Post by Admin on Feb 21, 2015 22:31:47 GMT
Regular viewers of Japanese TV may remember young Haruka Christine’s first appearances on the variety-show circuit in early 2010, when she had her fellow entertainers and audiences in stitches. Here was a girl of 18, often dressed in traditional Swiss garb and every inch the European, who would abruptly transform into a wild-eyed creature exuberantly aping the acts of well-known Japanese comedians. Regular-looking foreign girl does zany Japanese impressions? So far, so Japan.
Nearly four years later, having racked up dozens of TV appearances, Christine is more likely to be found discussing national politics than cracking jokes. Most recently, she came under fire from Japan’s notorious Net-uyoku (right-wing Internet trolls) after she was asked about the view from abroad regarding Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s December visit to the contentious Yasukuni Shrine, where the remains of Japan’s war dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals, are enshrined. Overseas, she suggested, some liken the visits to a modern-day German leader praying at Adolf Hitler’s tomb. Though the comparison is often made abroad, and despite Christine offering no opinion on whether the comparison was fair, Internet forums were abuzz with angry discussion about the subject. She has recently been on a mission to get young people talking about politics, although this particular controversy was probably not what she had in mind.
Christine, the child of a Swiss mother and Japanese father, was born and raised in Zurich, on a continent where, she says, “Everyone speaks openly about current affairs and politics.” On arriving in Japan to study at 16, Christine was surprised to find that people her age were often indifferent to such matters. “One of the first things I was told after coming to Japan, during my high school years, was that it wasn’t worth engaging in or talking about politics because ‘all politicians are liars,’ ” she says. Coming to Japan to study had been a childhood dream for Christine. Having been too young to remember her first visit, aged 3, “When I came for the second time to Tokyo, when I was 9, I was overwhelmed.”
Many Japanese, she says, only seem to become politically aware and concerned when, for example, they end up struggling to find a nursery school for their children or face other everyday problems that require political solutions, either locally or nationally. Six years after arriving, Christine — now a journalism student at Tokyo’s Sophia University — has established a reputation for shoehorning her interest in politics into her career as a TV personality. As part of her mission to alleviate political apathy among the young, she published a book in which she offers an insight into her passion. It has resulted in her becoming known as a seijika-okkake, which is something akin to a political junkie.
She also pointed out that many Japanese tend to categorize politicians as either left-wingers or right-wingers, when things are more nuanced. “There are even Net-uyoku who criticize politicians without even listening to their opinions on particular issues,” she adds. Christine’s level of interest in politics and social issues is admirable. However, as a TV persona her views are exposed to the public in a way other citizens’ are not. The celebrity system she is a part of tends to demand conformity to societal expectations and beliefs.