Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind, we're going to be starting a series,
Speaker 3: probably a couple of episodes on a cultural phenomenon, the
Speaker 3: wobbly mascots of Japan known as urukiara. Rob what got
Speaker 3: you 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, at this
Speaker 2: little one. We've got to and we have to research it,
Speaker 2: you know, bust out our phones. Once we were able
Speaker 2: to find ourselves seated or stationary on the train, figure
Speaker 2: out who this individual is, what they represent, it was
Speaker 2: a great deal of additional fun.
Speaker 3: Now we'll go into a lot more detail about what
Speaker 3: yurukiarra are in the forms they take in these episodes,
Speaker 3: but generally they are characters that can appear in the
Speaker 3: form of two D representations like drawings or also in
Speaker 3: costumed embodied form. Were you mostly just seeing them like
Speaker 3: on signs and in media and stuff, or did you
Speaker 3: actually come across physically costumed eruqia.
Speaker 2: Are Sadly, we never encountered any physically costumed mascot character
Speaker 2: as Kiara mostly, I mean exclusively, we're encountering them on
Speaker 2: informational signs sometimes you know, promotional material and so forth,
Speaker 2: and very rarely on merchandise. I didn't encounter a lot
Speaker 2: a lot of them that were heavily merged, though some
Speaker 2: of them are as we'll discuss, but yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: oftentimes would be like in the midst of going from
Speaker 2: point A to point B and momentarily being distracted, but
Speaker 2: also momentarily being you know, getting an emotional boost from
Speaker 2: seeing one of these little cute characters and you know,
Speaker 2: and figuring out what they're trying to say to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, oh, it's a pair of bipedal sentient Japanese
Speaker 3: 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 is his team of McDonald's mascots. They're
Speaker 2: sometimes physical and costume or makeup form. They're oftentimes illustrative,
Speaker 2: sometimes downplayed, sometimes you know, exaggerated, but they're there and
Speaker 2: they represent the brand. Then you have things like what
Speaker 2: the Starbucks siren with with the double tail. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't you know, I have never seen anyone dressed
Speaker 2: up as that in an official capacity for Starbucks, but
Speaker 2: it's very much a part of the brand and you
Speaker 2: recognize it like, Okay, there it is. It's a creature,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't have much personality. But you could say
Speaker 2: it's sort of a mascot.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think the Starbucks Mermaid and Ronald McDonald are
Speaker 3: a good comparison, except a couple of differences with most eurokiara.
Speaker 3: I think they tend to be more shaped like pillows
Speaker 3: than either of those characters, where Ronald McDonald and the
Speaker 3: Starbucks Mermaid are more kind of humanoid, like leaner, more
Speaker 3: humanoid representations most erukiara, though there's some variation between them.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: Man, yes, yeah, or the stay Puffed marshmallow Man exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: But another thing is that both of those are corporate mascots,
Speaker 3: and so we're familiar with like corporate mascots in America,
Speaker 3: like sports team mascots. But imagine if a broader range
Speaker 3: of cultural institutions and objects could have mascots. So you
Speaker 3: can have a mascot for a town, a mascot for
Speaker 3: a region, a mascot for a piece of public infrastructure,
Speaker 3: or 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 to guideen and Westerners
Speaker 2: that you realize, oh, well, a chemical company that is
Speaker 2: not marketing anything towards children will have one of these,
Speaker 2: as will like the local sewage treatment plan. So it's uh,
Speaker 2: it runs in directions you might not expect. And then
Speaker 2: you find or if I have found anyway sort of
Speaker 2: digging into it, then there are there are like corporate
Speaker 2: companies that you might expect to have gotten into it
Speaker 2: that seemingly haven't. Like, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: Pilot Pins, the Pilot Corporation based in Japan, they have
Speaker 2: no uru kiara that I can tell. Maybe I just
Speaker 2: couldn't find them. But then so, not every company company
Speaker 2: is getting in on this, and it is it seems
Speaker 2: like it's more often that you do find them in
Speaker 2: various like city or prefecture associated organizations. All right, so
Speaker 2: what does this word mean? Euro Kiara is actually fairly
Speaker 2: complex to break down as a translation. One paper I
Speaker 2: was looking out for this as a twenty sixteen paper
Speaker 2: called who is Hikonyan The Phenomenon of Japanese Urukiara by
Speaker 2: Gillian Ray Sutter, this twenty sixteen publication, and they point
Speaker 2: out that the term here is short for the code
Speaker 2: mixed uru mascot character, So you already know what mascot
Speaker 2: character is, and that just becomes kiaru. But the uru
Speaker 2: here may be translated as loose, easy, lazy, careless, half hearted,
Speaker 2: or lenient, according to Sutter. And I've also seen lax
Speaker 2: and soft invoked in translation as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I did a little digging on this word yurui,
Speaker 3: which is spelled usually in English why you are you? I?
Speaker 3: And it seems to have some different clusters of connotations.
Speaker 3: So Japanese speakers right in and correct me if I'm
Speaker 3: getting anything wrong here, But I'm doing best to figure
Speaker 3: out all the different to untangle all this. It seems
Speaker 3: like it literally means loose, slack, or soft, but when
Speaker 3: applied to a person or creature, indicates something like relaxed,
Speaker 3: chilled out, laid back, or lazy. So I think in
Speaker 3: this facet of the words meaning the dude from The
Speaker 3: Big Lebowski would be a type of yurui, but it
Speaker 3: would also seem to apply to characters that are more gentle,
Speaker 3: light hearted, sweet, and non threatening. So something that is
Speaker 3: yurui maybe has some overlap with cuteness, but is also
Speaker 3: like no big deal. Also, an academic essay that I'm
Speaker 3: going to cite later in this episode translates yurukiara as
Speaker 3: wobbly characters, and that brings in another aspect of them.
