Spotted in Fukuoka near Akasaka Station and also on the Kobe subway, here is what appears to be an antismoking public health campaign. Text reads:
"Inhaled. Burned. Thrown away.
If it were anything but a cigarette, it would surely be crying."
Now, this is not Engrish, in the sense that it is grammatically unimpeachable. Bonus points for proper use of the subjunctive "were," which boggles native speakers. No, it is the content which is awesomely perplexing. I mean, who thought that nicotine addiction was rooted in lack of empathy for the cigarette?
This may be characteristically Japanese. A book called "The Geography of Thought" presents an anecdote about Japanese childrearing in which a mother reacts to a child throwing a toy by talking about how sad the toy must feel. Perhaps it connects to the reputed Japanese tendency to be conscious of the effects of actions on others.
On the other hand, maybe it's not Japanese, because this would totally work on me. I am terribly vulnerable to anthopomorphizing. One time, when I was eating a bowl of baby carrots, my sister started pretending to be the voices of the carrots crying out in pain and begging for their lives. I tried to ignore her but finally, heartsick at my newly discovered genocidal tendencies, I abandoned the last carrot. To which, of course, my sister made the carrot respond, "Please.... Eat me too. You killed my whole family. I want to die."
I still feel guilty.
I pondered the picture before realizing there was text above and was confused about what the moral of the story was...the best I could come up with was, "Don't litter. Keep your cigarette butts with you, forever".
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The carrot-voice method of torture was so successful that I employed a similar strategy with a friend who was throwing away her Christmas tree after the holidays. It worked on her, too.
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