Let me first point out that I am not the original source for this picture. If you would like to see more of the original sources pictures or read the story please go here.
Well, others may have experienced this but it’s a first for me. I have never participated in the annual Yamanote line Halloween party and after what happened this year I am pretty glad that I haven’t.
This is just one of a few lovely signs paraded around by a group of ultra right-wing Japanese Nationalists who were protesting the annual Halloween party.
Rumor has it that they showed up in KKK-esque sheets and pointed hats in order to fit in with the rest of the costumed throng of people.
Now listen, I am a big advocate of free speech but you tell me this, what did the poor Protestants ever do to deserve this kind of treatment. Those poor Protestants, poor poor Protestants, my heart goes out to them. Geez if your going to make a sign, at least make one that has a modicum of sense to it.
Oh god…. I can’t believe this. I don’t wanna think that I’m from same country as them. Theirs postcard was SUPER rude. I understand people have diffrent oppnions but that’s not good at all.
With regard to “Protestants”, I first thought their misunderstanding goes back to the Jesuits and Will Adams. Before the Tokugawa shut out overt foreign influence in the 1600’s.
But on this wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween , I learned that in Protestant Christian history, October 31 has been celebrated as “Reformation Day”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation_Day
Since the Lutherans were closely affiliated with the Reformed Dutch, and the Dutch were the ones doing the trading through Dejima Island in the Shogunate, it’s not too far a leap that the Dutch described October 31 as a Protestant holiday to the people here years ago.
Then, as it turns out, October 31 is popularized in other circles in Europe as a festive holiday of ghosts and ghouls. Maybe the Protestants picked it as a day to honor reform in Christianity, as opposed to the high jinks of other Christian religious sects? Hmmm . . .
Anyway, it’s not a stretch to conclude that insular or xenophobic Japanese (not really knowing a damn thing about western culture), confused the Reformation churches’ holiday with the Pagan/Christian festival of other denominations of Christianity.
That is not a far leap at all.
And so you see the protester’s sign saying that the Protestants should knock this Halloween sh*t off because this is Japan.