Speaker 3: I don't know if wobbliness is itself at all implied
Speaker 3: by yurui, but the author who coined this term originally
Speaker 3: specified that an important thing about them is the they
Speaker 3: have sort of like awkward or unstable movements. I think
Speaker 3: that's a key part of their cuteness appeal. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I don't know if we really have a term in
Speaker 3: English that connects all these different connotations that I'm seeing
Speaker 3: with yurui. But the way I understand it is that
Speaker 3: is that these yurui characters are They're soft, they're easy going,
Speaker 3: they're a little bit awkward, they're cute, they're non threatening,
Speaker 3: and they are not telling you to hurry up and
Speaker 3: get those spreadsheets finished. They're just 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 3: Yes, yeah, let me remind you about public health precautions,
Speaker 3: 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 many of them,
Speaker 2: as we'll get into there's basically an unknown number of them,
Speaker 2: and there's not uniform quality. Most of them are amazing,
Speaker 2: but some of them there have been occasionally one or
Speaker 2: two that I've seen where it's like, I don't know
Speaker 2: that this concept really working. Maybe they should have workshopped
Speaker 2: this a little bit more, but they are pretty much,
Speaker 2: without exception cute, and therefore I think they're a fine
Speaker 2: example of the larger Japanese concept of cuteness kauhai and
Speaker 2: its various subsets.
Speaker 3: Rob, I don't know if you came across the same thing,
Speaker 3: but there are a few that I almost understood to
Speaker 3: be considered cute in the way that they fail to
Speaker 3: be cute. That they're like something that is understood as
Speaker 3: an attempt to be cute that is unsuccessful and is
Speaker 3: 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 3: One of the academic essays I was reading about Urikiara
Speaker 3: talked about this concept of gross cute. It's a type
Speaker 3: of cuteness in Japanese culture that didn't apply to any
Speaker 3: particular URUQR, but to other bear characters in cartoons specifically,
Speaker 3: 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 pair. 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 pitiful cute area that I think arguably includes
Speaker 2: such examples as Goodi Tama, the Lazy Egg, which I
Speaker 2: know a number of you are familiar with now because
Speaker 2: 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 3: Yeah, you shared this with with JJ and me, and
Speaker 3: I thought this was really funny. It seems like they're
Speaker 3: often centered around but like an awkward social misunderstanding, Like
Speaker 3: there was one comic you shared with somebody waving and
Speaker 3: then this character waving back at them, but then it's
Speaker 3: 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 most of it has no language associated with it,
Speaker 2: so you can look it up on Instagram and plow
Speaker 2: through them, which is what I did. I mean, I also,
Speaker 2: I want to stress I also did things like I
Speaker 2: saw Mount Fuji while I was there, but I mostly
Speaker 2: end up talking about things like this.
Speaker 3: Oh but wait, doesn't the Mount Fuji region have its
Speaker 3: own mascot?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, 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 kawhi 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 I was looking around
Speaker 2: for a good source on this, and I found an
Speaker 2: article on Ian magazine titled The Great Regression by Tokyo
Speaker 2: based translator, writer and speaker Matt Alt who also co
Speaker 2: wrote a trio of very fun books on Yo Kai
Speaker 2: Yuri and Ninja's which two of those I've read with
Speaker 2: my son and the other one I have on the
Speaker 2: shelf ready to go, in addition to other books dealing
Speaker 2: with Japanese culture that he's pinned over the years. And
Speaker 2: so this article in general is a very good read.
Speaker 2: It deals with this idea that there's like this larger
Speaker 2: trend in the world of adults taking an interest in
Speaker 2: things associated with childhood, arguably when they should not be,
Speaker 2: which I want to stress here is a not a
Speaker 2: concept that I feel one hundred percent okay with. It's
Speaker 2: just kind of like a judgment call of how grown
Speaker 2: up to spend their lives and make their choices.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we could take normative judgments out of it
Speaker 3: and just talk about the phenomenon. It does seem like
Speaker 3: there's been a clear trend, I think in the last
Speaker 3: couple of decades at least in my knowledge in the
Speaker 3: US context, of more of a tendency for adults living
Speaker 3: adult lives to engage with say media men for children.
Speaker 3: I mean, especially like you know, nostalgic media that they
Speaker 3: liked when they were kids, and you know, you can
Speaker 3: ask interesting questions about like what drives that kind of
Speaker 3: that kind of interest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I want to stress that the alt
Speaker 2: article here is very good and is ultimately not trying
Speaker 2: to grind an act in that direction. But but my
Speaker 2: my sort of gut response to just the concept of
Speaker 2: it is like I end up, you know, going back
Speaker 2: to that old C. S. Lewis quote, you know, when
Speaker 2: I became a man, I put away childish things, including
Speaker 2: the fear of childishness and the desire to be very
Speaker 2: grown up, you know, because like ultimately, like what are
Speaker 2: adults supposed to be doing? You know, you get into
Speaker 2: that whole question, and and and also like the unreality
Speaker 2: of the idea that that in the old days adults
Speaker 2: didn't do things like play games or or craft you know,
Speaker 2: fiction for children and so forth.
Speaker 3: I feel like the most childish thing one could actually
Speaker 3: say is like, you know, that's for babies. I'm not
Speaker 3: a baby. Yeah, yeah, nothing makes you sound more like
Speaker 3: 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 local health factors over
Speaker 2: the last decade or two. And this is wrapped up
Speaker 2: in the whole idea of they're like the Great Regression.
Speaker 2: And in this the idea is that has arguably occurred
Speaker 2: in Japan during the nineties. Quote, when the youth and
Speaker 2: young adults of a hyper connected post industrial society lose
Speaker 2: faith in the future, the Great regression is inevitable. And
Speaker 2: I have to admit, And he points out as well
Speaker 2: that this sounds grim and again I personally feel 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: net positive and that this is where where it gets
Speaker 2: into the mindset that I can connect with. Alt writes 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 mind 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, like you know,
Speaker 2: up to and including acts of physical violence. And it's
Speaker 2: also in other ways, like you see it referenced in
Speaker 2: the sci fi tapestries of you know, futuristic cyberpunk visions.
