July 11, 2024 • 47 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss Japan’s beloved yuru-chara, corporate and governmental mascots that are undeniably cute but with deeper connections to other aspects of Japanese culture.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our series on Yurukiara,
the lovable wobbly mascot characters of Japan. Now, if you
haven't heard part one yet, you should go back and
listen to that episode first. In that one, we talked
about the origins of the Urukira concept. Rob shared some
(00:36):
of his experiences with these characters on a recent trip
to Japan, and we talked about a couple of our
favorite examples, including the Kuma Moto mascot, a real megastar
called Kuma Man, which looks like a bear but apparently
is not a bear. You'll listen to the episode you'll understand,
and then the more obscure park associated mascot Hako Geo.
(01:00):
And we're back today to talk about some more.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
That's right. Okay, So my last selection was more emotional
than I guess substantially interesting to everybody. But this next
one I think is even more fascinating because it does
include ties into mythology and architecture. So this is one
that I definitely got to observe in the wild. So
me and my family were big Studio Ghibli fans. Of course,
(01:23):
we made our way to visit Ghibli Park during our
trip to Japan, so we spent two nights in Nagoya
to do so, and while traveling on the Nagoya Municipal Subway,
we frequently encountered helpful signs that featured its mascot, its
official mascot, Hatchi Hatchi is well, I would say to
the uninformed guidjin I Hatshi is a humanoid uniform Nagoya
(01:49):
City subway employee, but his head is a golden fish
with a human cartoon face, complete with fins on the
side and an upward cresting tail on the back of
the head.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So when you say he has a fish head, you
were not saying his head is the head of a fish.
You're saying his head is an entire fish.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Right, But like, you know, kind of like a flat
face fish with like a cartoon human nose. So there's
there's something interesting going on here. But at the very least,
you can say a subway employee with a fish for
a head.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
A human bodied subway employee with a fish for a head,
but the fish for a head has a human face.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Correct, Yeah, so already I'm on board, right, I mean,
he's cute, he's a bit weird. He's shown up and
given me helpful advice. You know. He often brings him
attention to important signage or in particular the glass. It's
like kind of like glass pane doors in between subway cars.
I found that they had stickers on there. I guess
to keep people from bonking into them if they were
(02:50):
you know too, if they were free of smudges and
so forth.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
As someone who has more than once in my life
walks straight into a glass door, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
But this is where things get even cooler. So it's
not merely a fish that is serving as his head.
Hatschi has a shachi hoko or shachi for a head.
So what is this? Well, in Japanese mythology, this is
a fearsome sea monster, often described as a great fish
with either the head of a tiger or of a dragon.
(03:19):
It's also sometimes compared to a dolphin or an orca,
and shachi actually apparently means orca in Japanese. Now, the
origins of this mythical creature ex seemingly extend back through
Chinese and Vedic influences, namely connecting to the chai Win
and the Makara in those different mythologies, both creatures that
(03:42):
were often used as rooftop guardian sculptures, so comparable in
some ways to like a gargoyle in the West. Okay,
though some sources still when talking about the shatshi, go
with more of a literal. This was modeled after a
killer whale, but, as we often discussed in The show Man,
are generally born of like multiple reference points, there can
(04:02):
be a lot of different things going on when a
monaster has created wholesale or when it you know, makes
the journey from one culture into another, and then add
you know, one hundred two hundred years or more on
top of that, uh huh. So the sashi joko, this
golden fish with upturned tail is frequently found as a
traditional Japanese architectural flourish, so great golden fish upward tail,
(04:26):
generally gleaming gold in appearance, and traditionally employed as a
means of supernatural fire prevention. Because the mythical fish here
was said to hold water in its belly and it
could control the rain, So you know, you can think
of this as an invocation of a protective spirit while
you're doing other things as well, of course, to try
(04:47):
and keep fires from getting out of hand and burning
down buildings or districts.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Almost like a symbolic sprinkler system.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, but why on the subway, you might ask. Well,
the main reason is because Nagoya's historic Nigoya Castle, originally
built in sixteen ten, partially destroyed in nineteen forty five,
and sort of continually restored since nineteen fifty seven, prominently
features a golden sachi on the roof, and I included
(05:14):
a picture of one here for you, Joe and everyone
out there. You can look these up as well. The
English for this word is shachi.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Oh okay, So am I understanding this image correctly? If
I'm looking at it right. The fish's face is not
facing out from the roof, It's turned inward along the roofline,
and the fish is sort of waving its tail out
toward the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
That's correct, Yes, and pretty much I think all the
times that I saw it utilized while I was over
there and just looking around at various pictures, that seems
to be the standard.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Interesting, I guess when I imagine artistic conventions of representing
like an animal or a creature on the outside of
a building, I would always have thought of it as
having the face facing out, But there's no reason it
has to be that way.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, And the front half of the creature is very impressive.
Again in these statues, it's very much of like a
dragonoid sort of head, you know, even again see the
tiger associations. And also you can sort of see roughly, okay,
I can imagine an orca or dolphin standing in for
this creature. Now on top of that, you know, I
guess we can also acknowledge that subway fires are certainly
(06:23):
always a possibility. So I imagine you could also make a
case for employing a mythological creature associated with fire prevention
against subway fires or maybe more generally, against unwanted safety
related scenarios in general. You know, like it's employed on
buildings as a protective spirit to help protect against like
(06:43):
sort of worst case scenarios. And likewise, in the subway,
our friend here than the mascot hot sheet, is here
to help.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Just looking at this fellow, I cannot help but feel assured.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, he's very lovable. I highly recommend if you're interested
looking at it's generally spelled h Atchii in English, or
just look for Nagoya Municipal Subway mascot and you'll find him.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Okay, you're ready to talk about my next selection?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah? Yeah, here you got a very interesting choice. Is
not one that was that I was familiar with?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Well, so, I think the most interesting thing about the
uukiara I'm about to talk about is that it is
the only one I'm aware of. There may be others
that have escaped to my attention. That is a successful
usurper king so I mentioned in the last episode coming
across a mascot who was said to be a big
fan of heavy metal music, which it seems incongruous with
(07:40):
the vibe of most of these mascots. Like, what soft
toddling character of this kind could be a metal head?
The answer is it's Funasi, the unofficial mascot of Funabashi Chiba. Now,
you might wonder, unofficial, how does a city end up
with an unofficial mascot? So I was reading about in
(08:01):
a couple of blog posts, one on a Kawhi culture
site called you May Twins and also on the Mondo
Mascots blog, Rob, I think you name dropped this one
in the last episode in you.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, it's a great resource, especially if you just want
to overload on images of various mascots and eventually like
learn what they represent. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
And so the short story is that in the year
twenty thirteen, Funabashi City decided to get in on the
mascot hype and created its own official character. This character
was called Funeimon, who was widely considered by locals to
be excruciatingly bland and boring. Rob, I will let you
(08:41):
judge for yourself. Here I've included a picture. This is
a Funeimon on the right. He is described in most
of the sources I could find as an Edo period
salaryman or Edo period merchant. He's wearing typical clothing for
the period and glasses. And I have to agree it
is It is not a thrilling design. It's also not
(09:02):
even super cute. It's just like an adult guy.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, it just looks like somebody's dad. Who's you know,
I'm pretty cool dad. But as a mascot for the city,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah. So, in Rebellion against this uninspiring official mascot the
people of Funabashi City elevated I think a pre existing character.
This character is a hyperactive sentient pair named Funasi who
was born in a pair orchard and loves headbanging to
(09:33):
Ozzy Osbourne. Funasi seems to have an appetite for extreme
experiences and thrill seeking, and also allegedly sustained an injury
while participating in a luchador exhibition in Mexico in twenty sixteen. Now,
for whoever's writing this character's sort of backstory, As we
mentioned in the last episode, a lot of these mascot
(09:56):
characters have more extensive personal histories and backstory reason sort
of storylines then you might expect. You know, we talked
last time about the ones that were falling in love
with each other and all that stuff. We uh, But
but so this one really likes getting into extreme experiences
and you know, the loud headbanging and all that. And
(10:17):
I wonder if that is in fact a reaction to
the fact that this character filled the void of a
character who was perceived to be too boring.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Hmmm, yeah, I can see that being the case. Maybe
combine that with some of this sort of attention seeking,
arguably at times out of control enthusiasm for for these
various mascots. You know, I was reading about about one
the other day. In fact, it was the one that
was prominently featured on John Oliver. How that particular mascot
(10:48):
kind of got into a little bit of trouble based
on just sort of being a little bit too aggressive
and a bit too extreme and it stunts.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Wait, sure that's not the same one, is it that
it was different fun Oh?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Okay, yeah, yeah, different one. But I'm saying it seems
like there's there is a line somewhere in there where
you could go too far. But I guess Funasi's doing
it right. I looked up Funasi and wrestling to see, okay,
well what is he doing? Where has he been engaging
with like Lucha Libre or whatever? And I couldn't find
many immediate answers, but I did see some clips of
(11:20):
him being like thrown and flung around by some pretty
big name Japanese professional wrestlers, So you know, he's getting
out there. I mean, I don't think he's having official matches,
he's getting out there.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Carpe DM.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
All right, The next one I want to cover Here
is terreb Tosin Aka Father Television, Akaido Prefecture. This guy,
I've included a picture of him before you here, Joe,
tell me what you get off of just an initial
look here at Terrebe Tosin. Say, what do you think
he is?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
He is a red thing almost maybe like an upturned
flower pot for a head, a sort of slightly you know,
like a upside down flower pot with a little bit
of soft corners on it, with a face. The face
looks very jolly hit you know, a big, big smile
(12:22):
in the face. It has the best kind of mustache,
which is just four hairs, and then has a sort
of I don't know, a black spike reaching up from
the top of his head, which almost suggests a piece
of fruit, you know, like an apple has a stem.
