Irony

This morning I introduced one of the great topics of argument of the Garner family to Yuuka and her Mum. If there`s one thing my Dad can get on his high horse about, it`s irony, which he believes the Italians, my Mum`s adoptive culture, fail to understand. To fully appreciate this battle, you have to know that my Dad is completely rooted in a very English social awkwardness (though he`s lived in Scotland for ages) and can barely string two words of Italian together despite having visited multiple times. My Mum every so often feels the urge to needle him about this (`he had never been abroad before he`d met her`, etc ), stressing the fantastic taste, warmth, and social ease of Italians to implicitly contrast with said English awkwardness. Now my Dad, these situations usually being at the end of a family meal, tends to have already drunk at least four glasses of wine by this point. (they both have, though the exact respective numbers will or already have been hotly disputed) So instead of refusing the bait as he should, he becomes defensive. To the implication that he was green and untravelled, it hasn`t been unknown for him to give a detailed account of his job rolling barrels down into a pub storeroom as a seventeen year old -surprisingly this never fails to do the opposite of impressing her. But sooner or later, and probably sooner, he will use his favourite counter attack against the imagined hordes of Armani-clad Casanovas battering at his door. `They lack a sense of irony`, he will declare, and as soon as the words are out, the next stage of the battle has begun. Never one to miss an obvious riposte, my Mum shoots back: `What do you mean?` And off we go, for the next twenty minutes my Dad will attempt a definition of irony coupled with reasons why the Italians don`t possess it, and my Mum will hinder him at every turn, not least with the comeback that, as he can`t understand Italian, he is unlikely to know when irony is or isn`t being employed by them.
For my part I see what he means - appreciating irony does have something to do with a slight emotional detachment which Italians, from one angle at least - don`t seem to go in for. But what of the Japanese? This morning I thought I would investigate, so I typed in the word on Yuuka`s electronic dictionary, pushed the incomprensible translation across the breakfast table to her, and told her my Dad likes this.
Soon I had got down to one of my favourite activities, which was pedantically defining the differences between two similar words, in this case irony and sarcasm. Then her Mum got involved, and I had them both trying to give examples of ironic events - which I define according to the `spanner in the works` theory. After a couple that were merely unfortunate, Mamisan remembered a story I had already heard from Yuuka: M had been voraciously reading a Sidney Sheldon detective thriller and after three hundred pages was almost at the climax, when K (Y`s Dad) happened to pick up the book which she had put down for a second, read the final three pages, and nonchalantly announced the name of the killer. Yes, this was a classic piece of irony - I felt it immediately along with the accompanying pleasure. On reflection though, if the characters were replaced by strangers, most of the effect would be lost. It`s ironic because I know Koujisan wouldn`t really give a tinker`s cuss who the killer was, whereas Mamisan, a devotee of detective fiction, would have been thinking of nothing else but the solution.
So here`s the moral, kids - irony works best when you know the people involved. Probably. But don`t think about it. Just let it happen.
Anyway, that was just a long introduction to an account I wanted to give you of an awkward Japanese social occasion which I was involved in last night. Proper travel writing, the kind you come to this blog for. Thank you for waiting.