Effective advertising and public relations efforts communicate the company's points in a way that resonates with the tastes and sensibilities of the target group. That's some 101 stuff right there. But try telling that to the howling monkey creatures who actually make ads and advise PR moves for a living. They'll take what should have been a basic or even well-meaning message and twist it until the whole thing is confusing, hurtful, or downright disturbing. And then they will poop on it. For that is what monkeys do.

10 Japan Advertises Earthquake Safety Tips With Old-Timey Racism

Tokyo Metro Government

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In 2006, the Tokyo Metro Government released a series of illustrated earthquake-safety pamphlets for English-speaking visitors, since foreigners may not be as chill about earthquakes as the Japanese have learned to be. Admirably, the pamphlets depicted non-Asian races in an effort to be inclusive. Unfortunately, the black people depicted in the pamphlets looked like this:

Tokyo Metro Government

"Come on, this is like the third worst thing involving people on our trains."

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The Japanese can probably be partially forgiven for this considering that, as a largely homogenous society, they don't exactly have a vibrant black community to run the cartoons past, just in case they turned out to be, you know, incredibly racist. But still, the extent of their research into what black people look like seems to have been white power pamphlets, Al Jolson performances, and Amos 'n' Andy. Aaand here we see the goofy black caricatures being chastised by more enlightened white people:

Tokyo Metro Government

Enlightened white people get their info from reliable radio DJs.

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Obviously, the publishers of the pamphlets were subject to some complaints. And to their credit, they did correct themselves -- by redrawing the cartoons to feature only whites and Asians. We guess that technically fixes the problem.