In a country where cuteness is an obsession, the southern Japanese city of Fukuoka boasts that its girls are the cutest of them all.
The city is trying to promote itself as the nation’s capital of cute through a campaign that, without any detectable irony, invites young ladies from around the country to register as a “resident” of Fukuoka in a new virtual administrative district called “Cute Ward.”
“Fukuoka women are cute — That is something we hear often from visitors,” says the official website for the Cute Ward — or Kawaii-Ku in Japanese.
「カワイイ区」とは
ReplyDelete福岡は女性がカワイイ」
福岡を訪れる人からよく聞く言葉です。
なぜ福岡の女性はカワイイのか、この視点で福岡の都市（まち）を改めて考えてみると、「豊かで健康的な食べもの」や、「コンパクトな都市スケール」、「アジアと交流してきた歴史や風土」など、女性をカワイくする要素がそのまま福岡の持っている魅力だということに気づきました。
「カワイイ区」では、こういった福岡の魅力を新しいカタチで発信します。
カワイイとは
容姿ではなく、感情表現が豊か、明るく人なつっこい、いきいきと輝いている、情に厚いなど、考え方、話し方、振る舞いすべての要素に用いられるもので、人をいとおしい気持ちにさせるすべての魅力・センス
Fukuoka Girls: Don’t You Wish You Were Cute Like Me?
ReplyDeleteby Yoree Koh
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/08/30/fukuoka-girls-dont-you-wish-you-were-cute-like-me/?KEYWORDS=virtual
In a country where cuteness is an obsession, the southern Japanese city of Fukuoka boasts that its girls are the cutest of them all.
The city is trying to promote itself as the nation’s capital of cute through a campaign that, without any detectable irony, invites young ladies from around the country to register as a “resident” of Fukuoka in a new virtual administrative district called “Cute Ward.”
“Fukuoka women are cute — That is something we hear often from visitors,” says the official website for the Cute Ward — or Kawaii-Ku in Japanese — which went public on Wednesday.
The city says that, compared to other locales in Japan, it has more people employed in the beauty industry, more nail and hair salons, and annual household spending on aesthetic-related goods or services that exceeds cities like Kyoto and Tokyo. All of which, it says, help to make the city cuter than the rest of the country.
It’s also because of Fukuoka’s “abundance of healthy foods, compact scale, cultural relations with Asia, history and location,” the website explains.
But don’t let the pink ribbon-frilled website fool you. Behind the campaign’s saccharine image lies the logic of business.
The port city makes no secret about its intent to promote its fashion, beauty and food industries by inviting the “residents” of Kawaii-Ku to events that will help “polish their sense of cuteness” as well as offer Fukuoka-based companies opportunities for promotional tie-ins.
The city will accept up to 10,000 “special resident applications” online, and in September “special certificates of residence” will be available for purchase on the Kawaii-ku shopping site. A set will go for ¥888 ($10).
To burnish its cute credentials further, the city has named Mariko Shinoda, a member of the massively popular all-girl pop group AKB48 and a Fukuoka native, as “head of the ward.”
“I don’t have any administrative experience,” wrote the 26-year-old pop star in her welcome message. “But as someone who enjoys brushing up on style, movies and music, and values friends and family, I will reliably manage Kawaii-Ku.”