Abstract
This paper addresses an emerging pop culture trend in Japan involving yuru-charas. Yuru-charas are local mascot characters who work for cities and prefectures and are expected to serve as new tools for tourism promotion. Among several activities in which the yuru-charas engage, we studied their use of Twitter for public relations. We collected the tweet data of 16 major yuru-charas, as well as the data of their followers. Using three indexes for tweet data and another three indexes for follower data, we analysed the characteristics of the yuru-charas’ Twitter use and their followers. As a result, we found that the yuru-charas seem to have different policies regarding Twitter use but the popular yuru-charas share several common characteristics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Birkett, M. (2012). Amateur mascots on the loose: The pragmatics of Kawaii (Cute). Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.
Borg, I., & Groenen, P. (2005). Modern multidimensional scaling: Theory and applications (2nd ed.). Springer.
Burkhalter, J. N. (Ed.). (2015). Maximizing commerce and marketing strategies through micro-blogging. IGI Global.
Executive Committee of Yuru-chara Grand Prix. (2016). Yuru-chara GP official web site. Retrieved from http://www.yurugp.jp/ (in Japanese).
Hirota, A. (2014). Business ecosystem model in regional activation—case of ‘KUMAMOTO SURPRISE’ and ‘KUMAMON’. Journal of the Japan Association of Regional Development and Vitalization, 5, 347–356. (in Japanese).
Hotogi, M., & Hagiwara, M. (2015). Analyses of local mascot characters and proposal of automatic character creation system using affective words. International Journal of Affective Engineering, 14(4), 299–307.
Jiyavorananda, S., Ishikawa, H., Sakai, S., Yamanaka, K., Yamanaka, T., & Masuda, T. (2016). Elucidation of factors predicting the impression of ‘Yuru-sa’ in Japanese Yuru-kyara mascot characters. International Journal of Affective Engineering, 15(3), 231–238.
JTS Group. (2016). YURU-CHARASESSION with UMI☆KUUN. Retrieved from http://www.japan-expo-paris.com/en/programme/yuru-chara-session-with-umikuun_1389.htm.
Kaneko, K. (2013). An analysis of Japan’s popular cultural tourism: Constructing Japan’s self-image as a provider of ‘unique’ culture. Global Journal of Human-Social Science Research, 13(4).
Kumamoto Prefecture. (2016). 2015 KUMAMON product use and annual sales. Retrieved from https://www.pref.kumamoto.jp/common/UploadFileOutput.ashx?c_id=3&id=14996&sub_id=1&flid=60627 (in Japanese).
McGray, D. (2002). Japan’s gross national cool. Foreign Policy, 130, 44–54.
MacWilliams, M. W. (2014). Japanese visual culture: Explorations in the world of manga and anime. New York: Routledge.
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. (2015). Cool Japan initiative. Retrieved from http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/mono_info_service/mono/creative/150706CJInitiativeJuly.pdf.
Oricon Style. (2009). Interview with Jun Miura. Retrieved from http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/71089/full/ (in Japanese).
Rogers, S. (2014). What fuels a tweet’s engagement? Retrieved from http://blog.twitter.com/2014/what-fuels-a-tweets-engagement.
Ross, P. (2014). Photos are still king on Facebook. Retrieved from http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/2149-photos-are-still-king-on-facebook.
Suzuki, S., & Morimoto, S. (2014). Electronic internal marketing for tourism: A new tourism marketing approach. In 2014 11th International Conference on E-Business (ICE-B) IEEE.
Yamamura, T. (2015). Contents for tourism promotion and prefectural government policy: The case of saitama prefecture. The Theory and Practice of Contents Tourism, 46–50.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the mangers of the yuru-charas listed in Table 1 who permitted us to use the illustrations of the yuru-charas in this paper. In addition, copyright of the illustrations of yuru-charas and/or licence number are as follows:
Kumamon: ©2010 kumamoto pref. Kumamon. Fukka-chan: ©Fukaya City. Takinomichi Yuzuru: license no.275. Sanomaru: ©2011 Sano city Sanomaru. Shimane Tourism Mascot “shimanekko”: license agreement SHIMAKANREN No.3794. Daimyo of Success, Ieyasu Kun: ©2011 Hamamatsu City. Choruru: ©Yamaguchi prefecture., license no.100-75. Shippei: ©Iwata City. Mican: ©2011 ehime pref. mican, license no.2810012. Merugyu-kun: ©OYABE CITY 2008, license no.219. Tochisuke: ©2014 Tochigi City Tochisuke.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Suzuki, S., Kurata, Y. (2017). An Analysis of Tweets by Local Mascot Characters for Regional Promotions, Called Yuru-Charas, and Their Followers in Japan. In: Schegg, R., Stangl, B. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2017. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51168-9_51
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51168-9_51
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51167-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51168-9
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)