Make Believe Mailer #117: Mrs. GREEN APPLE Discovers Colonialism

It's Not Just About The Global Stage

Mrs. GREEN APPLE might very well be the biggest band in Japan right now. The trio has been kicking around for over a decade, though it’s only in recent years it has enjoyed smashing success. Following a hiatus that seemed more like a chance to re-tool the project, Mrs. GREEN APPLE have become a juggernaut of palatable rock-pop. Songs like “Dancehall” and “ Que Sera Sera” are huge on every platform, and have to be included when talking about the defining J-pop hits of the 2020s so far. One of its latest cuts, “Lilac,” serves as the opening theme to the popular baseball anime Bokyaku Battery, and became the song to knock off Creepy Nuts from the top of streaming charts recently.

That’s not just a significant commercial victory for the three-piece. If “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” monopolized J-pop in the first half of 2024, it sure started feeling like Mrs. GREEN APPLE would take the spotlight for the back end. “Lilac” was but the beginning…whatever they released next would surely get a ton of attention as they gear up for a big, big summer.

When I saw the new Mrs. GREEN APPLE single awaiting me this week, I thought…what are they trying here. It’s called “Columbus,” and is not referencing the capital of Ohio, but rather Christopher Columbus the Italian explorer, colonizer and genocidal maniac. “Does Mrs. GREEN APPLE really think they are Suiyoubi No Campanella now with the historical figures?” Absolutely not, in terms of music or thematic concern. The lyrics mention Columbus one time, standing in as a metaphor for exploration and drastic change (the actual focus here is on…growing up).

A bit of a clumsy choice that would raise a few eyebrows — “Magellan” fits with a little finessing — but in the end the song is just another Mrs. GREEN APPLE number, bound to soundtrack school lunches and ¥100 stores the country over. I mean, it’s not like they leaned into the Columbus thing, right?

One of the only ways to experience the “Columbus” video in full — reaction videos. I’m sure this will be taken down soon enough, but enjoy the jankiest quality archive of history possible.

The music video came out that night, and sat at the top of my YouTube recommended page the next morning. I like to think I’m a person who isn’t overly reactionary, and who has seen so much stupid stuff online that it’s hard to shake me. I won’t act like I was personally offended by “Columbus” the music video…but I was sorta offended by how knuckleheaded it was from an optics perspective. Like…you didn’t ask anyone for a second opinion?

Not to get too far ahead of myself, but seeing as the video is now off YouTube and one can only experience it via extremely cruddy reaction videos (above, doomed to be privated soon enough) and Twitter snippets, let me offer a summary. The members of Mrs. GREEN APPLE dress up as assorted famous historical figures, including Beethoven, Napoleon and the titular sailor. They arrive at some house sitting on an island (think Master Roshi’s house from Dragonball) which is inhabited by…monkeys? Apemen? They are creatures that are kind of a combination of traditional apes, Monchichi and the cursed Disney character Fuzzbucket. Mrs. GREEN APPLE gets to “civilizing” them by teaching them how to do various human things, like play piano and operate a rickshaw so they can be pulled around. They also have a party at one point. Mrs. GREEN APPLE depart at the end, presumably to find other lands to “educate.”

In isolation, some of these themes and ideas could have worked. The problem is the song is called “Columbus” and the vocalist for the group dresses up like Columbus, which makes it impossible to offer any excuses for them. The internet pretty much instantaneously pointed this out. YouTube comments lambasted the band for their ignorance of world history¹, while it quickly became THE dominant topic if discussion on Twitter in Japan, with the general consensus being along the lines of “Mrs. GREEN APPLE do not understand the complexities of colonialism and racism.”

The video for “Columbus” did not last a single day online. Mrs. GREEN APPLE removed it around 3 p.m. Thursday, issuing an apology on its website. Despite that, people are still talking about it come Friday morning.

