Long-time foes China and Japan have accused each other of being many things over the years, but this may be the first time they have compared each other to an evil wizard from a children’s book.
Ambassadors for the Asian neighbors in the UK invoked Lord Voldemort, the arch villain of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling Harry Potter series, in the latest spat between the two countries, which was sparked by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent visit to a controversial war shrine.
Writing in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, last week, Beijing’s envoy to London, Liu Xiaoming, said: "If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation's soul."
As Harry Potter fans will remember, Voldemort created seven horcruxes to hold fragments of his soul in order to achieve immortality. To kill him, all seven horcruxes must be destroyed.