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…
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Australia’s impact on Japanese society is visible in numerous areas, but in the cultural sphere, Australian influence has been negligible at best. オーストラリアは日本社会に対してあらゆる分野で与えた影響が見えるが、文化の面ではオーストラリアのインパクトがほぼないといって良いところだ。 Apart from a literal honeymoon period in the early 1990s when cashed-up newlyweds made Down Under their favored destination, the odd hit movie during the Australian New Wave cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, notably the Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee series, and the even rarer hit song — by artists most Japanese normally regarded as coming from the United States, anyway — Aussie cultural influence has largely been limited to sporadic moments of faddishness. バブル経済効果がまだ残っていた1990年代前半で「ハネームーン・ブーム」によってオーストラリアがハワイを抜いて新婚旅行地1位となり、マッド・マックスやクロコダイル・ダンディなどのオーストラリア・ニュー・ウェーヴ映画やためにアメリカ人と見なされた歌手がヒット曲を出した時に除けば、オーストラリアが日本に対して文化的な影響が一時的な流行以外はない。 It’s…