On Studio 360 this weekend, I heard about cute mascots adopted by Japanese corporations. What I couldn’t catch was the Japanese word for them. It sounded something like ryo chyura or rya kyura. Does anyone know the correct term?
A couple things come to mind:
They’re called masukotto, just a Japanization of “mascot.”
Or maybe ime-ji kyara, “image character.”
Or maybe just kyara, “character.”
Nothing more specialized comes to mind.
I’m pretty certain it started with an r sound. You can listen to the segment here. It’s the second segment, titled “Murakami.” It’s about 5-6 minutes in.
Could it be yuru chara or yuru kyara?
The kyara part sounds right = character.
“Yuru” doesn’t ring a bell.
I asked my Japanese wife, too. Might be a new Japanese word; they’re created all the time. I suspect that some of our other Japanophiles will have insights.
Isamashii houmu rogo desu ne!
What a brave corporate logo!
The article said that many Japanese corporations and governmental bodies adopt these cute (kawaii?) mascots. Can anyone point me to examples?
The lady speaking in the recording doesn’t know how to pronounce things correctly, so I can’t be certain, but it sounds to me like she’s saying Rio Kyara (リオキャラ.) Which makes me think that this may be a case of
Whitey points to a picture of Sanrio and says, “What do you call those?”
Japanese person looks at Sanrio and says “Rio Kyara”–short for Sanrio
In other words, whitey got the wrong word.
Another possibility is Riyou Kyara (利用キャラ–the character we use), but referring to your company mascott so machiavelianly makes me think option number 1 is more likely.
The word is yuru-kyara. Yuru as in yurui (loose), and kyara as in character. It’s a new word, coined by Miura Jun whose book Yuru-kyara dai zukan (Illustrated Guide to Yuru-kyara) came out last year. It refers to ridiculous made-up mascots used by local government bodies (usually towns and cities) to promote their area or events organized by them.
Yep, google is positive for yuru kyara. Though over half of the links specifically mentioned Miura, so this may be a word of the moment thing (or it might take off and kill masukotto.)
One of the scarier ones that turned up is the Kyoto Tower mascott. Honestly my first thought was, “So that’s what a dying sperm looks like…”
He is disrepectful to dirt, after all.