Japan to protest Fukushima-Olympics cartoons in French weekly

Bloomberg

Japan plans to complain to the French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaine after it published cartoons poking fun at Tokyo hosting the 2020 Olympics in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

One cartoon published in the Sept. 11 edition of the paper shows two emaciated sumo wrestlers with extra limbs battling it out with nuclear reactors in the background. The caption reads: “Thanks to Fukushima, sumo has become an Olympic sport.”

Tokyo won the right to host the games for the first time since 1964, after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe flew to Buenos Aires last weekend to give a final presentation to the International Olympic Committee. The last few days of the campaign were dogged by questions about tons of radioactive water leaking into the sea from the crippled Fukushima plant. Abe has vowed to resolve the issue before the games.

The cartoon was “extremely regrettable,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Thursday.

“This kind of cartoon hurts the feelings of those who suffered in the disaster and gives an incorrect impression of the problem of contaminated water at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant,” he told reporters in Tokyo.

Suga added that the government would complain to the weekly via the Japanese embassy in Paris and would instruct the Foreign Ministry to discourage inappropriate media coverage of Japan in the future.

Another cartoon in the paper showed what appeared to be a tank of contaminated water at the ruined nuclear plant. “We have already built our Olympic swimming pool at Fukushima,” reads the caption.

Louis-Marie Horeau, one of the two editors in chief of Le Canard Enchaine, said in a telephone interview that the newspaper doesn’t plan to apologize.

“We don’t see any reason to apologize,” he said. “Satire is a long-standing French tradition and it will continue. The representation of an anorexic sumo wrestler may not be funny to some people but I don’t see how it has hurt Fukushima victims.”

He said a charge d’affaire from the Japanese embassy in Paris called the newspaper to convey how “upset” the government was by the caricatures. A formal protest from Japan is also expected, which would be a first for the weekly, he said.

The newspaper and its political cartoonist Cabu were “taken by surprise by the Japanese reaction,” Horeau said. “Cabu actually loves Japan, he goes there often and knows it well.”

  • leaf

    Emaciated sumo wrestlers with extra limbs???? Come on! This is downright offensive and I don’t understand how these guys could expect any other reaction. And Horeau says “anorexic sumo wrestlers”. I highly doubt that that’s the only thing the cartoon is trying to express and if he thinks it’s as simple as that, he probably just doesn’t get it.

  • Sid Barton

    Funny cartoon. And don’t forget about 3-eyed Tuna — coming soon. A delicacy not to be missed.

  • Tabatha33

    yes, it is a pitty for the people who lived that but it is a reality that Japan is not taking care off.. You just published few weeks ago that the Fukushima plant is been pouring tons and tons of contaminated water to the sea and your government doesn´t think is an important issue… then at least let us laugh about this polution you are giving to the world

    • JTCommentor

      Did you write that the government doesn’t think that the situation in Fukushima is an important issue? Can you point me to your source for this – or did you just make it up?

  • JTCommentor

    Of course they dont – Japanese humor is completely different. I think the satirical humor is probably more funny than the slapstick Japanese style, but still, if the French publicatoin cant see how deeply this would hurt people from the region, who are already suffering, then they need to think a little more. The world is small now, and these sorts of things quickly make it around the globe. This will just worsen the Japanese people’s opinion of foreign countries – they will wonder how anybody, satirical press or not, could make a joke about such huge scale a tragedy and those personally affected by the tragedy will feel pain.

  • nonuke

    “This kind of cartoon hurts the feelings of those who suffered in the disaster..”??? This cartoon is about the prime minister Abe and his government saying that “everything was/is under control” to the naive Olympic committee. It is actually the government who uses those suffered in the disaster as victims for their political decisions.

  • Michael Radcliffe

    Loss of life?

  • Ururoa

    Absolutely pathetic attitude shown by the Japanese government. If you don’t like it then just don’t read it! Such childish immaturity by the Japanese government is unbecoming, and I am sure that they and the victims of Fukushima have far more pressing concerns than some cartoons from the other side of the world.

  • Stack Jones

    The world needs many more articles, and cartoons mocking Japan’s criminal ineptness. Japan and the Olympics… Wow! How undeserved. Period!

  • kamakiri

    Hello Mike,
    thanks for the compliments. Only the trappist beers are really made by monks but there are beers based on that style of beer, they are called abbey beers.

  • Krang

    Still, I’m amazed to see how differently Abe’s speech was reported in the French and Japanese media. The Japanese media quoted his phrase saying Fukushima was under control. But French newspaper Le Monde published an even more outrageous quote : “Today, children are playing ball under Fukushima’s blue sky, and they’re looking toward the furture. Not the past.” After searching in articles reporting the speech, I haven’t been able to find this phrase in the Japanese media.

    Here it is (in French)
    http://www.lemonde.fr/jeux-olympiques/article/2013/09/08/tokyo-candidature-stable-et-traditionnelle-remporte-les-jo-de-2020_3473014_1616891.html

    • http://www.dadsarmy.co.uk/ GMainwaring

      Huh. That part of his speech was in all the Japanese TV coverage *I* saw.

      What part of that is “outrageous”? I am certain lots of children *are* playing ball under Fukushima’s blue sky. Fukushima is a big place, and most of it was and is unaffected by what is going on at Dai-Ichi.

  • OlivierAM71

    I was referring to the French article itself!
    Why no media did refer to the content of the article?! instead of just talking about the cartoons.
    The Government used this stratagem only as another way to get Japanese people focused on something else than the real problem! As someone else pointed it out in another comment : this is another “red-herring”.
    “Hoo, look at what French people say about people from Fukushima! French people hate Japanese people”
    Meanwhile, the government is free to continue not to take care seriously of the matter.
    Plus, if you knew Le Canard background history and if you read the article, you WOULD KNOW they absolutely do not talk “badly” about Fukushima’s people. Quite the contrary, they defend them, pointing to the government and TEPCO’s misconduct since the start of the disaster.

  • OlivierAM71

    Unfortunately, the Japanese people you meet in “your” country (meaning outside Japan) are fewer than the ones never leaving Japan.
    I’m not implying that the one not leaving Japan are all uneducated, but the system is really made for them not to think.
    Fortunately enough, a lot of people are highly interested in other countries. But, indeed, most of them, as well, tend to mix things pretty easily.
    But, I should say, it’s nothing compare to what I witnessed in Australia.