Doodling on faces in Japanese history textbooks
March 12th, 2009 by James
A Japanese TV show recently searched through hundreds of junior high school history textbooks to find awesome examples of doodling on the faces of historical figures. Here is a clip of some of their best discoveries:
And a clip showing the 5 most popular faces:
The Top 5 Most Vandalized Faces
For reasons not quite know, the images of Francis Xavier were censored by the program. Could it be that the show’s producers thought it might offend Christians to see one of their saints defaced?
Related link: Some similar textbook doodling from a Taiwanese otaku.
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“Could it be that the show’s producers thought it might offend Christians to see one of their saints defaced?”
Well, Aso is Catholic…
I also notice that images of the emperor seem to have been spared.
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Why would they censor Xavier’s pictures?
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Yeah – this is a bit sinister. Are they really afraid of fanatics?
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“Could it be that the show’s producers thought it might offend Christians to see one of their saints defaced?”
LOL – why do i suddenly feel an incoming debate again….
But on a more serious note: are there that many Christians in Japan to begin with to warrant such censorship?
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i think that they were afraid of offending james.hehehe
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they shouldn’t be afraid at all. francis xavier isn’t mohammed.
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Awesome. Just awesome.
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Funny and inventive. Nice to see that the youth of today is on the right tracks.
Though, I do wonder why the music being played was “Land of Hope and Glory”…
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I’d be more worried about censoring Gandhi than Xavier. Those fanatics are experts at getting shows cancelled… shows that they’ve never seen… that aren’t even broadcast in India…
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I remember doing the same thing when I was a kid.
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A quick google of 開国してください led me to this: http://storage.irofla.com/?name=peri&type=swf
(Crappy flash and good laughs.)
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“Could it be that the show’s producers thought it might offend Christians to see one of their saints defaced?”
Francis Xavier is a Catholic saint, not a Christian one; the idea of sainthood isn’t even present in most Christian theologies.
(No, I’m not saying that Catholics aren’t Christians, only that non-Catholic Christians probably wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about people drawing on pictures of a Catholic saint. I doubt most Catholics would care either.)
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I sent this to Ito’s Great Grand-Daughter, she thought it was cute.
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