Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Anti-Blood Clot Medication Kimono for Sale in Ebay

If you are interested in purchasing some authentic Japanese kimono replica, why not just check out eBay’s bargain selection?

Especially item number 270025981666, “Boutique Clovergirls BDB Costume Geisha Kimono Japanese”. (thanks to "Furisode Fan" for the tip)

* I have removed the photo that was originally posted here after “jetsoncity@gmail.com” (who is not the seller of the kimono, not the legal guardian of the girl shown in the photos, nor owner of the actual photos) decided to do a little “cybercensoring” of her own.

Luckily, the actual photos are located at vintageduck.com as well as eBay.com, and it is not copyrights infringement by directly linking to there.

(more photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)



* I have decided to repost the image from eBay after contacting Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) about my blogger's rights. I am free to post the photo since I am only using the image to illustrate my point, the image size has been reduced from its original, and it was posted on eBay, thus it does not hold the same copyrights as commerical photos.

Look, they even have some Japanese characters accompanying all the photos.

means “anti-blood clot medication”.

The clever seller has simply lifted some Japanese characters from medicine bottles and pasted them over the photo to give them the “authentic” feel.


Ps. Dear jetsoncity@gmail.com,

Since you like to censor other people's websites so much, why not write to this website and defend Lindsay Lohan's flashing vagina?
Oh my, how embarrassing.

And Jzcustoms,

Sweetheart, before you splash together another photo of your latest creation, how about do a little research?


13 comments:

  1. Even better, above that it says ミミズから, which is "from worms."

    "Anti-bloodclot medication from worms"... I'll take it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I contacted the seller, and they said that the characters were part of a Japanese Photoshop brush set they bought. Interesting ... I wonder if the maker of the brush set knows what the characters mean.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Guav,

    Thanks for the info.

    I have been using Adobe Photoshop for over eight years; I have never seen any brush sets that would give the precise phrase “血栓治療薬”.

    The seller is probably too embarrassed to face the truth.

    I call it bullshit.

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  4. "Anti-bloodclot medication from worms"

    Mmmm, leech spit.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I would have left the photo up. Once anything is on the internet it's immediately accessible to millions. Kind of like making a giant billboard and then yelling if people look at it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. *sigh* For whatever reason this made your blog..I have hundreds of brushes, either bought or gotten off websites and a heck of a lot from Deviant where I saw these. Granted I do NOT claim to know Japanese ;) And the auction was merely for a COSTUME. Not sure why this is huge news for you (even though the translation is funny) but here is the link to where I downloaded the brushes:

    http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/21941870/?qo=20&q=japanese+brushes+boost%3Apopular+age_sigma%3A24h+age_scale%3A5

    jzcustoms

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dear jzcustoms,

    If it was not a big deal like you said, why did you remove all the photos off from vintageduck.com and ebay.com then?

    Perhaps you were just a bit embarrassed about it?

    About the fact that you knew nothing about Japanese, yet since it is a Kimono costume, by adding some random Japanese characters on the photos would boost up the sales price?

    ReplyDelete
  8. How about we do you a deal?

    We acknowledge that you can't be expected to learn the entire Japanese language just for one bit of design work.

    In return, you acknowledge that those of us for who these are no more and no less than words could not fail to be amused by this if we tried, and that we cannot be expected not to want to talk about it. And that although you have a right to take your pictures down if you find it embarrassing, we have the right to discuss what we saw.

    You can't be expected to understand yourself what these brushes mean; but likewise you have to be prepared to face the consequences of mishaps when trusting sources as unreliable as some random teenager on DeviantArt - and I say that as a dedicated Deviant myself - who clearly does not speak the language himself, as he created the brushes from a newspaper clip he found on google.

    Just be thankful that your pictures didn't get covered in excerpts from an article about a sex scandal, or worse.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Tian:

    Egad! How dair you call the poster of the pitchures a "lair". How could you! And how dair you post a pitchure of a young girl wearing a kimno on a sight like yours when clerely the person selling the item would perfer the girl to remain anonimous by posting her pitchure only on Ebay!

    (c) 2006. All rights in the aforesaid parody are reserved to the author. All of the characters and locales appearing in the afore-mentioned parody are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

    Good for you Tian. As someone who deals with copyright law on a daily basis, I'm glad you stood up to someone who clearly wants to try and use their "knowledge" of U.S. copyright law to try and censor someone...basically yelling "I'll sue" even though they have no case.

    Every blogger should know their rights and obligations under U.S. copyright as well as the provisions governing fair-use. There are a lot of sites out there like the one you linked to that have some pretty non-legalese translations of the law.

    Kudos to you!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm with Coco. If someone unfamilar with a language, written or spoken, tries to use it for advertising they have to accept the consequences if hilarity ensues. Just like I have to accept that every once in awhile I'm going to miss a tone in Cantonese, say something idiotic, and the nice ladies at my favorite dim sum restaurant are going to laugh at me.
    To jzcustoms, I urge you to take yourself less seriously. Life is more fun if you roll with the punches.

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  11. "just becuase you havent seen that brush set doesnt make her a lair."

    A Lair?

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  12. All language issues aside...Does anyone recognize the creepiness of a little girl dressed up as a geisha? Now I know that this may have been acceptable in the past, as geishas began training at a very young age, but if someone was so concerned about you pasting a child's face on your site, then shouldn't they be concerned about posting a child dressed as a geisha?

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  13. This is absolutely horrible.
    Aside from the hilarious "anti bloodclot", the picture itself is a shame.

    As someone pointed out,
    - the girl in the picture is way too young to be a geisha (even too young for maiko i'd say)
    - her kimono of course is a piece of crap, which material would be never used in Japan under any circumstance
    - she is wearing cheap sandals that are not even "sandals" for yukata (of course not for kimono...)
    - her Obi is not done correctly and falling apart
    - The whole set, besides being fake, cheap and ugly, makes the girl look like a prostitute. the way her obi is done looks more like how fake "geisha" (prostitutes in the 50s working for the american soldiers in Japan) used to do. Very nice, indeed.

    Instead of bitching that a website is being critical, the posters of this item should be ashamed of promoting sexual and degrading images of young girls. period.

    ReplyDelete