'Prince Pickles' Puts Friendly Face on Japan's Iraq Deployment

"Cuddly Characters Front Japan's Military Aspirations" - AP (Tokyo), as published by the International Herald Tribune (Paris), 16 February 2007

TOKYO: Prince Pickles, a perky cartoon character with saucer-round eyes, big dimples and tiny, boot-clad feet, poses in front of tanks, rappels from helicopters and shakes hands with smiling Iraqis. [Click through to IHT article for an illustration.]

The cutesy icon hardly calls to mind the Japanese military that conquered and pillaged its way across Asia during World War II, and that is just the way the country's leaders want it.

As Japan sheds its postwar pacifism and gears up to take a higher military profile in the world, it is enlisting cadres of cute characters and adorable mascots to put a gentle, harmless sheen on its deployments.

"Prince Pickles is our image character because he's very endearing, which is what Japan's military stands for," said Shotaro Yanagi, a Defense Agency official. "He's our mascot and appears in our pamphlets and stationery."

Such characters have long been used in Japan to win hearts and minds and to soften the image of authority.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police tries to lighten its stern image with Peopo, which looks like a cross between a rabbit and a space trooper. The cellphone company NTT DoCoMo has a smiley mushroom, while rival KDDI sports a squirrel with headphones.

The Japanese government hopes the same tactic can work overseas.

Foreign Minister Taro Aso has proposed sending animation or cartoon artists abroad as cultural ambassadors, and the government has named a panel of executives to advise ways to market Japanese animation and culture to foreign audiences.

Aso argues that warm feelings for Japanese animation can translate into warm feelings for Japanese foreign policy.

"The more positive images pop into a person's mind, the easier it becomes for Japan to get its views across," Aso said in a speech last year to budding artists at Tokyo's Digital Hollywood University, whom he called the "people involved with bringing Japanese culture to the world."...

For context, see this entertaining April 4, 2006 post to the Mutant Frog Travelogue blog.

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