Speaker 2: You know, this idea that the future, there's something about
Speaker 2: the future that will be predominantly Japanese, that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: and you still see that in sort of like retro
Speaker 2: futuristic cyberpunk visions. It like just becomes sort of baked
Speaker 2: in to the concept and into the world building. But
Speaker 2: then in nineteen ninety one, there's this economic burst. People
Speaker 2: coped or didn't as best they could, and there was
Speaker 2: this kind of slide away from the capitalist pursuit of
Speaker 2: the salarymen, you know, the stereotypical you know, employee worker
Speaker 2: that's out there just really busting it. And then you know,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, you know, you have
Speaker 2: a few beers and then you go to sleep, and
Speaker 2: you wake up and you do it all again. And
Speaker 2: there was a slide away from all of that into
Speaker 2: interest that were previously more niche. And this all brings
Speaker 2: us to Kuwai quote. Salarymen may have built Japan ink,
Speaker 2: but when it crumbled, young people picked up the pieces.
Speaker 2: The real trendsetters were young women, ranging from schoolgirls to
Speaker 2: office ladies, the female counterparts of the salarymen. They began
Speaker 2: unabashedly incorporating symbols of feminine childhood into their adult identities,
Speaker 2: upending entire industries. So the power of kuai, a Japanese
Speaker 2: word that overlaps with cuteness, but which is also a
Speaker 2: state of mind that refers to being adorable, playful, just
Speaker 2: begging for cuddles like a kitten or a baby. By
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, One Woman's magazine anointed kawai the most
Speaker 2: widely used, widely loved habitual word in modern living Japanese.
Speaker 3: So it's a kind of fascination, especially beginning with younger
Speaker 3: women in Japan, but sort of taking over the whole
Speaker 3: 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 kuai 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 it's ultimately it
Speaker 2: has universal appeal. So anyway, all goes on to argument
Speaker 2: while critics love to see all of this, either in
Speaker 2: Japan or elsewhere, as a moral failure, as an inward
Speaker 2: escape 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 worth 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, you know,
Speaker 2: element of cuteness, appreciation of like small decorative 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 kauai
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 kauai 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 observes about this.
Speaker 2: You know, the ideas of regression over here. You know,
Speaker 2: people are 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 3: I think it's hard to deny the appeal of legos
Speaker 3: 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 Eagle 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 3: Why is the pig surrounded in bubbles? Oh no, this
Speaker 3: is not a pig that's dissolving in a vat of
Speaker 3: why is it.
Speaker 2: No, he's happy, he's cute.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's a happy pig. It does look happy, does
Speaker 3: not look to be dissolving.
Speaker 2: Now, as we've pointed out, these these mascots, these zero
Speaker 2: kara often are personified and brought into physical reality via
Speaker 2: a costume, and as Eddie yl Chang points out in
Speaker 2: the 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 Keise Shimbun business newspaper,
Speaker 2: an indication that Urukiara 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 dear. Rinkachan is like
Speaker 2: a cartoon princess. And this is news of this not
Speaker 2: even engagement, but possible girlfriend boyfriend scenario was published in
Speaker 2: what I can only imagine would be like if there's
Speaker 2: a Wall Street Journal article about it in the US.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Santo Kun, by the way, I should point out, is
Speaker 3: one of the mascots that I had read described as
Speaker 3: ugly in acute way. According to some people, it is
Speaker 3: just a bold boy with antlers. Apparently some people find
Speaker 3: the antlers off putting, but in a way that actually
Speaker 3: 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 yurokiara look like, I
Speaker 2: 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 where
Speaker 2: you can encounter them in the wild. Now, one thing
Speaker 2: that Star points out in her article that referenced earlier
Speaker 2: is that, yeah, these mascots are not only far more popular,
Speaker 2: but they're compared to say, US mascots, but they're also
Speaker 2: far more numerous, and indeed their full number is probably uncountable.
Speaker 2: And potentially out of control, something that has been a
Speaker 2: topic of some concern. I don't know how ultimately how
Speaker 2: concerned you can get about mascots getting out of control,
Speaker 2: but it has been on everyone's radar for a bit.
Speaker 3: I might go out on a limb and say I'm
Speaker 3: 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 Sewer Department needs its own mascot, though
Speaker 2: it does or had one named Rinko Chan a Lotus
Speaker 2: ferry riding on a leaf. 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.
Speaker 2: You know, someone has to design them. If you have
Speaker 2: a suit, someone has to wear that suit. If you're
Speaker 2: 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 decide I did, Okay, not only do we need
Speaker 2: our own Eurokiara for the show, but we need separate
Speaker 2: Eurokiara for Weird House Cinema for each of our Wednesday
Speaker 2: short form shows. Listener Mail needs one. We need a
Speaker 2: vault centric Eurokiara. It would be a bit much, and
Speaker 2: I could understand our corporate masters being a little resistant
Speaker 2: to the addition of an additional four to five mascots.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's what it is. A super Kowhi rendering of
Speaker 3: Christoph Lambert, but the old man version from the beginning
Speaker 3: of pilot or 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 Lambert Productions being a
Speaker 2: little week ago. Yeah, oh yeah. Is there a way
Speaker 2: you could animize it, like by thirty five percent?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he would be he would have lamb characteristics,
Speaker 3: little tiny like buds of ram horns.
Speaker 2: Maybe okay, and then you have Ramirez and maybe he's
Speaker 2: a bear. Hmm.
Speaker 3: I don't know, we're getting there.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I you know it as a guiding tourist.
Speaker 2: For my part, I never got tired of seeing this
Speaker 2: endless parade of cube 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
Speaker 2: see I realized not only my own enthusiasm, but I've
Speaker 2: also seen this reference in various articles dealing with him,
Speaker 2: talking about how they've really caught on not only with
Speaker 2: Japanese residents but also with tourists, also becoming instrumental in
Speaker 2: international relations. So, you know, I wonder if it's something
Speaker 2: that while they maybe do the cost cutting, if it's
Speaker 2: something they could lean into even more from like a
Speaker 2: tourism standpoint, you know, you know, like a kind of
Speaker 2: like a bird watcher's guide, but just for euro Kiar.
