Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick and it's Saturday, so we are
Speaker 1: heading into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 1: This is the first part of the series that Rob
Speaker 1: and I did last year on the Urukiara Japanese mascots.
Speaker 1: This originally published July ninth, twenty twenty four. Enjoy Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb and.
Speaker 1: I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, we're going to be starting a series, probably
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes on a cultural phenomenon, the wobbly
Speaker 1: mascots of Japan known as Urukiara. Rob, what got you
Speaker 1: interested in Urukiara?
Speaker 2: Well, my family we recently visited Japan and it was
Speaker 2: an amazing experience, highly recommended, you know, full of culinary, historic, natural, cultural,
Speaker 2: and pop culture discoveries. We tried to cover just about
Speaker 2: everything during our time there, from you know, Shinto shrines
Speaker 2: and historic landmarks to Ghibli Park, the Tokyo Pokemon Center,
Speaker 2: and you know, as with any visit to another country
Speaker 2: and another culture. There's so much fun and wondered to
Speaker 2: be had in the little things. And I think one
Speaker 2: of our favorite pastimes, especially as we traveled around in
Speaker 2: the country and especially as we use public transportation, was
Speaker 2: the endless parade of these curious mascots, these uru kiyara,
Speaker 2: and it was just, you know, every time we would
Speaker 2: encounter another one, we were like, oh, look look at
Speaker 2: this little one. We've got to and we have to
Speaker 2: research it, you know, bust out our phones. Once we
Speaker 2: were able to find ourselves seated or stationary on the train,
Speaker 2: figure out who this individual is, what they represent, it
Speaker 2: was a great deal of additional fun.
Speaker 1: Now we'll go into a lot more detail about what
Speaker 1: urukyara are in the forms they take in these episodes,
Speaker 1: but generally they are characters that can appear in the
Speaker 1: form of two D representations like drawings or also in
Speaker 1: costumed embodied form. Were you mostly just seeing them like
Speaker 1: on signs and in media and stuff, or did you
Speaker 1: actually come across physically costumed erukiyara.
Speaker 2: Sadly, we never encountered any physically costumed mascot character as kiara. Mostly,
Speaker 2: I mean exclusively, we're encountering them on informational signs sometimes
Speaker 2: you know, promotional material and so forth, and very rarely
Speaker 2: on merchandise. I didn't encounter a lot of them that
Speaker 2: were heavily merged, though some of them are as we'll discuss.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was like oftentimes would be like in
Speaker 2: the midst of going from point A to point BE
Speaker 2: and momentarily being distracted, but also momentarily being you know,
Speaker 2: getting an emotional boost from seeing one of these little
Speaker 2: cute characters and you know, and figuring out what they're
Speaker 2: trying to say to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, oh, it's a pair of bipedal sentient Japanese
Speaker 1: leaks who are talking about the agricultural products of this prefecture.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, so yu Kyara have garnered a fair amount
Speaker 2: of attention internationally already. I imagine many of you are
Speaker 2: more than aware of them. I believe John Oliver did
Speaker 2: a piece on them many years ago, and it has
Speaker 2: continued to revisit the topic over the years. But for
Speaker 2: those of you who are new to the concept, you
Speaker 2: can basically start with the Western concept of a mascot character,
Speaker 2: say a Ronald McDonald, you know, like there's an example
Speaker 2: Ronald McDonald and his team of McDonald's mascots. They're sometimes
Speaker 2: physical and costume or makeup form. They're oftentimes illustrative, sometime downplayed,
Speaker 2: sometimes you know, exaggerated, but they're there and they represent
Speaker 2: the brand. Then you have things like what the Starbucks
Speaker 2: siren with with the double tail. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: you know, I have never seen anyone dressed up as
Speaker 2: that an official capacity for Starbucks, but it's very much
Speaker 2: a part of the brand and you recognize it, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: there it is. It's a creature, but it doesn't have
Speaker 2: much personality, but you could say it's sort of a mascot.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think the Starbucks Mermaid and Ronald McDonald are
Speaker 1: a good comparison, except a couple of differences with most Eurokura.
Speaker 1: I think they tend to be more shaped like pillows
Speaker 1: than either of those characters, where Ronald McDonald and the
Speaker 1: Starbucks Mermaid are more kind of humanoid like leaner more
Speaker 1: humanoid representations most Erucuara, though there's some variation between them,
Speaker 1: most of them are more like a large, walking plushy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Grimace of the McDonald's crew would be a
Speaker 2: better example. He would fit the mold more of the
Speaker 2: euro Kiara, as would I would say the Michelin Man.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, or the stay Puffed marshmallow Man exactly yes.
Speaker 1: But another thing is that both of those are corporate mascots,
Speaker 1: and so we're familiar with like corporate mascots in America,
Speaker 1: like sports team mascots. But imagine if a broader range
Speaker 1: of cultural institutions and objects could have mascots. So you
Speaker 1: can have a mascot for a town, a mascot for
Speaker 1: a region, a mascot for a piece of public infrastructure,
Speaker 1: a mascot for an agricultural product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's where it instantly begins to become my
Speaker 2: obvious I think to do to guideen and Westerners that
Speaker 2: you realize, oh, well, a chemical company that is not
Speaker 2: marketing anything towards children will have one of these, as
Speaker 2: will like the local sewage treatment plant. So it's it
Speaker 2: runs in directions you might not expect. And then you
Speaker 2: find or if I have found anyway sort of digging
Speaker 2: into it, then there are there are like corporate companies
Speaker 2: that you I'd expect to have gotten into it that
Speaker 2: seemingly haven't, like, as far as I can tell, Pilot Pins,
Speaker 2: the Pilot Corporation based in Japan. They have no uru
Speaker 2: kiara that I can tell. Maybe I just couldn't find them.
Speaker 2: But then so not every company company is getting in
Speaker 2: on this, and it is it seems like it's more
Speaker 2: often that you do find them in various city or
Speaker 2: prefecture associated organizations. All right, So what does this word
Speaker 2: mean euro kiara? It's actually fairly complex to break down
Speaker 2: as a translation. One paper I was looking out for
Speaker 2: this as a twenty sixteen paper called who is Hikonyan
Speaker 2: The Phenomenon of Japanese Eurokiara by Jillian Ray Sutter, this
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen publication, and they point out that the term
Speaker 2: here is short for the code mixed uru mascot character,
Speaker 2: So you already know what mascot character is and that
Speaker 2: just becomes kiaru. But the uru here may be translated
Speaker 2: as loose, easy, lazy, careless, half hearted, or lenient, according
Speaker 2: to Sutter. And I've also seen lax and soft invoked
Speaker 2: in translation as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I did a little digging on this word yurui,
Speaker 1: which is spelled usually in English why you are you I?
Speaker 1: And it seems to have some different clusters of connotations.
Speaker 1: So Japanese speakers right in and correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: getting anything wrong here, but I'm doing my best to
Speaker 1: figure out all the different to untangle all this. It
Speaker 1: seems like it literally means loose, slack, or soft, but
Speaker 1: when applied to a person or creature, indicates something like relaxed,
Speaker 1: chilled out, laid back, or lazy. So I think in
Speaker 1: this facet of the words, meaning the dude from The
Speaker 1: Big Lebowski would be a type of yurui. But it
Speaker 1: would also seem to apply to characters that are more gentle,
Speaker 1: light hearted, sweet, and non threatening. So something that is
Speaker 1: yurui maybe has some overlap with cuteness, but is also
Speaker 1: like no big deal. Also, an academic essay that I'm
Speaker 1: going to cite later in this episode translates yurukiara as
Speaker 1: wobbly characters, and that brings in another aspect of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if wobbliness is itself at all implied
Speaker 1: by yurui, but the author who coined this term originally
Speaker 1: specified that an important thing about them is that they
Speaker 1: have sort of like awkward or unstable movements. I think
Speaker 1: that's a key part of their cuteness appeal. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we really have a term in
Speaker 1: English that connects all these different connotations that I'm seeing
Speaker 1: with yurui. But the way I understand it is that
Speaker 1: these yurui characters are They're soft, they're easy going, they're
Speaker 1: a little bit awkward, they're cute, they're non threatening, and
Speaker 1: they are not telling you to hurry up and get
Speaker 1: those spreadsheets finished. They're they're just hanging out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's that's pretty accurate from what I've
Speaker 2: read and what i've seen. And the interesting thing is, though,
Speaker 2: even though they are very lax and very chill, and
Speaker 2: they might be doing nothing more than just being that
Speaker 2: representing this company or this you know, public works department,
Speaker 2: but also they can and sometimes are invoked in situations
Speaker 2: or or in causes that are serious, but they keep
Speaker 2: that laxness. So I'll get a specific example of this
Speaker 2: in the second episode. We do. But it's like your
Speaker 2: particular mascot may be like, Hey, I'm just being chill,
Speaker 2: I'm vibing, I'm cute and approachable, but try not to
Speaker 2: fall in the train tracks.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, let me remind you about public health precautions,
Speaker 1: but in a very non threatening, chilled out way.
