Asia has inadvertently taken the spotlight in French internal politics as a result of a visit to China by France's ambitious Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and his disparaging comments about one of the prides of Japanese culture - sumo wrestling.
Mr Sarkozy's posture in China and remarks about sumo, made at a dinner in Hong Kong's China Club just after the interior minister's Beijing sojourn, have been interpreted in Paris as an affront to French President Jacques Chirac, who is an avowed fan of Japanese wrestling. While officially Mr Chirac is the interior minister's boss, the two have a long-standing rivalry.
'How can one be fascinated by this combat between obese guys with plastered-down chignons?' Mr Sarkozy was quoted as saying in the latest edition of Paris Match.
Even though the comments were made just after the minister flew from Beijing to Hong Kong on January 9, they were not reported in France until the glossy weekly magazine printed them on Thursday in big, bold print across the top of its double-page text on the visit.
'It's not really an intellectual sport, sumo' said the minister, an avid cyclist. His comments were picked up and put under the microscope on Friday and yesterday by the rest of the French media, setting off a chain of musings on sumo from other politicians.
The same issue of Paris Match also quoted Mr Chirac, a Japanophile who has made dozens of trips to that country, as saying he was a sumo devotee. When France's Eurosport television sent him several cassettes of Japanese wrestling matches recently, he duplicated them and sent copies to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Mr Sarkozy's sumo snub added to the swipes the minister had taken at Mr Chirac while on the mainland, where he signed an accord to crack down on illegal migration.