Entitled Toffs and Plagiarizing Prime Ministers

It’s no surprise that a Nazi-themed host bar in Japan recently opened and closed almost simultaneously. What’s remarkable is that it opened at all. The bar, Unfair, used the swastika as a promotional design, including on its champagne bottles, and dressed its young-male staff in Nazi uniforms. Social media rose up, and Unfair was undone, shuttered within 48 hours, its owners “sincerely apologiz[ing] for our lack of knowledge and awareness.”

If this rings a bell, maybe it’s because a few years ago in Japan an all-girl “idol group”—teenagers who sing and dance in sync—performed, as the Associated Press reported at the time, “in black knee-length dresses that look like military overcoats, and black capes and officer caps with a Nazi-like eagle emblem.” The group’s label, Sony Music, apologized for, yes, “our lack of understanding.”