Americans have long found Japanese advertisements peculiar—the “Mr. Sparkle” commercial parody from The Simpsons (“I am disrespectful to dirt!”) is certainly an excellent representation of why we regard them as so strange.

In this 2009 commercial for a Japanese telecom named SoftBank, renowned director and would-be actor Quentin Tarantino makes his best pitch at being the Mickey Rooney of his generation (watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s if you don’t get that reference) when he dons a kimono, waves his hands around martial arts-style, and says a few words in Japanese.

The product in the commercial is a cell phone speaker shaped like a dog, which is SoftBank’s mascot. The dog is actually the patriarch of the family featured in SoftBank’s commercials. They are known as “the White Family,” and as David Griner observes, the family consists of “the most popular recurring commercial characters in Japan” in which “the father is a human in a dog’s body ... the son is a black American, and their maid is an alien incarnation of Tommy Lee Jones.” Hooo-kay! But then again, try summarizing any Geico commercial and you end up in Weird Town pretty fast.

In the commercial, which is scored to Prokofiev, “Uncle Tara” is excited to be accompanying Papa Doggy to “Tosa” (whatever that is) and makes kitana-waving gestures with his hands, but he is immediately chastened when the cellphone rings and his shrewish “wife” yells at him, and Tarantino leaves hurriedly.

See for yourself.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Quentin Tarantino’s father really really sucks as an actor
What if Quentin Tarantino’s movies actually were pulp fiction?