Erin go Bragh
In the fall of 2002, I began teaching adult ESL three evenings a week at a local high school. I had not been in a public school classroom in about 40 years so it definitely was a learning (and a bit of a nerve-racking) experience. As anyone who has taught knows, and especially if you are teaching a foreign language or a second language, appropriate and useful materials are of the essence. As a rookie, you are apt to try just about anything in the hope that you can find something that you can use consistently and over time.
I am something of a news junkie, and I was teaching ostensibly curious, educated adults, so discussing the news was something I very much wanted to do. The problem was that even the local paper was difficult for most of my students to read and understand.
An experienced teacher suggested that I try a publication called Easy English News. It reminded me of the old Weekly Reader that many of my contemporaries read in school from about third grade through high school. Topical stories mixed with interesting features and sports news.
One March evening as St. Patrick’s Day approached, I had planned to do a lesson on the popular holiday in the U.S. with its large Irish population. A new issue of Easy English News was in my box. I expected a Saint Paddy’s Day story, but I was surprised to find a story about St. Patrick’s Day as celebrated in Japan and its widespread popularity there.
Given the Japanese people’s reputation for insularity and antipathy to foreigners, I was surprised to read that St. Patrick’s Day of all holidays was popular there. I had known that Carnaval was a big deal in Japan, but that did not surprise me, for I knew that the largest concentration of the Japanese diaspora lived in Brazil, the most famous Carnaval venue in the world. As for an expatriate population of Irish in Japan? Not so much.
I have been unable to locate the original story that I that we read in the class, but there is no shortage of information online about St. Patrick’s Day in Japan. This from The Japan Times:
KYOTO –
The first ever St. Patrick's Day parade in Tokyo made history for a number of reasons — least of all for the fact that it was the first such parade in Asia, and it unfolded on a sidewalk in Roppongi.
On March 15, 1992, a small contingent of Irish and Japanese left the Irish Embassy en route to a record store called Roppongi Wave. Dressed in emerald green, the group was led by a man playing the bagpipes. The spectacle went mostly unnoticed, which was probably just as well because the parade had not been sanctioned.
The following year, the parade moved away from Roppongi to the genteel surroundings of Omotesando-dori, a tree-lined boulevard stretching from Aoyama Street to Meiji Shrine.
Since that first parade, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations have mushroomed in Japan. There are now parades and celebrations across the entire country.
I was surprised at how interested my adult students were in Saint Paddy’s day. That was even more the case when I started teaching ESL in a public school system. All of my students, regardless of national origin, dressed the part, wearing the green enthusiastically and taking part in school celebrations.
It is not only in Japan that St. Patrick’s Day is eagerly celebrated outside of Ireland. It seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. The question is why?
The Economist explains it this way:
St. Patrick’s Day is widely celebrated for a number of reasons. The most significant being Irish mass migration. There are approximately 70 million people on earth with Irish blood. Emigration has been part of Irish history since at least the Middle Ages, but it peaked during the Irish famine of the 1840s. A quarter of the population left seeking new lives, mostly in America, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Surprisingly, St. Patrick’s Day as we’ve come to know it was invented in America. In 1762, Irish soldiers marched through New York City, beginning the traditional St. Patrick’s Day parade. Today parades are held in many different countries with revelers downing 13,000,000 pints of Guinness.
But there’s another secret to the success of Saint Patrick’s Day—Irish pubs. It’s estimated there are 8500 Irish pubs around the world, from Nepal to Dubai, and even Mongolia. The deluge of drinking establishments is thanks, in part, to Guinness, who in the 1990s began exporting its concept of the Irish pub around the world, providing designs and advice to aspiring publicans. And if they wanted it, even shipping them a pre-built bar. In the past 25 years, Guinness has helped open pubs in more than 150 countries around the globe.
The Irish government is trying to capitalize on the country’s growing fame. This year its ministers will travel to over 50 different nations and cities to promote their country. And it’s working. Brand Ireland is now one of the fastest growing nation brands in the world.
Having grown up in the Chicagoland area with its large Irish population, I could not help but be imbued with a bit of the Irish. In addition, I married an Irish-American girl whose family traced its origins to County Kerry. Many prominent Chicago pols and police officers are of Irish descent, most famously the Daley family, producing two mayors: Richard J. Daley (In office April 20, 1955 – December 20, 1976), and his son, Richard M. Daley (In office April 24, 1989 – May 16, 2011).
I find it fascinating that the St. Patrick’s Day traditions have spread far and wide. It is a bit surprising that the woke scolds who intimidate the masses into compliance with their, what would have once been thought of as a puritanical agenda, have not been more vociferous in criticizing the revelry associated with the Irish holiday. Parades, beer drinking and meat eating? That’s quite a carbon footprint.
And why are environmentalists not objecting to dumping green dye into a waterway? There must be some species, even if just a mosquito, endangered by this practice.
However, the most nagging question of all relates to the wearing of traditional Irish dress, attempting to dance an Irish jig and dining on Irish cuisine. If one cannot wear a Mexican sombrero and sport a bandolera as a Halloween costume without triggering a proud and patriotic Mexican, how is doing one’s best Irish imitation on St. Paddy’s day not cultural appropriation?