Speaker 2: Exactly now, they are pretty much without exception cute. I
Speaker 2: think if you look around there are so any of them.
Speaker 2: As we'll get into there, there's basically an unknown number
Speaker 2: of them, and there's not uniform quality. Most of them
Speaker 2: are amazing, but some of them there have been occasionally
Speaker 2: one or two that I've seen where it's like, I
Speaker 2: don't know that this concept is really working. Maybe they
Speaker 2: should have workshopped this a little bit more, But they
Speaker 2: are pretty much without exception cute, and therefore I think
Speaker 2: they're a fine example of the larger Japanese concept of
Speaker 2: cuteness kauai and its various subsets.
Speaker 1: Rob, I don't know if you came across the same thing,
Speaker 1: but there are a few that I almost understood to
Speaker 1: be considered cute in the way that they fail to
Speaker 1: be cute, that they're like something that is understood as
Speaker 1: an attempt to be cute that is unsuccessful and is
Speaker 1: in fact ugly, which itself is cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. And this
Speaker 2: might actually relate to some of the subsets of kauai
Speaker 2: that I find pretty interesting, Like, for instance, there there
Speaker 2: is or was I'm not sure if this term is
Speaker 2: still relevant, but Kauai noir, which is dark cute, so
Speaker 2: it's creepy cute, and therefore sometimes it may feel like
Speaker 2: it's like falling short of true cuteness, or the mask
Speaker 2: of cuteness is slipping away from horror.
Speaker 1: One of the academic essays I was reading about Urkiara
Speaker 1: talked about this concept of gross cute. It's a type
Speaker 1: of cuteness in Japanese culture that didn't apply to any
Speaker 1: particular URQR, but to other bear characters in cartoons specifically,
Speaker 1: I think like a rotting zombie bear.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, there was one called angry Bear.
Speaker 2: I think I remember this was years and years ago,
Speaker 2: that is like an actual bear and he ends up
Speaker 2: mauling the cute human characters in his vicinity because he's
Speaker 2: an actual bear. But there's yeah, there's this other area
Speaker 2: that I believe is referred to as pitiful cute, and
Speaker 2: I think there is also some sort of level of
Speaker 2: crossover in Japanese language between pitiful and cute that maybe
Speaker 2: doesn't like they're too separate in English and maybe they're
Speaker 2: more connected in Japanese. It's my loose understanding, but you
Speaker 2: have this hit aful cute area that I think arguably
Speaker 2: includes such examples as Goodi Tama the Lazy Egg, which
Speaker 2: I know a number of you are familiar with now
Speaker 2: because he's really blown up and has his own Netflix series.
Speaker 2: He's amazing. And then there's this other character that I
Speaker 2: only discovered while in Japan, and this is a Panchu Yusagi.
Speaker 2: She is like a little pink rabbit in like old
Speaker 2: Granny underpants, and I think her name basically means like
Speaker 2: Pamper's rabbit. And she goes about trying to do things
Speaker 2: that are sweet and cute and have like sweet, cute,
Speaker 2: meaningful experiences, generally in like two panel cartoons, and something
Speaker 2: goes wrong, and so there is kind of this. She
Speaker 2: often looks kind of weird in the second panel because
Speaker 2: she's either embarrassed or she's angry expectations have not met
Speaker 2: up with reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you shared this with with JJ and me, and
Speaker 1: I thought this was really funny. It seems like they're
Speaker 1: often centered around but like an awkward social misunderstanding. Like
Speaker 1: there was one comic US shared with somebody waving and
Speaker 1: then this character waving back at them, but then it's
Speaker 1: clear that the original character was waving for a cab.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that sort of thing and it's really good,
Speaker 2: and you don't most of it has no language associated
Speaker 2: with it, so you can, you know, look it up
Speaker 2: on Instagram and plow through them, which is what I did.
Speaker 2: I mean, I also, I want to stress I also
Speaker 2: did things like I saw Mount Fuji while I was there,
Speaker 2: but I mostly end up talking about things like this.
Speaker 1: Oh but wait, doesn't the Mount Fuji region have its
Speaker 1: own mascot?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, yeah, and I'll definitely come back to that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: anywhere you go there, there's there's some sort of it
Speaker 2: basically comes down to like how visible are they going
Speaker 2: to be? You know, how many posters and so forth.
Speaker 2: But I want to come back to just the concept
Speaker 2: of cuteness and kwai and broader detail here, because I
Speaker 2: think it is key. It's one of the key sort
Speaker 2: of tripod legs or even like table legs to understanding
Speaker 2: this whole concept. And I was looking around for a
Speaker 2: good source on this, and I found an article on
Speaker 2: Ian magazine titled The Great Regression by Tokyo based translator,
Speaker 2: writer and speaker Matt Alt, who also co wrote a
Speaker 2: trio of very fun books on Yo Kai Yuri and
Speaker 2: Ninja's which two of those I've read with my son
Speaker 2: and the other one I have on the shelf ready
Speaker 2: to go, in addition to other books dealing with Japanese
Speaker 2: culture that he's pinned over the years. And so this
Speaker 2: article in general is a very good read. It deals
Speaker 2: with this idea that there's like this larger trend in
Speaker 2: the world of adults taking an interest in things associated
Speaker 2: with childhood, arguably when they should not be, which I
Speaker 2: want to stress here is a not a concept that
Speaker 2: I feel one hundred percent okay with. It's just kind
Speaker 2: of like a judgment call of how grown up spend
Speaker 2: their lives and make their choices.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, we could take normative judgments out of it
Speaker 1: and just talk about the phenomenon that it does seem
Speaker 1: like there's been a clear trend, I think in the
Speaker 1: last couple of decades, at least in my knowledge in
Speaker 1: the US context of uh more, of a tendency for
Speaker 1: adults living adult lives to engage with say media men
Speaker 1: for children, I mean, especially like you know, nostalgic media
Speaker 1: that they liked when they were kids, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can ask an interesting questions about like what drives
Speaker 1: that kind of that kind of interest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I want to stress that that that
Speaker 2: the alt article here is very good and is ultimately
Speaker 2: not trying to grind an act in that direction. But uh,
Speaker 2: but my my sort of gut response to just the
Speaker 2: concept of it is like, I end up, you know,
Speaker 2: going back to that that old C. S. Lewis quote.
Speaker 2: You know, when I became a man, I put away
Speaker 2: childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire
Speaker 2: to be very grown up. You know, because like ultimately,
Speaker 2: like what are adults supposed to be doing? You know,
Speaker 2: you get into that whole question, and and and also
Speaker 2: like the unreality of the idea that that in the
Speaker 2: old days adults didn't do things like play games or
Speaker 2: craft you know, fiction for children and so forth.
