Just the other day I was complimenting Japan, but now I find that as I was doing that, a couple of Canada's most famous citizens were embarrassing themselves there. Fortunately, few people noticed, because another famous Canadian decided to clean his pants.
First, Justin Bieber got in trouble for praying at a Japanese shrine. See, most countries with checkered military pasts have the good sense to make it well known that their war memorials are dedicated only to innocent victims and rank-and-file soldiers, not to the war criminals that led them. But Japan hasn't done this, and the Yasukuni Shrine memorializes the war criminals right along with everyone else.
Bieber apologized when this was pointed out to him. I may have criticized him in the past, but I find it hard to blame him here. Most of the other dumb things he's done were things he should have known better. But not knowing the controversial history of a shrine in another country? I can forgive him for that. What I find notable is that a twenty-year-old pop star with a history of bad decision-making handled the situation better than fifty years of Japanese politicians, who have visited the shrine unapologetically.
Meanwhile, Avril Lavigne has been accused of either racism or bad taste for her video for a song dedicated to Hello Kitty. I can't say whether or not it's racist, because the video was taken down from YouTube, and I don't want to watch it anyway. What it does tell me is: Lavigne's remaining fan base is in Japan, and there is no limit to how far she will go to stay popular with someone.
From the descriptions of the video, it doesn't sound racist so much as simplistic. We really need a term that can describe naive ignorance rather than actual hatred or prejudice. People who think Mexico is full of Taco Bells. Or more to the point, people who don't realize they don't know about a given country, and try to discuss it anyway. It's annoying, but let's reserve inflammatory words like "racist" for people who have really earned it.
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