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| Meet Kureshi. He likes 90s pop music and he’s a good dancer. |
The city of Kure in Hiroshima Prefecture has a strange new mascot. His name is Kureshi and he made his debut in the music video for the city’s brand new theme song.
The city’s new theme song is a modified version of “CRAZY GONNA CRAZY,” a number one hit single released in 1995 by the iconic 90s pop group TRF. The new version of the song is called “Kureshi GONNA Kureshi.” Kureshi, aside from being the name of the city’s new mascot, is also how you say “Kure City” in Japanese.
Although the melody is identical to the original, the song is no longer a love song. Or, well, it is. But now it’s a love song dedicated to the city of Kure. The song’s lyrics, much like the video, are all about how beautiful and great a place the city of Kure is.
As for the video, while it does have plenty of beautiful shots of the city, it also prominently features Kureshi and his “crazy” dance moves. Check out the video below to see Kureshi in action. Also, if you’d like to listen to the original TRF version of the song, click here.
So Kureshi can dance. Big deal. Is there anything else noteowrthy about him? That’s debatable. If you care about kanji, then yes. If you don’t then, you should probably stop reading here.
In a sense, you could say that the main reason why Kure created this not-so-cute dancing mascot was to make it clear to people what the correct reading of the kanji used to write the city’s name is. As many of you probably know, kanji characters can be read multiple ways. In the case of the character used to write the city’s name (呉), it can be read as either go or kure. Although many people, particularly in the western region of Japan know that the city’s name (呉) is read kure, others, particularly those in eastern Japan, often think it is read go. And this is where Kureshi comes in.
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| It’s not “go.” It’s “kure.” Get it right! |
If you look at Kureshi from the front you’ll notice that his face is that tricky to read kanji, 呉. Now, if you look at his back (pictured above) you’ll see kure written out phonetically (in katakana). This way, anybody tempted to read the kanji on his face go realizes that they’re supposed to read it kure as soon as they see his back.
And then there’s Kureshi’s name. As mentioned above, “Kureshi” is how you say “Kure City” (呉市) in Japanese. However, shi can mean both “city” (市) and “Mr./Ms.” (氏) depending on how it is written In the case of Kureshi, he uses 氏, and so if you were to transalte his name you’d get “Mr. Kure.” This is, of course, just one more way in which the city is trying to get people to remember their name.
So yeah, that’s pretty much it. There really isn’t much more to say about Kureshi. Hopefully, moving forward the city gives him a bit more of a backstory because right now he kind of comes off as a slightly pushy dancing billboard. Definitely effective for what he’s trying to do, but not all that endearing.
Source: Sankei Biz