Speaker 1: I feel like the most childish thing one could actually
Speaker 1: say is like, you know, that's for babies. I'm not
Speaker 1: a baby. Yeah, yeah, nothing makes you sound more like
Speaker 1: a baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, anyway, in this article all lays out this idea,
Speaker 2: this concept that many people in the contemporary Western world
Speaker 2: have entered into a kind of global second childhood in
Speaker 2: response to various social, economic, and global health factors over
Speaker 2: the last decade or two, and this is wrapped up
Speaker 2: in the whole idea. They're like the Great Regression, And
Speaker 2: in this the idea is that has arguably occurred in
Speaker 2: Japan during the nineties quote, when the youth and young
Speaker 2: adults of a hyper connected post industrial society lose faith
Speaker 2: in the future, the Great regression is inevitable. And I
Speaker 2: have to admit. And he points out as well that
Speaker 2: this sounds grim and again I personally feel a certain
Speaker 2: amount of resistance to the idea. But he goes on
Speaker 2: in an interesting direction here, arguing that this large scale
Speaker 2: cultural interest in the things of childhood can be in
Speaker 2: that positive and that this is where it gets into
Speaker 2: the mindset that I can connect with alt Wrights. Quote.
Speaker 2: Under the right circumstances, regression can nourish. It can be
Speaker 2: a form of progression, a form of experimentation and creative play.
Speaker 2: It can pave the way for new ways of thinking
Speaker 2: and living. It can spawn new trends and identities and lifestyles.
Speaker 2: These become essential tools for navigating the strange new frontiers
Speaker 2: of modern life, and as we adopt them, they transform
Speaker 2: our definition of what it means to lead healthy adult lives.
Speaker 2: So the historic underpinning here is that is Alt lays
Speaker 2: out Japan's post war economy was extremely ascended from the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies through roughly nineteen ninety one, and was even
Speaker 2: expected to overtake the US economy, something that ended up
Speaker 2: being echoed and warped in contemporary, certainly American culture at
Speaker 2: the time, even in racist and hateful ways, up to
Speaker 2: and including acts of physical violence. And it's also in
Speaker 2: other ways, like you see it referenced in the sci
Speaker 2: fi tapestries of you know, futuristic cyberpunk visions. You know,
Speaker 2: this idea that the future there's something about the future
Speaker 2: that will be predominantly Japanese, that sort of thing, and
Speaker 2: you still see that in sort of like retro futuristic
Speaker 2: cyberpunk visions. It like just becomes sort of baked in
Speaker 2: to the concept and into the world building. But then
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one, there's this economic burst. People coped
Speaker 2: or didn't as best they could, and there was this
Speaker 2: kind of slide away from the capitalist pursuit of the salarymen,
Speaker 2: you know, the stereotypical you know, employee worker that's out
Speaker 2: there just really busting it. And then you know, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, you know, you have a
Speaker 2: few beers, and then you go to sleep, and you
Speaker 2: wake up and you do it all again. And there
Speaker 2: was a slide away from all of that into interest
Speaker 2: that were previously more niche. And this all brings us
Speaker 2: to kuai. Quote. Salarymen may have built Japan ink, but
Speaker 2: when it crumbled, young people picked up the pieces. The
Speaker 2: real trendsetters were young women, ranging from schoolgirls to office ladies,
Speaker 2: the female counterparts of the salarymen. They began unabashedly incorporating
Speaker 2: symbols of feminine childhood into their adult identities, upending entire
Speaker 2: industries through the power of kuai, a Japanese word that
Speaker 2: overlaps with cuteness, but which is also a state of
Speaker 2: mind that refers to being adorable, playful, just begging for cuddles,
Speaker 2: like a kitten or a baby. By nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: One Woman's magazine anointed kauwai the most widely used, widely
Speaker 2: loved habitual word in modern living Japanese.
Speaker 1: So it's a kind of fascination, especially beginning with younger
Speaker 1: women in Japan, but sort of taking over the whole
Speaker 1: culture in a way and becoming a very economically important concept.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and one that even though you know, there's
Speaker 2: a load about kuwai that's distinctly Japanese, and you know
Speaker 2: we're already talking and we'll continue to talk about that,
Speaker 2: but obviously it's also something that anyone can look at
Speaker 2: and feel connection to, you know, it's ultimately it has
Speaker 2: universal appeal. So anyway, all goes on to argument. While
Speaker 2: critics love to see all of this, either in Japan
Speaker 2: or elsewhere, as a moral failure, as an inward escape
Speaker 2: into fantasy, he stresses that it's much more than that,
Speaker 2: and in the example of Japanese pop culture, it didn't
Speaker 2: just result in an endlessen we're inward gays, but also
Speaker 2: resulted in new modes of social change, adaptation to changing times,
Speaker 2: and the advancement of whole industries. So anyway, it's a
Speaker 2: great article we're checking out in full. But I think
Speaker 2: the key things to keep in mind for our purposes
Speaker 2: here are that number one, there was a hyper charging
Speaker 2: of kauwhai in Japanese culture during the nineteen nineties. And
Speaker 2: again too, it doesn't occur in a bubble, but it
Speaker 2: also isn't a bubble, if that makes sense, Like this
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that there was nothing cute prior to that.
Speaker 2: I mean, to the contrary, there was this strong element
Speaker 2: of cuteness appreciation of like small deck or objects and
Speaker 2: so forth in Japan, and this was like just a
Speaker 2: hyper charging of that. And you can also point to
Speaker 2: examples like Hello Kitty, one of the ambassadors of kawai
Speaker 2: dates back to seventy five. And you know, as we've
Speaker 2: discussed in the show before, you have this long standing
Speaker 2: Japanese fascination with house cats, and cats feature very strongly
Speaker 2: into various forms of kauwai, and also kawai as manifested
Speaker 2: in Japanese handwriting goes back to the seventies and so forth,
Speaker 2: and I think you can make similar observations about this.
Speaker 2: You know, the ideas of regression over here. You know,
Speaker 2: people were pointing out, oh you have you have adults
Speaker 2: with no children going to Disney World, adults with no
Speaker 2: children buying lego sets. You know, these are things that
Speaker 2: pre existed any observations of widespread regression by decades, So
Speaker 2: you know, none of this is coming out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to deny the appeal of legos
Speaker 1: to anyone, the way they snap together that's just good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My son and I just built an ornithopter.
Speaker 2: It was it was challenging and rewarding. Anyway, coming back
Speaker 2: to urukiara again, it's just essential that these are not
Speaker 2: just aimed at kids. They're representing a wide range of
Speaker 2: regional governments or governmental agencies and all sorts of different businesses,
Speaker 2: but not all businesses. For instance, I ran across one
Speaker 2: very adorable pig urukiara that is a pink pig, very
Speaker 2: cute inside of like bubbles, like he's covered from bubbles,
Speaker 2: like he just got out of a bubble bath. His
Speaker 2: name is Awabutta, and he is the mascot of Eagle
Speaker 2: Star Chemicals. So it's companies, you know like that. I
Speaker 2: don't know anything about Egle Star Chemicals, but I'm assuming
Speaker 2: that they are not, you know, particularly like child oriented
Speaker 2: in their marketing and so forth. But they have this
Speaker 2: adorable mascot.
Speaker 1: Why is the pig surrounded in bubbles? Oh no, this
Speaker 1: is not a pig that's dissolving in a vat of
Speaker 1: Why is it. No, he's happy, he's cute. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: a happy pig. It does look happy, does not look
Speaker 1: to be dissolving.
Speaker 2: Now, as we've pointed out, these mascots, these zero kiara
Speaker 2: often are personified and brought into physical reality via a costume.
Speaker 2: And as Eddie y L Chang points out in the
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen article, let the euro Kiara do the job,
Speaker 2: they essentially have the life of a celebrity spokesperson. They
Speaker 2: make public appearances again in suit form. They participate in
Speaker 2: charity and outreach initiatives. And I have to read this
Speaker 2: passage from Cheng's article. This was published in the Japanese
Speaker 2: studies journal Mira, and this is brilliant quote. Urukiara do
Speaker 2: not just have a realistic profile and job. Part of
Speaker 2: their public relations work involves them having a life. For instance,
Speaker 2: and he refers to a picture in the article. In Fig.
