http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3456169.stm

Wednesday, 4 February, 2004

A Japanese film distributor has cancelled plans to display a painting by Germany's Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.
The move followed a protest by a Jewish human rights group that the display risked trivialising the holocaust.

The work, showing a church in Vienna, was to be displayed at a Tokyo theatre on Saturday to promote a film loosely based on Hitler's life - the Max.

When the film was released in Europe last year, it prompted the charge that it was an attempt to humanise Hitler.


A spokesman for Toshiba Entertainment, the film's Japanese distributor, reportedly said that too much interest in the painting had led to the exhibition's cancellation.

"The reaction was overwhelming. We received too many inquiries," the spokesman was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

"People asked us questions like how long the painting would be shown or how much it could cost," he said.

The company said it was worried about appropriate security for the display.

It was not clear whether cultural sensitivities also played a part in the decision to drop the exhibition.

The US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center's associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper criticised the planned display Tuesday, saying in a statement on its website it "could have the effect of trivialising the evil of the man and the horrors he unleashed on humankind".

Toshiba had earlier acknowledged that displaying the painting of Vienna's Karlskirche, also known as Saint Karl's Church, by the dictator may fuel allegations that Japan was indifferent to racial sensitivities but had defended its use.

"The showing of the watercolour is meant to back up the message of the film - to show that Hitler had a human side to him and that is all the more reason why he is terrifying because a despot could be born again," said spokesman Daisuke Kobayashi.

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Japan blocks company from naming pinball game after Hitler

October 20, 2004

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/5683.html

TOKYO - Japan's patent office has blocked a company from making "pachinko" pinball machines named after Adolf Hitler, Moses and other historical figures, officials said Wednesday.

Fuji Shoji Co., based in Osaka, submitted the names of 36 well-known people, including the Wright Brothers and Tchaikovsky, for trademarks on their garish, upright pinball machines.

The Patent Office rejected the applications in May, Fuji said, but word of the decision was first publicized in Japan this week.

The office is barred from granting trademarks that may disrupt public order and morals, a patent official said on condition of anonymity. He refused to provide further details.

Nobuhide Tonaka, a spokesman for Fuji, said the Patent Office told the company that using Hitler as a trademark would conflict with Japan's pacifist constitution.

He added that the names were chosen at random from the world's "famous people" and that no offense was intended.

"But we failed to pay close consideration, and we regret that very much," Tonaka said.

Brightly lit pachinko parlors are everywhere in Japan, clustered around city train stations or along country roads.

The games often feature panels illustrated with scantily clad female comic book characters or action heroes. Fuji has produced machines with motifs from the movie "Ghostbusters" and the TV series "Thunderbirds."

General knowledge of the Holocaust is limited in Japan.

"People ... may feel Hitler is someone remote, but that's naive and more consideration should have been given," said Tatsuki Shibuya, a law professor and member of the Japan Trademark Association.

Earlier this year, a film distributor planned to display a watercolor painted by Hitler to publicize a film about his life, but canceled the exhibition after complaints from abroad.

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