Speaker 3: Oh well, the way I understood it, especially some of
Speaker 3: the like regional township mascots were specifically, at least in
Speaker 3: part aimed at 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. They're all so interesting. I
Speaker 2: want to catch them all.
Speaker 3: And there have been attempts to reckon with the multitudes
Speaker 3: of mascots because I don't know if they're doing it
Speaker 3: in the most recent years, but for a while there
Speaker 3: 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 3: I feel like if it were taken too seriously, it
Speaker 3: 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 that's not laid back. If you're spending you know,
Speaker 2: close to a million dollars on your lax character, I
Speaker 2: don't know how lax they are anymore, you know, So
Speaker 2: I guess we have to take that into consideration with
Speaker 2: these criticisms here.
Speaker 3: Now, where does this cultural concept come from? The term urukia?
Speaker 3: Most of the sources I was looking at give credit
Speaker 3: to a Japanese manga author and I think sort of
Speaker 3: social critic, an essayist named June Mura, who coined the
Speaker 3: term urukyara in I've actually seen different years cited for this.
Speaker 3: An essay that I'm going to get into in just
Speaker 3: a bit pins it in the year two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: But according to Mura, there are three characteristics that define
Speaker 3: a urukyara. The one we've already mentioned is the concept
Speaker 3: of urui, which has these connotations of like soft, loose, relaxed,
Speaker 3: laid back, weak, gentle, non threatening, no big deal. The
Speaker 3: second characteristic is a strong sense of love or passion
Speaker 3: for the home region that they represent. And then third
Speaker 3: is awkward, wobbly, strange, unique or unstable movements. And that
Speaker 3: seems like a very specific kind of criterion, but maybe
Speaker 3: later in this series we'll come back to that and
Speaker 3: zero in on the unstable movements, because I think that
Speaker 3: is a more psycho logically important criterion then one might
Speaker 3: assume at first. An interesting thing about these criteria is
Speaker 3: that they sort of implied that the character must have
Speaker 3: an embodied form, So a lot of times these mascots
Speaker 3: only appear as you know, as drawings as two dimensional representations,
Speaker 3: but it implies that they must at some point move
Speaker 3: right to have these strange, unstable movements, and so I
Speaker 3: think this does connect to the fact that most of
Speaker 3: these characters do have an embodied form or at some
Speaker 3: time in place a human inside a suit. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I think it would be useful to just look at
Speaker 3: a few examples of Yurukyr 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 my family fell in love with rather quickly.
Speaker 2: His name is Hako Geo and he is the mascot
Speaker 2: of Hakone Geopark. So Hakone is a beautiful mountain area
Speaker 2: with sometimes views of Mount Fuji. It kind of depends
Speaker 2: on where exactly you are in what the clouds are doing,
Speaker 2: because it's it's a shy mountain sometimes and we luckily
Speaker 2: we got we got a little peak there at the peak,
Speaker 2: but you're not guaranteed that with Mount Fuji. But anyway,
Speaker 2: it's full of This region is full of natural hot springs.
Speaker 2: It has some fun museums. The ways to get around
Speaker 2: are amazing because you have, of course, you know, great trains,
Speaker 2: but then cable cars, gondolas, pirate ships are part of
Speaker 2: the public transportation system there to get across, criss crossing
Speaker 2: this lake there, and there's in so much more. There
Speaker 2: are restaurants and so forth is the fourth It's a
Speaker 2: beautiful area and every step of the way we saw
Speaker 2: signage with hako Geo there to tell us what we
Speaker 2: were doing, right, where to go, and how much we
Speaker 2: should be enjoying Hakone and he does occasionally take physics
Speaker 2: in a costume, but we did not see him in
Speaker 2: such form. It was not one of those days. Okay,
Speaker 2: So the design of this character is nothing to elaborate.
Speaker 2: It is just a cute person. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: it's a boy or what. And they're very cartoony, just
Speaker 2: a bright, glorious face. They're so happy. And this person
Speaker 2: is wearing a hat shaped like the mountains of Halkoni,
Speaker 2: like three peaks, a bigger one in the center. And
Speaker 2: it's just still amazing. I just felt the looseness every
Speaker 2: time I looked at him. I was a little surprised
Speaker 2: that there wasn't a lot of merch for this guy,
Speaker 2: because by the end of our brief stay in Hakone
Speaker 2: like I wanted more. I was like, yes, let me
Speaker 2: have a shot at the Hagajio merch but it didn't
Speaker 2: seem to be. There was barely any of it. But
Speaker 2: of course this is not the case with every eurokiara.
Speaker 2: Some of them are merchandise superstars.
Speaker 3: That's right. So if you know Rob and I, you
Speaker 3: probably know that we're going to be drawn to some
Speaker 3: of the weirder and more obscure matth scots as we
Speaker 3: highlight some more in the next episode or two. But
Speaker 3: we should definitely mention the heavy hitters as well. And
Speaker 3: one of the most famous yurokiara in Japan and around
Speaker 3: the world is Kumaman, which is a mascot created in
Speaker 3: the year two thousand and nine to represent the Kumamoto
Speaker 3: Prefecture of western Kshu and to boost local products, spur trade,
Speaker 3: and attract tourists. This character was debuted at the same
Speaker 3: time that a high speed rail line connecting the region
Speaker 3: was completed in the year twenty eleven. I believe now
Speaker 3: I will get to a source in just a minute.
Speaker 3: That disputes the essential nature of what I'm about to describe.
