Leaders of world powers strike energy blast pose.

There’s an interesting cultural question that pops up during international meetings in Japan: Should the participants shake hands at the end of their conversation? Japan isn’t ordinarily a hand-shaking society, with bowing instead being the gesture by which respect, gratitude, and similar earnest sentiments are conveyed. However, most Japanese people know that handshaking is common in much of the rest of the world, especially western countries…but then again, so too are many people from other nations aware that bowing is the norm in Japan.

There’s not a clear consensus, and it’s a question that only gets more complicated when both parties are prominent figures who frequently interact with each other’s culture, such as, say, Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi and French president Emmanuel Macron. As the pair wrapped up a joint press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, it appeared that they’d subconsciously settled on a handshake…until Takaichi followed it with a third option.

Yes, that’s Dragon Ball’s kamehameha pose that the two world leaders exchanged. The gesture itself is more or less the same as Street Fighter’s hadouken, but it’s clearly Dragon Ball’s energy blast that Takaichi and Macron are emulating, as Takaichi can be faintly heard saying “kamehameha” through the audience’s applause. Macron himself, as a professed anime/manga fan, is also likely more familiar with the kamehameha than the hadouken.

▼ A clip of Macron at France’s Japan Expo event in 2025, where he met with Kazuhiko Torishima, Dragon Ball’s initial editor

Following the press conference, Macron posted the kamehameha video to his Twitter account along with “Fusion” written in Japanese.

Of course, the French president didn’t come all the way to Japan for anime fandom, and the main purpose of his visit is to discuss cooperation between the French and Japanese governments regarding rare earth and energy procurement. Still, the sudden kamehameha shows that their worldwide recognition and popularity grow, anime and manga continue to be prominent goodwill cultural ambassadors for Japan.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
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