Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom, has written a remarkable editorial in the Telegraph, ‘China and Britain Won the War Together,’ in which he explains the evil Japan represents on the Pacific Rim with language straight from a Potter-phile’s dictionary. Could anyone understand this man’s point who was not very familiar with the Hogwarts Saga? His first paragraph:
In the Harry Potter story, the dark wizard Voldemort dies hard because the seven horcruxes, which contain parts of his soul, have been destroyed. If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation’s soul.
I’m not sure the analogy works either in the sense of Japan as Dark Lord to the Chinese Communist regime as the China that resisted the Rising Sun Empire in the Second World War “shoulder to shoulder” with British troops or in the parallel the ambassador tries to make with a Horcrux and the Yasukuni Shrine. That’s for political partisans and historians to dispute.
What I think is undisputable is that this is the highest ranking official to use Wizarding World vocabulary in an important statement of his country’s position. This is an order of magnitude greater than the bumper sticker language of “Democrats for Voldemort” and “Bush killed Lily.” Hat tip to James!
Japan responds, with another HP reference: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-and-japan-invoke-harry-potter-in-war-of-words/article16203481/
Really. This is an amazing new high bar standard for Shared Text references.
That the Chinese ambassador made the Voldemort accusation/reference in London isn’t that surprising, right? But that the Japanese respond in kind? From the Pacific Rim?
That’s reach. And a global Shared Text.