So now we know. Aso the "manga" man cannot read Japanese. At least not when it is written in kanji. The newspapers have been full of revelations these past few weeks about Prime Minister Taro Aso's slipups in the art of kanji deciphering.
Mind you, kanji reading is no easy feat. Children have to spend very long hours trying to master the technique. Even the most well-read Japanese are apt, every so often, to come across a word that defeats their kanji-unraveling skills. Yet if the newspaper reports are to be believed, Aso's difficulties in this field seem to be in a league of their own, and quite creative, too.
It seems the problem is being generated by his habit of making up his own way of reading certain kanji, not an inability to read them. One might call it the art of imaginative misreading.