It's not just in Japan, but the mascots are spread out in different areas of the world. Companies use mascots, football/soccer teams have mascots and even games have their mascots. Japan, on the other hand, uses mascots in almost any situation. It is common to use mascots that represent places, cities, regions, TV stations, events, organizations, airports, anime, tourist attractions, government and even on street signs.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many mascots? First we have to analyze why large companies and organizations often use mascots. The main focus of mascots is to market a certain thing, place or product. But the real intention of the mascots is something bigger, to give an identity and personality to the company. People feel more comfortable talking, associating and buying from other people, companies with fancy names need something to represent and show personality to them, so they use mascots.
We already know that Japan is influenced by kawaii culture, but if we stop to think, the large number of mascots is due to the shyness of the Japanese, their difficulty in socializing, and various other cultural factors.
To better understand this, we need to analyze the Japanese mascots. The most common term for referring to Japanese mascots is yuru-kyara (or yuru-chara). Various things are created around these mascots, songs, games, performances, TV shows, etc.
The most popular and cute japanese mascots
At the beginning of the article, we have images of some mascots. First is fukka-chan, which is a cross between a deer and a rabbit that represents the city of Fukaya. The second is Kaparu, a version of the kappa yokai from the city of Shiki. And the third is Ebinya, a cheerful mascot from the city of Ebina, with its shrimp (ebi) hat and strawberry body.
The most famous mascot is Kumamon, which represents the city of Kumamoto, when they opened the shinkansen. Another cute mascot is Chihana-chan, which represents the city of Chiba and its beautiful flowers.
Next, we have the cute Yachinyan, a kitten created to attract tourists to the shopping street and Yonbancho Square, located in Hikone, Shiga. Followed by the green bear called Arukuma. He was created with various hats to represent different specialties of Nagano, each hat represents something, such as apples, chestnuts, persimmons, mushrooms, lettuce, soba, and wine.
Tagatan is a mole representing the mining and construction industries of the city of Tagawa. Sanomaru is a cute samurai created to promote the city of Sano, which is close to Tokyo. He has a bowl-shaped hat and some accessories that represent the city's specialties like sano-ramen noodles.
For me, Yachinyan is the cutest mascot...
Musubimaru it was designed to represent the rice farms of Miyagi. It has a samurai armor based on that of Date Masamune and a head shaped like an onigiri rice ball. Gunma-chan, as the name suggests, he is the mascot of Gunma since 1983, but his current design was created in 2008. He has a horse face representing that Gunma was the first region to raise horses. Lastly, we have Domo-kun the famous official mascot of the NHK television station.
These are some popular pets. There are thousands of other pets in Japan, some even more popular than the ones mentioned in this article. If you any, you can comment on them in the comments, we would be happy to help.
