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Nagasaki Prefecture mascots asked to be changed for gender equality

1 min read
February 7, 2022

The two mascots of Nagasaki Prefecture, Ganba-kun and Ramba-chan, would display gender discrimination as the captain is a boy and the vice-captain is a girl.

Nagasaki Prefecture mascots: Ganba-kun and Ramba-chan
Nagasaki Prefecture mascots: Ganba-kun (left) and Ramba-chan (right)

Several women’s associations on February 4 handed over a request to the Nagasaki Prefecture to change the mascots.

As the organizations promote an equal society between genders, the two prefecture mascots Ganba-kun and Ramba-chan would also display gender discrimination.

Ganba-kun and Ramba-chan are two Mandarin ducks representing the prefecture of Nagasaki for public relations events.

They first appeared at the National Sports Festival of Japan, also known as Kokutai, held in Nagasaki in 2014 for the second time. Kokutai is the main annual sports event in Japan, where prefectures compete against one another. Each tournament usually has its own mascot.

Ganba-kun was the captain, and Ramba-chan was the vice-captain of the event.

Yuru-chara, the Japanese term for promotional mascot characters, are very popular and common in the country. An annual event determining the most popular Yuru-chara by public voting receive more than a thousand contestants.

These mascots can also become a real business with merchandising revenue.

Since 2014, Ganba-kun and Ramba-chan have been used for public relations events representing the Nagasaki prefecture.

But Captain Ganba-kun, wearing blue clothes, is a man. On the other hand, the vice-captain Ramba-chan wears pink and is a woman. For the associations, this represents gender discrimination as both gender and position are set.

They, therefore, asked the Nagasaki prefecture to abolish the two mascots and think of new characters.

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Clément Vérité

Clément is the executive editor and founder of Newsendip. He started in the media industry as a freelance reporter at 16 for a local French newspaper after school and has never left it. He later worked for seven years at The New York Times, notably as a data analyst. He holds a Master of Management in France and a Master of Arts in the United Kingdom in International Marketing & Communications Strategy. He has lived in France, the United Kingdom, and Italy.