Speaker 3: But I have to start just by reporting my own
Speaker 3: perception and first impression looking at Kumaman, and that is
Speaker 3: that Kumaman looks like an adorable bipedal black bear, sort
Speaker 3: of pear shaped in the body, with a white muzzle,
Speaker 3: large eyes with curious curved brow, sort of arched eyebrows
Speaker 3: over them, and prominent bright red cherry cheeks. Kumaman was
Speaker 3: the winner of the urukiar A Grand Prix in twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: I think that was the first year they had the competition,
Speaker 3: 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 3: Now, like many urukya, Kumaman plays a big role in
Speaker 3: marketing and advertising for a particular region. In this case,
Speaker 3: again the Kumamoto Prefecture, and Kumaman in particular has been
Speaker 3: judged a huge success. At this goal, I was reading
Speaker 3: an I Triple E paper by Nakasato and Tanaka about
Speaker 3: using machine image analysis to predict the popularity of these mascots.
Speaker 3: By the way, the results of that was that people
Speaker 3: seem to like bright colors, especially on the yellow green spectrum,
Speaker 3: so bright yellow greens seem to be the most popular.
Speaker 3: But Kumaman, of course, is an exception. Anyway, in the
Speaker 3: intro of this article, they just happened to summarize a
Speaker 3: Japanese news article which included a figure from the Kumamoto
Speaker 3: branch of the Bank of Japan estimating that Kumaman alone
Speaker 3: had generated one hundred and twenty four billion Japanese yen
Speaker 3: worth of economic activity just in the two year period
Speaker 3: from twenty eleven to twenty twelve. I tried to look
Speaker 3: a conversion rate, and that's something like seven hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy million US dollars today. Don't know what that would
Speaker 3: have been in twenty twelve. But yeah, so this is
Speaker 3: a big business, an adorable creature, a beautiful, incredibly cute design,
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: Now, the likeness of this character is used in all
Speaker 3: different kinds of marketing contexts, seems to appear he seems
Speaker 3: to pop up in you know, photos, like in a
Speaker 3: costume with a beautiful natural landscape behind him, like hey,
Speaker 3: you know, come visit Kumamoto Prefecture, but also appears on
Speaker 3: the packaging of products and so forth. But some uses
Speaker 3: of this character go hard, and go hard almost into
Speaker 3: bizarre territory. One example is I found an article from
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen about a recent promotion for Kumamoto tourism which
Speaker 3: involved filling a hall in Osaka Station with dozens and
Speaker 3: dozens of kumaman representations of various sorts. Some are three
Speaker 3: dimensional models, some are two D cutouts like you know,
Speaker 3: cardboard stands. Some are banners that hang from light posts.
Speaker 3: One is a giant, just a giant kumaman head that
Speaker 3: has like spotlights aimed at it curiously. A lot of
Speaker 3: these representations have little variations on the character. One is
Speaker 3: wearing a pink scarf, one is holding an apple, one
Speaker 3: has its eyes closed usually they're wide open. So these
Speaker 3: strange little variations, and all of these images are of
Speaker 3: this same excruciatingly cute bear like organism. But the way
Speaker 3: they're lined up in these columns stretching down the hall,
Speaker 3: it's almost like you are looking at a bunch of
Speaker 3: storm troopers standing at attention on the Death Star. It's
Speaker 3: a bit menacing, and from what I can tell, Rob,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you picked up on the same thing.
Speaker 3: It seems like some cultural uses of yurukiara seem to
Speaker 3: embrace this kind of irony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know when I look at it. They're 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 realize that maybe I'm not
Speaker 2: one person either. Maybe I'm multiple people just spread out
Speaker 2: across time and there's no there's no definite identity or reality.
Speaker 2: I don't know that that was their intention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so another strange, ironic use of kumaman. I was
Speaker 3: not aware of this meme when it popped up, but
Speaker 3: apparently sometime around twenty eleven, this adorable, rosy cheeked bear
Speaker 3: became the subject of a minor meme in which he
Speaker 3: was depicted in front of something that's on fire, and
Speaker 3: the text was always for the glory of Satan.
Speaker 2: Of course, Now this was not an official usage, right.
Speaker 3: This memes on the internet, okay, And in fact I
Speaker 3: want to turn into an essay that in one part
Speaker 3: does address perplexity of people over why Kumaman is used
Speaker 3: in this meme. So I was trying to learn more
Speaker 3: about Kumaman and I came across a fascinating essay on
Speaker 3: this character and on the broader you werekire phenomenon. It
Speaker 3: was called Kumaman, Japan's surprisingly Cheeky Mascot by Debor j
Speaker 3: Ochi in a book introducing Japanese popular culture published twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three by Rutledge. This book is edited by a
Speaker 3: professor of Japanese literature at the University of Oregon named
Speaker 3: Elisa Friedman. But again the essay is by Debor je Ochi.
Speaker 3: So I'm not going to have time to get into
Speaker 3: everything the author brings up in this article, but I'll
Speaker 3: go through and hit some highlights that I thought were interesting.
Speaker 3: One is about the literal origin of this character. So,
Speaker 3: Kumaman began as part of a regional advertising and pr
Speaker 3: campaign called Kumamoto Surprise, the goal of which was to
Speaker 3: give Kumamoto residents a new sense of local pride and
Speaker 3: to sort of delight tourists and visitors with what Kumamoto
Speaker 3: had to offer in terms of natural landscapes and local cuisine.
Speaker 3: And the story goes that originally, a Kumamoto born designer
Speaker 3: named Koyama Kundo set out to design a logo just
Speaker 3: on the theme of Kumamoto Surprise, but his art director,
Speaker 3: who was named Mizuno Manabu, included as a surprise this
Speaker 3: new character, Kumaman, which allegedly went through three thousand draft
Speaker 3: variations before he reached his final form. That's how the
Speaker 3: story goes. I don't know, three thousand drafts. What do
Speaker 3: you think I mean?
Speaker 2: That's it' that's evolution right there, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, all the generations. But what are so
Speaker 3: I've already described him looks like a black bear with
Speaker 3: a very cute face, a wide eyes, kind of curious expression,
Speaker 3: the red rosy circles on the cheeks. But what were
Speaker 3: the visual influences on Kumaman? According to this essay, the
Speaker 3: creators have cited Santa Clause and a New York Yankees
Speaker 3: baseball player named Matsui Hideki. I initially found this somewhat perplexing,
Speaker 3: but it makes more sense the more I thought about it.
