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Harry Potter wizard invoked as Japan admits no hope of China summit
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Harry_Potter_wizard_invoked_again_as_Japan_hits_back_at_China_999.html
Harry Potter wizard invoked as Japan admits no hope of China summit
Tokyo (AFP) Jan 06, 2014
The diplomatic bickering between Japan and China descended into name-calling in the British press Monday, with ambassadorial claim and counter-claim invoking the fictional evil wizard of the Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort.
In an opinion piece published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Tokyo's envoy to London Keiichi Hayashi compared Beijing to the arch-villain of JK Rowling's multi-million selling books and the resulting movie franchise.
"East Asia is now at a crossroads. There are two paths open to China," he wrote.
"One is to seek dialogue, and abide by the rule of law. The other is to play the role of Voldemort in the region by letting loose the evil of an arms race and escalation of tensions, although Japan will not escalate the situation from its side," he said.
<snip>
Hayashi's letter was an apparent response to an earlier op-ed -- also referencing the boy-wizard's nemesis -- published in the Daily Telegraph on January 1 by Liu Xiaoming, Chinese ambassador to London.
Liu harshly criticised Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's December 26 visit to Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni war shrine, which honours war dead, including men convicted of serious war crimes in the wake of Japan's 1945 World War II defeat.
The shinto shrine is seen by China and other Asian nations as a symbol of Japan's militarist past.
"If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation's soul," the Chinese envoy wrote.
In the Harry Potter series, a horcrux is a receptacle in which evil characters store fragments of their souls to enable them to achieve immortality.
<snip>
Harry Potter wizard invoked as Japan admits no hope of China summit
Tokyo (AFP) Jan 06, 2014
The diplomatic bickering between Japan and China descended into name-calling in the British press Monday, with ambassadorial claim and counter-claim invoking the fictional evil wizard of the Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort.
In an opinion piece published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Tokyo's envoy to London Keiichi Hayashi compared Beijing to the arch-villain of JK Rowling's multi-million selling books and the resulting movie franchise.
"East Asia is now at a crossroads. There are two paths open to China," he wrote.
"One is to seek dialogue, and abide by the rule of law. The other is to play the role of Voldemort in the region by letting loose the evil of an arms race and escalation of tensions, although Japan will not escalate the situation from its side," he said.
<snip>
Hayashi's letter was an apparent response to an earlier op-ed -- also referencing the boy-wizard's nemesis -- published in the Daily Telegraph on January 1 by Liu Xiaoming, Chinese ambassador to London.
Liu harshly criticised Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's December 26 visit to Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni war shrine, which honours war dead, including men convicted of serious war crimes in the wake of Japan's 1945 World War II defeat.
The shinto shrine is seen by China and other Asian nations as a symbol of Japan's militarist past.
"If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation's soul," the Chinese envoy wrote.
In the Harry Potter series, a horcrux is a receptacle in which evil characters store fragments of their souls to enable them to achieve immortality.
<snip>
