"Little Black Sambo" is a bestseller in Japan

Bruce Wallace:

The Japanese edition of "Sambo" was a big favorite here, from the time it was introduced in 1953 until it was yanked from bookstores in 1988 after a swift and effective anti-racism campaign.

The rap against it in Japan echoed that heard in the West years earlier: Sambo was a racist term for American blacks and illustrator Frank Dobias' portrayal of the main character, with his bulging white eyes and exaggerated, thick lips, was tantamount to a boy drawn in blackface.

In April, Zuiunsha, a small Tokyo publisher specializing in reprints, bet that there was still a market for a book that had charmed generations of Japanese youngsters who, as adults, were unable to find the book to read to their own children.

The market proved him right. Zuiunsha reportedly has sold 95,000 copies in two months since bringing out "Chibikuro Sambo." Despite being a child's read at a thin 16 pages, "Sambo" sits among the top five adult fiction bestsellers at major Tokyo book chains.

"Some people buy it out of nostalgia," said Tomio Inoue, Zuiunsha's president, who gambled that he wouldn't face a backlash for breaking the informal ban when he picked up the rights to the book. "Many readers didn't know why it was out of print. They missed the book."

"Sambo" has returned to shelves with few objections in a country where blacks remain extremely rare. One complaint has been published in an English-language newspaper, written by an African American resident of Japan. An online petition against the publisher garnered 263 signatures by Saturday, most of them from non-Japanese, many from abroad.

That is a far cry from 1988, when a mainly American campaign drove the book off Japanese shelves. The undoing was triggered by a report in the Washington Post that noted the popularity of a book "that most Americans thought had died a well-deserved death years ago," as well as several Sambo-related doll items on sale in Tokyo department stores.

The article spawned a letter-writing campaign in Japan from the Assn. to Stop Racism Against Blacks, which was later discovered to be essentially a one-family enterprise.

But it sparked a bigger backlash in Washington, where there were accusations of entrenched racism against blacks among the Japanese and protests were held at the Japanese Embassy and threats made to boycott its cultural exports.

This was at a time when Japan, with its then go-go economy, was perceived to be a threat to the United States. Fearing the book was adding a culture war to the trade disputes with Washington, Japan's Foreign Ministry had a word with the publishers, suggesting that a picture book and its spinoffs were not worth wider trouble.

Japanese publishers withdrew the book in less than a week. The dolls went too.

In Nagano City, the education board sent letters to every kindergarten asking parents to burn any copies of "Little Black Sambo" they might have at home.

“Little Black Sambo” returns to Japanese bookstores

Banned Book Returns to Japanese Shelves

Publishing Irresponsibility

chibikuro sambo