The Guardian newspaper in London is reporting that “Japanese who object to being forced to sing their country’s national anthem have a secret weapon: the English language. Kiss Me, an English parody of the Kimigayo, and that the song has been spread through the Internet and was sung by teachers and pupils at recent school entrance and graduation ceremonies. Can anyone here find a link to the song and post it below? Would love to hear it.

The song, whose composer remains a mystery, takes the syllables of each word of the Japanese original and turns them into phonetically similar English words, allowing non-conformist singers to escape detection. For example, “Kimigayo wa” becomes “Kiss me girl, your old one.” Weeks after a British music producer caused uproar in the USA with a Spanish version of the Star Spangled Banner, the conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun, denounced the new song as an attempt to “sabotage” Japan’s traditional anthem. The English lyrics have a serious political twist: they apparently refer to the tens of thousands of Asian ianfu “comfort women” who were forced to service soldiers in Japanese military brothels during the World War II.

In related news, a retired Japanese teacher has been fined for an anthem protest he carried out recently. Quote:

A Japanese court for the first time yesterday punished a teacher for disrespecting the national anthem, which liberals associate with World War II militarism, officials said. Retired instructor Katsuhisa Fujita, 65, was fined ¥200,000 (US$1,800) but escaped prison time for delaying a graduation ceremony when he urged the audience to stay seated during the national anthem.
It is the first known time that a court has punished a teacher over the anthem, although the Tokyo metropolitan education board has disciplined 345 teachers for refusing orders to honor it, a board official said.
Fujita, who had retired before the incident, said he was practicing his right to free speech.

(via wire services)