May 1, 2021
Last November, Yoshiaki Yoshida, founder and CEO of DHC Corp., which mainly sells health supplements and cosmetics, posted a message on its official online store about DHC’s rival, an affiliate of Suntory Holdings Ltd., in which he said that almost all the talent employed by the affiliate in its advertising are “Korean-related.” He then referred to the company with a made-up word that merged a derogatory Japanese term for Koreans with the Suntory name.
In contrast, he said that DHC only uses Japanese talent in its ads because DHC is a “pure Japanese company.”
The message prompted an outpouring of online comments condemning Yoshida for his broad discriminatory rhetoric, which some labeled hate speech. Most large media outlets avoided any coverage of the statement, presumably because DHC is a major advertiser.