Nothing is sacred from the Sakamoto boom. When you want to promote your product or business in Japan this year all you needed to do, apparently, was turn to Ryoma Sakamoto and hey presto.
Even controversial “new religion” Happy Science (幸福の科学) is exploiting the helpless samurai. Outside their office in Yurakucho a statue of Sakamoto (with a face perhaps slightly touched up to resemble Happy Science founder Ryuho Okawa) in his trademark pose stands welcoming visitors — or perhaps he is guarding the doors to stop people going in!
Happy Science was founded in the Eighties and now has numerous elaborately designed temples around Japan. It preaches a message of, well, happiness, which might sound a bit insubstantial but in fact the founder now has political ambitions.
With the Yurakucho office as its headquarters, Happy Science’s Happiness Realization Party campaign vans are among the most vocal and visible, and their candidates have stood in dozens of elections since last year. (None have won so far.)
Just along from the Happy Science office are many of those prefectural goods shops, which tend to focus on famous local foods. The Kochi one also has a statue of Sakamoto but they can at least claim to be his home province. We could help notice he was got up in Christmas garb for the forthcoming festivities.
As a man who helped revolutionize Japan and its embracing of the west, we reckon he would have quite liked the Santa beard!
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