- The Guardian,
- Wednesday July 2, 2008
A few initials scratched on one of Florence's famous buildings set off a hunt for the culprits on the other side of the world - and highlighted the vast cultural differences between Italy and Japan.
Italian media yesterday recounted - in tones of wonder, bewilderment and admiration - the fate meted out to Japanese tourists who left their names or initials scrawled on the stonework of the city cathedral's panoramic terrace.
But so many Italians and other tourists do the same thing that, as a cathedral official, Paolo Bianchi, acknowledged: "We have staff whose sole job every day is to rub out pierced hearts, declarations of love and travel graffiti."
In a nation whose prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is busy giving himself blanket immunity from prosecution, no one would dream of taking the matter further. But when a Japanese holidaymaker photographed a series of graffiti in his own language, it unleashed what the daily La Repubblica termed a "manhunt" involving appeals for information in two of Japan's biggest newspapers, on national television and in online forums.
One of the guilty, who left her initials and the name of her university, at Gifu, in Japan, was soon traced. She and two fellow students have since been given two-month suspensions and may yet return to Florence to remove the graffiti. Their university offered to pay damages to the cathedral, which the cathedral authorities politely refused.
An even more severe fate may await three students at Kyoto Sangyo University who confessed that they too had defaced the marble walls supporting Filippo Brunelleschi's sublime dome. They could be expelled.
On Sunday, yet another culprit was brought to light - a 30-year-old teacher from Mito who visited Italy in January. He has already been dismissed as the coach of his school's baseball team, and now risks losing his job.
Corriere della Sera, which devoted part of its front page to the affair, also carried an interview with a Japan expert, Gian Carlo Calza. In an effort to explain the severity of the reaction, he said the students "but above all the teacher made Japanese lose face abroad.
"They offended their hosts - that is to say, Italy - and this, for their mentality, is unacceptable."
As for the teacher, he told a television interviewer, reportedly with eyes cast down: "I had heard that writing your name on those walls brought happiness."