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Anne of Green Gables Finds Countless Kindred Spirits in Japan

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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Anne of Green Gables never lived, and it goes without saying that she never lived in Cavendish.

Then why do thousands of visitors--a surprising number of them Japanese, some of them in formal wedding clothes--descend each year on this tiny village in Canada’s tiniest province?

Because, over the years, they have fallen in love with a spunky chatterbox with a wild, poetic imagination, a vocabulary of preposterously big words and a fiery temper to match her flaming red pigtails.

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Because the heroine of “Anne of Green Gables” may be fictional, but she’s as real to readers as the girl next door--even in Japan.

Because in the story of a young girl in turn-of-the-century Canada, the Japanese find romance-- so much so that some come here to exchange vows.

“I’m always amazed that sometimes it’s the husband, not the bride, who is the lifelong fan of Anne,” says George Campbell, a direct descendant of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of “Anne” who died in 1942.

“We had a champion sumo wrestler here from Osaka, an enormous fellow. He told me he’d read ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ and it was his dream to come here and get married.”

It was here that Montgomery was reared by strict, joyless grandparents, taught school, married a Presbyterian minister, ran the post office and in 1906 composed “Anne of Green Gables” on postal forms. She based her fictional town, Avonlea, on Cavendish.

The novel was published two years later; it would become Canada’s best-selling book, and she its best-selling author.

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The novel tells what happens when aging bachelor Matthew Cuthbert and his unmarried sister, Marilla, decide to adopt an 11-year-old orphan to help with chores on their Prince Edward Island farm.

The Cuthberts expected a boy, but the child they greet at the train station is Anne Shirley.

The adoption people goofed. But Matthew is captivated from the moment Anne climbs into his buggy. Marilla is all for sending Anne back, but the mischievous, dreamy child soon melts her heart. The same affection overtakes her adopted hometown.

The book has never been out of print, selling 9 million copies and inspiring six sequels. It’s been translated into 17 languages, turned into three movies and, in 1985, a TV miniseries distributed worldwide.

But the Japanese turned “Anne” into a national passion.

It began in 1954 with the Japanese publication of “Akage no An,” Anne of the Red Hair. Here was a country decimated by war, its cities teeming with orphans. Readers were enthralled by Anne’s sunny optimism in the face of adversity and her love of nature. Japanese found in the character, as she would put it, “a kindred spirit.”

The book found its way into the junior high school curriculum, and 30 more publishers adopted Anne.

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A 1994 Canadian academic study of Anne’s popularity in Japan found that young women reread the book when applying for a job to emulate her courage and candor. Parents love it because, at the end, the irrepressible rebel shows respect for her elders by dutifully giving up a college scholarship to look after ailing Marilla.

Though 12,000 Japanese tourists came to Cavendish last year, they were not the only ones--this little town with a winter population of 196 welcomed a total of 185,000 visitors.

Scholars once dismissed this book, but now they flock from around the world to the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island for seminars and conferences that examine the author’s impact on readers and discuss her many other novels and poems.

And a new Korean translation of “Anne” has brought an influx of Korean visitors.

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The Japanese seem to come with a special ardor. They pump more than $8 million (Canadian) into the island’s economy, support a thriving craft and souvenir industry and inspire hotel chefs to add “Grand Banks sushi” and “lobster sashimi” to their menus. A survey by a Japanese travel magazine ranked Prince Edward Island right behind New York, Paris and London as most desired destination.

They explore every alcove and spare room of Green Gables, the home of Montgomery’s elderly cousins where she set her story. Couples stroll hand in hand down the cow path that became “Lover’s Lane” and venture into Anne’s “Haunted Wood,” now haunted by golf balls from the adjoining Green Gables course.

A national park since 1937, the house and grounds have been faithfully restored with period furnishings, blending fact and fantasy. In Anne’s room, for instance, visitors knowingly smile as they focus their cameras on the cracked writing slate that their heroine banged on the head of a lad who teased her about her red hair.

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Doug Heaney, who supervises the Green Gables house for the national park system, said college kids working as guides are taught basic Japanese so they can say “good morning” as well as “Anne’s room is upstairs” and “the restroom is this way.”

“The Japanese account for about 5% of our visitors,” Heaney said, “but they seem to know 100% about Green Gables before they get here.”

A few miles down the road is the Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silverbush, the former farmhouse of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Aunt Annie and Uncle John Campbell, where the author was married. Today, Japanese couples in full wedding regalia exchange vows in an identical old-style Presbyterian ceremony; they practice their “I do’s” in English on the flight in.

“The last week in June, we had 14 weddings,” said George Campbell. “It’s not exactly a legal wedding. They’ve already been married at a Shinto or Buddhist ceremony. Some are on their honeymoons. Others renew their vows.”

They are married in front of the fireplace, at the same spot where Lucy Maud was wed on July 5, 1911. Campbell’s wife, Maureen, plays a 1905 pump organ and leads the singing of “The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden,” the hymn sung at Lucy Maud’s wedding.

The lovebirds pass out the door beneath a deer head and a patchwork quilt made by the author. They climb into “Matthew’s buggy,” a two-seater built on the island in 1910. Prince, a chestnut colt, knows the way around a placid farm pond that Anne’s imagination transformed into the “Lake of Shining Waters.” A reception follows in the museum’s small tearoom.

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In partnership with tour operators and Canadian Pacific Hotels, Campbell arranges wedding packages.

“Good for local business too,” Campbell observed. “They usually rent the wedding dress, hire a video operator and photographer. Then there’s the flowers, the minister, the soloist, the limousine and their accommodations.”

Japanese students trying to master English spend their summers in the bed-and-breakfast houses in “Anne Land.” Campbell said stories are told about young Japanese men begging local redheads for locks of their hair.

So far, none has been conked over the head with a slate--or a laptop.

On four visits to Japan, Campbell has sampled Anne-o-mania: the fan clubs, the television cartoons, the puppets, dolls and T-shirts, even an “Anne Academy” teaching English as a second language.

And he has toured “Canada World,” a Japanese theme park. There, the Anne of Green Gables house has been exactingly reproduced beside an ersatz “Lake of Shining Waters.”

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