Speaker 2: Seven we see Rinkachan from Katsuragi City in Nara Prefecture,
Speaker 2: quote unquote falling for Sinto Kun and baked a cake
Speaker 2: for him for his second birthday in an attempt to
Speaker 2: win his heart and become his girlfriend. It is striking
Speaker 2: that this was reported in the Nara kise Shimbun business newspaper,
Speaker 2: an indication that yurukiara are considered by people as social
Speaker 2: members in a world where the line between reality and
Speaker 2: fantasy is often unclear. And I need to stress that
Speaker 2: Sinto Kun is a young boy with deer antlers because
Speaker 2: Nara is known for its it's deer and Rinkachan is
Speaker 2: like a cartoon princess. And this is news of this
Speaker 2: not even engagement but possible girlfriend boyfriend scenario was published
Speaker 2: in what I can only imagine would be like if
Speaker 2: there's a Wall Street Journal article about it in the US.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Santo Kun, by the way, I should point out, is
Speaker 1: one of the mascots that I had read described as
Speaker 1: ugly and acute. Way, according to some people, it is
Speaker 1: just a bold boy with antlers. Apparently some people find
Speaker 1: the antlers off putting, but in a way that actually
Speaker 1: comes full circle and makes it cute.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that. I think that was the
Speaker 2: roller coaster I went on when I first glimpsed him,
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know, okay, okay, it's cute.
Speaker 2: By the way, if you really want to like supercharge
Speaker 2: your knowledge of what these various UK area look like,
Speaker 2: I highly recommend checking out the Instagram feed for Mondo mascots.
Speaker 2: You can get hit by new ones every day. It's
Speaker 2: a wonderful experience, especially if you are not in Japan
Speaker 2: where you can encounter them in the wild. Now, one
Speaker 2: thing that Sutter points out in her article that referenced
Speaker 2: earlier is that, yeah, these mascots are not only far
Speaker 2: more popular, but they're compared to say, US mascots, but
Speaker 2: they're also far more numerous, and indeed their full number
Speaker 2: is probably uncountable and potentially out of control, something that
Speaker 2: has been a topic of some concern. I don't know
Speaker 2: how ultimately how concerned you can get about mascots getting
Speaker 2: out of control, but it has been on on everyone's
Speaker 2: radar for a bit.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out on a limb and say
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 2: Well, they didn't. There are some details that everyone has
Speaker 2: to take into account here. But she decides a twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen story in The Guardian detailing a move by the
Speaker 2: government of Osaka to cut down on the number of
Speaker 2: mascots in Osaka government offices because this apparent and ultimately
Speaker 2: this ended up resulting in there cutting down from something
Speaker 2: like ninety two to sixty nine mascots in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that held, if they've been able
Speaker 2: to hold it at sixty nine or if that has
Speaker 2: gone up again. And according to Bloomberg, that same year,
Speaker 2: the Japanese government announced a nationwide crackdown on yurokiara from
Speaker 2: a cost cutting standpoint. So again, it's not the idea
Speaker 2: that people were saying, you know, I don't think that
Speaker 2: the Kashiwa City sewerd Apartment needs its own mascot, though
Speaker 2: it does or had one named Rinko Chan a lotus
Speaker 2: ferry riding on Ali. It's not that they that that,
Speaker 2: you know, politicians and government workers were saying, we can't
Speaker 2: have things like cute things like this in life. They
Speaker 2: were just saying, you know, it's costing too much money. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know someone has to design them. If if you
Speaker 2: have a suit, someone has to wear that suit. If
Speaker 2: you're printing up a bunch of promotional materials with that character,
Speaker 2: well then you know that's an added cost. And you know,
Speaker 2: some of the estimates that I've read with particular mascots,
Speaker 2: it was like it was getting pretty pricey, and I
Speaker 2: get it, like, imagine if for stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 2: We decided, okay, not only do we need our own
Speaker 2: eurokiarra for the show, but we need separate Eurokiara for
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema for each of our Wednesday short form shows.
Speaker 2: Listener Mail needs one. We need a vault centric Eurokiara.
Speaker 2: It would be a bit much, and I could understand
Speaker 2: our corporate masters being a little resistant to the addition
Speaker 2: of an additional four to five mascots.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's what it is, a super Kowhi rendering of
Speaker 1: Christoph Limb bear. But the old man version from the
Speaker 1: beginning of Pilot er two just make it cute somehow.
Speaker 2: I can imagine it. I can imagine, but I can
Speaker 2: also imagine what it was that Lambar Productions being.
Speaker 1: A little week ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh well there. Yeah, is there a way you
Speaker 2: could animize it, like by thirty five percent?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he would be He would have Lamb characteristics,
Speaker 1: little tiny like buds of ram horns.
Speaker 2: Maybe hmmm, okay, and then you have ramires and maybe
Speaker 2: he's a bear. Hmmm.
Speaker 1: I don't know we're getting there.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I you know it is. As a guidgen tourist,
Speaker 2: for my part, I never got tired of seeing this
Speaker 2: endless parade of cute mascots. But I could see where
Speaker 2: the prize could get out of hand. But on the
Speaker 2: other side of the issue, I can you know, I see,
Speaker 2: I realized not only my own enthusiasm, but I've also
Speaker 2: seen this reference in various articles dealing with him, talking
Speaker 2: about how they've really caught on not only with you
Speaker 2: and these residents, but also with tourists, also becoming instrumental
Speaker 2: in international relations. So, you know, I wonder if it's
Speaker 2: something that while they maybe do the cost cutting, if
Speaker 2: it's something they could lean into even more from like
Speaker 2: a tourism standpoint, you know, you know, like a kind
Speaker 2: of like a bird watcher's guide, but just for Eurookiaga.
Speaker 1: Oh well, the way I understood it, especially some of
Speaker 1: the like regional township mascots were specifically, at least in part,
Speaker 1: aimed at attracting tourists.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely. Yeah, there are ones that are associated with
Speaker 2: directly with tourism. But it's like, I don't want to
Speaker 2: just know about the tourism related ones. I want to
Speaker 2: know about the sewage departments. You know, they're all so interesting.
Speaker 2: I want to catch them all.
Speaker 1: And there have been attempts to reckon with the multitudes
Speaker 1: of mascots because I don't know if they're doing it
Speaker 1: in the most recent years, but for a while there
Speaker 1: they were holding in Japan a Eurokiara Grand Prix.
Speaker 2: That's right. This began in twenty eleven as a way
Speaker 2: to specifically to help revitalize various regions in Japan by
Speaker 2: highlighting their mascots, and it featured like a really cool
Speaker 2: website which is still around. You can look up in
Speaker 2: lots of mascot pictures, and participants could vote online for
Speaker 2: their favorites in both a regional and a business division.
Speaker 2: But by twenty twenty apparently, I think the last one
Speaker 2: was in twenty twenty, because it was deemed that this
Speaker 2: had just become too competitive with competing regions and or
Speaker 2: companies lobbying like super hard to get those online votes,
Speaker 2: and it was just decided I'm not sure exactly who
Speaker 2: decided this, but it was decided that, you know what,
Speaker 2: this is betraying the spirit of what these characters should be,
Speaker 2: and we're just not going to do it anymore.
Speaker 1: I feel like if it were taken too seriously, it
Speaker 1: would not be yurui.
Speaker 2: That's right. It's supposed to be laid back, it's supposed
Speaker 2: to be lax and ultimately, yeah, It's like, if you're
Speaker 2: if you're putting all this effort into getting votes, you know,
Speaker 2: that's not laid back. If you're spending you know, close
Speaker 2: to a million on your lax character, I don't know
Speaker 2: how lax they are anymore, you know, So I guess
Speaker 2: we have to take that into consideration with these criticisms.
Speaker 1: Now, where does this cultural concept come from? The term urukya?
Speaker 1: Most of the sources I was looking at give credit
Speaker 1: to a Japanese manga author and I think sort of
Speaker 1: social critic and essayist named June Mura, who coined the
Speaker 1: term urukyara in I've actually seen different years cited for this.
