Day 043 - 01 Nov 94 - Page 54

     
     1        entrepreneurial credentials."  Do you see that?
     2        A.  Yes, I do.
     3
     4   Q.   Can you just read down the bit that I have yellowed
     5        alongside it, until you get to the sentence ending, towards
     6        the end of the paragraph, "to put hamburger outlets through
     7        Japan".  Just read it to yourself and tell me when you have
     8        got there.
     9        A.  Yes.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just where on the page are you?
    12
    13   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I start with a paragraph:  "Fujita had
    14        the entrepreneurial credentials" -- 426.
    15
    16             (To the witness)  Do the last two sentence of that
    17        paragraph read:
    18
    19             "'The reason Japanese people are so short and have
    20        yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish
         and rice for 2,000 years', he" -- that is Mr. Fujita --
    22         "told reporters.  'If we eat McDonald's hamburgers and
    23        potatoes for 1000 years, we will become taller, our skin
    24        will become white and our hair blonde.'"
    25
    26             Do you know Mr. Fujita quite well?
    27        A.  I have met with him a number of times and have spent
    28        some time with him, yes.
    29
    30   Q.   Does he speak English?
    31        A.  Yes.  He speaks English very well.
    32
    33   Q.   Does he have a sense of humour?
    34        A.  He has a very rye sense of humour, and I can see him
    35        saying this with quite a smile on his face.
    36
    37   Q.   More seriously, perhaps, Mr. Green, some sort of a
    38        suggestion is made in this court -- though not at any
    39        earlier stage of the proceedings -- that McDonald's exports
    40        its particular brand all over the world and that the
         consequence of that, taken with the advertising that
    42        accompanies that export, is that local culture is subverted
    43        in favour of the worst aspects of American culture.  Do you
    44        follow the suggestion?
    45        A.  I do not -- I do not agree with it, but I follow it,
    46        yes.
    47
    48   Q.   Leaving aside the question of whether or not McDonald's is
    49        a good or a bad aspect of American culture, is it the
    50        policy of McDonald's, so far as you know, as it were, to 
    51        move into countries and take over aspects of local 
    52        culture? 
    53        A.  No, not at all.  No.  I think, in general, we present
    54        the goods and services that people know about McDonald's,
    55        and, if they like them, they patronise them; if they do not
    56        like them, they do not.
    57
    58   Q.   I would like to move now, if I may, to something else.  Do
    59        you know anything, in anything but the most broad sense,
    60        about the question of nutrition?