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Kyarakuta
( ),
taken from the English word "character," is the general term
for the human, animal, and other personae that appear in manga comics,
animated television programs, movies, computer games, and other media.
Manufacturers often use characters to sell products. According to a survey of respondents ranging in age from seven to their sixties conducted in 2000 by the Bandai Character Laboratory, a toy research institute, the proportion of Japanese who owned character goods stood at 83.9 percent, and 87 percent responded that they had a favorite character. Just looking at men in their fifties and sixties, 54.7 percent owned some kind of character goods and 64 percent said they had a favorite character. Nowadays, media characters are popular among people of all ages, and there is nothing unusual in owning or using character goods. The character goods market in Japan is enormous, at over 2 trillion yen per year. Characters from Japanese manga like Pokemon (  )
and Gundam (Gandamu  )
have grown in popularity not only in Asia but also in the United States
in recent years, making the "character business" a big business
not only in Japan but worldwide. |
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| Photo:Hongo Jin |
| “Characters” Everywhere | Photo:Hongo Jin | ||
| Rarely
will you go through a whole day without setting eyes on some sort of trademarked
character. They adorn ballpoint pens, notebooks, and other stationary
products, cosmetic accessories like hand-held mirrors and makeup pouches,
dangle from mobile phone straps and backpacks, and turn up on T-shirts,
and bicycle bumpers. "Characters" are effective attention-getters; they can soften the image of something that seems dull and uninteresting and make approachable things that seem complicated or daunting. Many banks now offer customers bankbooks, cash cards, and other business items sporting media character designs in addition to plainer, more conventional designs. Some characters are also originally created expressly for marketing businesses, events, and products. |
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| Politicians as “Characters” | Photo:TJF |
The approval rate for the cabinet of Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro (  ),
formed in April 2001, initially exceeded 80 percent, and some of its members
were the talk of the television talk shows. Not only the prime minister
enjoyed the media limelight: former foreign minister Tanaka Makiko ( )
was known as Makiko Daijin ( [ ]
"Minister Makiko") and the elderly finance minister, Shiokawa
Masajuro ( ),
was dubbed Shio-jii ( [ ]
"Grandpa
Shio"). |
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Their
style of speech, mannerisms, looks, and other characteristics unrelated
to their caliber as politicians became the object of popular fascination,
forming an extraordinary fad. For real-life politicians to be treated
along the same lines as trademarked characters and treated like popular
TV personalities was a provocative and unprecedented occurrence in Japan.
The Liberal Democratic Party itself, of which Prime Minister Koizumi is
a member, en-tered into the trademark character business by cre-ating
the character "Shishiro" (
Mr. Lion--a reference to the prime minister's wavy "mane"of
hair; shishi means lion) to "market" Prime Minister Koizumi
as "the lion-hearted" prime minister. Aside from selling Koizumi-character
goods like T-shirts, mugs, hand towels, stickers, fans, mobile-phone straps,
etc., for the purpose of party publicity, the Liberal Democratic Party
even offered desktop backgrounds and computer games featuring the prime
minister. |
| Mom and Dad Love Characters, Too | |||||
In Japan today, anime and manga
are forms of entertainment anyone can enjoy, regardless of age. Men who
were ten years old in 1963 when the animated TV program Astro Boy
(Tetsuwan Atomu  [ ] )
was first broadcast turned forty-nine this year. Likewise, women who were
ten years old in 1967 when the Rica-chan ( )
doll was first brought on the market are now forty-five. Nowadays, the
greater part of society is made up of men and women who were raised on
character goods featuring heroes and heroines from earlier TV shows that
captured their imaginations as children. To dismiss anime and manga as
somehow reserved for childhood is now considered old-fashioned. Superhero
and animation series like Ultraman (Urutoraman  ),
Masked Rider (Kamen Raida  [ ] ),
Sazae-san ( ),
and others, first aired 30 years ago, are now being broadcast in newly
produced form, and it is not unusual to find two generations--children
and their parents-- enjoying them in front of the television each week.
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Original text : The Japan Forum Newsletter No. 25 "Japanese Culture Now" June 2002.
Send feedback to forum@tjf.or.jp