Speaker 3: So I will say that Santa sort of has the
Speaker 3: Kumaman build, and what all three sharing common is prominent cheeks.
Speaker 3: So Santa Claus is often depicted with rosy red cheeks.
Speaker 3: I don't know anything about baseball, so I was not
Speaker 3: familiar with this player. But I looked up pictures of
Speaker 3: Matsui Hideki, and the essay doesn't make this connection. But
Speaker 3: I noticed he has in some pictures where he's got
Speaker 3: a leaner physique, he has very prominent cheek bones, and
Speaker 3: in other pictures where he's older, he has just a
Speaker 3: 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 equal Kumiman. But I believe it. I'll accept it.
Speaker 3: Should we take a moment to say anything about the
Speaker 3: role of Santa in Japanese culture, Like, despite the mostly
Speaker 3: non Christian context, a number of people in Japan do
Speaker 3: observe Christmas in some way, not as a religious holiday,
Speaker 3: but just as a kind of a fun cultural holiday,
Speaker 3: and there is some role for Santa Claus in Japanese
Speaker 3: culture or Santa San Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, Santa has Uh has has proved to be an
Speaker 2: export in some ways. I mean, Japanese Christmas traditions also
Speaker 2: include Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is its own whole story.
Speaker 2: But I haven't researched Japanese Santa culture a lot. I've
Speaker 2: looked into Chinese embrace of sand in the past, where
Speaker 2: he ended up like basically entering the Chinese popular mindset
Speaker 2: during the nineties and ended up playing a saxophone due
Speaker 2: to associations with Bill Clinton playing a saxophone. Probably, uh.
Speaker 2: These are things that often happen like without you know,
Speaker 2: they just happen, and you don't know how an idea
Speaker 2: is going to move from one culture to the next,
Speaker 2: what it's going to drag with it, and then when
Speaker 2: it gets over there, you know where, what kind of
Speaker 2: form it's going to take up take on, either temporarily
Speaker 2: or permanently. You know, as as you know, something comes
Speaker 2: over from another culture and whatever's novel about it may
Speaker 2: be accepted, you know, And and there's also how does
Speaker 2: it fit into pre existing values and ideas you know,
Speaker 2: where does it sort of like naturally fit and so
Speaker 2: forth and so forth. So I imagine there's a fair
Speaker 2: amount of that going on with Santa being brought in.
Speaker 2: We've talked in the past two about how in like
Speaker 2: in Chinese traditions, there are these ideas of Chinese and mortals.
Speaker 2: You know that in some ways like remind me of
Speaker 2: Santa Claus. You know, the idea that it's an old
Speaker 2: man with a beard that lives at the North Pole
Speaker 2: in some you know, translations of and understanding of the story,
Speaker 2: and so you're like, well, this kind of sounds like
Speaker 2: Santa Claus to me. So I don't know. All sorts
Speaker 2: of things like this I think end up occurring when
Speaker 2: when one cultural motif is is brought over into another.
Speaker 3: I think you can also think about some cross cultural
Speaker 3: similarities and characters like that, not necessarily as even having
Speaker 3: influenced one another at aiting point, but there are just
Speaker 3: some character types that are kind of easy for the
Speaker 3: mind to get to. Yeah, and a lot of cultures
Speaker 3: will come up with characters with some similar characteristics.
Speaker 2: I think it gets to the appeal in general of
Speaker 2: urokiara though, because these are all individuals that you can
Speaker 2: look at one, and you don't need to know like
Speaker 2: how their design came together. You don't need to know
Speaker 2: what they represent, if anything, you don't have to know
Speaker 2: like what corporation or prefecture they're associated with, but you
Speaker 2: just instantly get why they're appealing. There's something about them
Speaker 2: that transcends all language and cultural understanding, and you're like, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: come into my life. You know so many characters like
Speaker 2: that in pop culture in general.
Speaker 3: Ochi in this essay mentions another possible influence on the
Speaker 3: design of Kumaman, which is that he is thought in
Speaker 3: some ways to resemble a sort of local stereotype of
Speaker 3: the qshu man, who is described as stocky, tough, and
Speaker 3: subject to turbulent emotions. So I'm not sure I understand this,
Speaker 3: this sort of intro Japanese stereotype perfectly, but I'm interpreting
Speaker 3: it in the same way that we have regional stereotype
Speaker 3: characters in America, like you know, the forget about It
Speaker 3: New York mayn or the you know, the Barbecue Texas mayn.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing, Okay, And so if you like
Speaker 2: took this stereotype and then made it cute and then
Speaker 2: used it to represent the region, which you know that
Speaker 2: it sounds more appealing the more I think about it,
Speaker 2: because you take that which on some level and I
Speaker 2: don't know to what degree they were doing this on
Speaker 2: any level with this particular Japanese scenario, but you could
Speaker 2: imagine part of it being well, let's take this thing
Speaker 2: that might be a little intimidating and we make it cute.
Speaker 2: We you know, we pull the thangs from it, and
Speaker 2: we turn it around and make it something that ultimatelyons
Speaker 2: of attracting people.
Speaker 3: Yes, but you know, there's another way that the cuteness
Speaker 3: of these characters can be deceiving, because it seems to
Speaker 3: me that certainly with Kumaman, and I think with many
Speaker 3: of these other mascots that we'll get to in the
Speaker 3: next episode. The more you dig, the more layers of
Speaker 3: intended symbolic meaning and cultural reference seem to emerge. For example,
Speaker 3: according to this essay, the red rosy circles on Kumaman's cheeks.
