Stephen Fry forced to cancel Japan trip after nuclear bomb jokes
Stephen Fry forced to cancel Japan trip after nuclear bomb jokesStephen Fry has been forced to pull out of a planned Planet Word shoot in Japan after joking about the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He was due to arrive in the country earlier this week for the BBC show to examine how the Japanses language is changing but his researchers are now looking for another Asian location.
Fry sparked the row after describing Tsutomu Yamaguchi as the “unluckiest man in the world” in an episode QI, the BBC panel show. Yamaguchi is famed for surviving both the nuclear bombs that fell in Japan at the end of World War II.
Apparently there were concerns about 'ongoing threats' to Fry as a result of the row, and the show's producers felt it was not worth risking injury to make a programme on culture.
Yamaguchi, who died last year aged 93, was on a business trip to Hiroshima when it was attacked in 1945. However, he managed to get a train home to Nagasaki and, as he was telling his boss what had happened, found himself a victim of the second bomb.
Panellists on the BBC show expressed amazement that public transport could still operate under the circumstances and poked fun at British train services with one mentioning 'the wrong bomb' on the tracks.
The Japanese Embassy did not see the funny side and complained to the BBC who apologised.
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I take it the 'Japanese' (it's not specified who exactly - let's assume it's the government) are offended because Fry mentioned the bombings in a lighthearted game show. This from a people who systematically murdered thousands of POW's and indigenous peoples throughout SE Asia during the war and who have never apologised to, or compensated their victims. I personally don't give a toss about their being offended.
I would have thought Yamaguchi should have been described as the luckiest man in the world having survived 2 nuclear bombs and lived to 93, but then what does Stephen know about english usage or making people laugh? I agree with Anon 4Feb 01.01 as I don't care if the Japanese are offended.
How bizarre. Fry has a point. If I was nuked twice, I would probably consider myself particularly unlucky. I wouldn't describe what he said as a 'joke'. But then again, maybe the Japanese see things differently. After all, they flog used schoolgirls' knickers in vending machines, and have 'specialist restaurants' where women on wholegrain diets crap on glass tables for the delectation of the attending business-men - a sort of human sushi.
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Actually, I'd probably consider myself extremely lucky to survive two nuclear strikes in two days...! A joke lost in translation, I suspect. Although I wonder how the British media would react to a visit from a comedian joking about someone staggering from the tube and boarding a bus to Tavistock Square on 7/7.
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