Japanese Comedian Who Used Blackface Comes Under Fire Online<br />A Twitter user shared a clip from the show, calling the depiction "unacceptable and racist."<br />Is Japan the only country that doesn’t know that Black Face is UNACCEPTABLE<br />and RACIST #racism pic.twitter.com/zoSXded3N0 Baye McNeil, a black columnist who was born in Brooklyn and has lived in Japan for 13 years, shared pictures of Mr. Hamada’s performance on New Year’s Eve and denounced it as offensive.<br />Unlike the United States, they said, Japan does not have a history of systematic discrimination against black people,<br />and a Japanese performer painting his face black does not come with the same cultural stigma.<br />In a show that aired on New Year’s Eve, the Japanese comedian Masatoshi Hamada appeared in a Detroit Lions football jacket, a curly wig<br />and dark makeup, an attempt at imitating the actor Eddie Murphy’s character from the 1984 movie "Beverly Hills Cop." Mr. Hamada is half of the comedy duo Downtown.<br />4, 2018<br />A Japanese comedian is facing criticism for performing in blackface in a widely viewed television show, a move<br />that has outraged many and highlighted the regular appearance of performers in similar makeup on mainstream media outlets in Japan.<br />Being African American and new to Japan this portrayal of people who look like me is very discouraging and worrying to me developing my new life here.<br />Mr. McNeil, who was involved in that petition effort, said in a phone interview<br />that even though the segment was removed, the network never weighed in on the blackface issue.
