Simon Wiesenthal Center

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO has expressed its shock and dismay over the appearance of the Japanese rock group Kishidan on a recent MTV-J program,"Megavector".

Members of the band were wearing SS-like uniforms during an interview on the February 23rd prime time broadcast. “There is no excuse for such an outrage”, said rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. In protests to MTV-J, SONY Music Artists, and the Avex Group, Cooper wrote in part, “As someone who has visited Japan over 30 times, I am fully aware that many young Japanese are woefully uneducated about the crimes against humanity committed during World War II by Imperial Japan in occupied-Asia, let alone about Nazi Germany’s genocidal “Final Solution” against the Jews in Europe. But global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better.”

“Such garb like the uniform worn by Kishidan is never tolerated in the mainstream of any civilized country outside of Japan. In spite of all the efforts made by democracies to combat bigotry, racism and hate crimes, there are young people who are attracted to a racist ideology and the symbols of Nazism like those that inspired the uniforms worn by Kishidan. It is wrong for anyone, including people in Japan to dismiss such marketing as mere “faux-rebellion,” rabbi Cooper explained.

The Wiesenthal Center is also urging that the group drop its Nazi attire and apologize to its fans and to the victims of Nazism. In addition, “the Simon Wiesenthal Center is prepared to bring an aging survivor of the Nazi Holocaust to Japan so that MTV Japan can interview someone who spent their teen years suffering starvation, depravation and torture and seeing their families being murdered for the “crime” of being born Jewish”, Cooper concluded.