I would like to approach the question of character creativity from academic fields of mythological studies, religious studies, folklore studies and civilization theories. Today, I would like to raise questions by broadly capturing how characters evolved and developed from the time when the Sea of Japan was created around 10,000 years ago and the Japanese archipelago was established as it is today. I would like to present this according to my own intuition, judgment and bias and ask for your criticisms.

　

 'Tokyo Character Show' took place in July 2005 and popular characters born from animation, comics, games, hobbies and cinema gathered together and held a multifarious exhibition. This is now expanding as a market all over the world and enlarging its scale.

 In this context, I hear that the word kawaii has become part of international vocabulary since the past several years. I think the sense and value of kawaii contains elements of 'delightful' and 'fun'. Something cute, delightful and fun brings about the word kawaii.

 This kawaii rabbit character was a gift given to guests at my friend's wedding reception that took place a week ago in Kamakura. It was the second marriage for the fifty-two year old man and forty-one year old woman who got married, and the woman has a nine year old daughter. The reception took place in Kamakura Park Hotel after the wedding ceremony took place in a Zen temple called Tokeiji, which used to be a temple to which wives ran away for refuge from their cruel husbands. This stuffed toy rabbit was given as a gift at the wedding reception. I've taken a great liking to it so I want to talk to you about it.

 The rabbit character comes in four colors: white, pink, blue and brown. Each color has its own meaning. For example, white is for good health, pink is for love, blue is for success. So a pink rabbit is not given to a married person. A white rabbit signifying good health is given to an old person who is worried about his/her health. A blue one is given to a person who hopes that his/her work will go well. So there seems to be different classifications.

 Besides this, I found this character interesting for the following reason.

 The nine year old girl could not get used to her future father at all, so they could not decide about the marriage for about three years because they did not want to get married when the child was not used to the new father. The girl did not talk to the man who was going to be her new father, she sat separately from them on a train, and she would not go near the future father. My friend really did not know what to do, but decided to get married because she could no longer postpone the conclusion, and one day they went to a friend who made these rabbit characters.

 When they went there, Minami-chan, the nine year old girl, decided to take home rabbit characters of different colors that she took liking to. Then, in the train on the way back, the future father sat in the middle and the mother and Minami-chan sat beside him on both sides. The father was very happy about the fact that all three of them could sit on a train together for the first time.

 I cannot think of anything else apart from the rabbit character which brought together the future father and daughter all at once. The stuffed rabbit character had acted as a mediator between the two of them.

 When I heard this story directly from the people involved, I thought that the power of characters has an aspect of contemporary sorcery or magic. So recently I have been thinking that it would be interesting to consider the question of characters from the point of view of magic. In fact, the words 'delightful' and 'fun' contained in the Japanese term 'kawaii', literally contains elements of magic.

 There is a famous episode of the ama no iwato (cave of heaven) in Japanese mythology in which the sun deity Amaterasu Omikami hid in the cave, and Ame no Uzume no Mikoto danced in a trance. When she danced, she revealed her breasts and vagina, so the gods laughed aloud. Amaterasu Omikami became suspicious about the sound of their laughter and tried to get a peep of what was going on outside. At that moment, Ame no Tajikarao no Mikoto pushed open the door of the cave with all his might, and once again the light of the sun returned and the world was brought back into order.

 According to a record called Kogoshui (Collection of Ancient Words) in the Heian period, the light of god shone at that moment; that is to say, light came due to Amaterasu Omikami coming out of the cave. The gods chanted all together, 'aware, appare', meaning that the heaven had cleared up. Next, their faces became white by reflecting this light, and the gods said to each other 'ana omoshiro' meaning that the faces are shining brightly. Then their hands automatically stretched out and they had fun dancing. They said 'Ah, it's fun' (ana tanoshi). At the same time bamboo grass blew in the wind making a sound 'saya saya' (sayake), and leaves and grass swung together (oke). In this way, there is a description that the gods called out words of joy and talked together. 'Aware' (how interesting), 'ana omoshiro' (ah how fun), 'ana tanoshi' (ah how delightful), 'ana sayake' (ah how bright) indeed mean that there was a change and shift in the situation from when the world was completely dark, chaotic, in a state of panic and full of all kinds of calamities, to when the light returned and faces became white and hands automatically stretched out and dancing started.