Speaker 1: An essay that I'm going to get into in just
Speaker 1: a bit pins it in the year two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: But according to Mura, there are three characteristics that define
Speaker 1: a urukyura. The one we've already mentioned is the concept
Speaker 1: of urui, which has these connotations of like soft, loose, relaxed,
Speaker 1: laid back, weak, gentle, non threatening, no big deal. The
Speaker 1: second characteristic is a strong sense of love or passion
Speaker 1: for the home region that they represent, and then third
Speaker 1: is awkward, wobbly, strange, unique or unstable movements and that
Speaker 1: seems like a very specific kind of criterion, But maybe
Speaker 1: later in this series we'll come back to that and
Speaker 1: zero in on the unstable movements, because I think that
Speaker 1: is a more psychologically important criterion than one might assume
Speaker 1: at first. An interesting thing about these criteria is that
Speaker 1: they sort of implied that the character must have an
Speaker 1: embodied form. So a lot of times these mascots only
Speaker 1: appear as as drawings, as two dimensional representations, but it
Speaker 1: implies that they must at some point move right to
Speaker 1: have these strange, unstable movements, And so I think this
Speaker 1: does connect to the fact that most of these characters
Speaker 1: do have an embodied form or at some time in
Speaker 1: place a human inside a suit. But anyway, I think
Speaker 1: it would be useful to just look at a few
Speaker 1: examples of Rukyr that stick out to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I want to start with one that
Speaker 2: that ties into what we were talking about earlier about
Speaker 2: tourism and both domestic and international, because the one I
Speaker 2: want to highlight first is ultimately a pretty simple one.
Speaker 2: This is not a complex or super weird one, but
Speaker 2: one that that my family fell in love with rather quickly.
Speaker 2: His name is Hako Geo and He is the mascot
Speaker 2: of Hakone Geo Park. So Hakone is a beautiful mountain
Speaker 2: area with sometimes views of Mount Fuji. It kind of
Speaker 2: depends on you on where exactly you are in what
Speaker 2: the clouds are doing, because it's it's a shy mountain.
Speaker 2: Sometimes well, luckily we got we got a little peak
Speaker 2: there at the peak, but you're not guaranteed that with
Speaker 2: Mount Fuji. But anyway, it's full of This region is
Speaker 2: full of natural hot springs. It has some fun museums.
Speaker 2: The ways to get around are amazing because you have,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, great trains, but then cable cars, gondolas,
Speaker 2: pirate ships are part of the public transportation system there
Speaker 2: to get across, criss crossing this lake there, and there's
Speaker 2: in so much more. There are restaurants and so forth
Speaker 2: is the fourth It's a beautiful area and every step
Speaker 2: of the way we saw signage with Hako Geo there
Speaker 2: to tell us what we were doing right, where to
Speaker 2: go and how much we should be enjoying Halkone And
Speaker 2: he does occasionally take physical form in a costume, but
Speaker 2: we did not see him in such form. It was
Speaker 2: not one of those days. Okay, So the design of
Speaker 2: this character is nothing to elaborate. It is just a
Speaker 2: cute person. I'm not sure if it's a boy or what.
Speaker 2: They're very cartoony, just a bright, glorious face. They're so happy.
Speaker 2: And this person is wearing a hat shaped like the
Speaker 2: mountains of Halkoni, like three peaks, a bigger one in
Speaker 2: the center, and it's just still amazing. I just felt
Speaker 2: the looseness every time I looked at him. I was
Speaker 2: a little surprised that there wasn't a lot of merch
Speaker 2: for this guy, because by the end of our brief
Speaker 2: study in Hakone like I wanted more. I was like, yes,
Speaker 2: let me have a shot at the Hagajiyo merch, but
Speaker 2: it didn't seem to be. There was barely any of it.
Speaker 2: But of course this is not the case with every Eurokiara.
Speaker 2: Some of them are merchandise superstars.
Speaker 1: That's right. So if you know Rob and I, you
Speaker 1: probably know that we're going to be drawn to some
Speaker 1: of the weirder and more obscure mascots as we highlight
Speaker 1: some more in the next episode or two. But we
Speaker 1: should definitely mention the heavy hitters as well, and one
Speaker 1: of the most famous Eurokiara in Japan and around the
Speaker 1: world is Kumaman, which is a mascot created in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand and nine to represent the Kumamoto Prefecture
Speaker 1: of western Kshu and to boost local products, spur trade
Speaker 1: and attract tourists. This character was debuted after at the
Speaker 1: same time that a high speed rail line connecting the
Speaker 1: region was completed in the year twenty eleven. I believe
Speaker 1: now I will get to a source in just a
Speaker 1: minute that disputes the essential nature of what I'm about
Speaker 1: to describe, But I have to start just by reporting
Speaker 1: my own perception and first impression looking at Kumaman, and
Speaker 1: that is that Kumaman looks like an adorable bipedal black bear,
Speaker 1: sort of pear shaped in the body, with a white muzzle,
Speaker 1: large eyes with curious curved brows, sort of arched eyebrows
Speaker 1: over them, and prominent bright red cherry cheeks. Kumaman was
Speaker 1: the winner of the eurokiar A Grand Prix in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: I think that was the first year they had the competition,
Speaker 1: So he's a big early winner and incredibly popular.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely adorable, looking, very huggable, just yeah, phenomenally cute
Speaker 2: and reassuring, very soft. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, like many Urukiura, momman plays a big role in
Speaker 1: marketing and advertising for a particular region. In this case, again,
Speaker 1: the Kumamoto Prefecture and Kumaman in particular has been judged
Speaker 1: a huge success at this goal. I was reading an
Speaker 1: I Triple E paper by Nakasato and Tanaka about using
Speaker 1: machine image analysis to predict the popularity of these mascots.
Speaker 1: By the way, the results of that was that people
Speaker 1: seem to like bright colors, especially on the yellow green spectrum,
Speaker 1: so bright yellow greens seem to be the most popular.
Speaker 1: But Kumaman, of course, is an exception. Anyway, In the
Speaker 1: intro of this article, they just happened to summarize a
Speaker 1: Japanese news article which included a figure from the Kumamoto
Speaker 1: branch of the Bank of Japan estimating that Kumaman alone
Speaker 1: had generated one hundred and twenty four billion Japanese yen
Speaker 1: worth of economic activity just in the two year period
Speaker 1: from twenty eleven to twenty twelve. I tried to look
Speaker 1: up a conversion rate, and that's something like seven hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy million US dollars today. Don't know what that
Speaker 1: would have been in twenty twelve. But yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is a big business, an adorable creature, a beautiful, incredibly
Speaker 1: cute design, a cultural phenomenon, but also a big money maker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't argue with those figures. No matter how
Speaker 2: much it costs to design it or make the costume,
Speaker 2: this guy paid off. Now.
Speaker 1: The likeness of this character is used in all different
Speaker 1: kinds of marketing contexts. Seems to he seems to pop
Speaker 1: up in you know, photos, like in a costume with
Speaker 1: a beautiful natural landscape behind him, like hey, you know,
Speaker 1: come visit Kumamoto Prefecture, but also appears on the packaging
Speaker 1: of products and so forth. But some uses of this
Speaker 1: character go hard, and go hard, almost into bizarre territory.
Speaker 1: One example is I found an article from twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: about a recent promotion for Kumamoto tourism which involved filling
Speaker 1: a hall in Osaka station with dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: kumaman representations of various sorts. Some are three dimensional models,
Speaker 1: some are two D cutouts like you know, cardboard stands.
Speaker 1: Some are banners that hang from light posts. One is
Speaker 1: a giant, just a giant kumaman head that has like
Speaker 1: spotlights aimed at it curiously a lot of these representations
Speaker 1: have little variations on the character. So one is wearing
Speaker 1: a pink scarf, one is holding an apple, one has
Speaker 1: its eyes closed, usually they're wide open, So these strange
Speaker 1: little variations, and all of these images are of this
Speaker 1: same excruciatingly cute bear like organism. But the way they're
Speaker 1: lined up in these columns stretching down the hall, it's
Speaker 1: almost like you are looking at a bunch of storm
Speaker 1: troopers standing at attention on the Death Star. It's a
Speaker 1: bit menacing, and from what I can tell, Rob, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you picked up on the same thing.
