{"id":23473,"date":"2020-10-05T16:35:45","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T07:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/oct\/05\/japans-mascot-contest-to-end-amid-fierce-rivalry-among-entrants-yuru-kyara"},"modified":"2020-10-05T16:35:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T07:35:45","slug":"japan-scraps-overly-competitive-mascot-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=23473","title":{"rendered":"Japan scraps overly competitive mascot contest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yuru-kyara competition \u2018lost original purpose\u2019 after aggressive campaigning by prefectures<\/p>\n<p>A cuddly fairy on a mission to \u201cdeliver happiness\u201d to her disaster-hit hometown has been crowned Japan\u2019s most popular mascot, but unseemly rivalry among competitors has forced organisers to announce that this year\u2019s contest would be the last.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yurugp.jp\/jp\/vote\/detail.php?id=00000368\">Takata-no-Yumechan<\/a> defeated almost 400 other <em>yuru-kyara<\/em> \u2013 \u201cgentle characters\u201d \u2013 to take the title at the mascot grand prix in the north-eastern prefecture of Iwate on Sunday, narrowly beating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yurugp.jp\/jp\/vote\/detail.php?id=00004194\">Yurunakin<\/a>, a dog mascot from Osaka prefecture, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yurugp.jp\/jp\/vote\/detail.php?id=00001114\">Tsurugon<\/a>, a dragon-like character from Saitama prefecture.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/oct\/05\/japans-mascot-contest-to-end-amid-fierce-rivalry-among-entrants-yuru-kyara\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yuru-kyara competition \u2018lost original purpose\u2019 after aggressive campaigning by prefecturesA cuddly fairy on a mission to \u201cdeliver happiness\u201d to her disaster-hit hometown has been crowned Japan\u2019s most popular mascot, but unseemly rivalry among competito&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,88,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-japan","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23474,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23473\/revisions\/23474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}