Speaker 3: Ochi says that the red circles symbolize that Kumamoto is
Speaker 3: also known as the land of Fire, and they are
Speaker 3: also supposed to be a reference to the mark of
Speaker 3: a particular feudal lord of Kumamoto during the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Speaker 3: And then also they are reminiscent of the he Knu
Speaker 3: Maru or the sun circle the rising Sun, which is
Speaker 3: used on the Japanese flag, and the essay points out
Speaker 3: that these red circle cheeks appear on other Japanese characters,
Speaker 3: 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,
Speaker 2: open Man, who I was not familiar with, but I
Speaker 2: looked up pictures of this superhero is character, and he
Speaker 2: has like a big rosy red nose and then two
Speaker 2: big red rosy cheeks, so his face is highlighted by
Speaker 2: three big rosy red circles.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I mentioned earlier that Kumaman is a big business,
Speaker 3: and this is true. Kumaman not only exists as a
Speaker 3: mascot promoting Kumamoto and its products, but also as a
Speaker 3: motif in a type of consumer item known as fun chiguzu,
Speaker 3: which is a term derived in part from English meaning
Speaker 3: fancy goods, and in the essays words, these are quote small, cute,
Speaker 3: decorative personal items often marketed to young women and An
Speaker 3: example given is Hello Kiddy merchandise. So some of these characters,
Speaker 3: especially Kumaman, have been popular not just in promotions, but
Speaker 3: as imagery in themselves, sought after for their own value
Speaker 3: in the form of like cute decorative knickknacks. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: you brought this up earlier, that your kiara are not
Speaker 3: just visual image or likenesses, but characters and their creators
Speaker 3: give them narratives, backgrounds, and personalities. You brought up the
Speaker 3: I think the romance between two different mascots, so they
Speaker 3: have like histories and hobbies and preferences. I came across
Speaker 3: references to at least one mascot that was said to
Speaker 3: be a fan of heavy metal music, and maybe we'll
Speaker 3: get back to that in a subsequent part here. But
Speaker 3: the author of the essay mentions several things about Kuma
Speaker 3: Man's bio in particular, so they say his birthday is
Speaker 3: March twelfth, and he is five years old. I don't
Speaker 3: know if he ages or if he is perpetually five
Speaker 3: years old. I mentioned his arched eyebrows, which I initially
Speaker 3: interpreted as curious, but another way of rating them is surprised,
Speaker 3: And in this way he connects to the theme of
Speaker 3: Kumamoto Surprise. The creators do say that he is male,
Speaker 3: though this is specified quote in the human not animal sense, Okay,
Speaker 3: They say he is curious and loves playful mischief, and
Speaker 3: so an example of the playful mischief is that sometimes
Speaker 3: at public events, when he's in costume form, he will
Speaker 3: show off strange behavior that seems to baffle his human handlers.
Speaker 3: One example given is that, like, he will sit down
Speaker 3: on 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: you know, silent clowning routine, and therefore, like some of
Speaker 2: the basics of entertaining, you know, costume work, are you
Speaker 2: going to be in play now?
Speaker 3: One thing that I thought was interesting that this essay
Speaker 3: gets into is that often urukiara do speak, but from
Speaker 3: what Ochi says, at least in the context of Kumaman,
Speaker 3: they don't speak in person in the embodied form, So
Speaker 3: the person in the costume is never going to make
Speaker 3: a statement out loud, but the character, or may have
Speaker 3: their words appear in print or be spoken for by
Speaker 3: an attendant spokesperson, And I thought that was kind of
Speaker 3: interesting because it reminded me of other characters. Specifically, I
Speaker 3: was thinking of silent protagonists in video games, and examples
Speaker 3: of this would be characters like Mario or Link from
Speaker 3: Legend of Zelda, or Gordon Freeman in the Half Life games,
Speaker 3: the protagonist of the Portal games. These are characters that
Speaker 3: we never hear speak, at least not in sentences. We
Speaker 3: might hear little exclamations or noises or single words. You know,
Speaker 3: Mario might say yahoo or little thing, but will not
Speaker 3: make a full statement, and these characters are usually not
Speaker 3: understood to actually be mute within the storylines of the
Speaker 3: games in which they appear. The way I've always understood
Speaker 3: it is that within the story they can speak, and
Speaker 3: the other their characters have heard them speak and sometimes
Speaker 3: react to them as if they are speaking in the moment,
Speaker 3: but we do not hear them speak out loud ourselves.
Speaker 3: And this seems to have some kind of magical relationship
Speaker 3: to the fact that when we're playing the game, we
Speaker 3: are them. Some kind of magic would be broken if
Speaker 3: we heard their voice, speaking full coherent sentences, and so
Speaker 3: that seemed in some ways parallel to the idea of
Speaker 3: that like with Kumaman, you're not going to hear the
Speaker 3: person in the suit speaking as Kumaman, but Kumaman is
Speaker 3: understand understood to be able to speak. It's just that,
Speaker 3: 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 Mermay doesn't talk, but the Starbucks Mermay doesn't
Speaker 2: do anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I wonder if a difference here is that
Speaker 3: these mascots often represent locality or polities of some kind,
Speaker 3: and so there are lots of people who are passively
Speaker 3: being represented by them in some ways. You know, you
Speaker 3: sort of like are Kumaman. If you are a Kumamoto resident,
Speaker 3: he's sort of the avatar of your region. So I
Speaker 3: wonder if there's a similar logic at work that kind
Speaker 3: of prevents them from speaking in person, even if they
Speaker 3: can be understood to have personalities and the power of speech,
Speaker 3: just only being able to give quotes in print.
Speaker 2: I think That's a great point because some of these
Speaker 2: images you included in our notes of Kumaman 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 too 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 3: Yeah. Now, there's a bunch of stuff about Kumaman that
Speaker 3: I would like to get into, but I might save
Speaker 3: some of it for part two, especially if we start
Speaker 3: talking about connections between these characters and Yokai. But one
Speaker 3: last thing I wanted to get to while talking about
Speaker 3: Kumaman right now is one of my favorite parts of
Speaker 3: this essay. It is the insistence that despite appearances, Kumaman
Speaker 3: is not a bear. What okay, he looks like a
Speaker 3: bear to me, So what is he? Is he some
Speaker 3: kind some other kind of animal that just looks like
Speaker 3: a bear. And here I just have to simply read
Speaker 3: from Ochi's essay. The answer makes reference to the concept
Speaker 3: of kigarumi, which means costumed character. So a kigarumi is
Speaker 3: a person in a costume, Ochi writes.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Another misconception about Kumaman is that he is a bear,
Speaker 3: the animal he most resembles. When I contacted Kumamoto Prefecture
Speaker 3: to use his image in my chapter, I was told
Speaker 3: that any such statements must be removed. Most Japanese people,
Speaker 3: along with foreign and domestic media, say Kumaman is a
Speaker 3: bear and are surprised to learn otherwise. Perhaps this reminds
Speaker 3: readers of the wildly popular news story of August twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: in which Sanrio insisted that Hello Kitty.
