To make the most of the last day of our Japan Rail Pass validity, we took a completely frivolous 500km trip on the Kyushu Shinkansen to Kumamoto and Kagoshima, only to backtrack all the way to Fukuoka, our destination for the night.
Kumamoto Prefecture made international headlines in April 2016 for the two deadly earthquakes (magnitudes 6.2 and 7.3) that struck the region two days apart, which were then followed by over 130 aftershocks. Despite the prevalence of seismic activity across Japan, this was a particularly devastating and disruptive series of tremors. The reason we were going there for a quick one hour visit was to see a bear.
Japan has a curious obsession with yuru-kyara: intentionally cute mascots that are created as ambassadors for everything from tourist attractions to companies of almost any size (though sometimes there’s a public outcry if they aren’t cute enough, as we found out in Kanazawa). To anyone from anywhere else in the world, this can all seem downright bizarre. A sub-type of yuru-kyara are gotochi-kyara, or “local characters”, which specifically represent places in Japan.
Kumamon is the red-cheeked black bear from Kumamoto Prefecture but, unlike his compatriots, his fame and popularity has soared to stratospheric levels in a ridiculously short space of time.
Until 2010, Kumamoto Prefecture wasn’t known for much. It’s a largely agricultural region known for growing melons and strawberries. But when the new Kyushu Shinkansen that stopped at Kumamoto was opened for the first time, it connected the city to the rest of the country through the high-speed rail network. Local government officials were keen to use this opportunity to promote tourism to the city and the wider region so they commissioned the creation of a new mascot. Kuma is Japanese for bear and Mon is local slang for man. Paired with a mischievous personality, he made his first headlines when the city announced that he was missing, having rushed off to Osaka to encourage residents there to take a trip on the new train line. The stunt worked and within the first year of his creation, Kumamon was voted the most popular yuru-kyara in the country, from a field of over 1,700 mascots!
In what turned out to be one of the best possible marketing moves, the Governor of Kumamoto chose to waive all licensing fees to encourage manufacturers to use Kumamon’s image royalty free. Rather than pay a fee, companies seeking licensing permission have to commit to support Kumamoto to use the bear’s image, either by using locally manufactured parts, ingredients or suppliers, or by promoting the region for tourism on the packaging of the product. Over 100,000 different products now bear the image of Kumamon, from stickers and notebooks through to cars and an aeroplane (operated by one of Japan’s low-cost carriers). Sales of Kumamon-licensed products now exceed $1bn per year. That’s a lot of publicity for a rural prefecture no one knew about only a few years ago.
To put into context just how remarkable the bear’s success has been, the city of Osaka has around 45 different mascots promoting various aspects and they regularly have to fend off calls to be culled due to lack of interest.
Kumamon is a veritable rock star among yuru-kyara who’s showing no sign of slowing down.
Jan & Warren's Spot 
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