Yesterday the Catalan government mounted some kind of co-branding (brand leeching, if you prefer) spectacle with the Japanese ambassador to Spain, which seems to have been designed to encourage the local public to contribute money to Japanese reconstruction and the Japanese to empathise with Catalan nationalist aspirations. Much was made of the virtues of industry and parsimony that unite these two massively indebted Völker, and, says Avui (echoed unquestioningly by El País, skirted subtly by La Vanguardia), an elderly soap actress, Montserrat Carulla, was given a text to read which included the following classic:
Catalonia and Japan share the myth of St George, who is called Susanoo in Japanese.
(Catalunya i el Japó compartim el mite de sant Jordi, que en japonès duu el nom de Susanowo)
Are the Japanese really celebrating the god of the sea and storms at the moment? Is the Catholic church aware that tsunamis are also St George’s vocation? (At least Gibbon’s St George, George of Cappadocia, had some connection with the sea, in which he was drowned by his followers.) Is Shintoism a Christian sect or vice versa?
(H/t: DN)
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Ironic really after all the American Christian bating of the Japanese after the tsunami.
Catalonia is Shin Chan world. Let's see if the Susan-thing thus invited makes our next San Jordi. Or may it be Nai-no Kami.
It's all Cappadocian to me, mate.