Saturday, July 02, 2005
Live 8 outside Europa
Japanese news outlets at this time don't seem all that concerned with Live 8.
Top stories on Kyodo News include baseball star Hideki Matsui's 11th Major League home run, and the world record set by a man reciting pi to the 81,400th digit, or thereabouts. Makuhari Messe Convention Center was said to be only half full when the concert started.
Imagine - if you'll excuse the pun - the fuss that might have been generated there had Paul McCartney trotted out with Yoko Ono and Ringo to do a John Lennon number, instead of (Beatlessly) recycling Sergeant Pepper.
Paul famously hates her, but Yoko has been quite the hero amongst various cross-sections of Japanese over the years. Diplomatic (not to mention practise-what you-are-preaching) opportunity missed, in my book, by not involving her.
Hell may freeze over before Paul buries the hatchet with Yoko. And there is a very, very persuasive argument that she is right, and he is wrong, about the British media-fanned perception of Yoko - well-known in Japan to have come from a very wealthy background - as Lennon-piggybacker and Beatles-destroyer.
