I translated and re-uploaded the article that was uploaded in 2006.
It's about recent TV commercials for tobacco products, but JT (Japan Tobacco) hardly promotes their tobacco products. Recently, it's almost non-existent. Most of the commercials seem to be filled with advertisements for tobacco manners, corporate image, and beverage commercials such as coffee, "roots" and "peach natural water," "drinking tea house," "green tea," and "senoby." Additionally, the company name is only listed as "JT" and not "Japan Tobacco." Is this also due to the times? Is it shameful to display their own company name? While it has long been said that smoking is bad for one's health, even opinion advertisements from the Japan Medical Association have begun airing on TV saying "smoking is also bad for the people around you." Smoking areas are getting smaller and moving to inconvenient places, and it's becoming a difficult situation for smokers. As someone who doesn't smoke at all, I don't know the struggles that smokers are going through. By the way, my father, who has been smoking for 40 years, has quit smoking at home. He quit perfectly. According to him, he's not quitting smoking, he's just taking a break from it. He said that if he didn't stop smoking with a relaxed attitude, he would feel pressured.
Returning to the topic of TV commercials, in the 1980s, when TV commercials for tobacco products were still aired, most of them featured foreigners (mostly white people with blond hair) smoking comfortably, as if in a scene from a foreign movie. Among them, the most impressive one for me is the TV commercial for "LARK."
(Cigarette)JT Mild coded. Lark Speak LARK 1988
In the commercial, a man appears in a suspicious trading place. Another man, identical to him, appears and they both show their photos to the trade partner, who is at a loss as to which one is the real person. Then, an idea for confirmation appears. The trade partner offers a cigar to one of them, and one of the men immediately tries to light it with a lighter. However, the other man takes out a "LARK" and says, "Speak LARK!" The man with the lighter is exposed as a fake and taken away. The actor played two roles in the commercial, but back then, it was impossible to process it with computer graphics (CG), so it was obvious that one of them was wearing a mask.
