Italians (or at least a few senile old priests and media hacks) seem positively delighted by the level of bowing and scraping their complaints of vandalism against some irreverent Japanese students have elicited; so delighted in fact that when the girls visited (out of their own pockets, or least those of their parents) the historic cathedral they scrawled graffiti on to grovel and shed tears of repentance, they were greeted with open arms and praise for their courtesy and manners, and subsequently made into peace ambassadors.
The Japanese media can’t understand why the Italians are so blasé about the whole affair – evidently they haven’t visited too many European monuments recently.
Nobody really wants to spoil such a choice story of pagan barbarism ameliorated by Confucian virtue and Christian forgiveness it seems, but after the initial news broke there were some photos taken years before showing similarly scrawled vandalism in a dozen languages on the walls of the very same structure; perhaps, being part of the glorious history of European history of pillage, this does not bear mention… or at least nobody could browbeat them into apologising.
A profitable piece of theatre for all concerned it would seem. Via FNN.
Oh man, lol.
Not totally sure I understand what happened… Some Japanese students drew graffiti and then apologized and the Italians didn’t seem to be too offended by the initial act? Correct?
Oh well, as an Italian I have seen much worse “desecration” going on… and nobody ever said they were sorry. So that might be a plus…
An example…
When Rome (A.S. Roma - Nakata was playing there at the time) won the Italian Soccer League there was a huge party in the “Field of Mars.”
That would have been ok, since the field is nothing more than its name, a freaking field. But around it is the “Foro Romano,” the Roman Forum. And a bunch a #@&!ers were late for the party and decided to make the ruins their party area, climbing to the top of the ruins, breaking stuff up and getting hammered.
It got to the point that the President of A.S. Roma Franco Sensi had to say that they were shutting down the party if everybody didnt get off the ruins. The response from the vandals was lukewarm. So the music was shut down, the singers got off the stage, etc…
Then the rest of the people legally in the field of Mars started to roar… and that’s when finally the vandals understood it was time to schedaddle.
And I’m not saying that Italians are vandals so we are used to it… only Italy has so many ruins it’s just a matter of statistics that it gets hit with vandalism more often than not…
No place is immune… Venice, Rome, Milan, Florence… Museums, Statues, Ruins… We just clean it up, go get an expresso and move on with our day, chilling out and talking about soccer… And if an apology comes our way, we appreciate it :)
I think you hit the nail on the head - Europe is full of shoddy ruins and historical monuments and nobody really pays them much attention at all, only the most important get any attention paid to them.
In Japan however, these places are usually immaculate and doing something like that would be national news; a different mentality clearly.