Speaker 2: Is not a cat yep. I remember that the paragraph.
Speaker 3: Goes on, not only is Kumaman not a bear, he
Speaker 3: is not a human in a fuzzy suit, as I
Speaker 3: was told by the Kumamoto brand promotion office.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: The kumaman you see in the real world is not
Speaker 3: a kigarumi. The thing you see is his flesh and blood. Wow,
Speaker 3: So I this really got the gears going. So they're
Speaker 3: not denying that Ku the Kuma Man costume looks like
Speaker 3: a bear. They are denying that it is a costume,
Speaker 3: but it is also not a real bear.
Speaker 2: Hmm. 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 almost
Speaker 2: like it's a supernatural being, like you would say that
Speaker 2: like getting into the world of Yokai, which we'll get
Speaker 2: 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 and therefore it has special classification.
Speaker 3: Well, I was thinking about it in another way, which
Speaker 3: is that if you ask the question is Kumaman a bear?
Speaker 3: You could mean sort of two different things by that question.
Speaker 3: One is is a bear what it is supposed to resemble?
Speaker 3: And the other is a sort of literal or reductive question,
Speaker 3: like are you currently playing along with the game? So
Speaker 3: we have you know, normally, if a person in a
Speaker 3: costume or a cartoon representation of an animal, if I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about that, there are two possible ways to think
Speaker 3: about it. Either I'm playing along, which involves accepting the
Speaker 3: thing as the thing it resembles or represents, So a
Speaker 3: cartoon cat is a cat if I'm playing along, Or
Speaker 3: there's being reductive, which would be taking a literal objective
Speaker 3: perspective and saying no, it's pixels on a screen that
Speaker 3: are intended to look like a cat, or in the
Speaker 3: case of a person in a suit, it is a
Speaker 3: human being inside a suit that is supposed to look
Speaker 3: like a bear. And this is neither one. It's like
Speaker 3: they are still asking you to play along. They're saying no, no, no,
Speaker 3: We're not being literal and reductive that it's a human
Speaker 3: inside a suit. What it actually objectively is we're still
Speaker 3: playing the game, but we're not asking you to see
Speaker 3: the character as the thing. It looks like it is
Speaker 3: only what it is on the outside, no questions about
Speaker 3: what's underneath.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's kind of it's kind of like the concept
Speaker 2: of KFA and pro wrestling. Then, I guess it's like
Speaker 2: if you were to ask about, say, I don't know
Speaker 2: the Undertaker, and you were to say, well, is the
Speaker 2: Undertaker a zombie? No, he's not a zombie. Is the
Speaker 2: Undertaker like a guy from Texas pretending to be a zombie? No,
Speaker 2: he's not that either, He's this other thing. You've got
Speaker 2: to like approach it. You got to play the game,
Speaker 2: like you say, he is what he is. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: is as presented.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was like worthy of a symbiotics
Speaker 3: lecture or something interesting. I'm I keep thinking on that.
Speaker 3: Oh at won very last I want to get to
Speaker 3: before we wrap up for today is there is a
Speaker 3: section of this essay where people are just trying to
Speaker 3: make sense of why Kumaman is being used in the
Speaker 3: for the glory of Satan memes. Now, I don't really know.
Speaker 3: I wasn't familiar with these memes back in the day.
Speaker 3: I didn't make them, obviously, but I if I had
Speaker 3: to guess, I would just think it's the irony. It's
Speaker 3: just like he's cute, and thus it's funny to make
Speaker 3: a cute thing say something that is, you know, menacing
Speaker 3: or sinister.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the juxposition is just like the Almo you hell
Speaker 2: fire thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. One thing mentioned here is a Japanese news
Speaker 3: report that's trying to make sense of the meme and
Speaker 3: says and they speculate that it may have dimmed from
Speaker 3: the similarity between the word kumaman and the word in
Speaker 3: English demon or the names of specific demons in Christianity
Speaker 3: Mammon or Ammon, and that I don't know. That just
Speaker 3: seemed like I don't think that's what it is. But
Speaker 3: it's funny because that's the same kind of logic we
Speaker 3: sometimes employed, and we're like trying to figure out why
Speaker 3: something why a cultural connection is made. It's like maybe
Speaker 3: it has to do with these sound alike words, but like,
Speaker 3: I really don't think that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the memon 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 3: But then apparently this same news report speculated in the
Speaker 3: other half that the answer is what is in my opinion,
Speaker 3: almost certainly correct. It's just the juxtaposition of like the
Speaker 3: 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 the twisting, the flipping of the concept.
Speaker 3: 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 euro Kiara, some more
Speaker 2: examples of note that we thought were pretty interesting, and
Speaker 2: we'll also get into some of these connections that you
Speaker 2: know that get into you know, religion and folklore. So
Speaker 2: make sure you tune in for that, and in the meantime,
Speaker 2: certainly right in and share your favorites with us. We'd
Speaker 2: love to discuss that in future episodes of the Lister
Speaker 2: Mail episodes that we run on Mondays. Also, if you
Speaker 2: reside in Japan, have visited Japan, our Japanese and so forth,
Speaker 2: and have additional thoughts on all of this, yes, right in,
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from you on all of that
Speaker 2: as well. Please reminded the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays Monday's Lister Mail Wednesdays we have
Speaker 2: short form episodes, and on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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