British bank HSBC has been accused of the modern mortal sin of (Gasp!!)”cultural insensitivity” for an ad campaign that uses the image of a sumo wrestler in posters like the one shown below.

• A spokesman for the Japan Society, said: ‘My colleagues don’t like this advertisement, and you can understand how some Japanese people in the UK would find this ad offensive.’
• The head of the British Sumo Federation, said: ‘It looks terrible and it is insensitive to have made him up to look Japanese. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to get someone over from Japan who could adopt the proper athletic pose. I turn the page quite quickly when I see it. The whole thing is bloody awful. I’d like them to drop the advert. For a company that size, I would have thought they could use a little more judgment. They’ve shot themselves in the foot.’
• The director of the Anglo-Japanese Society of Wessex, said the advertisement ‘insulted the honour of a nation, ‘ and: ‘The fact that the picture depicts a sumo wrestler who is not actually a sumo wrestler but has been made up to look like one would be considered a high insult to the Japanese community. It is culturally insensitive.’

Mrs: JP says: “I don’t see anything wrong with it. If people are so small that they get upset over something like this, we’ll never make any progress in dealing with the larger problems of the world.” (She also made a remark about the people who complain about such things having size problems in certain parts of their anatomy, but we won’t go into that here.)