 This became the origin of kagura (dance performed in shrines). So 'delightful' and 'fun' contain aspects connected to religious ritual, performance and magic, and I would like to relate these to characters later on.

　

 Characters are of course consumed and proliferated in various ways among the masses and within consumer society, and contain the tradition of idol worship which has been strictly prohibited since the days of Moses, as Professor Funabiki points out. So here I would like to take up the clay figures of the Jomon period and put forward a hypothesis concerning the relationship between idol worship and character creativity.

 There is a famous clay figure in the shape of a heart. If we observe this, we see that it contains a design sense that can be related to various character goods of today and even to contemporary art. I feel that it contains both a sense that is close to very abstract contemporary art and a sense of kawaii which I have mentioned above.

 Clay figures were produced in relation to beliefs and rituals of the Jomon people, so they can be said to be deeply related to prayers for fertility, propagation and reproduction. In particular, the curb beneath the thighs, roundish feel like a cavity, and the heart-shaped curb around the head are very beautiful, well balanced and cute. Their actual size is about 30 centimeters, so one feels like keeping them as an ornament in the house somewhere, by the bedside or somewhere near by. Mimizuku (a horned owl faced) clay figure has a large face and head and short legs. It is roundish and seems as if it might appear just like that as a manga or animation character. This is 18 centimeters in size, so it is a cute little thing that can just fit on the palm of one's hand. The slit on the stomach is the vagina. Clay figures are of all sorts, including pregnant figures, and most of them represent femininity. Woman's vagina and breasts represent reproductive power such as fertility and fecundity.

 The famous Shakoki (goggle-eyed) clay figure enables us to imagine all kinds of character models. The real meaning of this figure has not been sufficiently understood, and some people even say that it is an extra-terrestrial figure. Research on figures of the Jomon period is rather undeveloped even in the field of archeology, so there is no detailed semantic analysis about the kind of symbolism expressed by this figure, icon and shape. A swirling pattern usually beneath the breast or around the stomach is commonly found in figures of Japan, Celtic culture and other ethnic cultures, and we can see that it indeed symbolically represents the emergence of life force. In clay figures of around the end of the Jomon period, breasts, voluptuous hips and vaginal slits are shaped, and the form of pregnant clay figure is clearly represented. It rather gives the impression of the work by a contemporary sculptor Aristide Maillol called 'The Mediterranean'. Did the Jomon people feel awe on seeing such clay figures of voluptuous pregnant women, or did they think they were cute? Surely they felt both awe and affection/attraction. And, of course, I imagine that they felt that they were in some ways cute.

 The Shakoki (goggle-eyed) Jomon clay figure had various forms and existed over hundreds and thousands of years, so ten thousands of clay figures were made in a variety of forms and we see only a very small part of these as archeologically excavated material.

 In 1986, a clay figure which came to be called the 'Jomon Venus' was excavated at Tanabatake site in Togariishi, Chino city, Nagano prefecture. It was dated around 2500 BC, closely dated to Sannai Maruyama ruins, and was designated as the oldest national treasure of Japan. The hip shape of this clay figure with is voluptuous thighs and legs represent the best feel as a character. The breasts are small and cute, but it has a wonderful unsophisticated touch due to the exquisite balance or imbalance with the voluptuous sun like hip shape. The stomach is slightly bulging so it could be pregnant. This figure is printed on a stamp and circulates as a character in public merchandise. All the clay figures I presented as examples have as a common characteristic in form of emphasizing, exaggerating or deforming a certain part and give an impression of imbalance. This presents a borderline between the cute and the grotesque.

 Here let me play a replica of a Jomon flute. They are usually ceramic and are in the shape of fish, owl or horned owl. They are decorated with Jomon like patterns, have holes and produce cute sounds or sounds made when ghosts come out. These clay flutes also have a fold in the center, representing female genitalia. Sounds are produced by blowing into that fold. I am always impressed by the sense of the Jomon people who made such items, and even though they are 5000 or 4000 years old, I think they contain things which are very close to various character merchandises in circulation in our market today.