Maybe it's a piece of fruit with a stem poking off.
And then oh, also so if his head and body
(12:44):
is an upturned clay flower flower pot, he has two
legs underneath that are right side up clay flower pots
of a smaller size, and then sort of a green
loin cloth. That that's what I get.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, I looked at him and I instantly thought, like,
may the pepper like maybe he's a hot pepper or
other kind of a vegetable or fruit. I showed a
picture of him to my wife and she was like,
I think he's a traffic cone. Also I think a
valid guest.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, that's that's good.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
But the reality here, and this makes sense once you
see the images side by side, is he's designed to
resemble the Supporo TV tower, and once once you see it,
you're like, okay, I can see it now with the
like he's very vaguely tower shaped. The tower in question
has this kind of like green band structure around the
(13:37):
lower portion of it that has been transformed into a
belt in his mascot form. And then that black apparatus
on the top of his head, well, that's those are
the upper extremes of the the television tower itself.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I see, yes now, So I like that.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
You know, there's like a journey to for at least
for someone like me to figure out what he is.
But I was looking into it more, and I think
part of the appeal of this guy is that his
name in Japanese also has there's like a pun involved here,
like mister television tower, which does not translate all that well.
But I was instantly amused as well, because someone's for
(14:14):
me ideas of TV as this kind of like stand
in parent or teacher, you know, father television. And it
also reminds me of that old Simpson's line from Treehouse
of Horror Television teacher mother, secret lover.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, are you kids hugging the TV?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah? I mean it's father television. He just has the
best of intentions for us. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I like this one. He seems sage and redolent with pleasure.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, And there's not a lot to him, I admit,
But it's another example of what they can be born on.
They can be born of local landmarks, you know, architecturalal
touches and so forth. But the next one I want
to mention is interesting because it seems to be very
mission orient like this is a yurikiyara that was dreamt up,
(15:04):
that was designed in order to fulfill a particular objective
in reaching the masses and conveying some very important safety ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Oh, I'm intrigued, who is it?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
All right? This one is Sukimi moriy So this is
another one. I'm fairly certain that I got to see
this one in the wild, because we were in Osaka.
That's where this one is utilized. Osaka is a really
fun city, though, but we had a little harder time
navigating ourselves on the public transportation, so I wasn't as
on the ball about like getting pictures and chronicling him.
(15:38):
But basically, this is a large, slightly scary, purple and
pink creature with a single glowing eye with a yellow pupil,
and he lives in the gap in the subway stations.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Oh my lord, rob, I was trying to think, what
does he reminded me of? And he looks like a
purple version of the monsters from the Green Slime.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
He really does. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a sense of
the Green Slime to him. If we were to see
him animated, I bet he would have some very Miyazaki
esque elements. He kind of reminds me of cat Bus
a few times, but like a darkness cat bus. And
so his mission here is. And there are a lot
of I think objectively cute signs warning people of all ages,
(16:29):
but especially children, about the dangers of closing doors and
the gap on Japanese trains and subways, So Gaijen may
be more used to you know, mere mind the gap
and watch for the closing doors announcements, but Japanese subway
and train systems are generally more proactive on this. Oftentimes
there are automatic gates in front of the gap that
(16:50):
help you know, that help make sure that people are
not getting too close, And then you have initiatives like this,
And yeah, I love him because Sukima Morey isn't just
a cute lax fellow to make you feel chill about
public transportation. He is very cute, but he could also
be mistaken for one of the darker Pokemon. Perhaps you
(17:10):
know some of the ghost types. But again, his whole
deal is about reminding you of the dangers of the gap,
so he needs to be a little bit scary, even
if he is not malicious. Like, I want to be clear,
Sukima Moury is not here to grab your children and
pull them into the gap.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
I gotta say, it looks like that in some of
the pictures you've supplied below, Like he's peeking out below
the train with his like fingers ready as a child
is wandering by. It looks like he's going to snatch
the child.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Right. This has led to some comparisons in the West
to Pennywise, the dancing clown, you know, the lurking and
the sewer to pull children down. That is not what
Sukima Moury is about. Okay, he is here. He's friendly,
but he is scary because he is scaring you away
from the dangerous part of the train, or one of
(17:59):
the dangerous parts, because again, remember he is a creature
of the gap. His name quite literally means the gap,
get go. And he was created by j R. West Railways,
again largely a serve as a reminder for children and
adults and parents, kind of a nursery bogie, you know,
to scare kids away from the danger zone. And this
(18:22):
was in response to apparently troubling stats at the time
about gap related accidents with kids. So you know, there
was a real reason to roll out this mascot. It
wasn't just a situation where wouldn't it be cool if
we had a cute mascot. This again seemed to have
been a very mission first scenario.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
We need a Jenny Green Teeth of the subways exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah. He's also really down on cell phone use on
the train and on the move, especially among parents who
should be helping their kids navigate that gap, and you know,
not get a footstuck or anything. We're told that he
does love to dance, and I love this detail. He
sleeps amone the many lost things in the gap, so
there are various images of him like sleeping around like
(19:05):
lost shoes and lost cell phones and so forth, like
sort of sleeping in the junk down there, his own
treasure trove. He loves declaires, So you know, you do
have some just sort of like neutral information about him,
and we can we can relate to that.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I guess, huh, is that like a thing people drop
a Claire's through the gap? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I mean maybe one person dropped in a Claire and
he was like, this is good. I'm a fan. Now
I wait other Eclaires to be dropped into the gap.
So again, it would be unfair to Classifyzukimamori as a
malevolent force, but he's at least adjacent to dangerous realities
and as such, you know, he reminds me a bit
of past discussions of things like Jenny Green Teeth and indeed,
(19:47):
like the Kappa, you know, a superstitious supernatural monster to
warn people away from water related dangers, and in this case,
it's it's subway oriented.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yes, but though as soon as I said Jenny green
Teeth a few moments ago, I did realize, no, that's
still not quite right, because Jenny green Teeth does want
to snatch the children and Sukima Mouri does not.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
That's right. Yeah, The the energy here seems to be
to amuse, to entertain, but also to be a little
bit scary, because he is a scary but cute creature
that comes from a place that you should be moral,
weirre of and you should have a little more uncertainty about,
because it is like a dangerous in between zone when
boarding the train. So look him up. This one's There
(20:29):
are a lot of interesting posters and images of this
guy and some interesting reactions to him. But he's doing
good work, so I applaud him.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
So say we all.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
All right, Now this brings us to some more cultural
connections that we can make about our euro Kiara. So
most cultures have their various mythological and folkloric creatures. Obviously
we talk about a lot of them on the show.
We're always trying to drag him in from different parts
of the world, and it is, but it is often
observed that Japanese culture offers a particularly powerful trifecta of
(21:03):
cultural influences that may help us understand some of the
energy underlying the appeal of their mascots, of their hero
ki era. You know, why are they such a big
deal compared to other parts of the world that also
have cute, you know, imaginary beings that may be invoked
in various ad campaigns and public awareness and typical mascot
(21:24):
work and so forth. And on one hand, there is
certainly and this is you know, sit in a lot
a lot of sources we're looking at. There is the
polytheistic nature of Japan's Shinto religion and the presence of
supernatural kami in all things in Shintoism. So this absolutely
can't be overlooked. You know. It's it's a traditional worldview
(21:48):
in which there are multiple supernatural agents of power that
can reside in pretty much anything that's very sort of
like fast and loose. There's a lot more to Shintoism
than that, but basically, like in terms of like the
key points we might reference in understanding something as far
far more simple as Japanese mascots. Essentially, you can look
(22:12):
at that Shintoism as one possible leg of understanding them culturally. Now,
I think we do have to also be careful here
not to other the situation too much, because while there
does seem to be a uniquely Japanese emphasis in play here,
we can of course point to the coexistence of various mythic, folkloric,
and otherwise at least supernatural adjacent beings in various cultures,
(22:32):
regardless of the dominant religion or religions in that culture,
and beings from outside traditions have a way of working
their way into even those religions, at least into the periphery. Okay,
So there's Shintoism, and then, as we we've already referred
to several examples of this, but they're also the yokai,
which we've discussed in greater detail on the show before,
(22:53):
a catch all for various monsters, supernatural phenomenon and ghosts.
