Japan pop band Mrs. Green Apple’s Columbus video pulled after slavery backlash

A Japanese pop band’s video to promote its new song Columbus has been withdrawn, its record company said on Thursday, after coming under fire for imagery that seems to conjure justifications of colonialism and slavery.

Universal Music LLC said in a statement that the video for the song written by the three-man band Mrs. Green Apple “contains expressions that lack an understanding of history and cultural context,” and apologised for failing to catch the issue in advance.

In the video released on Wednesday, the three band members appear to be dressed as historical figures, including Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, during a visit to a tropical island.

They are shown interacting with anthropoids, presumably native to the island, who are depicted as primitive and servile. The various scenes include an anthropoid pulling a band member’s rickshaw and others learning how to play musical instruments during a party.

Motoki Omori, the band’s vocalist who proposed the video concept and led the selection of costumes, said in an apology statement that he intended to depict a fictitious world in which beings from different eras could throw a house party.

“I took a hard look at” the criticism that the video’s imagery can be seen as reflecting specific historical events, he said.

Coca-Cola (Japan) Co. said it has suspended all advertisements featuring the song.