Speaker 1: It seems like some cultural uses of yurukiara seem to
Speaker 1: embrace this kind of irony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know when I look at it, there's certainly
Speaker 2: the feeling of like, okay, an army of kumaman's are
Speaker 2: here for me. But also it's like, well, kumaman he
Speaker 2: represents the way I want to feel. And now they're
Speaker 2: all of them here, and they all have different expressions,
Speaker 2: different emotional states. And I realized that maybe I'm not
Speaker 2: one person either, Maybe I'm multiple people just spread out
Speaker 2: across time, and that there's no there's no definite identity
Speaker 2: or reality. I don't know that that was their intention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so another strange, ironic use of Kumaman. I was
Speaker 1: not aware of this meme when it popped up, but apparently,
Speaker 1: sometime around twenty eleven, this adorable, rosy cheeked bear became
Speaker 1: the subject of a minor meme in which he was
Speaker 1: depicted in front of something that's on fire, and the
Speaker 1: text was always for the glory of Satan.
Speaker 2: Of course, now this was not an official usage.
Speaker 1: Memes on the Internet, and in fact, I want to
Speaker 1: turn into an essay that in one part does address
Speaker 1: perplexity of people over why Kumaman is used in this meme.
Speaker 1: So I was trying to learn more about Kumaman and
Speaker 1: I came across a fascinating essay on this character and
Speaker 1: on the broader Rokyr phenomenon. It was called Kumaman Japan's
Speaker 1: surprisingly Cheeky Mascot by Debor j Ochi in a book
Speaker 1: called Introducing Japanese Popular Culture published twenty twenty three by Rutledge.
Speaker 1: This book is edited by a professor of Japanese literature
Speaker 1: at the University of Oregon named Elisa Friedman. But again
Speaker 1: the essay is by Debor j Ochi. So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to have time to get into everything the author
Speaker 1: brings up in this article, but I'll go through and
Speaker 1: hit some highlights that I thought were interesting. One is
Speaker 1: about the literal origin of this character. So Kumaman began
Speaker 1: as part of a regional advertising and pr campaign called
Speaker 1: Uoto's Surprise, the goal of which was to give Kumamoto
Speaker 1: residents a new sense of local pride and to sort
Speaker 1: of delight tourists and visitors with what Kumamoto had to
Speaker 1: offer in terms of natural landscapes and local cuisine. And
Speaker 1: the story goes that originally, a Kumamoto born designer named
Speaker 1: Koyama Kundo set out to design a logo just on
Speaker 1: the theme of Kumamoto Surprise, but his art director, who
Speaker 1: was named Mizuno Manabu, included as a surprise this new character, Kumaman,
Speaker 1: which allegedly went through three thousand draft variations before he
Speaker 1: reached his final form. That's how the story goes. I
Speaker 1: don't know, three thousand drafts, what do you think I mean?
Speaker 2: That's it's lots of evolution right there.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, oh yeah, all the generations. But what I've
Speaker 1: already described him looks like a black bear with a
Speaker 1: very cute face, a wide eyes, kind of curious expression,
Speaker 1: the red rosy circles on the cheeks. But what were
Speaker 1: the visual influences on Kumaman? According to this essay, the
Speaker 1: creators have cited Santa Claus and a New York Yankees
Speaker 1: baseball player named Matsui Hideki. I initially found this somewhat perplexing,
Speaker 1: but it makes more sense the more I thought about it.
Speaker 1: So I will say that Santa sort of has the
Speaker 1: Kumaman build. And what all three sharing common is prominent cheeks.
Speaker 1: So Santa Claus is often depicted with rosy red cheeks.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about baseball, so I was not
Speaker 1: familiar with this player. But I looked up pictures of
Speaker 1: Matsui Hideki, and the essay doesn't make this connection, but
Speaker 1: I noticed he has in some pictures where he's got
Speaker 1: a leaner physique, he has very prominent cheek bones, and
Speaker 1: in other pictures where he's older, he has just a
Speaker 1: very very like cute, you know, cute prominent cheeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I look at him and I'm like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: hands on baseball player, prominent cheek bones. But it's hard
Speaker 2: for me to imagine the transition from this plus Santa
Speaker 2: Claus to equal Kumuman. But I believe it. I'll accept it.
Speaker 1: Should we take a moment to say anything about the
Speaker 1: role of Santa in Japanese culture, Like, despite the mostly
Speaker 1: non Christian context, a number of people in Japan do
Speaker 1: observe Christmas in some way, not as a religious holiday,
Speaker 1: but just as a kind of a fun cultural holiday.
Speaker 1: And there is some role for Santa Claus in Japanese
Speaker 1: culture or Santa San.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, Santa has proved to be an export in
Speaker 2: some ways. I mean Japanese Christmas traditions also include Kentucky
Speaker 2: Fried Chicken, which is its own whole story. But I
Speaker 2: haven't researched Japanese Santa cultural a lot. I've looked into
Speaker 2: Chinese embrace of Santa in the past, where he ended
Speaker 2: up like basically entering the Chinese popular mindset during the
Speaker 2: ninety and ended up playing a saxophone due to associations
Speaker 2: with Bill Clinton playing a saxophone. Probably, Uh, these are
Speaker 2: things that often happen like without you know, they just happen,
Speaker 2: and you don't know how an idea is going to
Speaker 2: move from one culture to the next. What it's going
Speaker 2: to drag with it, and then when it gets over there,
Speaker 2: you know where what kind of form it's going to
Speaker 2: take up and take on, either temporarily or permanently. You know,
Speaker 2: as as you know, something comes over from another culture
Speaker 2: and whatever's novel about it may be accepted, you know.
Speaker 2: And then there's also how does it fit into pre
Speaker 2: existing values and ideas, you know, where does it sort
Speaker 2: of like naturally fit and and so forth and so forth.
Speaker 2: So I imagine there's a fair amount of that going
Speaker 2: on with Santa being brought in. We've talked in the
Speaker 2: past two about how in like in Chinese traditions, there
Speaker 2: are these ideas of Chinese and mortals, you know that
Speaker 2: in some ways like remind me of Santa Claus. You know,
Speaker 2: the idea that it's an old man with a beard
Speaker 2: that lives at the North Pole, and some you know,
Speaker 2: translations of and understanding of the story, and so you're like, wow,
Speaker 2: this kind of sounds like Santa Claus to me. So
Speaker 2: I don't know all sorts of things like this I
Speaker 2: think end up occurring when one cultural motif is brought
Speaker 2: over into another.
Speaker 1: I think you can also think about some cross cultural
Speaker 1: similarities and characters like that, not necessarily as even having
Speaker 1: influenced one another editing point, but there are just some
Speaker 1: character types that are kind of easy for the mind
Speaker 1: to get to. Yeah, and a lot of cultures will
Speaker 1: come up with characters with some similar characteristics.
Speaker 2: I think it gets to the appeal in general of Eurokiara, though,
Speaker 2: because these are all individuals that you can look at
Speaker 2: one and you don't need to know like how their
Speaker 2: design came together. You don't need to know what they represent,
Speaker 2: if anything. You don't have to know like what corporation
Speaker 2: or prefecture they're associated with, but you just instantly get
Speaker 2: why they're appealing. There's something about them that transcends all
Speaker 2: language and cultural understanding, and you're like, yes, yes, come
Speaker 2: into my life. You know. There's so many characters like
Speaker 2: that in pop culture general.
