is a

mascot A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...

created by the city government of

Hikone 280px, Hikone City Hall is a city located in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 111,958 in 49066 households and a population density of 570 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Hikone i ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. He was created in 2007 to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of

Hikone Castle is a Japanese Edo-period Japanese castle located in the city of Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, Japan It is considered the most significant historical building in Shiga. The site has been protected as a National Historic Site since 1951. Hikone is ...

. The character design is derived from a legend concerning

Ii Naotaka was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the early Edo period who served under the Tokugawa shogunate. He was the son of the famous Tokugawa general Ii Naomasa. His childhood name was Bennosuke (弁之介). Naotaka served in the Siege of Osaka in his brot ...

, the 3rd Lord of Hikone. The ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

'' was beckoned by a white cat to seek shelter from a storm in a temple, and thus saved from a lightning strike. In

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, "nyan" is an

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

for a cat's meow. Hikonyan's samurai helmet is based on a Ii family helmet currently in the Hikone Castle museum. Hikonyan's popularity increased tourist visitation of Hikone by over 200,000 annually. The estimate of Hikonyan's effect on the tourist industry is 17.4 billion yen (approximately US$218 million) and the overall economic effects total 33.8 billion yen (US$425 million). Total merchandise sales reached about 1.7 billion yen (US$21 million) as of 2008. In 2010, Hikonyan won first place in the open vote competition of other mascots, collectively known as .

References

External links

*
Hikonyan blog
Advertising characters Male characters in advertising Cat mascots Fictional cats Japanese mascots Cats in Japan {{mascot-stub

See also

References

External links