OpEd: No Personality for Tokyo 2020 Mascots

This article originally appeared in Mainichi Shimbun. Click here to read the original column in Japanese.

Japanese imagination has produced some extraordinary creatures that have entertained on a global scale. There’s movie monsters Godzilla and Rodin. Hello Kitty shows a softer side while Sonic and Mario capture the bouncing energy of 21st Century life.

Fictional creatures, all undeniably creations of Japan. Each of them unforgettable.

Now meet the candidates to become the mascots for the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics in Japan.

Three pairs of prospective mascots have been selected from more than 2,000 entries submitted by the public earlier this year. These six finalists have been chosen by a committee of experts in graphic design, animation, fashion and sport.

The end result? Sorry, mascot experts. Forgettable.

In the case of these misfits, the expression that "a camel is a horse designed by a committee" could not be more true.

These mongrels are part human, part animal, part droid. One has a vague resemblance to a fox. Another looks like a Lucky Cat. The rest are a jumble of pretend creatures without personality.

Other than the Tokyo 2020 logo on the chest of each one it would take a fertile imagination to make a connection between any of these would-be mascots and the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo.

I guess I have seen too many mascots in my quarter-century of Olympic watching to get very excited about what usually turns out to be a bust. The annals of the Olympics are littered with forgotten mascots. Some forged by committee. Some created by design experts. All come to life with glowing optimism that they will be cherished and sought after by children.

But few ever succeed in building much interest. Some have been virtually ignored by the time of the opening ceremony.

Vinicius, the catlike mascot for Rio de Janeiro, got its name from one of Brazil’s most famous musicians. But this animal which represented all mammals in Brazil, was hardly seen during the Games.

Wenlock, London 2012’s odd shaped creature with a camera instead of an eye, was too weird to figure out. It was named for the town in England where the forerunner of the modern Olympics was first held 150 years ago.

At Beijing in 2008, the world met the Fuwa. The five mascots each came in one of the colors of the Olympic rings. They represented variously the Olympic flame and animals indigenous to China, such as the panda. The name of the group meant "welcome to Beijing".

So far there are not even names for these Japanese candidates -- just A, B and C. The same young people across Japan who will vote in their schools for their favorite mascot also get to choose a name once the winning design is chosen. Maybe they’ll do better than the committee approach.

And symbolism for Japan, for Tokyo? The anime style of drawing may be as close as it gets with these mascots. Cartoon characters maybe. But cuddly friends for seven-year-olds?

I have my favorites. Cobi, a Pyrenees Mountain dog, was the cheerful and whimsical mascot for Barcelona in 1992. He was used extensively officially and unofficially. A bootleg comic book from 1992 portrayed Cobi as an animal with an unquenchable appetite for sex. Definitely not kid’s stuff.

I am not suggesting that’s where Tokyo needs to go with its new mascots.

In fact one of my most favored mascots embodies sweetness and innocence. And actually there were four of them, the first and only quartet of Olympic mascots. They were the Snowlets, precious snow owls of the Japanese Alps, representing the four major islands of Japan.

It was hard not to love these feathered ambassadors of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.

Let’s see if the same will be said about Tokyo 2020’s A, B and C.

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Written by Ed Hula for Mainichi Shimbun.

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