Dimensions
111 x 154 x 17mm
A menagerie of mascots and characters inhabit the islands of Japan, cheerfully guiding citizens through all sorts of daily activities and situations. Hello, Please! collects photographs of hundreds of the these cute (or kawaii) creatures in their native habitat, which is virtually everywhere: from public street signs to supermarket shelves, in doctor's offices, on tax forms and instruction manuals-even emblazoned on the sides of Tokyo's fire and police emergency vehicles. Authors Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda explore the cultural context of these ubiquitous, hard-working critters and their relationship to anime and manga, commercial characters like Hello Kitty, and the cult of cute, while introducing a host of adorable new best friends you never new you had.
The book is structured as an introduction to the concept of cute character illustrations that appear almost literally everywhere in Japanese society, exploring why that is and giving historical and cultural context, then divided into 5 chapters on the characters various habitats (official characters, warning characters, etc.) which are primarily images and captions.
