Nintendo is promising to remove a Japanese religious symbol — which resembles a swastika — from one of its Pokémon cards amid protests from Jewish groups.
The “manji” — a Japanese symbol of good luck that pre-dates the Nazi swastika by thousands of years — appeared only on Nintendo’s Japanese-language versions of the popular trading cards.
But with kids so hot for the pocket monsters, even the Japanese versions of the cards are selling widely here.
This presented a problem when 11-year-old Marc Specht of Westchester opened a pack of Pokémon cards he bought on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
“I’m Jewish, and I know the symbol of hate that the Nazis used,” Marc said. “It’s not the exact symbol, but it’s close enough.”
Marc’s mother, Myla, objected and called her local paper, The Journal-News, which published an article that led to Nintendo’s announcement late Wednesday.
“While the Japanese creators … continue to believe that the manji symbol has a very positive meaning in the Japanese and Buddhist cultures, they also understand that there is the potential for others to misunderstand the symbol,” Nintendo said in a statement.
The company did not return repeated calls yesterday.
“I had no clue it was a Buddhist symbol,” said Myla Specht. “Now I understand it, but they were selling this card worldwide, so they should have realized that people will see it as a symbol of Nazi hatred, not good luck.”
Specht said he was pleased that Nintendo “recognized its responsibility and did the right thing.”
The similarity between the manji and the swastika stems from a common ancestor. Both are adaptations of an ancient Buddhist symbol. But while the manji, which literally translates to “mark of 10,000,” is a symbol of good luck, the swastika, which is flipped and rotated 45 degrees, is a perversion of its ancient Indian roots.
“It was an Indian symbol that the Nazis used as part of their idea of a superior Aryan culture derived from Indo-European culture,” said William Theodore de Bary, a Columbia professor of East Asian languages and cultures.