If there is any information the Japanese know about Ghana and have kept ‘safely’ in their subconscious minds, such that it spills out involuntarily anytime they meet a Ghanaian in Japan, then I will say it is one of the products of the cocoa bean Tetteh Quarshie brought from Fernando Po to Ghana – CHOCOLATES.
In the land of the rising sun, Ghana is synonymous to chocolates than anything else it is noted internationally for.
After the eighth Japanese I met retorted, ‘Chocolates’, after I had introduced myself as an African from Ghana in less than two months of living in Japan, I only smiled and confirmed the Ghanaian proverb, “sɛ wotan okwadu na wayi ne mirika”.
To wit, “you may not be fond of an individual or his actions, yet there may be a special characteristic about him or her which you cannot deny is acme.”
Months after that experience of knowing that Ghana is another word for chocolates in Japan, I decided in my mind to play a game that will confirm or deny my thoughts.
The game was to put one of the popular chocolate brands found in Japan in my bag anytime I stepped out just in case a Japanese asked me where I had come from. It may sound like a joke but amazingly, each time I was asked where I hailed, I pretended I was picking a tissue from my bag to burp or do a reflex act before I answered.
Once the chocolates came out from my bag, the Japanese immediately asks rhetorically “Gāna kara kimashita ka?” To mean, “Do you come from Ghana? Then I smile broadly without uttering a word, and as if the smile was an affirmative response, they continue “sure, because these chocolates are from Ghana”.
It’s lovely how Ghana’s chocolates are touted in Japan. That experience I must say, made me feel so much at home even though I had flown for more than 30 hours before getting to Japan from Ghana.
After one of those encounters, I got home and started soliloquizing, are those chocolates really from Ghana as the Japanese believe or say? Since I had one bar with me, I turned on Google translator to read every information on the bar and then to research about the ‘Lotte company’ that produces it. I sought to find out if the chocolates were truly from Ghana but had to be packaged in this manner for the Asian market.
Below is the information I got from the manufacturer of the CHOCOLATES called “Ghana” in Asia.
Ghana (Katakana: ガーナ, Korean: 가나) is a brand of chocolate manufactured by the Japanese company Lotte since 1964 and Korean company Lotte Confectionery since 1975. Its name is a homage to the country Ghana, one of the world’s largest exporters of cocoa beans from which chocolate is made. The confectionery has a creamy texture and is a popular brand in both Korea and Japan.
Japan’s Ghana chocolate is made by Lotte in Japan and unlike Korea’s Ghana chocolate, it uses cacao butter by using microglind method. Like Korea, the Japanese Ghana chocolate is written as ‘Ghana’ in English. Ghana has four kinds of chocolate wrapped in red, black, white and beige.
Wow, so the Chocolate’s name “Ghana” was only chosen because the country – Ghana is one of the world’s largest producers of cocoa and not because the Chocolates are truly from Ghana as the Japanese associate it to.
Well, maybe let me say that this marketing strategy of the Lotte company is really working as every confectionery in Japan that has cocoa bean in it is called ‘Ghana’ including even ice creams.
Impressive how Ghana’s association with cocoa is been capitalised on in Asia.
Errrhmmm, as I always reiterate in my write-ups, I don’t claim to know anything more than anyone who reads my article neither am I professing to be an expert in ways of earning foreign exchange for Ghana but I wish to ask this just as a concerned CITIZEN and the daughter of a cocoa farmer:
Is Ghana benefiting in any way, (socially, politically, culturally or environmentally) from this famous chocolate identification in Asia?
Does the life of the ordinary cocoa farmer in Ghana reflect the fact that he is the ‘engine’ behind these accolades that Ghanaians in Asia, typically those in Japan receive?
Are these Japanese and Korean companies manufacturing chocolates using the brand name “Ghana” transferring the trickling down economic remittances to my home economy or they are only using my ‘nationality’ to make money for their nation?
Well as I mentioned earlier, I am no tax expert nor anywhere near the decision making powers in my home country, but I am only concerned about these things in my home country: the deplorable state of roads in cocoa-growing areas, the unavailability of equipped health facilities, schools and markets in rural cocoa-growing areas in Ghana.
Do the lives of cocoa farmers in Ghana’s hinterland and the welfare of their children reflect this international pride I am wearing in Japan?
A picture, it is said is worth a thousand words, so fellow citizens in a “Christian country” like Ghana, I implore you to kindly have a look at these pictures and help me to echo my question to our leaders from the Bible in 1st Timothy 5:18.
“Ought the state muzzle the ox that treads the grain”?
(I am the GHANAIAN villager that came to Japan officially known as Afiba Anyanzua Boavo Twum)
#The value of Ghana’s cocoa Internationally
#The reality of the value of Ghana’s cocoa farmer