Never forget national humiliation and lick a mocha Tojo, Shanghai ice cream store urges

An ice cream chain in Shanghai is offering a lickable likeness of the head of executed Japanese war criminal Hideki Tojo to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war.

Iceason parlours are selling ice cream bars on a stick with the image of Tojo, former Japanese army general and prime minister, in a campaign with the slogan “10,000 people together eat the Japanese war criminal”.

An advertising poster displayed at one store in central Shanghai showed a chocolate Tojo, complete with glasses and a moustache, with the words: “Never forget national humiliation.”

Another store in Shanghai’s financial district on Wednesday offered five Tojo flavours: vanilla, blueberry, mocha, mango and tiramisu. But it had few takers for the ice cream, priced at 30 yuan (HK$36.5), even during the lunch hour.

Customers who bought 50 yuan-worth of ice cream could get a free Tojo bar if they used the online payment service of internet giant Alibaba, store employees said.