Japan Pulse

Acccording to a poll carried out by the Institute for Advertising Research Softbank’s Shirato Family series of commercials have been voted most popular with Japanese audiences for the third year running. To decide the nation’s favorite ad, the institute interviewed 3,000 respondents, ages 6 to 89. The campaigns in second and third place also came from cell-phone companies: KDDI and NTT DoCoMo, respectively. Fourth place went to Lotte for their extremely successful Fit’s viral-video dance campaign, which featured a catchy song-and-dance routine and challenged viewers to perform the dance themselves and upload it to YouTube.

Much of the success of the Shirato campaign has been attributed to the charms of pop idol/actress Aya Ueto (who plays the family’s younger sister character), but what really makes the commercials stand out is that, despite its depiction of a “typical” Japanese family, the women rule the roost, otousan (father) just happens to be a white dog and onisan (elder brother) is played by African-American actor Dante Carver.

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Free manga browsing at a convenience store

In a recent interview with Monocle Magazine, Japanamerica author and pop culture stalwart Roland Kelts was asked about Meiji University’s plans for a manga library. “When you make a Rock and Roll museum, it means that Rock and Roll is dead,” he said. “And when you build a manga museum, to some extent it means that there is an end in sight.”

Perhaps in its present form, yes. Kelts doesn’t believe that manga are going away, but domestic sales are down, with print media competing with – and frequently losing to – digital platforms on cell phones and the Internet. Don’t worry, he explains, manga are just in the process of adapting to the new landscape. Downloadable manga for your cell phone are but one example.

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Shall I connect to the Internet, master?

NTT DoCoMo, evidently feeling that customers are just not attached enough to their mobile phones, has been developing a new range of Machi-Chara (virtual characters) that can help customers manage their cell-phone correspondence. “Even your older brother will  get angry with you if you ignore messages,” explained the booth babe at the recent CEATEC IT and electronics exhibition in Makuhari Messe.

These cute animated characters have been around for awhile, typically roaming around the users’ screen and reacting to incoming calls and messages, or even helping you with your appointments diary. What’s different about the new, yet-to-be-released range is that they are exploiting otaku moe (character love) fetishes to the max and messages from them are designed to have a more personal touch. For example, the maid in her frilly white apron might ask you, “May I connect to the Web site, master?”

There are three characters in total: older brother, younger sister and maid. The first is aimed at women and the latter two at men, presumably the logic being that women enjoy being bossed around by an angry older brother while men prefer to assume a dominant role with their personal online slave. We expect this application is going to be extremely popular amongst male anime fans.

DoCoMo unveiled a very nice pair of wood-encased mobile phones a few days ago. The prototypes developed by Sharp and Olympus are made from cypress trees that have been selectively cut from ecologically sustainable forests. The product, sweetly named “Touch Wood,” is part of the more trees campaign that was started by musician Ryuichi Sakamoto back in 2007. The campaign is aimed at maintaining and replanting forest in Japan.

With the rise of the Mori Girl (forest girl) trend, not to mention increased public concern for the environment, we can see more natural products coming out of the woodwork. Here’s a few that are already available:

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