3/21/2023 0 Comments Mahoutokoro school of magic![]() ![]() I have a theory as to why these schools were so short-sightedly located and why the mechanics seem so short-sighted, too. Do I even need to state that Japan, just like Britain and the US, is a rich nation? You can argue that traveling is for free in the wizarding world, but let’s not forget how much schooling costs. But even if it did take students from all over Asia, there are so many caveats–as someone who spent a few days in Japan, I can tell you that you’d need to have more than a working knowledge of conversational Nihonggo and the ability to read katakana, hiragana, and kanji if you want to live in Japan.Īnd then there’s the money. (This is probably a quibble, but the fact that kids at start age seven and are given robes that change color according to your marks in class screams the Smart Asian stereotype to me.)Īnd the worst part is, nowhere does the text explicitly state that it takes students from all over Asia it even says that it has the smallest population of all 11 schools. Of course it’s Japan–it’s the only Asian country the West seems to know, right? But what really bugs me is, as of now, Mahoutokoro is the only magical school in all of Asia–and as the first one released, it is the best known. Given that there is already a Harry Potter theme park in Japan, having a school there makes sense for practical reasons. Mahoutokoro (by the way, it is pronounced Mahōtokoro, at least get your pronunciation right) is situated on a supposedly uninhabited volcano island of Iwo Jima. That half-assed explanation almost appeased my rage, but how is it that Africa–which has 1,500-2,000 languages, an indeterminate number of tribes, and anywhere between 47 to 55 countries depending on whom you ask–has only one school of magic, which purportedly takes in students from all over the continent? And given that Europe has three schools of magic with three clearly different languages of instruction–seriously, why? What language of instruction are Uagadou’s teachers using and how are the students even getting along, especially if they are from warring tribes? What does this mean for the magical mechanics of the African brand of magic? (The same, in fact, can be argued for having only one school of magic in all of the South American continent.)Īll that aside, do you notice how–and this is not new in pop culture–the Pottermore article and many of the news articles written up on it appear to be referring to Africa as if it were one country?īut hey, I’m not from any country in Africa by birth or by blood (although this person is qualified to speak further on the matter here and here), so I’m going to talk about the school that’s a little (sort of) closer to home. It is apparently the oldest surviving school, out of many other smaller schools. I’m going to begin by talking about Uagadou, the African school built into a mountainside and shrouded in mist. Is the magical strain in each person so limited that only 11 schools can educate them all? But even four additional new schools won’t be enough to appease my uneasy feeling toward there being only 11 wizarding schools on the face of the planet. I’ll preface this by saying that I am still holding out for information on the other four schools and that it occurred to me that judging this incomplete information may seem a little unfair. Why? Because these four new schools– Ilvermorny, Castelobruxo, Uagadou, and Mahoutokoro–were located in North America, South America (Brazil), Africa, and Japan, respectively. I breezed excitedly through the article, but in the end, it gave me so many feelings that I ranted to at least three people. So even though my eleventh birthday passed (and my twelfth, thirteenth, all the way to my seventeenth) without my ever getting a letter and I eventually outgrew the series, I could always hold on to the hope that maybe somewhere in Harry’s world, there is a Philippine wizarding school and I or some fictional character like me was magic enough to attend.įast forward around a decade later. The Harry Potter fandom was recently abuzz with Pottermore’s release of information on four of eight other wizarding schools (not counting Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and Hogwarts). He supposed, now that he saw representatives of so many nationalities in the campsite, that he had been stupid never to realize that Hogwarts couldn’t be the only one. Harry laughed but didn’t voice the amazement he felt at hearing about other wizarding schools. But then, I read a phrase that I didn’t realize the magical potency of until years later: ![]() Like so many other Harry Potter fans, I was hoping against hope that Hogwarts was real and that I’d get a letter inviting me to attend (of course, no such thing happened). I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire the year I turned 11.
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