To some degree, the uproar around “Columbus” feels like a throwback. It’s a slightly less jarring version of Momoiro Clover Z wearing blackface to honor an ‘80s blackface pop star, or Masatoshi Hamada taking Beverly Hills Cop cosplay a touch too far. It might be closer to the deeply insensitive “Curry Police” incident of a few years ago, but I don’t think any Japanese consulates will be issuing apologies to avoid diplomatic spats.

What’s unique about it is that this is the first controversy involving music / music videos in the “J-pop expanding globally” era of the 2020s. Yet up until…Thursday afternoon, I assumed this wouldn’t be a big deal. While an array of Japanese artists have eyes set on the international stage, Mrs. GREEN APPLE have always struck me as a domestic-only offering. Mostly, I have ears, so listening to the trio’s music always left me feeling like “oh, no way they try to take this abroad.”

Silly me! Mrs. GREEN APPLE established a whole company called Project-MGA in conjunction with Universal Music Group all the way back in 2021² with the purpose of bringing a “new kind of entertainment” to the world. While on a taste level I’m shocked by this, it isn’t totally a batshit insane proposition — this group has provided the themes to multiple anime series³, which is this decade’s golden ticket to worldwide attention. Yet that only makes “Columbus” all the weirder…they didn’t check with anyone about this? They didn’t know a single non-Japanese person (or hell, Japanese person who has read Howard Zinn) who could check the video out before?

Other artists do this…hell, I have been hired to create English materials for multiple Universal Music Japan artists, and I have had literal informal lunches with people where they’ve asked me “do you think this could get our artist in trouble” over like, dresses that resemble traditional Chinese garb in music videos. I should have charged more! Yet it stuck with me that they asked…whereas once they would have barreled forward unconcerned about the worries of the world, they now know there’s greater scrutiny placed on their artists. Well, some artists figured that out.

Making this all the more urgent is newfound corporate involvement. The final wrinkle that makes “Columbus” so much more bafflingly…and, I would speculate, resulted in the video being yanked from YouTube so quickly… is that Mrs. GREEN APPLE existed as the premier Japanese artist for The Coca-Cola Company’s “Coke Studio” initiative, the soda giant’s effort to use pop music to boost their brand. The trio were not elevated to the same level as, say, NewJeans — who now boast two songs primarily about the joys of carbonated drinks — yet still stood as a prominent player in their ~ corporate strategy ~ to use art as a way to pump chemicals into people. Surely the bad press prompted the big wigs at Coke Japan to apply some pressure on the group.

Making this all the funnier…the other prominent “Coke Studio” act in Japan is…Suiyoubi No Campanella, a project that exists almost solely to take historical figures, subvert them and make catchy pop songs. You had the perfect group in your midst, Coca-Cola! Their biggest song is even about one of the characters in the “Columbus” video!!!

The stakes are higher, but there’s one more twist — the backlash to “Columbus” came from Japan. It was domestic viewers who instantly lashed out at Mrs. GREEN APPLE and explained the atrocities of Columbus the person on social media. The blackface scandals of not that long ago played out differently — while plenty of Japanese viewers were like “that ain’t right” at seeing a member of Downtown go too far in becoming Axel Foley, the anger and eventual media attention came from non-Japanese viewers. Yet in 2024, sensibilities have changed, and it is those here who powered this forward, with Western media surprisingly not covering this as much despite it being the sort of story they usually love.

It’s easy for people online to moan about Japanese pop culture being influenced by the West and bending towards global standards…but the truth is, Japanese consumers have changed and become smarter, too. “Columbus” is notable because it’s the first time a home crowd has truly rejected a popular act’s offering on grounds of racism and general stupidity.

There’s also a small but vocal crowd of people who find the video no good AND think the song rips off Hanson’s “MMMBop.” I mean…maybe?

While I don’t want to make light of the issues at the center of all this, I have to admit…this is such a funny story. Mrs. GREEN APPLE is both the kind of mildly pleasant group who you would never expect to be at the center of such controversy…yet also make such bad music that it feels OK to get caught up in it all.