Speaker 1: Ochi in this essay mentions another possible influence on the
Speaker 1: design of Kumaman, which is that he is thought in
Speaker 1: some ways to resemble a sort of local stereotype of
Speaker 1: the Qshu man, who is described as stocky, tough, and
Speaker 1: subject to turbulent emotions. So I'm not sure I understand
Speaker 1: this sort of intra Japanese stereotype perfectly, but I'm interpreting
Speaker 1: it in the same way that we have regional stereotype
Speaker 1: characters in America, like you know, the forget about It
Speaker 1: New York man or the you know, the barbecue Texas man,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, And so if you like, took this stereotype and
Speaker 2: then made it cute, and then he used it to
Speaker 2: represent the region, which you know that it sounds more
Speaker 2: appealing the more I think about it, because you take
Speaker 2: that which on some level and I don't know to
Speaker 2: what degree they were doing this on any level with
Speaker 2: this particular Japanese scenario, but you could imagine part of
Speaker 2: it being, well, let's take this thing that might be
Speaker 2: a little intimidating and we make it cute, you know,
Speaker 2: we pull the fangs from it, and we turn it
Speaker 2: around and make it something that ultimatelyions up attracting people.
Speaker 1: Yes, but you know, there's another way that the cuteness
Speaker 1: of these characters can be deceiving, because it seems to
Speaker 1: me that certainly with Kumaman, and I think with many
Speaker 1: of these other mascots that we'll get to in the
Speaker 1: next episode. The more you dig, the more layers of
Speaker 1: intended symbolic meaning and cultural reference seem to emerge. For example,
Speaker 1: according to this essay, the the red rosy circles on
Speaker 1: Kubaman's cheeks. Ochi says that the red circles symbolize that
Speaker 1: Kumamoto is also known as the land of Fire, and
Speaker 1: they are also supposed to be a reference to the
Speaker 1: mark of a particular feudal lord of Kumamoto during the
Speaker 1: token Goa Shogunate. And then also they are reminiscent of
Speaker 1: the he Knu maru or the sun circle the rising Sun,
Speaker 1: which is used on the Japanese flag. And the essay
Speaker 1: points out that these red circle cheeks appear on other
Speaker 1: Japanese characters, such as Pokemon's Pikachu.
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, now that you mention it, Pikachu has
Speaker 2: those notable red spots. And then you've mentioned another one here, Opp'nman,
Speaker 2: who I was not familiar with, but I looked up
Speaker 2: pictures of this superhero ish character, and he has like
Speaker 2: a big rosy red nose and then two big red
Speaker 2: rosy cheeks, so his face is highlighted by three big
Speaker 2: rosy red circles.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I mentioned earlier that Kumaman is a big business,
Speaker 1: and this is true. Kumaman not only exists as a
Speaker 1: mascot promoting Kumamoto and its products, but also as a
Speaker 1: motif in a type of consumer item known as fun chiguzu,
Speaker 1: which is a term derived in part from English meaning
Speaker 1: fancy go woods. And in the essays words these are
Speaker 1: quote small cute decorative personal items often marketed to young women,
Speaker 1: and an example given is Hello Kiddy merchandise. So some
Speaker 1: of these characters, especially Kumaman, have been popular not just
Speaker 1: in promotions, but as imagery in themselves, sought after for
Speaker 1: their own value in the form of like cute decorative nickknacks. Now, Rob,
Speaker 1: you brought this up earlier that your kiara are not
Speaker 1: just visual images or likenesses, but characters, and their creators
Speaker 1: give them narratives, backgrounds, and personalities. You brought up the
Speaker 1: I think the romance between two different mascots, so they
Speaker 1: have like histories and hobbies and preferences. I came across
Speaker 1: references to at least one mascot that was said to
Speaker 1: be a fan of heavy metal music, and maybe we'll
Speaker 1: get back to that in a subsequent part here. But
Speaker 1: the author of the essay mentions several things about Kumaman's bio.
Speaker 1: In particular, so they say his birthday is March twelfth,
Speaker 1: and he is five years old. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he ages or if he is perpetually five years old.
Speaker 1: I mentioned his arched eyebrows, which I initially interpreted as curious,
Speaker 1: but another way of raading them is surprised, and in
Speaker 1: this way he connects to the theme of Kumamoto surprise.
Speaker 1: The creators do say that he is male, though this
Speaker 1: is specified quote in the human not animal sense.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: They say he is curious and loves playful mischief, and
Speaker 1: so an example of the playful mischief is that sometimes
Speaker 1: at public events, when he's in costume form, he will
Speaker 1: show off strange behavior that seems to baffle his human handlers.
Speaker 1: One example given is that he will sit down on
Speaker 1: the ground when it's time to dance.
Speaker 2: Well, and that makes sense too when you get into
Speaker 2: the fact that ultimately these mascots are going to be
Speaker 2: portrayed by a person in a costume, and then it
Speaker 2: becomes a performance hard then it becomes a basic like
Speaker 2: silent clowning routine, and therefore, like some of the basics
Speaker 2: of entertaining costume work. Are you going to be in
Speaker 2: play now?
Speaker 1: One thing that I thought was interesting that this essay
Speaker 1: gets into is that often urukiara do speak, but from
Speaker 1: what Ochi says, at least in the context of Kumaman,
Speaker 1: they don't speak in person in the embodied form, so
Speaker 1: the person in the costume is never going to make
Speaker 1: a statement out loud, but the character may have their
Speaker 1: words appear in print or be spoken for by an
Speaker 1: attendant spokesperson. And I thought that was kind of interesting
Speaker 1: because it reminded me of other characters. Specifically, I was
Speaker 1: thinking of silent protagonists in video games, and examples of
Speaker 1: this would be characters like Mario or Link from Legend
Speaker 1: of Zelda, or Gordon Freeman in the Half Life games,
Speaker 1: the protagonist of the Portal games. These are characters that
Speaker 1: we never hear speak, at least not in sentences. We
Speaker 1: might hear little exclamations or noises or single words, you know,
Speaker 1: Mario might say yahoo or a little thing, but will
Speaker 1: not like make a full statement. And these characters are
Speaker 1: usually not understood to actually be mute within the storylines
Speaker 1: of the games in which they appear. The way I've
Speaker 1: always understood it is that within the story they can speak,
Speaker 1: and the other characters have heard them speak and sometimes
Speaker 1: react to them as if they are speaking in the moment,
Speaker 1: but we do not hear them speak out loud ourselves.
Speaker 1: And this seems to have some kind of magical relationship
Speaker 1: to the fact that when we're playing the game we
Speaker 1: are them. Some kind of magic would be broken if
Speaker 1: we heard their voice speaking full coherent sentences, And so
Speaker 1: that seemed in some ways parallel to the idea of
Speaker 1: that like with Kumaman, you're not going to hear the
Speaker 1: person in the suit speaking as Kumaman, but Kumaman is
Speaker 1: understand understood to be able to speak. It's just that,
Speaker 1: like words will only appear in print or something.
Speaker 2: And I think that is that is a key difference
Speaker 2: from some of the Western counterparts that you might compare
Speaker 2: them to, like Grimace talks, Ronald McDonald talks. You know,
Speaker 2: the Starbucks Mermaid doesn't talk, but the Starbucks Mermaid doesn't
Speaker 2: do anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I wonder if a difference here is that
Speaker 1: these mascots often represent localities or polities of some kind,
Speaker 1: and so there are lots of people who are passively
Speaker 1: being represented by them in some ways. So you know,
Speaker 1: you sort of like are Kumaman if you are a
Speaker 1: Kumamoto resident as sort of the avatar of your region.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if there's a similar logic at work
Speaker 1: that kind of prevents them from speaking in person, even
Speaker 1: if they can be understood to have personalities in the
Speaker 1: power of speech, just only being able to give quotes
Speaker 1: in print.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great point because some of these
Speaker 2: images you included in our notes of Kuman in his
Speaker 2: natural habitat like he looks like I want to feel
Speaker 2: if I go there, you know, And I think that's intended.
Speaker 2: So there's that aspect to it for sure, like he
Speaker 2: represents that it would and it would destroy the magic
Speaker 2: if he spoke. And I guess also you could add
Speaker 2: maybe two that the various physical suit performances. I have
Speaker 2: seen footage of of these various mascots. There's a kind
Speaker 2: of shyness to them that is part of the cute factor.
