French actress Marion Cotillard bins her Japanese Rising Sun cap after Instagram photos spark anger
Star, 43, sparks online complaints after she is pictured wearing hat – showing emblem of Japan’s wartime aggression – in Paris on Saturday
Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard says she will throw her Rising Sun flag cap “in [the] trash” after learning that the flag is an emblem of Japan’s wartime aggression and colonisation, reports said on Wednesday.
The Japanese military used the flag during World War II.
[Marion Cotillard] didn’t know about the significance of this [emblem]. The hat is going in [the] trash
Cotillard, 43, shocked online users, including many in Korea – which was under Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945 – after she was seen wearing the cap last Saturday while attending the Longines Paris Eiffel Jumping – a show jumping equestrian event held in the French capital, Paris.
Photos of the actress wearing the cap sparked controversy after they went viral.
In the wake of the fuss, a Korean online user sent an Instagram message to Eliott Bliss, Cotillard's close friend and manager, to explain the wartime significance of the flag. He also asked the actress to stop wearing the cap.
![A screen grab of the text messages of Eliott Bliss, manager of French actress Marion Cotillard, which says ‘the hat is going in [the] trash’.](https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2019/07/11/c5fffe28-a389-11e9-9a3c-98259c87fba2_972x_141851.jpg "A screen grab of the text messages of Eliott Bliss, manager of French actress Marion Cotillard, which says ‘the hat is going in [the] trash’.")
A screen grab of Bliss' message was posted online on Wednesday.
Bliss said the pair had not known about the significance of the flag, adding there were many hats using the pattern in Europe.
However, “the hat is going in the trash”, Bliss added.
Cotillard rose to global stardom after winning numerous international awards, including the Oscar for best actress, for her performance as French singer Edith Piaf in the 2007 biopic, La Vie en Rose.