Horror-scope
Sunfire, a.k.a. Shiro
Yashida, appears in this scene from Alpha Flight vol 2 no
1 (August 1997; Writer: Steve Seagle, Penciler: Scott Clark). He
is ostensibly a Japanese lord, but I'm not completely sure such nobles
even exist in Japan anymore; certainly they don't have the status
and visibility of British lords, but Shiro seems to. And where'd
he get a weird last name like Yashida?
Now look at the narration.
Seagle's motif in this issue was the zodiac, giving each character's
sign and what it said about them. But he shows his ignorance of Japanese
horoscope-mania by claiming that Japan "does not believe in
the traditional firesigns of the zodiac" and "If you were
Chinese, you would be under the sign of the snake." Well, among
Japan's many cultural imports from China centuries ago was the zodiac,
and still today any Japanese can tell you what their Chinese zodiac
sign is. They usually know their Western zodiac sign as well. And
several other signs from new systems dreamt up by someone's marketing
department.
