Will the hand of God strike Japan down? Perhaps so!
I swear if most host countries knew that ESL teachers think the host culture is a hoot and are documenting that with digital cameras, they’d never let us in.
This is a prime example; an English teacher in Korea, noting the hateful school-driven drawings of Korean schoolchildren whose government is in a snit over the ownership of some very small islands (and more likely their associated mineral and fishing rights). The official propaganda process starts early in the vast majority of nations, and when you’re lucky you can get a glimpse of that in a direct fashion such as this which is devoid of cultural ambiguity. Thus far my favorite was a very similar set of drawings that Vietnamese schoolkids drew of the United States which I saw at the Museum of the American War (formerly the less diplomatic Museum of American War Atrocities, but with the same exhibits) in Saigon. The bombers were marked USA and the bombs marked BOM.
The Koreans just plain old don’t want their kids to like the Japanese. I’m sure the feeling is mutual.
Another brick in my wall of argument that US society, with all of its problems, still ranks in the top 10% of nations in the level of dialog on cultural (mis)understanding. It sure is a big scary world out there.
For the record, my favorite drawing is the bunny crapping out the major Japanese islands. Let’s face it, that’s comedy gold.