Though yuri, which are more in line with the haunting
ghosts of Western tradition, are kind of their own separate category.
Yokai ghosts are kind of they're more in line with
this idea of kami and that they're they're everywhere, and
they might be just completely neutral to humans, or they
(23:14):
might be a little bit mischievous. It just depends. So
you know, we've talked about them before. They occur in
various places throughout one's daily life, according to the traditions,
often associated with things such as bathrooms, restaurant, kitchens, alleys,
and so forth. And there's a very strong case to
be made that the Pokemon as well owe a lot
(23:35):
of their popularity to these traditions. And various Pokemon are
directly based on yokai, and some yokai and some Pokemon
are also uukiara, so you know, it's all kind of interconnected.
I should also know that we've discussed sukumogami on the
show before, household objects that are thought to become animant
(23:56):
through age and Japanese traditions. There seems to be this
slide towards personification, which of course ties into the very
basic human tendency to identify human like qualities and animals, plants,
and various inanimate or even non corporeal things. I think
sometimes examples like this from another culture just give us
the distance to recognize the larger global phenomena. Uh huh. Also,
(24:21):
kind I'm going to present as kind of like the
third leg of the tripod here potentially to understand eurokiara
as and this also ties into just sort of cuteness
in general in kawai. But as Eddie yl Chang points
out in the twenty eighteen article, let the Eurokiara do
the job, there's also this long standing popularity of small
(24:41):
things in Japanese culture, particularly the small sculpture art form
of netsuki, combined with long standing appreciation for animal forms
and cute things in general.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
All Right, so you've got this sort of pyramid of
different influences that could be feeding into the EUROQR phenomena.
On one hand, the traditional Shinto beliefs about the spirits
or entities all throughout nature. On the other hand, you've
got the sort of yokai, the various sort of like
monsters or beings that we've talked about on the show.
(25:14):
And then also this tradition of making these cute small
sculptures like netsuki. Specifically regarding the one leg of the
tripod here of yokai, I wanted to come back to
(25:37):
something from an essay that I mentioned in part one.
So and the last time I talked about the essay
about Kumaman the bear or not Bear Yurukyara of the
Kumamoto Prefecture. This essay was called Kumaman, Japan's surprisingly cheeky mascot.
That was in a book called Introducing Japanese Popular Culture
(26:00):
three from Rutledge, edited by Elisa Friedman. The essay was
by Deborah j Ochi, and this part that I'm about
to mention was in the context of a paragraph talking
about how urukia are sometimes deployed by authorities after large,
frightening public events. One big example is the March twenty
(26:21):
eleven earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear incident at Fukushima, after
which Ochi says that the number of mascots in Japan increased,
as did the perception of their healing power for the people.
And I've also read that the figure of Kumaman specifically
was widely used to comfort the public after the devastating
(26:42):
twenty sixteen Kumamoto earthquakes. So there's a sense that part
of the role, part of the cultural role of these
like these sort of cute, positive informal characters, is that
they help people feel better after a tragic event. On
the topic of linking kumaman to pre existing yokai, here's
(27:03):
the quote I wanted to discuss Ochi writes quote. During
the COVID nineteen pandemic, yurukiara were again mobilized across the
linguistic landscape, appearing on public notices and backdrops for televised
official announcements. Kumaman occasionally appeared along with his Kumamoto ancestor Amabi,
(27:24):
a folkloric yokai spirit associated with pandemic relief who was
also widely used. So I had to learn more about
this Amabi, and I did so by consulting the Book
of Yokai by the folklorist Michael Dylan Foster. I've talked
about this book before on the show. He is a
scholar currently affiliated with UC Davis, and the section on
(27:46):
the Amabi, I think it's from the expanded recent edition
of the book. So, according to Foster, the earliest image
we have of this yokai is printed on a kawaraban
broadsheet from the year eighteen forty six. Now, kooraban means
tile block printing, and it was a type of media
(28:08):
similar to a newspaper or a tabloid, considered very ephemeral,
so printed roughly on cheap paper, with the idea that
it would be read once and then tossed away, and
it was used in the Edo period for reporting major
news events and for reporting official announcements, but also on scandals, rumors,
(28:30):
and gossip, including things of a supernatural character. So you
might read about the effects of a recent typhoon, you
might read about the siege of a castle or a
murder in the city. But also you might read about
a ghost woman who turned into a giant spider.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Why not, I mean, it's basically just an extension of
your your rumor mill and your gossip columns, right, I
don't want to know what the ghost women are up
to around town.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yes, So there is a particular eighteen forty six Korabon
prison deserved in the library of Kyoto University that includes
both a narrative and an illustration about a Kumamoto official's
encounter with a spirit from the ocean. So the text
reads as follows in translation, every night, something brightly lit
(29:16):
would appear in the sea of he Go, and that's
off of a present day Kumamoto Prefecture. When a local
official went out to take a look, something like what
is in the picture here appeared and said, I live
in the sea and am called Amabi. For the next
six years, there will be abundant harvests throughout the provinces,
(29:38):
but disease will spread. So make haste to copy an
image of me and show it to the people. So
saying it returned back into the sea. And Rob, I've
included here a photograph of this broadsheet, including the illustration.
So this is the first representation of the Amabi and
the text that showed up next to it. Now, I
(30:00):
was thinking, man, the face really reminds me of something,
but I was not able to figure out what it was.
Robin the notes you figured out what it was it
was reminding me of. But the Amabi is a three
legged Avian mermaid. So it's got a bird's beak, a
diamond diamond shaped eyes, though we can usually only see
(30:22):
one of its eyes because its head is turned in profile.
It's got long hair reaching down to her feet, and
of which there are three by the way. She has
three feet, three toes on each foot, and a body
covered in shingled rounded scales like a fish. But I
was trying to think, what does the face remind me of?
And you got it exactly what is it?
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Oh? Man? I thought it was just me. But I
look at this creature and monstrous aspects of the creature aside,
I get strong Kathy vite Kathy from your caemical newspaper
cartoon section.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yes, it's Kathy. It's the combination of like the hair
and something about the eye.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It's yeah, like Kathy has like her eyes are depicted
like so close to each other they're touching. And then yeah,
the long hair and sort of the general shape of
Kathy is also present in this creature from the sea.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
So the Amabi in this illustration is not fearsome, I
will say it. Instead, it looks strange, and I think
it is supposed to look strange, but it's closer to
cute than scary. Yes, I would agree, but again the
details of the narrative. So off the coast of what
is now Kumamoto, people would see a bright light in
(31:34):
the darkness at night. An official goes out there to
figure out what it is. I guess he goes out
in a boat, though it doesn't say how he investigated.
I'm assuming I'm picturing a boat trip sees this three
legged avan mermaid with a beak. It says, I live
in the sea. I'm called a mobbi. You're gonna have
six years of good harvests, but you are also going
(31:55):
to have an epidemic of deadly disease. Share my picture
with people and the implicate that I read into it here,
and I think what it is meant is that sharing
the image will prevent the disease from spreading. And then
finally the yokai goes back underneath the waves. Now, Foster
writes that this is the first written record we have
(32:17):
of belief in the Amabi, but there is a very
similar being that slightly precedes it, called the Amabiko or
sometimes Amahiko, which appears in at least eleven documents from
the eighteen forties through the eighteen eighties, and Foster cites
a folklore scholar named Yumoto Koichi who argues that these
are actually the same creature and that Amabi is simply
(32:40):
a transcription error of the word amabiko that caught on
and then got copied done the line. So possibly the same,
possibly different, but in either case they're very similar creatures.
What's the deal with the amabiko? Some are said to
rise out of the sea, others appear in the mountains,
but they tend to give similar predictions and warnings to
(33:00):
what we heard in the first story. For example, there's
an eighteen forty four story of an amabiko that appears
in the Bay of Echigo and says disease is gonna
spread and seven out of ten people in Japan are
going to die. But if you look at a picture
of me, you will be spared. And then rob I've
attached a picture of what the amabiko looks like in
(33:21):
this eighteen forty four document. Different kind of look more
like a three legged black octopus dolphin.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yes, I think that's an accurate description. Yeah, totally different characters. Still,
I wouldn't say hmm, I wouldn't say fearsome, but I
get a far more more of a I get far
more of a neutral vibe off of this guy. I
don't know for sure if he leans more benevolent or benevolent. Yeah, different,
(33:48):
different sort of creature, but definitely three legs. You know.
The sort of snout is still there, so I can
see I can see the lineage between these two designs.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah, ambiguous, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
But I mean by according to the story, clearly wants
to help or wants to exploit an upcoming disaster or
fear of disaster into getting people to look at pictures
of him.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Right, So a pattern emerges between these stories. There will
be an epidemic, many will die, but if you see
a picture of me, you will live. So spread this
illustration far and wide. And it's funny because this reminds
me of stuff in the modern era, like those email
forwards you would get in the early two thousands that
are like, you know, you will see a ghost in
the mirror and die three days from now unless you
(34:32):
send this email to ten of your friends.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, because as far as I'm understanding, there's nothing really
informational in this image. It's not like study this, you know,
it's not like various big pieces of religious art, you know,
particularly I'm thinking like Tibetan Buddhism where or also you
see the examples of this in Buddhism in Japan, where
like a very complex piece has a number of messages
to convey to you about, say, how to reach meditative
(34:57):
states and so forth. This is just a picture of
their very simple drawing of a strange creature. And it's
just it's more like, know that I exist, see what
I look like, and that will give you an advantage
against disease.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah. I don't think there's a lesson in how it looks.
