Mr. Magic Mushroom

Maki Sunagawa, OCU

When you think of mushrooms, especially the average garden variety, you may not immediately visualize sex. A Japanese TV commercial produced by the advertisers of a mushroom company, Hokuto, went completely beyond our imagination. To many ordinary women, like me, the ad is rather degrading.

Hokuto ad, 2013

The characters featured in this short commercial are a middle-aged housewife performed by Sawa Suzuki and a handsome spirit of mushrooms with mushroom earrings performed by Jun Kaname. This kind of ad has been reproduced a number of times in various ways by the same agency, and all of the TV spots feature characters such as housewives in what males tend to think are typical female settings such as the kitchen, the living room couch, in front of the door at some average apartment, or some random aisle in a vast supermarket.

In this ad, every time she is alone, the spirit of the mushroom suddenly appears out of nowhere and whispers right behind her. The mushroom lecture he gives is called “Kin-katsu,” which can be translated as “fungi activity.” He presses his mushroom-decorated body against hers and asks which variety she prefers – “a regular mushroom” or “a majestic mushroom.” At the end of each advertisement, the erotic apparition that the supposed desperate housewife envisaged in the middle of the day turned out to be merely a daydream.

Beyond the barnyard aspect of sensuality the ad promotes, the ad also does a splendid job in expressing the erotic images that men seem to harbor toward the humble mushroom. Maybe it is good that children are not able to grasp the sexual innuendo that is clearly implied. The lasting image left in the minds of the audience that sees the ad is clear, if not clever, despite the indirect underlying message.

The reason why the ad merits discussion is its offensiveness. I found it demeaning and I presume most women will also conclude the same, as the ad portrays another stereotype. The housewife and the handsome young man suggest to viewers that all Japanese middle-aged women are bored stiff doing daily chores at home and are yet sexually frustrated, a feeling that could be treated by a man with a majestic mushroom.

This is not the only commercial regarding sex we can witness recently. Commercials that feature men and women assuming stereotypical gender roles where males earn the money and the women do the housework have appeared in various media in many countries. Recent ads appear to turn to sexuality increasingly more often into spectacle. The subtle level of sexual implication in ads may have been part of a long global tradition; however, the methods that marketers are now using are becoming more and more indecent. Therefore, I think it is necessary to point out that some of these ads are inappropriate, even for adults who claim to honor all people as equals.