Pop Culture and Kawaii

Japan has an exceptionally rich character culture (kyara). Characters from manga, anime, games and companies appear on everything from snacks to credit cards, and figures such as Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Pikachu, Anpanman and Rilakkuma are familiar across generations. Capsule toys (gachapon), prize machines and themed cafés extend the market.

Local governments and organisations use mascots called yuru-kyara, 'relaxed characters', often deliberately clumsy. Hikonyan, created for the 400th anniversary of Hikone Castle in 2007, started a boom, and Kumamon, the black bear of Kumamoto Prefecture created in 2010, became one of Japan's best-known characters. Annual mascot contests and fairs draw large crowds.

Harajuku, between Harajuku Station and Omotesandō in Shibuya, has been the centre of youth fashion since the 1970s and 1980s, when dancers and bands gathered on the pedestrianised streets near Yoyogi Park. Takeshita-dōri, a narrow shopping street, is lined with shops for clothes, accessories and colourful crêpes. From the 1990s Harajuku styles such as decora, gothic and Lolita fashion and colourful layered looks were documented by street-snap magazines such as FRUiTS and spread abroad.

The singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, who debuted in 2011, became an international face of Harajuku kawaii. Next to the youthful side streets, the boulevard of Omotesandō is a showcase of luxury flagship stores by leading architects.

Akihabara in Chiyoda Ward grew from a postwar black market for radio parts into Tokyo's 'Electric Town', and from the 1990s into the centre of otaku culture, the world of devoted fans of manga, anime, games and figures. Multi-storey shops sell manga, figures, trading cards and retro games, and maid cafés, where waitresses in costume greet customers as their masters, became a symbol of the district in the 2000s.

Other fan districts include Nakano Broadway, a shopping complex full of collectors' shops, Otome Road in Ikebukuro, known for goods aimed at female fans, and Den Den Town in Osaka's Nipponbashi. The word otaku, once pejorative, is now widely used with pride.

Cosplay, a Japanese contraction of 'costume play', is usually credited to the editor Takahashi Nobuyuki in the early 1980s. Fans dress as characters from manga, anime and games at events and conventions. The largest is the Comic Market (Comiket), held twice a year in Tokyo since 1975, where amateur artists sell self-published works (dōjinshi) to hundreds of thousands of visitors. The World Cosplay Summit has been held in Nagoya since 2003.

Fan culture is highly organised and has clear etiquette: photographers ask permission, costumes are changed on site, and cosplay in public outside designated events is generally avoided.

Idols (aidoru) are young singers and performers marketed through image, personality and closeness to fans rather than purely musical skill. Solo idols dominated the 1970s and 1980s; the 2000s brought large groups such as AKB48, founded in 2005 with its own theatre in Akihabara, where fans can meet members at handshake events and vote in popularity polls. Male idol groups have a similarly devoted following.

The idol system has attracted criticism for strict contracts, dating bans and pressure on young performers, and scandals at major agencies have led to public debate about the industry.