case, given that he may possibly be the biggest example of this trope. Pitt starred in many Japanese-only commercials in the 90's for jeans, Toyota and Honda cars, cell phones, coffee...you name it. However, he's been doing this since he broke into major film roles, and seems to genuinely respect the advertisers he markets for (to the point of recording a one-off song for the Edwin Jeans clothing company, of which he was a mascot for many years).
  • Britney Spears once shilled for Mikakuto gummy candy by doing corny dance routines.
  • Bruce Willis has done many Japan-only commercials, ranging from the odd (a subdued performance as the husband of a Japanese woman while they admire a Subaru Outback) to the truly insane (the Eneos Service Station commercials, which...have to be seen to be believed).
  • Charles Bronson was doing this as far back as 1970: "Mmm... Mandom!" (And nobody would remember it if it weren't for Lucky Star.)
  • David Bowie's done U.S. and U.K. ads (MTV, Pepsi, XM Satellite Radio), but in addition to those...
    • In Japan, his 1980 ad for Jun Rock sake featured an original instrumental, "Crystal Japan", that became a Japanese A-side and U.K. B-side.
    • In Italy, he did an ad for Vittel bottled water in 2003...and, with some reediting and a different song, it became the U.S. ad for his album Reality!
  • Harrison Ford in a series of Japanese ads for Uncharted 3.
  • Jean Reno did a commercial for a canned coffee drink in full Viking regalia, including a horned helmet.
    • Reno did it again, but this time playing Doraemon of all things to promote Toyota's "Fun To Drive Again" series of ads where it shows the Doraemon characters 20 years later. Reno appears in 2 of 3 ads so far in the series. See the ads here.
  • Kiefer Sutherland of 24 has starred in a series of Jack Bauer-themed commercials for Calorie Mate nutritional supplements, where he plays the part of the grizzled agent while maneuvering through schoolgirls on a crowded subway car or disarming bombs in downtown Tokyo. This also appears to be the sole reason why Carlos Bernard made an appearance on a Japanese comedy show as Tony Almeida.
  • American soccer player Landon Donovan made some ads for a sports-based lottery in Mexico.
  • Madonna has a long history of pimping Japanese goods, including campaigns for Mitsubishi in the 80's (where she performed various songs in person), Elleseine makeup (where she rides an elephant), a 1995 campaign for Takara beer (where she fights poorly-CGI'd dragons before enjoying a glass) and, most bizarrely, a 2007 campaign for a high-rise Japanese condo development.
  • This seems to be the sole reason why Nicolas Cage starred in a series of commercials for Sankyo Pachinko machines. The set of commercials (which, among other incidents, include him singing a heartfelt ballad about the joys of pachinko, gasping in awe and yelling in triumph when a group of triplets ask him for an autograph, and banging heads with pachinko-headed "moonmen" in the desert) includes Cage acting entirely in the "kooky" persona he's cultivated over the years - one seems to think that he knows he's in on the joke, and is just doing it to fund his outstanding mortgage payments.
  • A series of ads featuring Paul Newman for the Nissan Skyline became so iconic within Japan that the 1982-85 models (chassis code R30) are still referred to as the "Newman Skyline" to distingush them from earlier and later styles.
  • A yogurt ad manages to have Sean Connery singing with a rabbit in a sports car.
  • The series of ads promoting Suntory Whiskey (immortalized in the film Lost in Translation, seen below) used various Western celebrities, including Sean Connery, Francis Ford Coppola, Keanu Reeves and several others extolling the virtues of foreign whiskey while mugging for the camera and making complete fools of themselves.
  • Aside from his involvement in the aforementioned Suntory Whiskey ads, Tommy Lee Jones has shilled for Boss [dead link] coffee. The people of Japan recognize that Jones is, indeed, the Boss.
  • An extensive number of celebrities have shilled for various Japanese energy drinks over the years.
    • John Travolta shilled for Tokyo Drink during a commercial campaign in the early 80's, complete with embarrassing dance moves and a faux-workout routine.
    • Ben Stiller humiliated himself during a commercial for Chill Energy Drink, yelling in overdubbed Japanese about how fresh it is.
  • The cast of Twin Peaks once did a Japanese advert for Georgia coffee, which is coffee in a can.
  • Former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, of all people, appeared in a commercial for Pizza Hut in the States and other countries. Given that he used to head the Soviet Union and all, it was seen as greatly ironic and embarrassing for him to shill for a capitalist company and thus espouse consumerism. He did however explain in a New York Times interview that he did it to fund his research foundation, and that the capitalist irony didn't matter as the product he was shilling is "a people's matter" regardless of political ideology, i.e. food. The commercial was never shown in his native Russia especially as he is quite unpopular there.

Film

  • Lost in Translation uses this for Bob Harris's reason to be in Japan. He's there doing an ad for Suntory whiskey in a job that he in no way has any reason for being chosen for other than for being a recognizable face. His wife keeps phoning him about carpet samples and paint colors so it's implied that he's building a house which is probably why he's doing it. The depressed funk he gets from the debasement is a large part of the entire theme of the film (note that Sofia Coppola's father, Francis Ford Coppola, did in fact do this with Suntory ads in Japan, as did Sean Connery, who gets referenced a few times in the movie).
  • Referenced in Mean Girls, although the character appears to consider it unequivocally cool:

"I hear Regina does car commercials. In Japan!"

Live-Action TV

  • Joey from Friends is at one point a mid-level daytime Soap Opera star and ends up doing this from an advert for Ichiban Lipstick for Men. The advert is very much a Weird Japanese Thing: Joey is wearing bright blue lipstick while bright blue animation and dancing schoolgirls interject a number of flash cuts. You watch it, you can't un-watch it.
  • Mo Harris on Eastenders, of all beings, makes reference to the practice as part of an Aesop about how you should never sell stolen goods near your home turf and should do it a few boroughs away instead (it's not a very good moral). Eastenders is fond of transparent ploys to be relevant so most likely, one of the writers saw Lost in Translation one night and then spend several months trying to work it into a script.
  • In the Chinatown episode of Entourage, Ari persuades Vince to do a very well paid Chinese energy drink commercial.
  • In one episode of Leverage, part of Elliot's cover is a (fake) Japanese energy drink commercial that Hardison whipped together.
  • The Big Book of Top Gear features The Stig in one such ad.
  • On Would I Lie to You?, one of Jimmy Carr's lies was that he'd done a commercial for snuff (of all things) in Japan.
  • 30 Rock has Jenna doing one of these ads for a Japanese energy drink. It involves a random face punch.
  • In Hot in Cleveland Victoria dreams of the day that she's achieved enough fame that she can sell out for a boatload of money. She ends up doing a commercial for adult diapers. (They preserve the freshness of crotch!)
  • Conan O'Brien did a Super Bowl Special commercial for Bud Light, where he did an embarrassing ad in Sweden which got released in the United States. [1].
    • He would also use the above Schwarzenegger ads for clips for Late Night With Conan O'Brien.
  • On Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 James Van der Beek filmed an energy drink commercial in Vietnam. As expected it is hilariously bad.


Music

  • Pet Shop Boys based their music video for "Flamboyant" on this trope, intercutting bizarre Japanese game shows with mock ads featuring them.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • When The Simpsons went to Japan Homer & Bart ran into Woody Allen filming a commercial while dressed in boxing gear.

Oh. [ahem] Hello. [ahem] So many rice crackers claim to be low-cal, but only Fujikawa Rice Crackers make your interiors go bananas! What did I do to deserve this? ... Oh, right.

  • A Robot Chicken sketch revolves around Sarah Michelle Geller advertising a Japanese feminine hygiene product.
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