Japanese mayor Jo Baiden goes viral following Joe Biden’s victory
Via Handout
Japanese mayor Jo Baiden goes viral following Joe Biden’s victory
Words: Dylan Murphy
“It feels as though I’ve also won the election.”
The mayor of a small town in the south-west of Japan went viral following the discovery that the characters used to write his name can also be pronounced ‘Jo Baiden’.
73-year-old Yutaka Umeda is the mayor of Yamato and to his surprise became an overnight sensation following Joe Biden’s presidential victory in America.
According to reports he had no idea that people had made the link between the US president elect’s name and his own until he was trending on Twitter.
Kanji Chinese characters usually have several phonetic readings and one such pronunciation of his name is ‘Jo Baiden’.
Speaking on Sunday about the American candidate’s win he said, “I feel very close to him”.
“It feels as though I’ve also won the election.”
During President Obama’s presidential nomination run in 2008, residents in a Japanese fishing town named Obama formed a ‘Obama for Obama’ support group.
It resulted in Obama mentioning the town in a 2009 visit to Japan. “I could not come here without sending my greetings and gratitude to the citizens of Obama, Japan,” he said.