I think it's just apotropeic magic. It's like seeing me
gives you magical protection against the disease that's coming.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And you know that's this good news for the viewer. Right,
It's like, what do I have to do to give
this retection? Look at a picture I'm in. Yeah, don't
even have to read anything. It's easy to do. But also,
if you want to help your friends, you better make
a copy of this picture or buy another copy of
the broadsheet and show it to them. So it has
great mimetic power because it includes its own intrinsic motivation
(35:39):
to spread the meme. Interesting now, according to.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Foster, the amabi and the Amabiko are not even the
only yokai that give these types of warnings and offer
protection through replication and spreading of the image. He also
cites a creature called the kudabe, which does pretty much
the same thing. There's the Jingjahime, which has the body
of a fish and the head of a woman, but
(36:02):
with two horns. She predicts both seven years of plenty,
but also the spread of a deadly disease, a named
disease in this case called koori, and if you draw
her picture and share it with everyone you know, they
will be spared. There's another one called the hime Uo,
which is said in an Edo based tale to have
emerged off the coast of the island of Hirado. And
(36:25):
interesting detail here, Foster writes, quote Hirado might have been
selected as the location for the hime Uo because it
was a distant, marginal location and also a region historically
associated with foreign ships and traders, and thus a gateway
for both prosperity and potential disease.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So it's interesting that in the Edo period there are
lots of yokai with the power of prophecy. They're predicting
the future, often predicting disease, epidemics and plague, often predicting
bounty or both at the same time. And the image
of this creature can provide apotropaic immunity to anyone who
lays eyes on it, So you better copy it quickly
(37:06):
and show it to everyone you know. And these are
categorized by some scholars such as Eumoto Koichi as yoginju
or prophecy beasts, and Foster talks about the many different
kinds of motivations somebody might have to spread a story
like this. On one hand, it could just be a
desire to excite and entertain the reader, you know, it's
(37:27):
kind of like an interesting, entertaining story. In some cases,
it could be a simple desire to sell broad sheets.
In some cases, it could be a genuine desire to
give people the hope of protection in the face of frightening,
uncontrollable forces like infectious disease.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Oh, that's a great point, and it ties into what
we've been talking about too. Like a golden fish on
your roof is not going to actually protect you against fire,
but it gives you that sense of hope. It gives
you like this additional layer on top of knowledge of
preparation or statistics and so forth. Yeah, and you know,
I can see how that would apply to our Eurokiara
(38:04):
as well. You know, here's one of these cute creatures
giving me information, giving me helpful advice. But there is
an optimism to it. There's a hope intrinsic in the
design of the creature that is giving me this information.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Exactly right, and that in fact brings us back to
the Amabi's appearance during the COVID pandemic. So before twenty twenty,
the amabi was a relatively obscure okai foster it says,
you know, it probably would have only been known to
like certain types of historians or you know, like real
hobbyists or obsessives, though it did appear in some work
(38:39):
by the manga artist Mazuki Shigeru in the nineteen eighties.
But after news of COVID nineteen first began to spread
in early twenty twenty, the image of the amabi surged
in popularity on the Internet. Foster mentions several posts on
Twitter from February and even one at the end of
January twenty twenty that included renderings of the amabi communicated
(39:03):
the lore that we've just talked about, and I think
jokingly encouraged the proliferation of its image as a protective
measure against infection. And while it's pretty clear to me
that most of these posts had a spirit of irony
about them, like the use of the amabi was sort
of meant as kidding, the amabi really caught on as
(39:23):
a symbol of defense and vigilance against the virus both
virtually and in physical media and consumer culture. So there
was like a viral Twitter hashtag called Amabi Challenge where
people posted alongside they posted the hashtag along with like
images of homemade renderings of the merd bird, and the
(39:47):
Amabi imagery was also used on all kinds of products,
from like keychains, t shirts, tote bags, to rice crackers
and beer. There were actual invocations of the Amabi in
public religious rituals and prayer, and then eventually the Japanese
Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officially produced an Amabi
logo warning people that they could spread COVID nineteen without
(40:11):
realizing it and advising people to take measures to limit exposure.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Ah, and you included this this this poster art for
me here in our outline, and I believe I did,
in fact see this during my travels in Japan. So
either they're still putting them up, or there's still you know,
there's still some out there that haven't been digging down,
or people keep putting them up. Yeah, because again that's
kind of the that's what you're encouraged to do with
the Amabi.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Yeah, So I think it's interesting connecting this back to
the urukiara we were talking about, because both the Amabi
and kumaman were in some cases used in top down
public health messaging and in bottom up cultural processing of
events during the COVID pandemic. And I wonder if this
(40:56):
tells us anything about the broader role filled by urukiara
and how that relates to this yokai. I want to
read a passage from Foster here. Foster writes, quote the
Amabi's sudden rise exemplifies the eloquent adaptability of yokai, with
perfect ease and no contradiction. The Amabi straddles life and
death concerns like COVID nineteen and lighthearted fun t shirts
(41:20):
and beer, vernacular creativity, individuals circulating their own versions and
institutional promotion a government icon, heartfelt belief in religious ceremonies,
and rampant commodification in charms and key chains. So he
notes that this kind of goes along with the fact
that beliefs about yokai seem to thrive in the context
(41:44):
of uncertainty, as like a way of coping with mysterious
threats and questions that can't be answered or can't yet
be answered. I think we can all recall those like
early months of the pandemic when there was just like
so much uncertainty and we just didn't you know, there's
just like so much not knowing what to do, and
so the beliefs of this kind sort of provide people
(42:08):
a sense of control in some way. And while the
traditional apotropaic use of the amabi image may have been
interpreted as like literally efficacious in protecting against disease back
in the day, the way I'm reading it is that
I think the majority of the use in the early
months of twenty twenty was more playful and symbolic. Not
(42:30):
that most people sharing it thought that it would literally
mechanistically prevent the virus from entering and infecting their tissues,
but that it actually would do something, because of course,
on one hand, would provide a type of psychological comfort
and that feeling of control over an uncontrollable situation, but
also that by spreading the image of the okai you
(42:54):
were increasing front of mind public consciousness of the virus,
which meant people would be more likely to take actual
direct steps to limit contagion. And it strikes me that
apart from messaging about the pandemic, you're a kiara like
kumaman have a similar dual function. There's like, on one hand
you have emotional comfort, and then on the other hand
(43:16):
you have information consciousness, and that could mean either spreading
information directly, like telling you something you don't know, or
increasing the salience of information you already have, making you
think about what you do know.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, I mean it's enough to if you wanted to
go all ancient astronauts on this, you could say that
Amabe was an actual visitor from space and or the
ocean did realize that that information is one of the
key tools you can use against pandemics, and was like, hey,
start spreading images of me in response to illness. It's
(43:52):
not going to really pay off right away, but there
will come a time where this could make some small difference.
But anyway, obviously I love this idea that you know,
these various euroka ara much like these older forms. You
know that again they have the information, they also have
this emotional comfort like you've been discussing that brings with it,
(44:13):
you know, sort of cuteness and hope all sort of
tied together in a package. And I wish there was
more of this in the world, you know, because aside
from messaging aim directly at children, I feel like so
much of the more serious messaging out there, at least
in the US, is it's just purely fear based, or
at least that's how it often feels to me. You know,
sometimes there's this layer of hope to it, or an
(44:35):
image of like a smiling adult where it's like, oh,
this is what happiness looks like, this is what this
is what protection looks like, or so forth, or you know,
the hope is wrapped up in the purchase of something
that's going to protect you from the scary thing. And
I don't know, I would rather live in a culture
of cuteness and hope than a culture of fear. I
feel like we could overall, we could all push things
(44:57):
a little more towards hope and cuteness from just the
pure fear. I mean, the fear is always going to
be there. The cuteness and the hope doesn't erase that fear.
But you know, if it makes it feel a little
like if your experience going to the subway is is
less like, don't you dare get near the gap because
you'll be torn in half, you know, less shake hands
with danger and more Urukiara. Sorry, it's a bit of
(45:20):
a rant there.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Oh yeah, there's a difference between taking proper precautions and
wallowing in fear.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah yeah, and realizing that that kind of messaging, that
sort of leveling of the message can apply to everybody
and not just children, you know, and you can do
it in a way that's also not you know, sugarcoating anything.
Or maybe you are sugarcoating it a little bit, but
they're still medicine in the middle. Yeah, all right, we're
gonna go ahead and close out this episode, but we'd
love to hear from everyone out there. What are your
(45:50):
experiences with Urukiara, with the lax mascots, what are your
favorites right in because we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder, This Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode.
On Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. You can get
all of this any Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Huge, thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 2 (47:00):
FO
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our series on Yurukiara,
the lovable wobbly mascot characters of Japan. Now, if you
haven't heard part one yet, you should go back and
listen to that episode first. In that one, we talked
about the origins of the Urukira concept. Rob shared some
(00:36):
of his experiences with these characters on a recent trip
to Japan, and we talked about a couple of our
favorite examples, including the Kuma Moto mascot, a real megastar
called Kuma Man, which looks like a bear but apparently
is not a bear. You'll listen to the episode you'll understand,
and then the more obscure park associated mascot Hako Geo.
(01:00):
And we're back today to talk about some more.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
That's right. Okay, So my last selection was more emotional
than I guess substantially interesting to everybody. But this next
one I think is even more fascinating because it does
include ties into mythology and architecture. So this is one
that I definitely got to observe in the wild. So
me and my family were big Studio Ghibli fans. Of course,
(01:23):
we made our way to visit Ghibli Park during our
trip to Japan, so we spent two nights in Nagoya
to do so, and while traveling on the Nagoya Municipal Subway,
we frequently encountered helpful signs that featured its mascot, its
official mascot, Hatchi Hatchi is well, I would say to
the uninformed guidjin I Hatshi is a humanoid uniform Nagoya
(01:49):
City subway employee, but his head is a golden fish
with a human cartoon face, complete with fins on the
side and an upward cresting tail on the back of
the head.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So when you say he has a fish head, you
were not saying his head is the head of a fish.
You're saying his head is an entire fish.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Right, But like, you know, kind of like a flat
face fish with like a cartoon human nose. So there's
there's something interesting going on here. But at the very least,
you can say a subway employee with a fish for
a head.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
A human bodied subway employee with a fish for a head,
but the fish for a head has a human face.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Correct, Yeah, so already I'm on board, right, I mean,
he's cute, he's a bit weird. He's shown up and
given me helpful advice. You know. He often brings him
attention to important signage or in particular the glass. It's
like kind of like glass pane doors in between subway cars.
I found that they had stickers on there. I guess
to keep people from bonking into them if they were
(02:50):
you know too, if they were free of smudges and
so forth.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
As someone who has more than once in my life
walks straight into a glass door, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
But this is where things get even cooler. So it's
not merely a fish that is serving as his head.
Hatschi has a shachi hoko or shachi for a head.
So what is this? Well, in Japanese mythology, this is
a fearsome sea monster, often described as a great fish
with either the head of a tiger or of a dragon.
(03:19):
It's also sometimes compared to a dolphin or an orca,
and shachi actually apparently means orca in Japanese. Now, the
origins of this mythical creature ex seemingly extend back through
Chinese and Vedic influences, namely connecting to the chai Win
and the Makara in those different mythologies, both creatures that
(03:42):
were often used as rooftop guardian sculptures, so comparable in
some ways to like a gargoyle in the West. Okay,
though some sources still when talking about the shatshi, go
with more of a literal. This was modeled after a
killer whale, but, as we often discussed in The show Man,
are generally born of like multiple reference points, there can
(04:02):
be a lot of different things going on when a
monaster has created wholesale or when it you know, makes
the journey from one culture into another, and then add
you know, one hundred two hundred years or more on
top of that, uh huh. So the sashi joko, this
golden fish with upturned tail is frequently found as a
traditional Japanese architectural flourish, so great golden fish upward tail,
(04:26):
generally gleaming gold in appearance, and traditionally employed as a
means of supernatural fire prevention. Because the mythical fish here
was said to hold water in its belly and it
could control the rain, So you know, you can think
of this as an invocation of a protective spirit while
you're doing other things as well, of course, to try
(04:47):
and keep fires from getting out of hand and burning
down buildings or districts.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Almost like a symbolic sprinkler system.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, but why on the subway, you might ask. Well,
the main reason is because Nagoya's historic Nigoya Castle, originally
built in sixteen ten, partially destroyed in nineteen forty five,
and sort of continually restored since nineteen fifty seven, prominently
features a golden sachi on the roof, and I included
(05:14):
a picture of one here for you, Joe and everyone
out there. You can look these up as well. The
English for this word is shachi.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Oh okay, So am I understanding this image correctly? If
I'm looking at it right. The fish's face is not
facing out from the roof, It's turned inward along the roofline,
and the fish is sort of waving its tail out
toward the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
That's correct, Yes, and pretty much I think all the
times that I saw it utilized while I was over
there and just looking around at various pictures, that seems
to be the standard.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Interesting, I guess when I imagine artistic conventions of representing
like an animal or a creature on the outside of
a building, I would always have thought of it as
having the face facing out, But there's no reason it
has to be that way.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, And the front half of the creature is very impressive.
Again in these statues, it's very much of like a
dragonoid sort of head, you know, even again see the
tiger associations. And also you can sort of see roughly, okay,
I can imagine an orca or dolphin standing in for
this creature. Now on top of that, you know, I
guess we can also acknowledge that subway fires are certainly
(06:23):
always a possibility. So I imagine you could also make a
case for employing a mythological creature associated with fire prevention
against subway fires or maybe more generally, against unwanted safety
related scenarios in general. You know, like it's employed on
buildings as a protective spirit to help protect against like
(06:43):
sort of worst case scenarios. And likewise, in the subway,
our friend here than the mascot hot sheet, is here
to help.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Just looking at this fellow, I cannot help but feel assured.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, he's very lovable. I highly recommend if you're interested
looking at it's generally spelled h Atchii in English, or
just look for Nagoya Municipal Subway mascot and you'll find him.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Okay, you're ready to talk about my next selection?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah? Yeah, here you got a very interesting choice. Is
not one that was that I was familiar with?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Well, so, I think the most interesting thing about the
uukiara I'm about to talk about is that it is
the only one I'm aware of. There may be others
that have escaped to my attention. That is a successful
usurper king so I mentioned in the last episode coming
across a mascot who was said to be a big
fan of heavy metal music, which it seems incongruous with
(07:40):
the vibe of most of these mascots. Like, what soft
toddling character of this kind could be a metal head?
The answer is it's Funasi, the unofficial mascot of Funabashi Chiba. Now,
you might wonder, unofficial, how does a city end up
with an unofficial mascot? So I was reading about in
(08:01):
a couple of blog posts, one on a Kawhi culture
site called you May Twins and also on the Mondo
Mascots blog, Rob, I think you name dropped this one
in the last episode in you.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, it's a great resource, especially if you just want
to overload on images of various mascots and eventually like
learn what they represent. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
And so the short story is that in the year
twenty thirteen, Funabashi City decided to get in on the
mascot hype and created its own official character. This character
was called Funeimon, who was widely considered by locals to
be excruciatingly bland and boring. Rob, I will let you
(08:41):
judge for yourself. Here I've included a picture. This is
a Funeimon on the right. He is described in most
of the sources I could find as an Edo period
salaryman or Edo period merchant. He's wearing typical clothing for
the period and glasses. And I have to agree it
is It is not a thrilling design. It's also not
(09:02):
even super cute. It's just like an adult guy.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah, it just looks like somebody's dad. Who's you know,
I'm pretty cool dad. But as a mascot for the city,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah. So, in Rebellion against this uninspiring official mascot the
people of Funabashi City elevated I think a pre existing character.
This character is a hyperactive sentient pair named Funasi who
was born in a pair orchard and loves headbanging to
(09:33):
Ozzy Osbourne. Funasi seems to have an appetite for extreme
experiences and thrill seeking, and also allegedly sustained an injury
while participating in a luchador exhibition in Mexico in twenty sixteen. Now,
for whoever's writing this character's sort of backstory, As we
mentioned in the last episode, a lot of these mascot
(09:56):
characters have more extensive personal histories and backstory reason sort
of storylines then you might expect. You know, we talked
last time about the ones that were falling in love
with each other and all that stuff. We uh, But
but so this one really likes getting into extreme experiences
and you know, the loud headbanging and all that. And
(10:17):
I wonder if that is in fact a reaction to
the fact that this character filled the void of a
character who was perceived to be too boring.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Hmmm, yeah, I can see that being the case. Maybe
combine that with some of this sort of attention seeking,
arguably at times out of control enthusiasm for for these
various mascots. You know, I was reading about about one
the other day. In fact, it was the one that
was prominently featured on John Oliver. How that particular mascot
(10:48):
kind of got into a little bit of trouble based
on just sort of being a little bit too aggressive
and a bit too extreme and it stunts.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Wait, sure that's not the same one, is it that
it was different fun Oh?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Okay, yeah, yeah, different one. But I'm saying it seems
like there's there is a line somewhere in there where
you could go too far. But I guess Funasi's doing
it right. I looked up Funasi and wrestling to see, okay,
well what is he doing? Where has he been engaging
with like Lucha Libre or whatever? And I couldn't find
many immediate answers, but I did see some clips of
(11:20):
him being like thrown and flung around by some pretty
big name Japanese professional wrestlers, So you know, he's getting
out there. I mean, I don't think he's having official matches,
he's getting out there.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Carpe DM.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
All right, The next one I want to cover Here
is terreb Tosin Aka Father Television, Akaido Prefecture. This guy,
I've included a picture of him before you here, Joe,
tell me what you get off of just an initial
look here at Terrebe Tosin. Say, what do you think
he is?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
He is a red thing almost maybe like an upturned
flower pot for a head, a sort of slightly you know,
like a upside down flower pot with a little bit
of soft corners on it, with a face. The face
looks very jolly hit you know, a big, big smile
(12:22):
in the face. It has the best kind of mustache,
which is just four hairs, and then has a sort
of I don't know, a black spike reaching up from
the top of his head, which almost suggests a piece
of fruit, you know, like an apple has a stem.
