Pokemon has a long history of bringing people together. This goes all the way back to the original Red and Blue, which allowed players to trade pocket monsters and battle each other by connecting their Game Boys with a physical cable. Generations of children also have grown-up bonding over the popular trading card game and long-running anime series.
It seems that the unifying power of Pokemon extends to world leaders as well. Earlier today, the recently elected President of Chile received a Squirtle plushie as a gift from Japan’s Foreign Affairs Minister, who was in the country for an official diplomatic visit.
Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Kiyoshi Odawara met with Chilean President Gabriel Boric on Friday. He presented the President with a wrapped gift, which was soon revealed to be a Poke Ball containing Boric’s favorite starter Pokemon. He was visibly delighted by the gift, exclaiming “Squirtle!” as he unboxed the plushie to show the camera. President Boric thanked the visiting dignitary in a tweet saying, “Thanks to Japan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Kiyoshi Odawara, for this Squirtle!”
Boric also posted the clip on Instagram accompanied by the Spanish version of the theme song from the original 1994-2002 Pokemon anime. He quoted a line from the song in the caption saying, “I will travel from here to there, searching until the end… Thank you Japan for this Squirtle!”
The toy was an inauguration gift for the newly elected President, who assumed office today. Gabriel Boric is the Republic of Chile’s youngest-ever President at 36 years of age. A former student protest organizer, he was a significant figure during the 2011 student protests in Chile and was one of the primary faces of the Federation of Chilean Students. Campaigning on a social and economic reform platform, he won a decisive victory during the final round of elections in December, walking away with 56 percent of the vote.
President Boric expressed his love of Squirtle during a Twitter exchange with voters in March. The Japanese government presumably discovered this tweet and chose a gift accordingly. A toy Pokemon certainly is not the traditional gift one gives to a head of state, though it was clearly well-received and hardly out of character for the Japanese government.
Japan has a history of giving highly personalized gifts. As Newsweek noted, in 2006, Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe presented George W. Bush with a photograph of their grandfathers playing golf with former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 2018, a Russian figure skater received an Akita puppy after expressing a fondness for the rare Japanese dog breed. Even Pope Francis received a traditional Japanese coat featuring an anime-inspired picture of his face when he visited Tokyo in 2019.
Source: Newsweek