Building brand Jamaica in Japan

Japan goes Jamaican

By Julian Richardson in Tokyo, Japan richardsonj@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Less than a ten-minute drive from the Embassy of Jamaica in Tokyo, Ambassador Claudia Barnes and I sit down to dine at arguably the finest Jamaican restaurant in the country.

"I will have the usual, and I brought a guest from Jamaica — a journalist," Barnes tells a short Japanese man, with a Rasta-themed green, gold and red headband, as he approaches our table and respectfully acknowledges the ambassador's presence with deep head bows. I tell the man that I will have the same menu option as the diplomat, after which he heads back into the kitchen to prepare the order.

The food is terrific on this cold winter night. In fact, my jerk pork and jerk chicken meal tastes better than a similar dish I had at a popular jerk spot in rural Jamaica just two weeks earlier. My rice & peas and pepper pot soup side orders are spot on, as good as any from a Jamaican kitchen on a Sunday and Saturday evening respectively.

The vast menu — which includes Jamaican curry chicken, fried ripe plantains, festival and escovitch fish — photos of Jamaica and Jamaicans adorning the walls, and reggae tunes passing through the background speakers, give the restaurant an authentic feel of the island and gives justice to the black, green and gold flag at the entrance.

"I purposely brought you to this restaurant," Barnes says while we eat and patrons gradually pack the small restaurant, which has some six to eight tables.

"When I see all the opportunities that we could have had if we had copyrighted all of this, even just the brand 'Jamaica', it is just incredible," she says passionately, reflecting on our earlier discussion at her Tokyo office.

What she means is that the restaurant is not owned by a Jamaican. It is owned by the Japanese man who is waiting our table, she says, along with his Japanese wife and Japanese friend.

She argued earlier that the Jamaican brand is widely cherished and gainfully used by foreigners, while Jamaicans have largely fallen short on recouping from its intellectual property and brand recognition.

"There are a number of people who are using brand Jamaica," Barnes told Sunday Finance.

The ambassador recalled attending one country's national reception in Japan and being shocked to see a product with a startling resemblance to a famous Jamaican brand.

"Here, when you go to a national reception, everybody gives you a package. When I opened my package, I nearly fainted," Barnes said. "It was a packet of coffee called Blue Mountain. What they said in defense of their own Blue Mountain Coffee is that the seed came from Jamaica."

According to Barnes, nowhere is the power of the Jamaican brand more evident than in Japan. Now in her third year as ambassador in the country, she is working hard to help marry Jamaica's strong brand to meaningful trade with this Asian super power..

Formal relations between Jamaica and Japan stretch back to 1964. Japan is one of the largest markets for Jamaican reggae music and coffee — 80 per cent of the island's Blue Mountain Coffee is exported to Japan. However, Jamaica's trade deficit with Japan currently stands at some US$100 million, due largely to imports of machinery and equipment.

Against this background, Barnes wants to see Jamaica combine value-added products with its strong brand recognition to make a push into other areas of the Japanese market, such as crafts.

"In the same sort of structured way that we have our Blue Mountain Coffee coming in — we have a seven member association of Japanese importers of Jamaican coffee — I would like to see us developing in other areas," she said.

A big challenge to Jamaica is competition from other Asian countries with similar climates and products, but which are closer to Japan and have lower cost of production, she said. To counter this, it is important that Jamaica concentrates on producing high quality goods. To this end, she said, she has held talks with the Philippines, where she is also an honorary consul, to get technical assistance for Jamaican craftsmen.

"When I had talks with them, that is one of the things I asked them, if we could collaborate more with them in terms of helping our own craftsmen to improve the quality of the products we produce," she said.

The ambassador used the opportunity to commended reggae artistes for playing an integral role in developing the strong Jamaican brand in Japan, from which the country has a vantage point to target the Japanese market.

"I have had a deeper appreciation of what our reggae artistes have done for us since coming here as Ambassador," she said, adding: "Artistes who came here first, like Winston Mcanuff and Alford Scott, are the true pioneers."

Indeed, Barnes has been involved in two One Love Jamaica Festivals — a huge reggae event on the Japanese calendar. Officially started in 2004 to celebrate the then Jamaica/Japan 40-year diplomatic friendship, the two-day May festival started off with over 30,000 patrons and has now grown to 50,000.

"Reggae music is Jamaica's gift to the world," said Barnes. "Because our reggae artistes came out here on their own, they were not even aware of (the power of) what they were doing."

Jamaicans who come here on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) programme also help to maintain the bond between the two countries. Jamaicans come to Japan annually on the JET programme, in which they are assigned to various schools across the country as assistant language teachers.

"They have an excellent reputation here, with their dedication to service; they are very reliable and hard working. They are the true ambassadors here now," Barnes said.

And according to Barnes, Jamaicans did not hesitate to reciprocate kindness back to the Japanese in their time of urgent need after The Great East Japanese Earthquake and tsunami on March 11 last year, a day she said will forever be etched in her memory.

"I was in Tokyo and, interestingly, I was five minutes away from the embassy attending a seminar looking at the future of Japan in the basement of the Hotel Okura," Barnes said, adding that 15 minutes into the seminar, the ground started "rumbling."

Due to the frequency of earth movements in Japan, the seminar continued for a while, she said, but was stopped abruptly when the intensity increased significantly.

"The ground started heaving under me like it wouldn't stop and by that time, I went under the table and I did nothing but pray," she recalled.

"I started praying 'Dear God, please let this stop,'" Barnes said.

She was not hurt in the earthquake, though she acknowledged that Tokyo was spared the brunt of the disaster.

According to Barnes, in a show of support to the Japanese, the Jamaican Coffee Board visited Sendai, one of the hardest hit cities, with former Miss Jamaica Universe Yendi Phillips and had a reggae concert in the evacuation centre, where they served the victims coffee.

"It was really meaningful to them. They were clapping. It was really touching that day," said Barnes.

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Building brand Jamaica in Japan