In Japan, where there's a mascot for everything including the police and the national tax agency, it takes more than cuteness to make a "yuru-kyara", or "loose character," stand out.

These days, no character stands out more than Kumamon, the lumpy black bear mascot promoting rural Kumamoto prefecture in southern Japan, because of an innovative no-holds-barred marketing blitz hatched by a group of civil servants.

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