Please note that this talk will be given in German.
This event series is a collaboration between the NRW-Forum and the Institute for Modern Japan at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, organised as part of the ASIA POP exhibition.
They’re everywhere in Japan: the cute characters (known as ‘kyara’ in Japanese), which, as mascots for companies and organisations or as popular merchandising figures, add a splash of colour to people’s everyday lives and can be seen as a fashion accessory associated with ‘kawaii’ culture. They also enjoy great popularity internationally. But what is the idea behind characters such as Aggretsuko, Rilakkuma, Gudetama or Chiikawa? Why do even adults consume these cute characters, particularly in a highly industrialised, capitalistically optimised society?
Katharina Hülsmann studied Modern Japane and English at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and was awarded her PhD in 2025 with a thesis on ‘Japanese fan comics’. In 2017, she was a research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, where she conducted field research on Japanese amateur comics. She is a member of the Comic Studies and Fan and Participation Research working groups of the Society for Media Studies, as well as a founding member of icon and the Comic Studies Research Network on the Rhine. Her research focuses on comics, particularly manga and fan cultures.
