＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
What is “Sanrio Puroland”?
Sanrio is the company behind Kitty, the Japanese super character that has made the word “kawaii” a universal word.
Sanrio is well known for its cute kitty character “Kitty-chan,” and Sanrio Puroland is a theme park for Sanrio characters.
Sanrio Puroland, located in Tama City, Tokyo, is Japan’s first indoor theme park, which opened in December 1990 under the slogan “A Land Made of Dreams and Love.
2. period of stagnation
Although the park got off to a good start immediately after its opening, it was hit by the double whammy of sluggish consumption and asset deflation caused by the “Heisei Recession” that began with the bursting of the bubble economy that soon followed.
The park’s poor location, with few rides and its distance from the city center, also contributed to a prolonged period of stagnation, with the park continuing to incur recurring deficits every year.
One year after its opening, the park had 1.83 million visitors, 420,000 fewer than planned, and an ordinary deficit of 1.5 billion yen. The following year, the number of visitors continued to be around 1.52 million, resulting in a recurring deficit of more than 1 billion yen.
3. V-shaped recovery in popularity
(1) The key person is a former Sanrio employee
The person who successfully achieved this V-shaped recovery is Aya Komaki. She joined Sanrio in 1983, married and left the company, had a baby, and returned to an affiliated company.
Then, in 2014, she suddenly visited Sanrio Puroland and was shocked to see it losing its vitality, and despite the fact that she was an amateur in entertainment, she proposed a revitalization plan.
She then became an advisor to Sanrio Puroland, and in just two years, she helped the company achieve a V-shaped recovery. She is currently the president of Sanrio Entertainment Co., Ltd. and the director of Sanrio Puroland.
(2) Specific Measures
So what specific measures did she implement?
(1) Changed the target from children to adults
Now that the birthrate is declining and the number of children is aging, she has decided to target adults as well, judging that profits will not increase if she targets only children.
(2) Increased content for adult women
She increased the number of new female fans in their 20s by including handsome actors in “2.5 dimensional musicals” (musicals based on or inspired by manga, anime, games, etc.), and increased the entertainment value for both parades and adults.
(3) Increased employee motivation
Using the psychology she studied in college, she motivated and inspired her employees so that they were full of smiles and vitality.
(4) Focused on inbound measures to attract foreign tourists
(5) Eliminated the outline lines of the characters.
With the outline lines, the wallpaper of the characters was filled with black, making the wallpaper look like kindergarten.
Therefore, to make it “adult-oriented,” she eliminated the outlines of the characters.
As a result, the theme park is now also known as an “overly ‘Instagrammable’ theme park, and is crowded mainly with young women.
4. The Epic Life of the Leading Figure in the V-shaped Recovery of Popularity
When you read an interview with Aya Komaki, you will learn that she has had a checkered and spectacular life.
“I joined Sanrio as a new graduate, got married and left the company after a few years, had a baby, and raised my child”.
It seems like smooth sailing up to that point.
However, when her second son died in an accident at the age of 34, she lost the meaning of her life and the sense of being alive. She felt guilty for even being alive and felt that she was meaningless, and she questioned various relationships and everything else, and her emotions stopped.
After these complicated feelings exploded, she made the choice to divorce and become financially and emotionally independent as a single mother.
Later, recommended by an acquaintance, she got a job selling cosmetics and traveled around the country achieving excellent sales results. However, she was harassed and betrayed by people who did not take kindly to her, and she also saw the unpleasant side of people who would kick down the competition.
She quit her cosmetics sales job and started a business creating “Hello Kitty cosmetics” at a Sanrio affiliate, but it ended in failure.
She also suffered from serious illnesses such as “breast cancer” and “uterine disease. Through these life-threatening illnesses, she came to believe that she should live her limited life without regrets, and that it would be her true desire if she could use all her experiences for the benefit of others.
So, in her late 40s, she started an in-house venture to raise awareness about medical checkups and support women’s activities, became a radio personality, and broadened her activities.
In order to learn about the “problems of the human mind” and how he could live better by relating to himself, he entered the graduate school of the University of Tokyo at the age of 51 while still working, and began studying psychology. He studied hard, cutting down his sleeping hours to three hours when he was preparing to take the entrance examination.
His motivation for entering graduate school was partly based on his determination to devote the rest of his life to conveying important messages, and he intended to shift his focus to education-related work after graduation.
However, due to the circumstances I mentioned at the beginning of this article, it took some twists and turns, but that is how she ended up working on the revitalization of Sanrio Puroland.
She says, “I seem to have taken many detours, but I think they all lead me to my current job.
