Essay

Obamas 'come home'

By Mike Dwane

I mentioned in my last piece how Japan rarely makes the news in Ireland. Well guess what? Shinzo Abe has since come to Dublin in what was the first ever visit to Ireland by a Japanese prime minister.

Japan and Ireland don't have a lot in common. Both are island nations and both are in the top 20 countries when it comes to debt-to-GDP ratio. I'm sure there must be more.

I don't wish to bore you with details of the Irish economy. But we have had a huge housing bubble, failed banks, a currency (euro) crisis and mass unemployment. The government is cutting spending on infrastructure and wages.

Abenomics is a different approach and you might think what the Japanese PM had to say would be of interest to the Irish media. Well, you can think again. Mr. Abe got only a few paragraphs of coverage in most papers.

That's because there were pages and pages about the visit — on the same day — of Michelle Obama and her two daughters!

Mr. Abe and President Barack Obama were in Northern Ireland last month for the G8 meeting of world leaders. So while they were hard at work, Michelle and the girls came to Dublin, had lunch with Bono and took in a performance of Riverdance.

I hope you will forgive me when I say the first lady of the United States is more photogenic than Mr. Abe.

But the saturation coverage also has to do with cultural and historical links between Ireland and the United States. After all, Barack Obama is an Irishman! Or at least his great-great-great grandfather Falmouth Kearney, who emigrated from Ireland in 1850, is.

It would be an exaggeration to say that intermarriage between black Americans and Irish-Americans was common. The relationship between the peoples was often difficult. Freed slaves from the American South often found themselves competing with poor Irish — who were trying to escape famine — for the same low-paid jobs in the Northern cities. The vast majority of the 36 million Americans who say they are of Irish descent are white. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was probably the most famous Irish-American of all, Fitzgerald and Kennedy both being common family names here.

To help the tourism industry, the Irish government has designated 2013 the year of "The Gathering." They hope that some of the 100-million-strong Irish diaspora will return "home" and spend some money here. The Hollywood actor Gabriel Byrne — born in Dublin — has called it a rip-off but people in Irish towns and villages are enthusiastic and getting ready to greet their long-lost cousins from all over the world.

Most of the Irish diaspora is in North America, the U.K. and Australia. Hopefully they won't all arrive "home" at the same time this summer.

オバマ一家、アイルランドに「帰郷」

安倍首相は先月、日本の首相として初めてアイルランドを訪問した。そのニュースはアイルランド国内で大きく報じられるかと思いきや、報道はオバマ大統領夫人と娘たちの話題に集中していたという。

The Japan Times ST: July 26, 2013