This week's 小学校毎日新聞Mainichi Shinbun elementary-school newspaper has a front page story on the American election. The illustration is a manga of Obama and McCain over a map of the American voters, including Spiderman, Batman, and Superman near NYC, a cowboy out west, a Johnny Depp-ish pirate for Owen's mom, two (gay?) male sailors holding hands; a black jazz trumpeter and a basketball player; some football and baseball players, a boxer, a gangster, a priest and a nun, a few news broadcasters, King Kong, Mickey Mouse, and a big bald eagle. Makes me miss my country, Spidey, Louis Armstrong, and The Godfather in particular.
The article explains, to a Japanese elementary schooler and me, that America's election process is complicated because America is a 連ぽ国家 (renpotsu/kokka), a union of states nation: "America" is a "country" (国 kuni) but also 50 separate states gathered together. There's a great manga showing McCain and Obama's heads poking over the American flag, both sweating with voices merged saying "It's complicated". A speech bubble runs from the stars, saying "The 50 states' voters choose". Next to the speech bubble, in front of the stripes, stand five men and women representing the "538人" electoral college voters, and an arrow runs from them back to the two candidates above, with a speech bubble saying "The candidate who obtains 270 or more people is elected." Absolutely the most clear representation of the electoral process I've ever seen... in a Japanese newspaper for 10 year olds.
The kids' newspaper reminds me why comics are such an awesome communication tool. I see the manga on the covers of the kids' newspaper tacked on the school bulletin board every day, and if it's an interesting story-- about politics, or a neuroscientist, or "What was life like for grandpa?", about Japanese history during WWII-- I copy the article and spend my free period translating the kanji in it. That's how I've learned the characters for "neuron", "development", "green fluorescent protein", "gene", and now "Democrat", "Republican", and "election".
I also learned today the reason our election day is on Tuesday. Since America is a Christian country (クリスト教の国, "Ku-ri-su-to kyo no kuni", country of Christ's teachings) where the president-elect puts his hand on the Bible at his inauguration, we could never have Election Day on the "day of repose”、安息日, Sunday, like they do in Japan. (Japanese people are mind-boggled that Americans vote on a weekday, because they can't imagine how any voter with a job could make it home for dinner with his family before 10pm, let alone to a voting booth, on a day of work.) Why not Monday you ask? well, since our country is freaking gynormous-- about 25 times the size of Japan-- and covers a few time zones, we don't want to encroach on Californians' day of rest either (at least, I think that's what it says). So we vote on Tuesdays.
I'm very jealous that you guys will get to sit around a TV, Super-Bowl style, with your friends next Tuesday night, with beers (Dogfishhead! god I miss you), Doritos and pizzas, and shout at the TV (or celebrate all night if the results are obvious fast, knock on wood), as the votes are tallied. But there's something interesting about viewing this election from abroad, too. I never figured I'd be learning Japanese from the American electoral process, but now that I have, I'm damn sure never gonna forget it. Especially when Obama wins.
Did you know that next year will be the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, and the Lincoln Memorial, founded in 1922 in DC, will be re-dedicated by the new president on May 22? No black people were invited to Lincoln's 100-year birthday party in Illinois. Few were at the opening of the memorial either, where Lincoln was praised by the Republican president as the preserver of the union, not freer of the slaves. As Thomas Mallon put it in a great article, "Set In Stone: Abraham Lincoln and the politics of memory":
"The look and the emphasis of the occasion will have changed-- measurably, for certain; astoundingly, perhaps-- in the fourscore and seven years since 1922."
Breathtaking stuff. Wish I were with you, and Obama, on Tuesday night.
P.S. This American Life ran a great show this week on the Obama and McCain campaigns' competition in Pennsylvania-- "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle", as James Carville put it. An interesting microcosm of the country as a whole, on the brink before next Tuesday. By the time of Ira Glass' next episode, we'll have a new president.
No comments:
Post a Comment