Car firm ad banned for use of racial slur against Japanese

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Car import company Jap Car South has apologised after the advertising regulator found that its name was likely to cause serious racial offence.

The firm apologised to “any members of the public” who had been offended by the use of the word “Jap” in its name after a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that it was a racial slur and harmful and offensive.

The firm’s website included a logo of a stylised sun, similar to the Japanese rising sun flag, with the text Jap Car South Ltd superimposed on it.

Jap Car South said it had been trading since 2020, dealing directly with the Japanese market when purchasing vehicles.

It said Jap had been used as a shortened form of Japan or Japanese, and it had not previously received any feedback in Japan or the UK that the name was offensive or could cause offence.

The firm said it had chosen the name because they sold Japanese imported cars, adding that they had not intended to cause offence, and did not wish to do so in future.

The ASA said the fact that the company had not previously received such feedback was not determinative of the likely effect on consumers.

The watchdog said: “We understood that the word ‘Jap’ became particularly associated with anti-Japanese sentiment during and after the Second World War.

“We further understood that it had a history of use as a derogatory term for Japanese people and people of Japanese heritage, and was widely recognised as a racial slur.

“Because of those associations, we considered that its use in a marketing communication was likely to cause serious offence on the grounds of race.”

The ASA found that the stylised sun image reinforced the derogatory reference to Japanese identity and added to the offensive impact of the ad.

It added: “We also understood that while the image was legitimately used in various facets of public life in Japan, some consumers were likely to associate it with the now-defunct Imperial Japanese Army, and Japanese military aggression during the Second World War.

“In the context of its use alongside the term ‘Jap’, we considered that association was likely to further exacerbate the offence caused by the wording.”

The ASA said the ad must not appear again and told the firm to “avoid causing serious offence on the grounds of race in future marketing communications”.