Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Ollie Barder covers Japanese pop-culture and gaming from Tokyo. Kumamon is the mascot for Kumamoto Prefecture and it initially ...

Representing everything from prisons to safe sex, Japan has literally thousands of mascots, ranging from the uber-cute to the frankly disturbing. As Tokyo 2020 organisers unveil the mascot for the ...

A consortium of Japanese media companies is partnering with U.S. animation studio Tonko House to make an animation series starring Kumamon. The hugely popular character is the mascot of Kumamoto, a ...

MIYAZAKI, Japan — For some of Japan’s most adored celebrities, the journey to fame starts in a converted Internet cafe above a bowling alley in Miyazaki. This is where Hiromi Kano runs her unlikely ...

Japanese students had to select from three pairs of mascots. — -- Voting for the selection of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic mascots ended Thursday. Japanese elementary students had 73 ...

Tokyo's culture places a lot of emphasis on mascots. Those videos that we think are adorably weird of Pikachu parades are old-hat in Japan. Japan's eccentricities are well-documented, with the ...

More than 100 mascots promoting the charms of their local regions gathered on Saturday for a festival in the western Japan prefecture ...

The importance of dogs should never be understated. One town in Japan is taking this to heart — its appointed its area’s official mascot as Yukimaru Skywalker, a mechanical drone puppy who flies above ...

(TOKYO) — The schoolchildren have had their say: A pair of futuristic digital characters will be the mascots for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. Organizers unveiled the winning designs at a ...

Japan has pulled a mascot representing a cartoon tritium atom happily floating around in wastewater. People said the cuteness of the mascot undermined a serious issue, local media reported. Japan ...

One week after one of the show’s grittiest deep-dives, an exhaustive segment on the Muller report, Last Week Tonight released the YouTube clip of some “high-end nonsense”: a hilarious and weirdly ...