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WTF of the Day

June 14th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Chile, Photo of the Day, Travel

One of the best things about traveling is encountering totally unusual situations, and having no idea how or why they occurred. Sometimes, it’s fun to try to puzzle out these mysteries of the universe. Other times, you can only shake your head. This is one of those.

Um...what?

Um…what?


So, here in the hostel book exchange, I found not one, but TWO copies of a book in an Asian language featuring a photo of Adolf Hitler, and his loopy, rightward-leaning signature.

A little bit of internet searching (Thank you, Gordon Foster/Arabic numerals/the Internet, for adding detail to my confusion) reveals that the book (both of them!) is indeed the Japanese translation of Mein Kampf.

Honestly, every scenario I construct in my head to explain the presence of multiple copies of Hitler’s book, in Japanese, in a hostel in Chile, winds up seeming implausible. I know a lot of Nazis fled to South America after WWII. Perhaps some of the aging Nazis are engaged in efforts to leave Mein Kampf in hotels and hostels, like evil, fascist Gideons? But why Japanese? Why not Spanish, or English, or, hell, German? Perhaps a visiting Japanese tourist was reading a copy, for whatever reason, and just exchanged it for another book here? But then why the hell are there two copies? Who carries two copies of Mein Kampf as their travel reading?

Perhaps the only explanation that comes even close to being reasonable—”reasonable”—is this: Japan is insane. On some level, it makes perfect sense that there are two copies of Mein Kampf in Japanese here. I mean, why not? In the grand scheme of Japanese weirdness, this probably doesn’t even crack the top 10,000.

Other peripheral questions to consider: why is the title in red on one copy of the book, and black on the other? Their ISBN’s differ by the final digit (4-04-322402-8 for the black, 4-04-322402-X for the red). And, have I Godwin’s Law-ed myself by even writing this post?

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One Comment so far ↓

  • Brian Mc

    Nice try with the Nazi Gideons, but as you say, the language is wrong for South America. I can see the temptation to settle on insanity or ultra-weirdness. However, Mao’s little red book was read by youth in the U.S. at the height of the cold war, probably for the same reason alienated Japanese kids wore U.S. bomber jackets. (How’s that for anti-establishment?) Are we missing something? *** Maybe the books you found can be explained. Japan and Germany were allies in WWII. What’s the copyright date? Did they communicate through South America? Is that the connection? *** Wait, I’ve got it! You have imperceptibly slid into an alternative universe in which synchronicity, not cause and effect, is the driving rationale. That explains everything.

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