For reasons that should now be abundantly obvious from the format used to express the fourteenth of March in the headline, there are moves afoot to designate White Day “Pi(e) Day”. Actually, not all the reasons are abundantly obvious; another factor is Pi’s unendingness (my brain is failing to supply the correct term for this), which has been pressganged into symbolising eternal love [excuse me while I find a receptacle to spit in].
Fans of the Asahi Shimbun’s website will be unsurprised to learn that this trend is both irredeemably minor and the brainchild of an industry group, in this case the Japan Pie Association, about whose very existence I am highly sceptical.
I should say that the Mathematics Certification Institute of Japan had already claimed the day as Maths Day in acknowledgement of the English-speaking world’s Pi Day. But the 14th March event most closely associated with love and togetherness in Japan may in fact be the Meiji government’s 1873 decision to officially approve international marriages.
