P.M. BRIEFING : Japanese Firm Drops Black Doll

A Japanese toy maker said today it will stop selling a black inflatable doll with big round eyes and a grass skirt, but the company denied it was acting because critics called the doll racist.

Shusuke Kubota, a spokesman for Takara Co., said it was also discontinuing the use of the doll, named Dakko-chan, as its corporate symbol.

Takara, which also makes Transformer robots that can be bent and twisted into other objects, is the second Japanese company in less than 10 days to say it is abandoning symbols that critics have called derogatory to blacks.

But Kubota said Takara’s decision to discontinue Dakko-chan had no connection with racial issues. “It’s not a black. It represents a Japanese child whose skin has darkened from being out in the sun all summer long,” he said.