Because I Cannot Have Any Kinky Associations

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Kinki University to Straighten Out Name
JapanRealTime

What's in a name?

If it's Kinki University, probably more than was intended.

Which is why the school has finally decided to change it.

Kinki University, a prestigious institution of higher learning located in the Kinki area of western Japan that includes the major industrial city of Osaka, said this week it would change its official English name to Kindai University because of the undesirable connotations its current name suggests to English speakers...

(Link)

The question from a marketing standpoint is why make a big deal about a salacious misreading of the current name in the announcement of the change? Why not just make the changes and let the subject rest? Why go on and on about globalizing the university, then to the extreme of explaining the possible misunderstanding with the word "KINKY" in all capital letters in your press release? (Link - J)

It all seems a bit weird and discomfitting -- until one learns a vital piece of information: the chairman of the board of trustees of Kinki University is Seko Hiroshige.

"That Seko Hiroshige?"

Yes, that Seko Hiroshige, the Diet's, the Kantei's and the Liberal Democratic Party's avatar of the inapppropriate and overreaching. (Archive)

As it turns out, Kinki University is a Seko family fiefdom. It was founded by Seko Ko'ichi, Hiroshige's grandfather, who like Hiroshige, was an LDP Diet member (Link - J). The position of chairman of Kinki U. has been handed down through the family tree, Hiroshige having become the fourth Seko to be the university's top dog upon the 2011 death of his father Hiroaki. (Link- J)

So that which at first seems strained, peculiar and silly, turns out, when one learns the backstory, to be a natural course of events...because this is precisely the kind of change Seko Hiroshige can believe in.


Later - One probably cannot grasp the scale of the FAIL here unless one is aware that Seko is a holder of a Master's degree in Corporate Communications from Boston University. (Link)

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Poster image courtesy: Obamapostermaker.com