Criticism is growing in Japan over the gift of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida with a large rice spatula to pray for victory in Ukraine. Not only online, but also in the political world, voices call it a “shameful gift.”
According to Japanese media Sponichianex and Jcast on the 23rd (local time), Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said on the same day that Prime Minister Kishida presented a ‘shamoji’ (rice spatula) to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his visit with Kiiu, Ukraine.
The approximately 50 cm long chamoji is given by Prime Minister Kishida of Hiroshima, and has the prime minister’s signature and the phrase ‘Victory’ written in large letters.
Shamoji is known as a symbol of wishing for victory as it means ‘catch and eat the enemy’, just like eating rice with a spatula during the Russo-Japanese War. It is also said to mean ‘spreading luck and blessings’.
Prime Minister Kishida presented a Hiroshima-grown chamoji logo for 50 years of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan as a gift to then-Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se at a meeting between Korean and Japanese foreign ministers in 2015, when he foreign minister
About this, reactions like “I think it’s unnecessary” and “embarrassing” are pouring out in Japan.
One netizen pointed out, “It doesn’t matter if you give the Japanese baseball team this time, but it doesn’t make sense to give it to the president of a country at war.”
In Japan, 1000 origami cranes are a gift believed to bring good luck and speed up the recovery of the sick. At the time of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria last month, there was a movement to fold origami cranes in Japan, causing controversy.
There was also criticism that Prime Minister Kishida was “a kind of performance for the election campaign.”
Senator Renho of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party tweeted an article about Shamoji’s donation, claiming, “I think it’s just that they can’t distinguish between an election and a war.”
It is noted that Prime Minister Kishida, who hails from Hiroshima, aimed to motivate supporters of the trend and increase performance by giving Hiroshima-produced products as a gift ahead of Japan’s unification local elections next month.
Then, Representative Renho noted that Prime Minister Kishida had appointed his eldest son as secretary, saying, “Although his (Prime Minister’s) family is a secretary, no one is stopping him.”
Hideya Sugio, a member of the same party, shared the article on Twitter and said, “Is this real? I don’t want to believe it.”
jaeha67@newyddion1.kr
