Misabo

Misabo, a gloomy boar with a mountain on his head who wears whale overalls hiked up to his snout, has the daunting job of promoting the village as a tourism destination. He waddled into the world in 2013, as a mascot craze swept Japan and hundreds of the country’s graying and shrinking towns turned to colorful, often wacky characters to lure visitors and investment.

Now, as their tax bases dwindle along with their populations, communities like Misato are increasingly questioning whether the whimsy is worth the cost in public spending. In the absence of much evidence that the characters are delivering economic benefits, the answer for many towns in the grip of Japan’s demographic crisis has been to quietly mothball them.

Ben Dooley. NYT. 

First of all, I'm not a boar. I'm an aardvark, for the cats sake.

Second, there is no truth to the rumor I'm being mothballed, downsized, warehoused, superannuated, or in any other way losing my status and position.

And third, I don't know who is spewing out these so-called 'demographics,' but they are absolutely talking through their hats when they say our cities our 'graying' or becoming 'elderful.' 

Bosh, I say. It's just the opposite. On my mascot rounds I find an increasing number of adorable little babies in hovels and condos -- in fact, most elderly couples now have four or five infants crawling around the house, and you have to wonder where they all come from. At least I wonder about it. 

I asked one elderly matron, who was nursing twins, where these little children were coming from. She didn't want to tell me at first, but the power of a mascot is awfully strong -- you can't look into my bouncing button eyes for very long before falling under my spell, so she finally spilled the beans.

"We pay to have them kidnapped from various slums around the world and brought to us in the middle of the night" she told me, grimacing as one of the twins suddenly clamped down on a nipple. "We raise them as our own, until we die, and then they get all our savings -- because our first set of children have abandoned us and want nothing to do with us. They are afraid of senility and death."

I was stunned by this brutal revelation -- but I had to admit the truth of it. I hadn't been in contact with my own elderly parents in over ten years; I didn't want to find out if they had died or had become gibbering bed-ridden zombies. I wasn't even sure where they lived, and told my sister that if she knew where they were she was not to tell me their location or tell them my location. Or what I did for a living.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a mascot. Some great figures in history started out as mascots, like Charles Dickens and Bismarck. The pay is good and you get a good physical workout each day -- it's the equivalent of running a five mile marathon. Wrapped in burlap. 

A lot of it is photos with tourists, sure; but there's more to it than that. I visit hospitals and prisons, shaking hands and bobbling my eyes around to give the unfortunate hope and giggles. I also deliver ice to hockey arenas on weekends.

And there's national policy involved, as well. Most people don't know this, but the Premier bases many of his decisions on the input of the dozens of mascots that roam the countryside talking to high and low. The people open up to us in a way that they never do to glad-handing office seekers or pettifogging pen pushers. We take the pulse of the public, so to speak, and pass the results on to the highest circles. The police also use us extensively to monitor criminal activity, especially in rural communities. I personally have helped put away at least a dozen high binders with my testimony in the past twelve years. I have a photographic memory, because a mascot never forgets.

So you can see that when some snub-nosed reporter writes that we're only good for 'whimsy' and don't contribute anything of worth to the community or the national infrastructure, he or she is dead wrong. A good mascot not only pulls his or her own weight, but helps communities to flourish. And as soon as all those kidnapped babies begin to grow up and read newspapers, those scandal-mongering journalists will be hoisted with their pants on their own petard!