Maybe it's a piece of fruit with a stem poking off.
And then oh, also so if his head and body
(12:44):
is an upturned clay flower flower pot, he has two
legs underneath that are right side up clay flower pots
of a smaller size, and then sort of a green
loin cloth. That that's what I get.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, yeah, I looked at him and I instantly thought, like,
may the pepper like maybe he's a hot pepper or
other kind of a vegetable or fruit. I showed a
picture of him to my wife and she was like,
I think he's a traffic cone. Also I think a
valid guest.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, that's that's good.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
But the reality here, and this makes sense once you
see the images side by side, is he's designed to
resemble the Supporo TV tower, and once once you see it,
you're like, okay, I can see it now with the
like he's very vaguely tower shaped. The tower in question
has this kind of like green band structure around the
(13:37):
lower portion of it that has been transformed into a
belt in his mascot form. And then that black apparatus
on the top of his head, well, that's those are
the upper extremes of the the television tower itself.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I see, yes now, So I like that.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
You know, there's like a journey to for at least
for someone like me to figure out what he is.
But I was looking into it more, and I think
part of the appeal of this guy is that his
name in Japanese also has there's like a pun involved here,
like mister television tower, which does not translate all that well.
But I was instantly amused as well, because someone's for
(14:14):
me ideas of TV as this kind of like stand
in parent or teacher, you know, father television. And it
also reminds me of that old Simpson's line from Treehouse
of Horror Television teacher mother, secret lover.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, are you kids hugging the TV?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah? I mean it's father television. He just has the
best of intentions for us. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I like this one. He seems sage and redolent with pleasure.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, And there's not a lot to him, I admit,
But it's another example of what they can be born on.
They can be born of local landmarks, you know, architecturalal
touches and so forth. But the next one I want
to mention is interesting because it seems to be very
mission orient like this is a yurikiyara that was dreamt up,
(15:04):
that was designed in order to fulfill a particular objective
in reaching the masses and conveying some very important safety ideas.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Oh, I'm intrigued, who is it?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
All right? This one is Sukimi moriy So this is
another one. I'm fairly certain that I got to see
this one in the wild, because we were in Osaka.
That's where this one is utilized. Osaka is a really
fun city, though, but we had a little harder time
navigating ourselves on the public transportation, so I wasn't as
on the ball about like getting pictures and chronicling him.
(15:38):
But basically, this is a large, slightly scary, purple and
pink creature with a single glowing eye with a yellow pupil,
and he lives in the gap in the subway stations.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Oh my lord, rob, I was trying to think, what
does he reminded me of? And he looks like a
purple version of the monsters from the Green Slime.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
He really does. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a sense of
the Green Slime to him. If we were to see
him animated, I bet he would have some very Miyazaki
esque elements. He kind of reminds me of cat Bus
a few times, but like a darkness cat bus. And
so his mission here is. And there are a lot
of I think objectively cute signs warning people of all ages,
(16:29):
but especially children, about the dangers of closing doors and
the gap on Japanese trains and subways, So Gaijen may
be more used to you know, mere mind the gap
and watch for the closing doors announcements, but Japanese subway
and train systems are generally more proactive on this. Oftentimes
there are automatic gates in front of the gap that
(16:50):
help you know, that help make sure that people are
not getting too close, And then you have initiatives like this,
And yeah, I love him because Sukima Morey isn't just
a cute lax fellow to make you feel chill about
public transportation. He is very cute, but he could also
be mistaken for one of the darker Pokemon. Perhaps you
(17:10):
know some of the ghost types. But again, his whole
deal is about reminding you of the dangers of the gap,
so he needs to be a little bit scary, even
if he is not malicious. Like, I want to be clear,
Sukima Moury is not here to grab your children and
pull them into the gap.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
I gotta say, it looks like that in some of
the pictures you've supplied below, Like he's peeking out below
the train with his like fingers ready as a child
is wandering by. It looks like he's going to snatch
the child.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Right. This has led to some comparisons in the West
to Pennywise, the dancing clown, you know, the lurking and
the sewer to pull children down. That is not what
Sukima Moury is about. Okay, he is here. He's friendly,
but he is scary because he is scaring you away
from the dangerous part of the train, or one of
(17:59):
the dangerous parts, because again, remember he is a creature
of the gap. His name quite literally means the gap,
get go. And he was created by j R. West Railways,
again largely a serve as a reminder for children and
adults and parents, kind of a nursery bogie, you know,
to scare kids away from the danger zone. And this
(18:22):
was in response to apparently troubling stats at the time
about gap related accidents with kids. So you know, there
was a real reason to roll out this mascot. It
wasn't just a situation where wouldn't it be cool if
we had a cute mascot. This again seemed to have
been a very mission first scenario.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
We need a Jenny Green Teeth of the subways exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah. He's also really down on cell phone use on
the train and on the move, especially among parents who
should be helping their kids navigate that gap, and you know,
not get a footstuck or anything. We're told that he
does love to dance, and I love this detail. He
sleeps amone the many lost things in the gap, so
there are various images of him like sleeping around like
(19:05):
lost shoes and lost cell phones and so forth, like
sort of sleeping in the junk down there, his own
treasure trove. He loves declaires, So you know, you do
have some just sort of like neutral information about him,
and we can we can relate to that.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I guess, huh, is that like a thing people drop
a Claire's through the gap? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I mean maybe one person dropped in a Claire and
he was like, this is good. I'm a fan. Now
I wait other Eclaires to be dropped into the gap.
So again, it would be unfair to Classifyzukimamori as a
malevolent force, but he's at least adjacent to dangerous realities
and as such, you know, he reminds me a bit
of past discussions of things like Jenny Green Teeth and indeed,
(19:47):
like the Kappa, you know, a superstitious supernatural monster to
warn people away from water related dangers, and in this case,
it's it's subway oriented.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yes, but though as soon as I said Jenny green
Teeth a few moments ago, I did realize, no, that's
still not quite right, because Jenny green Teeth does want
to snatch the children and Sukima Mouri does not.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
That's right. Yeah, The the energy here seems to be
to amuse, to entertain, but also to be a little
bit scary, because he is a scary but cute creature
that comes from a place that you should be moral,
weirre of and you should have a little more uncertainty about,
because it is like a dangerous in between zone when
boarding the train. So look him up. This one's There
(20:29):
are a lot of interesting posters and images of this
guy and some interesting reactions to him. But he's doing
good work, so I applaud him.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
So say we all.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
All right, Now this brings us to some more cultural
connections that we can make about our euro Kiara. So
most cultures have their various mythological and folkloric creatures. Obviously
we talk about a lot of them on the show.
We're always trying to drag him in from different parts
of the world, and it is, but it is often
observed that Japanese culture offers a particularly powerful trifecta of
(21:03):
cultural influences that may help us understand some of the
energy underlying the appeal of their mascots, of their hero
ki era. You know, why are they such a big
deal compared to other parts of the world that also
have cute, you know, imaginary beings that may be invoked
in various ad campaigns and public awareness and typical mascot
(21:24):
work and so forth. And on one hand, there is
certainly and this is you know, sit in a lot
a lot of sources we're looking at. There is the
polytheistic nature of Japan's Shinto religion and the presence of
supernatural kami in all things in Shintoism. So this absolutely
can't be overlooked. You know. It's it's a traditional worldview
(21:48):
in which there are multiple supernatural agents of power that
can reside in pretty much anything that's very sort of
like fast and loose. There's a lot more to Shintoism
than that, but basically, like in terms of like the
key points we might reference in understanding something as far
far more simple as Japanese mascots. Essentially, you can look
(22:12):
at that Shintoism as one possible leg of understanding them culturally. Now,
I think we do have to also be careful here
not to other the situation too much, because while there
does seem to be a uniquely Japanese emphasis in play here,
we can of course point to the coexistence of various mythic, folkloric,
and otherwise at least supernatural adjacent beings in various cultures,
(22:32):
regardless of the dominant religion or religions in that culture,
and beings from outside traditions have a way of working
their way into even those religions, at least into the periphery. Okay,
So there's Shintoism, and then, as we we've already referred
to several examples of this, but they're also the yokai,
which we've discussed in greater detail on the show before,
(22:53):
a catch all for various monsters, supernatural phenomenon and ghosts.
Though yuri, which are more in line with the haunting
ghosts of Western tradition, are kind of their own separate category.
