I honestly can't imagine that kind of humor being taken any other way by Japanese bureaucrats.
After years of direct, negative experience, I still routinely step in it with my "American humor", and then feel like an ass afterwards. Scarcasm goes over like a lead balloon.
sarcasm and dark humor. I made a joke to a class of ESL students in Tokyo that was something about killing your friend (haha) and the humor did not transcend the language or cultural barriers at. all.
Did you study at JAIST? Sorry to ask, but when you said "deep in the mountains outside of Kanazawa", that's the only university that popped up in my mind that was more open to foreigners(which I assume you are/were).
It was Kindai (Kanazawa Daigaku). They moved from the castle inside Kanazawa to a new campus outside the city. It might be a stretch to say deep in the mountains, it was probably a 20 minute bus ride from downtown Kanazawa. I haven't been there in 25 years and I imagine it has all changed significantly.
It is a frequent reaction: Put people in charge of two things they can't control (people's speech and public's reaction) and they tend to become control freaks on the small things they actually have a hang on.
But I was still oblivious to what that gas attack meant, and what terrorism would mean to people in a few years after 9/11.
After the gas attacks happened, the other exchange students that all lived in the new foreigners dormitory (deep in the mountains outside of Kanazawa) planned a party. We put up flyers with a bear dancing with Asahara Shokou, the blind prophet of the cult. He was the Japanese equivalent of Osama bin Laden. The caption read "ore mo ikitai kedo naa!" ("Damn, I wish I could go too!") We thought it was really funny, since he had been arrested by that point.
The school administrators dragged us in, saying that "black humor, well..." We immediately took down all the flyers.
Sounds like the Microsoft PR people had the same reaction.