Speaker 2: You know. Sometimes they're peeking from behind doorways or you know,
Speaker 2: around corners at you. They're being a little shy, and
Speaker 2: that's part of their cuddliness. You know, like if they
Speaker 2: were chasing you down, it would not be the same vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, there's a bunch of stuff about Kumaman that
Speaker 1: I would like to get into, but I might save
Speaker 1: some of it for part two, especially if we start
Speaker 1: talking about connections between these characters and Yokai. But one
Speaker 1: last thing I wanted to get to talking about Kumaman
Speaker 1: right now is one of my favorite parts of this essay.
Speaker 1: It is the insistence that, despite appearances, Kumaman is not
Speaker 1: a bear. What Okay, he looks like a bear to me,
Speaker 1: So what is he? Is he some kind some other
Speaker 1: kind of animal that just looks like a bear. And
Speaker 1: here I just have to simply read from Ochi's essay.
Speaker 1: The answer makes reference to the concept of kigarumi, which
Speaker 1: means costumed character. So a kigarumi is a person in
Speaker 1: a costume, Ochi writes, quote, Another misconception about Kumaman is
Speaker 1: that he is a bear, the animal he most resembles.
Speaker 1: When I contacted Kumamoto Prefecture to use his image in
Speaker 1: my chapter, I was told that any such statements must
Speaker 1: be removed. Most Japanese people, along with foreign and domestic media,
Speaker 1: say Kumaman is a bear and are surprised to learn otherwise.
Speaker 1: Perhaps this reminds readers of the wildly popular news story
Speaker 1: of August twenty fourteen, in which Sanrio insisted that Hello,
Speaker 1: Kitty is not a cat.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I remember that The paragraph goes on, not only is
Speaker 1: Kumaman not a bear, he is not a human in
Speaker 1: a fuzzy suit. As I was told by the Kumamoto
Speaker 1: brand promotion office quote, the Kumaman you see in the
Speaker 1: real world is not a kigaroomy. The thing you see
Speaker 1: is his flesh and blood.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So I this really got the gears going. So they're
Speaker 1: not denying that the Kumaman costume looks like a bear.
Speaker 1: They are denying that it is a costume, but it
Speaker 1: is also not a real bear.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Yeah. And this I guess they're kind of like
Speaker 2: leaning into this kind of like on reality. This this
Speaker 2: this third case. You know, it's like it's it's it's
Speaker 2: almost like it's a supernatural being. Like you would say
Speaker 2: that like getting into the world of Yokai, which we'll
Speaker 2: get into more in the next episode. It's like saying, well,
Speaker 2: a kappa is not a turtle and it's not a man.
Speaker 2: It is and it would be wrong to say it's
Speaker 2: a hybrid of the two, either it is its own thing, yeah,
Speaker 2: and and yeah, oh boy, this is Yeah, it gets
Speaker 2: into I wonder if part of this, too, is like
Speaker 2: a Western impulse to need to strictly classify everything, like
Speaker 2: we need to know, you know, what species this particular
Speaker 2: mythological creature is without stopping to remind yourselves that it
Speaker 2: exists in myth and therefore it has special classification.
Speaker 1: Well, I was thinking about it in another way, which
Speaker 1: is that if you ask the question is Kumaman a bear?
Speaker 1: You could mean sort of two different things by that question.
Speaker 1: One is is a bear what it is supposed to resemble?
Speaker 1: And the other is a sort of literal or reductive question,
Speaker 1: like are you currently playing along with the game? So
Speaker 1: we have you know, normally, if a person in a
Speaker 1: costume or a cartoon representation of an animal, if I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about that, there are two possible ways to think
Speaker 1: about it. Either I'm playing along, which involves accepting the
Speaker 1: thing as the thing it resembles or represents, So a
Speaker 1: cartoon cat is a cat if I'm playing along, Or
Speaker 1: there's being reductive, which would be taking a literal, objective
Speaker 1: perspective and saying no, it's pixels. On a screen that
Speaker 1: are intended to look like a cat, or in the
Speaker 1: case of a person in a suit, it is a
Speaker 1: human being inside a suit that is supposed to look
Speaker 1: like a bear, and this is neither one. It's like
Speaker 1: they are still asking you to play along. They're saying no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not being literal and reductive that it's a human
Speaker 1: inside a suit. What it actually objectively is we're still
Speaker 1: playing the game, but we're not asking you to see
Speaker 1: the character as the thing. It looks like it is
Speaker 1: only what it is on the outside. No questions about
Speaker 1: what's underneath.
Speaker 2: Okay. It's kind of like the concept of KFE and
Speaker 2: pro wrestling. Then I guess it's like if you were
Speaker 2: to ask about, I don't know, the Undertaker and you
Speaker 2: were to say, well, was the Undertaker a zombie? No,
Speaker 2: he's not a zombie. Is the Undertaker like a guy
Speaker 2: from Texas pretending to be a zombie? No, he's not
Speaker 2: that either, He's this other thing. He's got to like
Speaker 2: approach it. You got to play the game, like you say,
Speaker 2: he is what he is, Yeah, he is as presented.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was like worthy of a symbiotics
Speaker 1: lecture or something. Interesting. I'm going to keep thinking on that.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: One very last thing I want to get to before
Speaker 1: we wrap up for today is there is a section
Speaker 1: of this essay where people are just trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of why kumaman is being used in the for
Speaker 1: the Glory of Satan memes. Now, I don't really know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with these memes back in the day.
Speaker 1: I didn't make them, obviously, but I if I had
Speaker 1: to guess, I would just think it's the irony. It's
Speaker 1: just like, he's cute, and thus it's funny to make
Speaker 1: a cute thing say something that is, you know, menacing
Speaker 1: or sin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The juxposition is just like the Elmo you know,
Speaker 2: hell fire thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. One thing mentioned here is a Japanese news
Speaker 1: report that's trying to make sense of the meme and
Speaker 1: says and they speculate that it may have dimmed from
Speaker 1: the similarity between the word kumaman and the word in
Speaker 1: English demon or the names of specific demons in Christianity
Speaker 1: mammon or ammon uh, and that I don't know. That
Speaker 1: just seemed like, I don't think that's what it is,
Speaker 1: but it's funny because that's the same kind of logic
Speaker 1: we sometimes employed, and we're like trying to figure out
Speaker 1: why something, why a cultural connection is made. It's like,
Speaker 1: maybe it has to do with these sound alike words,
Speaker 1: but like it, I really don't think that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Mammon thing came to my mind when we
Speaker 2: were talking about the hell fire thing earlier. But then
Speaker 2: I like, it's like it can't be it on a
Speaker 2: mainstream level, Like that's that's more of a like a
Speaker 2: deeper demonology cut that surely wasn't part of the decision
Speaker 2: making process. And it is me.
Speaker 1: But then apparently this same news report speculated in the
Speaker 1: other half that the answer is what is in my opinion,
Speaker 1: almost certainly correct. It's just the juxtaposition of like the
Speaker 1: cuteness and the evilness of Satan.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's the same reason that the stay
Speaker 2: Puff marshmallow Man runs a muck. It's the reason that
Speaker 2: we have so many different stories horror tales that involve
Speaker 2: like a murderous Santa or monstrous Santa. It's the juxtaposition.
Speaker 2: It's the twisting, the flipping of the concept.
Speaker 1: Okay, do we need to break part one there?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think that's a good place to
Speaker 2: break it off, but we will be back in our
Speaker 2: next core episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind with
Speaker 2: additional explorations of the world of Eurokiara, some more examples
Speaker 2: of note that we thought were pretty interesting. We'll also
Speaker 2: get into some of these connections that you know that
Speaker 2: get into you know, religion and folklore, so make sure
Speaker 2: you tune in for that, and in the meantime, certainly
Speaker 2: right in and share your favorites with us. We'd love
Speaker 2: to discuss that in future episodes of the Listener Mail
Speaker 2: episodes that we run on Mondays. Also, if you reside
Speaker 2: in Japan, have visited Japan, our Japanese and so forth,
Speaker 2: and have additional thoughts on all of this, yes, write in.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you on all of that
Speaker 2: as well. Please remind you of the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays Monday's Lister Mail Wednesdays
Speaker 2: we have short form episodes, and on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most series concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer jj Posway.
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Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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