God Dag, Behage!

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten ran a piece on our book, Hello, Please! Very Helpful Super Kawaii Characters from Japan, a month or so back. Can't read Norwegian? Try an online translation tool! In the meantime, you can enjoy the groovy gallery of photos. Some were excerpted from the book, while others were taken on an impromptu tour of the mascot-infested streets of Kichijoji. (For the kawaii-obsessed, I covered these same streets in a segment for NHK's Tokyo Eye show as well.)

Comments

[Markus]

Matt & Hiroko,
I’m swedish so I speak about 85% norwegian :)
Here’s my translation of the article in Aftenposten. Tell me if something seems strange, I might have got some words wrong.

Happy New Year,
Markus

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The World of Figures

They are so common in Tokyo that the japanese themselves take them for granted. But kawaii-figures, and their aesthetics have become one of the countrys big products for cultural export.

Here Mr Salad is glad for being eaten, and the nice Mr Poo helps you with the digestion. Japans impact on western visual culture is very strong. This fall Oslo will get it’s own festival with the country’s more and more famous cartoons, and manga is selling better all the time. But not all aspects of japanese culture are easy to understand. How is it possible that the japanese air force have a cute little boy as a mascot, for example? In the new book "Hello, please! Very Helpful Super Kawaii Characters from Japan" the american-japanese writer-couple Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda try to explain this strange phenomenon.

We meet them in the subcity/area Kichijoji in Tokyo, the centre of the enormous manga industry. Here, a real estate agent have a superhero as his mascot, and in the grocery store a cheerful version of Mr Salad smiles and thinks it is about time he is eaten.

Kawaii.
The japanese word kawaii is spreading all over the world. Even russian girls have used it since long ago. The latest issue of Nipponia, which represents Japan for the rest of the world, is all dedicated to the many facets of the kawaii phenomenon.

The word is impossible to translate, but a mix of ”sweet, helpless, cozy and cult”. And in Japan it is used more and more. Everything kawaii has become increasingly popular the latest 20 years. The concept, which is describing an aesthetics which in the West is connected to young girls, is about to become a central part of japanese identity. The japanese sociology professor Nobuyoshi Kurita says that kawaii is becoming synonymous with evertything that is acceptable in the country.

When the concept emerged in the 70s, only young girls cried ”kawaii!”. But that is not for nothing that the future oriented magazine Wired has "Japanese Schoolgirl Watch" as a regular column. Readers interested in following the development of global culture, are doing right in following the girls crying ”kawaii!” in Tokyo. Then security is secured. [ok, I don’t follow this last phrase.../markus]

Sweet mascots.
Especially japanese men earlier regarded kawaii as childish and overcute, as many still do in the West. But even they have turned. Today even the core-macho air force has it’s own cozy figure. The police of Tokyo has a cheerful flying squirrel as it’s mascot, and the fire department has a cute mini-fire fighter on the cars. It’s like it can’t get too childish in Tokyo of today.

- In the West mascots like these would be regarded as unserious. But I think it is quite a sympathetic sign that organizations like these are using these. They are making themselves more human, says Matt Alt. He lives with Hiroko Yoda in Tokyo, where they run a company that interprets japanese cultural signs to western markets. They live in Kichijoji, where the visual culture is more alive and active. They have focussed the book towards a special aspect of kawaii: the strange, ”work figures” which are found all over japanese everyday life.

- The figures are used to reduce stress in hard situations, to help and to facilitate contant. Even if they can seem laughable at first sight, there is a deeper menaning, a philosophy behind, Matt Alt explains.

They are everywhere.
The working figures are not used to sell themselves, as manga figures or as an internationally renowned kawaii-product as ”Hello Kitty” does. They have specific tasks to perform. On the streets of Tokyo you find them everywhere, either Miss Toilet Paper marking the good cause of toilet paper, or Mr Ticket Machine explaining how to use him. Everyone who has tried the incomprehensible automats in Tokyo’s subways, know that it can be quite stressful to feel how the line is getting longer behind you.

Or maybe you have tried to read the instruction manual to a new japanese PC or fax machine? Here your new technology gadget is sweating fountains if you put it in the sun, and cries hard if you spill coffee.

The working figures are often antropomorphic. They belong to nature, but are maed human in their cartoon form. A ashtray is getting pleased if you put ash in it. An ambulance is confused and scratches it’s hair when too many are calling SOS alarm without good reason.

Shinto.
The explanation is, according to tha married couple, deepy hidden in the japanese religion Shinto. So deep, actually, that the japanese Hiroko Yoda never recognized these figures, which everyday life is so full of, before she met her american husband. Matt always smiled because of reasons hard to explain, when he watched TV or read instruction manuals.

- For my american brain a telephone is just a telephone. A table is a table. But here in Japan, everyone have anoher relation altogether to the things around them. That should be respected, Matt Alt says.

Shinto is very focussed on mans relation to both nature and things. As early as the 17th century there are many examples of carvings showing things that are cross because they are thrown in the garbage.

- We don’t think that things are alive. That’s a form of spirituality in our environment that is unknown in the West. While christianity connects spirituality to heaven and hell, something outside this world, Shinto is connecting us to the world. We don’t put a screwdriver over humans in the hierarchy, but we know that we would’nt be at the top without our tools. That’s the reason why we can have a holy site in Tokyo, where we for example give thanks for the existance of glasses, says Hiroko Yoda.

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[Matt]

Thank you, Markus! That was VERY much appreciated!