Home > Highlighting JAPAN > Highlighting Japan JANUARY 2011 > Character Reference
Yuru-kyara mascot characters, created by local governments and regional business groups as PR tools to boost development and promote specialties, enjoy nationwide popularity. Unlike the characters designed by professionals, such as the mascots of major corporations, their distinctive feature is their appearance of having been handmade by local people. They are, in a sense, ordinary people's own versions of the venerable Mickey Mouse. "Yuru-kyara" is an abbreviation of "yurui" and "masukotto kyarakutaa" (mascot). "Yurui" here is used in the sense of making people feel good, provoking a smile; cute, but with an unsophisticated design.
On November 28, the Yuru-kyara Summit was held in Saitama Prefecture to promote local tourism-related activities. Some eighty-five yuru-kyara gathered at the event, which was attended by approximately 50,000 people.
The event materialized from the fact that Saitama Prefecture possesses relatively few tourism resources such as coastlines or mountains and so has come to concentrate on the manufacture of local characters as a trump card to alert tourists to the attractive features it does boast. Each participating character performed a dance or other display on the stage, using actions and hand gestures to urge people to visit their town.
© 2009 Cabinet Office, Government of Japan