Abstract
As the agricultural workforce in Japan ages, fostering the next generation of farmers is critical. Agricultural schools are an important point of entry into the sector, and there is a need to share the appeal of agriculture as a field of study and as an occupation among young people. Japanese agriculture is currently at a major crossroads regarding issues such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. Japanese subcultures offer a potential solution. Subcultures such as anime (cartoons), manga (comics), and anthropomorphic characters are well known, both in Japan and abroad. Such subcultures offer the potential advantages of making real places sacred; securing new marketing segments through effective character-based branding; increasing publicity through local characters; and stimulating interest in and increasing the popularity of agriculture and agricultural schools through comics set in that context. Although many such initiatives have been launched to date, there have been numerous failures, and many of the successes have been short lived. We conducted a survey and analyzed the long-term factors affecting the success of Japanese-style subculture strategies, and how these could be used to combine the concept of yaowarashi (yao = all, warashi = children) with agriculture to encourage people to enter agriculture. This paper reports on the yaowarashi initiative and the current state of yaowarashi activities and achievements. Measures to stimulate academic and employment interest in yaowarashi are discussed. Most respondents had high expectations for the future.
