This was by far the most positive commercial with a foreigner that I could find. This is a cross-promositional commercial for Natchan! juice drink and Natalie Emmons. In Japanese nicknames are usually the shortening of the first name and adding some sort of identifies at the end, such as kun or chan. So Natalie's name would be shortened to Nat-chan just like the drink. Natalie is a White American singer who sing in Japanese. This commercial displayed not only her ability to sing in Japanese but the fact that she is fluent in the language, even interacting with her Japanese director offscreen. These types of commercials are rare and hopefully in the future will become more of the norm.

This is a commercial for Asience hair products. It features a famous Chinese actress. This commercial is both positive and negative. It is positive in a sense that it is a Chinese actress staring in a Japanese commercial without being an idol for her homeland. On the other hand though, it does accentuate the differences between Asian's and Westerners in order to promote the product. She is the center of attention and all of the White people around her can't help but stare at her and that she is much better than them. In my reading there was another commercial (that I could not find) that actually uses a contest format where the Chinese actress is chosen over her western competitors.

These two are from a series of commercials for the cellphone company Softbank. While these commercials feature a black man as normal and average, everything around him is bizarre. He is part of a family with where his mom and sister are Japanese and his father is a dog who speaks. These commercials are incredibly popular in Japan turning this man into a celebrity. Also, the cameo by Quinton Tarentino is perfect. I think he is making fun of himself more than the idea of westerners being obsessed with historical Japanese culture.

http://youtu.be/Rwxk9UibZZg

Here is a Harrison Form commercial for Kirin Beer. While it is positive that he does interact with Japanese people and speaks in Japanese, at the end of both commercials he is simply referred to "Mr. Beer" and always says the same thing over and over. It buys into the stereotype that Americans only want to relax, but at the same time he's always with Japanese looking to do the same things.

This is another commercial that follows the concept that White Westerners are either giving credibility to a product (by typically using said product in a western environment) or being weird/bizarre in a Japanese environment. This vitamin drink ad with Arnold Schwarzenegger follows the bizarre route but I was happy they at least attempt to let him speak Japanese.

In my opinion this ad for Chu-hi (lemon flavored alcoholic drink) is much more negative than the previous one with Obama. While that was done in ignorance in regard to American prejudices this was done to explicitly follow generic stereotypes. Here we have Ben Stiller (who many Japanese probably do not know since American comedies don't translate well to Japanese audiences) with cheerleaders and football players. Ben Stiller's voice is dubbed over by a Japanese man except when he utters the word "Fresh" at the end of the commercial. There is not a single Japanese person anywhere near this commercial and conforms to weird stereotypes that Japanese have of Americans.

Here is a commercial for a cell phone company in Japan using a monkey as President Barak Obama. While in America we would see this as extremely racist in Japan it is not. They do not have the same history of racism with regard to Black people being compared to monkeys. Also, during WWII, It was America who created propaganda posters comparing the Japanese to gorillas.

I just love everything about this. This is Mark Coleman (Pride Open-weight Gran Prix Champion) doing a photo ad for Dole as the "Banana King". One thing you'll begin to notice in these advertisements is that while White Males are focused more often, they are usually in either ridiculous costumes/situations (like here) or in non-Japanese situations. They highlight the differences and reinforce the ideas that Japanese and all other nations are not the same.

This Suntory Whiskey add from the 90's shows Sean Connery being dapper. Many Japanese commercials use American celebrities to endorse their products, even though a high percentage of the country may not know who they are. This commercial while not racist in any way shows many of the stereotypes that Japanese have of Americans. In many Japanese commercials foreigners are depicted in relaxing situations. Many Japanese consider American's to be lazier than the hard working Japanese, in turn very rarely do we see Japanese commercials with Japanese people relaxing in such ways. Also, these ads were the basis for Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation.

This is one of the few blatantly racist commercials i've seen from Japanese television. It's a commercial for a Japanese website that is for tourism in Nagasaki. At the end, the two Japanese actors turn in to foreign tourists and appear with blonde wigs and big fake plastic noses while speaking broken Japanese.