Call it what you like, it's still a very depressing book

[Steve Bildermann]

Claim: The John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath was published in a Japanese translation bearing the title The Angry Raisins.

Status: False.

Example: [The New York Times, 1996]

http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/raisins.asp

Whenever we need a humorous story (true or otherwise) to highlight how easily different cultures can misunderstand one another, we turn to the Japanese, folkloric exemplars of foreigners who admire and imitate American culture but are too different from us to truly understand it. We don't lack for amusing anecdotes about how the Japanese have managed to garble some essential part of American culture in typically hilarious fashion, everything from their fashioning Christmas decorations showing Santa Claus nailed to a cross to their mistranslating the titles of Pulitzer Prize-winning novels.

We don't hear many accounts of Americans' garbling elements of Japanese culture, though.

Love that last line.....just love it....(now where did I put that Ninja thread)

[Socratesabroad]

Well, the definitive Western source for info on ninjas is here, of course...

[Taro Toporific]

http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/raisins.asp

Whenever we need a humorous story (true or otherwise) to highlight how easily different cultures can misunderstand one another, we turn to the Japanese, folkloric exemplars of foreigners who admire and imitate American culture but are too different from us to truly understand it. We don't lack for amusing anecdotes about how the Japanese have managed to garble some essential part of American culture in typically hilarious fashion, everything from their fashioning Christmas decorations showing Santa Claus nailed to a cross to their mistranslating the titles of Pulitzer Prize-winning novels.
We don't hear many accounts of Americans' garbling elements of Japanese culture, though.

Love that last line.....just love it....(now where did I put that Ninja thread)

Nailing Santa to the cross: why Japan doesn't do Christmas
Independent.ie | Business Newsletter 14/12/2014 | by Paul Sommerville
I emigrated to Japan in 1995. Interesting times. I spent the first evening in Tokyo with my new boss - a gregarious Englishman and an authority on Asian markets after many years of living in Japan.
I was eager to learn and bombarded him with questions regarding the Asian markets, the Japanese people, the economy etc. He stopped me straight in my tracks and told me this story.
"As you know Paul the Japanese do not celebrate Christmas - it is a normal working day. Well, last year the largest department store, equivalent of Harrods in UK, decided it wanted to market Christmas to boost sales so decided to have an elaborate window display. They assembled a huge domestic media pack and asked the US ambassador to unveil the window live on the main national news.
"He pulled the cord - and there for everybody to see was a huge cross with Santa Claus nailed to it. The Japanese clapped and the westerners present were appalled. That's Japan."
More...

If the author had simply had written that he had been told a "joke" (fiction) rather than a 'story' (ambiguous whether it is an account of an event or a joke-story) about the crucified Santa Claus, the Independent report would have been more palatable.
Snopes.com and others contend that the urban “legend" that a Japanese department store crucified Santa Claus is racist.

HOWEVER, I have seen Santa Claus crucified upside down in a display of all-black designer clothes during the 1986 X-mas season at the South entrance of the Lumiere department store in Tokyo’s Shinjuku station. My guess is that a fun-loving window dresser had heard the urban legend and decided to have a laugh.

santa-on-cross.jpg