Yokai ghosts are kind of they're more in line with
this idea of kami and that they're they're everywhere, and
they might be just completely neutral to humans, or they
(23:14):
might be a little bit mischievous. It just depends. So
you know, we've talked about them before. They occur in
various places throughout one's daily life, according to the traditions,
often associated with things such as bathrooms, restaurant, kitchens, alleys,
and so forth. And there's a very strong case to
be made that the Pokemon as well owe a lot
(23:35):
of their popularity to these traditions. And various Pokemon are
directly based on yokai, and some yokai and some Pokemon
are also uukiara, so you know, it's all kind of interconnected.
I should also know that we've discussed sukumogami on the
show before, household objects that are thought to become animant
(23:56):
through age and Japanese traditions. There seems to be this
slide towards personification, which of course ties into the very
basic human tendency to identify human like qualities and animals, plants,
and various inanimate or even non corporeal things. I think
sometimes examples like this from another culture just give us
the distance to recognize the larger global phenomena. Uh huh. Also,
(24:21):
kind I'm going to present as kind of like the
third leg of the tripod here potentially to understand eurokiara
as and this also ties into just sort of cuteness
in general in kawai. But as Eddie yl Chang points
out in the twenty eighteen article, let the Eurokiara do
the job, there's also this long standing popularity of small
(24:41):
things in Japanese culture, particularly the small sculpture art form
of netsuki, combined with long standing appreciation for animal forms
and cute things in general.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
All Right, so you've got this sort of pyramid of
different influences that could be feeding into the EUROQR phenomena.
On one hand, the traditional Shinto beliefs about the spirits
or entities all throughout nature. On the other hand, you've
got the sort of yokai, the various sort of like
monsters or beings that we've talked about on the show.
(25:14):
And then also this tradition of making these cute small
sculptures like netsuki. Specifically regarding the one leg of the
tripod here of yokai, I wanted to come back to
(25:37):
something from an essay that I mentioned in part one.
So and the last time I talked about the essay
about Kumaman the bear or not Bear Yurukyara of the
Kumamoto Prefecture. This essay was called Kumaman, Japan's surprisingly cheeky mascot.
That was in a book called Introducing Japanese Popular Culture
(26:00):
three from Rutledge, edited by Elisa Friedman. The essay was
by Deborah j Ochi, and this part that I'm about
to mention was in the context of a paragraph talking
about how urukia are sometimes deployed by authorities after large,
frightening public events. One big example is the March twenty
(26:21):
eleven earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear incident at Fukushima, after
which Ochi says that the number of mascots in Japan increased,
as did the perception of their healing power for the people.
And I've also read that the figure of Kumaman specifically
was widely used to comfort the public after the devastating
(26:42):
twenty sixteen Kumamoto earthquakes. So there's a sense that part
of the role, part of the cultural role of these
like these sort of cute, positive informal characters, is that
they help people feel better after a tragic event. On
the topic of linking kumaman to pre existing yokai, here's
(27:03):
the quote I wanted to discuss Ochi writes quote. During
the COVID nineteen pandemic, yurukiara were again mobilized across the
linguistic landscape, appearing on public notices and backdrops for televised
official announcements. Kumaman occasionally appeared along with his Kumamoto ancestor Amabi,
(27:24):
a folkloric yokai spirit associated with pandemic relief who was
also widely used. So I had to learn more about
this Amabi, and I did so by consulting the Book
of Yokai by the folklorist Michael Dylan Foster. I've talked
about this book before on the show. He is a
scholar currently affiliated with UC Davis, and the section on
(27:46):
the Amabi, I think it's from the expanded recent edition
of the book. So, according to Foster, the earliest image
we have of this yokai is printed on a kawaraban
broadsheet from the year eighteen forty six. Now, kooraban means
tile block printing, and it was a type of media
(28:08):
similar to a newspaper or a tabloid, considered very ephemeral,
so printed roughly on cheap paper, with the idea that
it would be read once and then tossed away, and
it was used in the Edo period for reporting major
news events and for reporting official announcements, but also on scandals, rumors,
(28:30):
and gossip, including things of a supernatural character. So you
might read about the effects of a recent typhoon, you
might read about the siege of a castle or a
murder in the city. But also you might read about
a ghost woman who turned into a giant spider.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Why not, I mean, it's basically just an extension of
your your rumor mill and your gossip columns, right, I
don't want to know what the ghost women are up
to around town.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yes, So there is a particular eighteen forty six Korabon
prison deserved in the library of Kyoto University that includes
both a narrative and an illustration about a Kumamoto official's
encounter with a spirit from the ocean. So the text
reads as follows in translation, every night, something brightly lit
(29:16):
would appear in the sea of he Go, and that's
off of a present day Kumamoto Prefecture. When a local
official went out to take a look, something like what
is in the picture here appeared and said, I live
in the sea and am called Amabi. For the next
six years, there will be abundant harvests throughout the provinces,
(29:38):
but disease will spread. So make haste to copy an
image of me and show it to the people. So
saying it returned back into the sea. And Rob, I've
included here a photograph of this broadsheet, including the illustration.
So this is the first representation of the Amabi and
the text that showed up next to it. Now, I
(30:00):
was thinking, man, the face really reminds me of something,
but I was not able to figure out what it was.
Robin the notes you figured out what it was it
was reminding me of. But the Amabi is a three
legged Avian mermaid. So it's got a bird's beak, a
diamond diamond shaped eyes, though we can usually only see
(30:22):
one of its eyes because its head is turned in profile.
It's got long hair reaching down to her feet, and
of which there are three by the way. She has
three feet, three toes on each foot, and a body
covered in shingled rounded scales like a fish. But I
was trying to think, what does the face remind me of?
And you got it exactly what is it?
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Oh? Man? I thought it was just me. But I
look at this creature and monstrous aspects of the creature aside,
I get strong Kathy vite Kathy from your caemical newspaper
cartoon section.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yes, it's Kathy. It's the combination of like the hair
and something about the eye.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
It's yeah, like Kathy has like her eyes are depicted
like so close to each other they're touching. And then yeah,
the long hair and sort of the general shape of
Kathy is also present in this creature from the sea.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
So the Amabi in this illustration is not fearsome, I
will say it. Instead, it looks strange, and I think
it is supposed to look strange, but it's closer to
cute than scary. Yes, I would agree, but again the
details of the narrative. So off the coast of what
is now Kumamoto, people would see a bright light in
(31:34):
the darkness at night. An official goes out there to
figure out what it is. I guess he goes out
in a boat, though it doesn't say how he investigated.
I'm assuming I'm picturing a boat trip sees this three
legged avan mermaid with a beak. It says, I live
in the sea. I'm called a mobbi. You're gonna have
six years of good harvests, but you are also going
(31:55):
to have an epidemic of deadly disease. Share my picture
with people and the implicate that I read into it here,
and I think what it is meant is that sharing
the image will prevent the disease from spreading. And then
finally the yokai goes back underneath the waves. Now, Foster
writes that this is the first written record we have
(32:17):
of belief in the Amabi, but there is a very
similar being that slightly precedes it, called the Amabiko or
sometimes Amahiko, which appears in at least eleven documents from
the eighteen forties through the eighteen eighties, and Foster cites
a folklore scholar named Yumoto Koichi who argues that these
are actually the same creature and that Amabi is simply
(32:40):
a transcription error of the word amabiko that caught on
and then got copied done the line. So possibly the same,
possibly different, but in either case they're very similar creatures.
What's the deal with the amabiko? Some are said to
rise out of the sea, others appear in the mountains,
but they tend to give similar predictions and warnings to
(33:00):
what we heard in the first story. For example, there's
an eighteen forty four story of an amabiko that appears
in the Bay of Echigo and says disease is gonna
spread and seven out of ten people in Japan are
going to die. But if you look at a picture
of me, you will be spared. And then rob I've
attached a picture of what the amabiko looks like in
(33:21):
this eighteen forty four document. Different kind of look more
like a three legged black octopus dolphin.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yes, I think that's an accurate description. Yeah, totally different characters. Still,
I wouldn't say hmm, I wouldn't say fearsome, but I
get a far more more of a I get far
more of a neutral vibe off of this guy. I
don't know for sure if he leans more benevolent or benevolent. Yeah, different,
(33:48):
different sort of creature, but definitely three legs. You know.
The sort of snout is still there, so I can
see I can see the lineage between these two designs.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah, ambiguous, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
But I mean by according to the story, clearly wants
to help or wants to exploit an upcoming disaster or
fear of disaster into getting people to look at pictures
of him.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Right, So a pattern emerges between these stories. There will
be an epidemic, many will die, but if you see
a picture of me, you will live. So spread this
illustration far and wide. And it's funny because this reminds
me of stuff in the modern era, like those email
forwards you would get in the early two thousands that
are like, you know, you will see a ghost in
the mirror and die three days from now unless you
(34:32):
send this email to ten of your friends.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, because as far as I'm understanding, there's nothing really
informational in this image. It's not like study this, you know,
it's not like various big pieces of religious art, you know,
particularly I'm thinking like Tibetan Buddhism where or also you
see the examples of this in Buddhism in Japan, where
like a very complex piece has a number of messages
to convey to you about, say, how to reach meditative
(34:57):
states and so forth. This is just a picture of
their very simple drawing of a strange creature. And it's
just it's more like, know that I exist, see what
I look like, and that will give you an advantage
against disease.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah. I don't think there's a lesson in how it looks.
