Unknown Nichigo

Learn more about the lesser-known aspects of the Japan-Australia relationship.
日本とオーストラリアの関係に隠れた、あまり知られていない側面についてもっと知ってみよう

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    Waltzing Matildas In The Land Of The Rising Sun

    Waltzing Matilda is probably Australia’s most famous song and it’s certainly a tune that remains powerfully iconic of Down Under, but has not had the impact in Japan of other Aussie tunes, like say, Click Go the Shears. That’s not to say that Matilda hasn’t made it’s mark. However, like many things Japan, it’s legacy lies not quite in the way you’d expect. My understanding is that Waltzing Matilda is probably best known in Japan for being the jingle used to open Japanese language shortwave radio broadcasts on Radio Australia, which ended in 1990, so there’s a fair chance that my guess is well out of date. Three-piece rock band…

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    Sheer Nonsense? No, Shear Delight!

    Australia hasn’t really had much of an impact on Japanese culture over the years, but there is one case that inspires sheer delight….or perhaps that should be “shear?” For Japanese of a certain age, 調子をそろえて、クリック、クリック、クリック (Choshi wo soroete kurikku, kurikku, kurikku, is a highly familiar song picked up in an early season of Minna no Uta, a radio and TV program broadcast by NHK since 1961 to introduce new tunes to the Japanese public. The song is known in English as Click Go the Shears and Peggy Hayama, who sang the Japanese version of the song with lyrics written by Takashi Otowa, would retain a lifelong connection with Australia because…

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    Goodbye Possums…

    Barry Humphries, the creator of characters such as Dame Edna Everage – the Moonee Ponds housewife famous for her flamboyance and shouted greeting of “Hello Possums” – Sir Les Patterson and Sandy Stone, and himself an entertainer and icon of Straya in many parts of the world, has passed away. Humphries died aged 89 on Saturday following complications from a recent hip surgery. Personally, I wasn’t a great fan of the Moonee Ponds housewife — Dame Edna Average is my name for her — but she had her moments and was a wonderful example of Humphries’ acerbic, anti-Establishment wit that Australian author Kathy Lette described this morning as his brilliance…

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    Up There, Kazari!

    Australian Sports Day was a fantastic event held at Komazawa Olympic Park yesterday, and I got to go and enjoy some of the proceedings that were a decorative display, (or should I say kazari?), of some of Down Under’s favorite pastimes. The day itself was a ripper, starting with explanations, demonstrations and games of cricket, moving on to games of footy and then ending with a netball exhibition, with sales of Aussie foods, wear and fare such as meat pies and banana bread and cuppas from Club Australia‘s Tad Watanabe and the Australia Cafe van. Needing to deal with duties in the garden and home and able to enjoy lunch…

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    Reminiscing: The First Time Australia Mattered in Kangaeroo’s Japan

    Kangaeroo has lived in Japan since the late ’80s, just as the Showa Era (reign of Emperor Hirohito from 1926-1989) drew to a close. Japan back then had possibly an even stronger fascination with English than it does even today, especially as it was far less accessible in a slower, less connected world. But English and overseas meant America and Japan had an obsession for the United States. Occasionally, news would filter through from other powers, such as then recently reunited Germany, France, Italy, Britain and the crumbling Soviet Union and Russia. It was rare, pretty close to unheard of, really, for Australia to attract much attention in a Japan…

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    オーストラリア最大恐竜がエロマンガに

    　オーストラリアの最大恐竜がエロマンガにあった。 　本当。 　下品なことを考えってんじゃねぇよ！エロマンガはオーストラリア先住民の言葉で「風がよく吹く平野」という意味だそう。 　エロマンガは、北部クイーンズランド州にある小さな村です。石油とオパール鉱業が中心となっている人口約40人の村である。 　1990年代までエロマンガ有名なことはオーストラリア内で海から最も遠く離れている町ということだった。（今でもそうと主張しているが、そうじゃないという人もいます。） 　いずれにせよ、クイーンズランド州都ブリスベーンから約1,000キロ西の方に置かれている。 　1994年にチャリ乗りの少年が化石を見つけて、以降次から次へ恐竜の化石が発見された。 　2007年にみつかった化石が今までオーストラリアで最も大きいな恐竜のものだった。 　その恐竜がティタノザウルス類の一種であり、エロマンんがの恐竜がクーパーと名付けられた。 　しかし、名前は名前なので、当然にエロマンガという村が日本に注目を浴びた。 　数多くの日本のエロ漫画や普通の漫画もエロマンガの話が出ています。 　その中は「ニニンがシノブ伝」、「サムライフラメンコ」というまでもなくオーストラリアで児童ポルノとして禁じられている「エロマンガ先生」がある。 　今、エロマンガに恐竜研究が励んでいる。 　2017年に開館したエロマンガ自然博物館が運営しているが、コロナ禍で苦しんでいるだろう。 　それでも、間違いなくエロマンガがオーストラリア恐竜研究・跡地の最前線にひとつということはまちがいない。 　これからもエロマンガにますます期待できるだろう。 　 　 　

  • Sayonara Stories

    Mobile phones were starting to become a reality when Kangaeroo left Australia around this time of the year back in 1988, a year when the bicentennial of British colonization was marked. It was supposed to be a six-week holiday in Japan. Some 32 years later, that trip effectively hasn’t ended. Japan was in the news in Australia at the time of departure. Then Emperor Hirohito was in a critical condition (he would die shortly into the new year). The Japanese economy was booming and Japan seemed poised to take over leadership of the global business world. But, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Like…

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    ‘You’re Not Taking the Kingswood’…But Japan Did for a Little While

    On this day 70 years ago, Australia launched a domestic automaking industry at Fishermen’s Bend in Melbourne to produce Holden cars. Not many outside Australia that the Great Southern Land once produced cars, and perhaps even fewer still are aware that Oz exported some models to Japan. These weren’t cars assembled in Australia and shipped to the world’s then second-largest car market (as would happen in the late 1980s and 1990s, notably with the Subaru Outback). They were cars made with the intent of attracting Japanese consumers. Ironically, one of the cars marketed was the Mazda Roadpacer, a car slightly adapted from an iconic Australian car, the Holden Kingswood. Holden…

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    RIP to a Ripper Bloke, Bob Hawke

    Australia’s last man of the people to become prime minister is no longer. Robert James Lee “Bob” Hawke died earlier this week, just two days before his beloved Australian Labor Party is expected to re-take office in the May 18 federal election following six years of misrule by an incompetent Liberal–National Party coalition government. Hawke was 89. He was a popular prime minister whose time in office went from 1983 to 1991. He remains the longest-serving Labor prime minister in Australian history. Hawkey didn’t really have much to do with Japan during his time in office. Perhaps the closest project involving Japan was the disastrous Multifunction Polis proposal that sparked…