The truth, though, is if it was any other group I’d feel bummed out. If YOASOBI or Fujii Kaze did this, I’d be stressed out at how J-pop suddenly had to deal with this on the global stage. If Ado — a PR client — was caught up in this, I’d be a crisis management expert right now. I personally find Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s music largely terrible, so this “Columbus” hullabaloo is mostly funny to me, but I also get what makes it such a to-do.

I don’t think anyone involved with the band or the “Columbus” video is a bad person. I genuinely think this is a case of ignorance. While Twitter allows anyone to be an alternative historian, the fact is a lot of people do not know the finer details of history. Hell, my entire academic experience…so like, 1992 to 2009…portrayed Columbus as “sailor guy,” save for the time in 12th grade AP History and some random class in college where we had to read Howard Zinn (no actual deeper discussion about Columbus, though). The reckoning with him is really quite recent, at least on a larger level.

Now, factor in that Columbus largely has nothing to do with Japanese education whatsoever. He’s largely a metaphor for “exploring,” which is what “Columbus” the song fixates on. A lot of people have celebrated this being the end of Mrs. GREEN APPLE, but I think that’s quite naive…they are still beloved across the nation, and, whether they did it themselves or via pressure from hulking soda companies, did actually remove the video and apologize for it. Look, I’m a hater…but I think they’ll be fine in the long run.

Yet ultimately, it also explains why Mrs. GREEN APPLE stinks so much as artists.

The apology from the band is surprisingly transparent. They lay out the “key themes” they wanted to include in the video — historical figures, monkeys, a “home party.” The group even admits that they considered that the appearance of monkeys could be a problem…but ultimately believed they approached it the right way (they did not). The clip itself is significant because lead vocalist Motoki Ohmori oversaw it, the first time he has done so. This was his vision.

And his vision is so, so cliche. “Columbus” features predictable historical figures, and I’d argue the decision to use “monkeys” as a counter to advanced civilization is an obvious move too — make them cavemen, or lizards, or like aliens. Even the activities they “educate” the apemen about feel obvious. I don’t know, teach them to use TikTok or something, everything in the video feels so hack. Again, it all comes back to the title and central motif — it’s super generic to associate “exploring” with Columbus. Choose somebody else!

Mrs. GREEN APPLE aren’t racist…they are boring, opting for the obvious choices both musically and visually in the video. If they expanded an ounce of creativity, they could have gone down a path that makes this not a trending topic. They did not, though, and instead they have a mess to deal with. It’s too easy to dismiss “Columbus” as a problem. Rather, it’s a perfect snapshot of J-pop at its laziest. For the trio itself, that’s not a revelation. The surprise, though, is seeing it get torn apart, righteously.

Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies

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1. Though this whole kerfluffle also offered an opening for those who just hate the band’s music to jump in and roast them. I have to side-eye this, though, as someone who has been pretty upfront about thinking they suck shit long before others could fall back on them being problematic. Show some spine, call out garbage music when you see it!

2. IMPORTANT J-POP HISTORICAL CONTEXT: In a lot of ways, Mrs. GREEN APPLE is the Daiso version of Official HIGE DANdism. Right before the pandemic, I have it on good authority that HIGE DAN was prepping to push further into foreign markets…before that became an impossibility, and the group’s domestic schedule became a labyrinth. Mrs. GREEN APPLE sorta took their place…like, in so many ways, compare the “Que Sera Sera” video with “I LOVE…” and note how much they are trying to fit the vibe (albeit with SIGNIFICANTLY worse music, no drama or lift)…down to the half-baked foreign ambitions.

3. For all the histrionics of this post, that includes one song for an anime I genuinely like…which actually pushes Mrs. GREEN APPLE ahead of the back numbers, Yuuris and Mr. Childrens of the world…I’m going to hate, but I’ll note here they are actually quite far ahead of J-pop’s true dreck.