I think it's just apotropeic magic. It's like seeing me
gives you magical protection against the disease that's coming.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And you know that's this good news for the viewer. Right,
It's like, what do I have to do to give
this retection? Look at a picture I'm in. Yeah, don't
even have to read anything. It's easy to do. But also,
if you want to help your friends, you better make
a copy of this picture or buy another copy of
the broadsheet and show it to them. So it has
great mimetic power because it includes its own intrinsic motivation
(35:39):
to spread the meme. Interesting now, according to.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Foster, the amabi and the Amabiko are not even the
only yokai that give these types of warnings and offer
protection through replication and spreading of the image. He also
cites a creature called the kudabe, which does pretty much
the same thing. There's the Jingjahime, which has the body
of a fish and the head of a woman, but
(36:02):
with two horns. She predicts both seven years of plenty,
but also the spread of a deadly disease, a named
disease in this case called koori, and if you draw
her picture and share it with everyone you know, they
will be spared. There's another one called the hime Uo,
which is said in an Edo based tale to have
emerged off the coast of the island of Hirado. And
(36:25):
interesting detail here, Foster writes, quote Hirado might have been
selected as the location for the hime Uo because it
was a distant, marginal location and also a region historically
associated with foreign ships and traders, and thus a gateway
for both prosperity and potential disease.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
So it's interesting that in the Edo period there are
lots of yokai with the power of prophecy. They're predicting
the future, often predicting disease, epidemics and plague, often predicting
bounty or both at the same time. And the image
of this creature can provide apotropaic immunity to anyone who
lays eyes on it, So you better copy it quickly
(37:06):
and show it to everyone you know. And these are
categorized by some scholars such as Eumoto Koichi as yoginju
or prophecy beasts, and Foster talks about the many different
kinds of motivations somebody might have to spread a story
like this. On one hand, it could just be a
desire to excite and entertain the reader, you know, it's
(37:27):
kind of like an interesting, entertaining story. In some cases,
it could be a simple desire to sell broad sheets.
In some cases, it could be a genuine desire to
give people the hope of protection in the face of frightening,
uncontrollable forces like infectious disease.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Oh, that's a great point, and it ties into what
we've been talking about too. Like a golden fish on
your roof is not going to actually protect you against fire,
but it gives you that sense of hope. It gives
you like this additional layer on top of knowledge of
preparation or statistics and so forth. Yeah, and you know,
I can see how that would apply to our Eurokiara
(38:04):
as well. You know, here's one of these cute creatures
giving me information, giving me helpful advice. But there is
an optimism to it. There's a hope intrinsic in the
design of the creature that is giving me this information.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Exactly right, and that in fact brings us back to
the Amabi's appearance during the COVID pandemic. So before twenty twenty,
the amabi was a relatively obscure okai foster it says,
you know, it probably would have only been known to
like certain types of historians or you know, like real
hobbyists or obsessives, though it did appear in some work
(38:39):
by the manga artist Mazuki Shigeru in the nineteen eighties.
But after news of COVID nineteen first began to spread
in early twenty twenty, the image of the amabi surged
in popularity on the Internet. Foster mentions several posts on
Twitter from February and even one at the end of
January twenty twenty that included renderings of the amabi communicated
(39:03):
the lore that we've just talked about, and I think
jokingly encouraged the proliferation of its image as a protective
measure against infection. And while it's pretty clear to me
that most of these posts had a spirit of irony
about them, like the use of the amabi was sort
of meant as kidding, the amabi really caught on as
(39:23):
a symbol of defense and vigilance against the virus both
virtually and in physical media and consumer culture. So there
was like a viral Twitter hashtag called Amabi Challenge where
people posted alongside they posted the hashtag along with like
images of homemade renderings of the merd bird, and the
(39:47):
Amabi imagery was also used on all kinds of products,
from like keychains, t shirts, tote bags, to rice crackers
and beer. There were actual invocations of the Amabi in
public religious rituals and prayer, and then eventually the Japanese
Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officially produced an Amabi
logo warning people that they could spread COVID nineteen without
(40:11):
realizing it and advising people to take measures to limit exposure.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Ah, and you included this this this poster art for
me here in our outline, and I believe I did,
in fact see this during my travels in Japan. So
either they're still putting them up, or there's still you know,
there's still some out there that haven't been digging down,
or people keep putting them up. Yeah, because again that's
kind of the that's what you're encouraged to do with
the Amabi.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Yeah, So I think it's interesting connecting this back to
the urukiara we were talking about, because both the Amabi
and kumaman were in some cases used in top down
public health messaging and in bottom up cultural processing of
events during the COVID pandemic. And I wonder if this
(40:56):
tells us anything about the broader role filled by urukiara
and how that relates to this yokai. I want to
read a passage from Foster here. Foster writes, quote the
Amabi's sudden rise exemplifies the eloquent adaptability of yokai, with
perfect ease and no contradiction. The Amabi straddles life and
death concerns like COVID nineteen and lighthearted fun t shirts
(41:20):
and beer, vernacular creativity, individuals circulating their own versions and
institutional promotion a government icon, heartfelt belief in religious ceremonies,
and rampant commodification in charms and key chains. So he
notes that this kind of goes along with the fact
that beliefs about yokai seem to thrive in the context
(41:44):
of uncertainty, as like a way of coping with mysterious
threats and questions that can't be answered or can't yet
be answered. I think we can all recall those like
early months of the pandemic when there was just like
so much uncertainty and we just didn't you know, there's
just like so much not knowing what to do, and
so the beliefs of this kind sort of provide people
(42:08):
a sense of control in some way. And while the
traditional apotropaic use of the amabi image may have been
interpreted as like literally efficacious in protecting against disease back
in the day, the way I'm reading it is that
I think the majority of the use in the early
months of twenty twenty was more playful and symbolic. Not
(42:30):
that most people sharing it thought that it would literally
mechanistically prevent the virus from entering and infecting their tissues,
but that it actually would do something, because of course,
on one hand, would provide a type of psychological comfort
and that feeling of control over an uncontrollable situation, but
also that by spreading the image of the okai you
(42:54):
were increasing front of mind public consciousness of the virus,
which meant people would be more likely to take actual
direct steps to limit contagion. And it strikes me that
apart from messaging about the pandemic, you're a kiara like
kumaman have a similar dual function. There's like, on one hand
you have emotional comfort, and then on the other hand
(43:16):
you have information consciousness, and that could mean either spreading
information directly, like telling you something you don't know, or
increasing the salience of information you already have, making you
think about what you do know.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, I mean it's enough to if you wanted to
go all ancient astronauts on this, you could say that
Amabe was an actual visitor from space and or the
ocean did realize that that information is one of the
key tools you can use against pandemics, and was like, hey,
start spreading images of me in response to illness. It's
(43:52):
not going to really pay off right away, but there
will come a time where this could make some small difference.
But anyway, obviously I love this idea that you know,
these various euroka ara much like these older forms. You
know that again they have the information, they also have
this emotional comfort like you've been discussing that brings with it,
(44:13):
you know, sort of cuteness and hope all sort of
tied together in a package. And I wish there was
more of this in the world, you know, because aside
from messaging aim directly at children, I feel like so
much of the more serious messaging out there, at least
in the US, is it's just purely fear based, or
at least that's how it often feels to me. You know,
sometimes there's this layer of hope to it, or an
(44:35):
image of like a smiling adult where it's like, oh,
this is what happiness looks like, this is what this
is what protection looks like, or so forth, or you know,
the hope is wrapped up in the purchase of something
that's going to protect you from the scary thing. And
I don't know, I would rather live in a culture
of cuteness and hope than a culture of fear. I
feel like we could overall, we could all push things
(44:57):
a little more towards hope and cuteness from just the
pure fear. I mean, the fear is always going to
be there. The cuteness and the hope doesn't erase that fear.
But you know, if it makes it feel a little
like if your experience going to the subway is is
less like, don't you dare get near the gap because
you'll be torn in half, you know, less shake hands
with danger and more Urukiara. Sorry, it's a bit of
(45:20):
a rant there.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Oh yeah, there's a difference between taking proper precautions and
wallowing in fear.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah yeah, and realizing that that kind of messaging, that
sort of leveling of the message can apply to everybody
and not just children, you know, and you can do
it in a way that's also not you know, sugarcoating anything.
Or maybe you are sugarcoating it a little bit, but
they're still medicine in the middle. Yeah, all right, we're
gonna go ahead and close out this episode, but we'd
love to hear from everyone out there. What are your
(45:50):
experiences with Urukiara, with the lax mascots, what are your
favorites right in because we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder, This Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode.
On Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. You can get
all of this any Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Huge, thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
FO
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