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The first thing an astute follower of politics might notice about this humorous anecdote is it would have been rather unusual for Yoshiro Mori to have made a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with Barack Obama, since Mori's term as prime minister of Japan ended in April 2001, nearly eight years before Obama became President of the United States. That's a clue this item is yet another piece of recycled political humor, one which originally circulated back in mid-2000, during President Bill Clinton's final year in office: The original version apparently worked its way over to the United States after having circulated in the Japanese tabloid press, where it was offered as a jab at an unpopular prime minister who had already become an object of derision for (among other reasons) having made several untoward verbal gaffes during his short time in office: Tales of Mori's supposedly confusing the English words how and who while greeting a U.S. president also circulated in other forms: The very same joke had appeared in the U.S. press several months earlier, at that time attributed to Kim Young-sam, who served as President of South Korea for five years beginning in 1993. The same apocryphal tale has also been told about any number of non-English speaking politicians from various countries.
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