FEATURES
How Japan’s youngest CEO transformed Hello Kitty
Hello Kitty, arguably Japan’s best loved creation, is celebrating her 50th anniversary.
But all has not always been well at Sanrio, the Japanese company behind the character. The business has been on a spectacular journey of financial peaks and valleys.
Hello Kitty has been ranked the second-highest grossing media franchise in the world behind Pokémon, and ahead of the likes of Mickey Mouse and Star Wars.
Underscoring her global fame, Britain’s King Charles wished her a happy birthday during the state visit to the UK by Japan’s Emperor and Empress in June.
In recent years though Sanrio had been struggling to make money, as interest in Hello Kitty waned.
Two previous surges in Sanrio sales, in 1999 and 2014, were both driven by the character’s popularity. But these jumps in demand for the firm’s products were not sustainable, says Yasuki Yoshioka of investment company SMBC Nikko.
“In the past, its performance had many ups and downs, as if it was on a rollercoaster ride,” Mr Yoshioka says.
Tomokuni Tsuji took over the top job at Sanrio four years ago
Then, in 2020, Tomokuni Tsuji inherited the role as Sanrio’s boss.
He is the grandson of the firm’s founder, Shintaro Tsuji, and was just 31 at the time, making him the youngest chief executive of a listed Japanese company.
His grandfather then became Sanrio’s chairman.
Under the younger Mr Tsuji’s leadership, Sanrio changed its marketing strategy of its stable of other characters.
“It is not about lowering Hello Kitty’s popularity but it is about boosting others’ recognition,” he says.
This resulted in Hello Kitty losing the position of Sanrio’s most popular character.
According to a poll of customers, that spot is now held by Cinnamoroll – a blue-eyed white puppy with pink cheeks, long ears and a tail that looks like a Cinnamon roll.
Sanrio is also no longer just about cute characters.
If Hello Kitty is Japan’s ambassador of cute, then angry red panda Aggressive Retsuko – or Aggretsuko – channels the frustrations of an ordinary working woman.
The character, which is popular among Gen Zers, first appeared in a cartoon series on Japan’s TBS Television before it became a global hit on Netflix.
Another unconventional character is Gudetama, or “lazy egg”, who is living with depression and fires out cold one-liners that reflect dark realities of life.
Sanrio is also no longer just about cute characters
As well as diversifying its characters, Sanrio boosted its overseas marketing and is now tackling counterfeits more rigorously.
“We are now using artificial intelligence to detect fake products and to make removal requests,” says Mr Tsuji.
For its marketing strategy, collaborations with major brands – including Starbucks, Crocs and the LA Dodgers baseball team – have been key, he added.
“In addition to our own promotion, by collaborating with global brands, we are trying to have our characters in the market throughout the year without many breaks.”
Hello Kitty collaborated with the LA Dodgers, home to Japanese baseball sensation Shohei Ohtani
In a society that puts so much emphasis on seniority, Mr Tsuji’s surname was crucial to his ability to make major changes at Sanrio.
Almost a quarter of listed companies in Japan, like car makers Toyota and Suzuki and camera firm Canon, are managed by members of the family that founded them.
The reason is cultural, according to Professor Hokuto Dazai of Nagoya University of Commerce and Business.
In Japan, home to the world’s oldest continuous monarchy, “there is strong recognition of families and family businesses,” he says.
The master-servant relationship from the samurai period has transitioned into the relationship between founding families and their employees, and “historically commoners never fought over the top job”.
“It is also because Japan has a smaller pool of professional executives to choose from,” says Professor Dazai.
“Firms tend to look for their next boss internally, including founding family members.”
King Charles wished Hello Kitty a happy birthday during the Japanese Emperor’s state visit
Still, “it would be a lie if I said there was no pushback” from other managers and employees in the company, Mr Tsuji says.
He also says he clashed with his grandfather over how to run the company.
“But one day I realised that I was being arrogant, trying to convince someone 60 years senior,” he says.
“After about a year, my grandfather told me to run the company as I see fit – that he will leave it up to me.”
The new boss’s revamp of the business has been paying off so far.
Within two years of the younger Tsuji becoming chief executive, Sanrio was profitable again, in what analyst Mr Yoshioka calls “a beautiful V-shaped recovery”.
Its share price has risen tenfold since 2020 and the company now has a stock market valuation of more than a trillion yen ($6.5bn; £5bn).
Hello Kitty is no longer the most popular Sanrio character
Away from the boardroom and stock market, there was also an intriguing incident earlier this year.
While Hello Kitty’s true identity is relatively well-known in Japan, some overseas fans were shocked by comments from a Sanrio executive in July.
Speaking on US television, retail business development director Jill Koch told viewers that “Hello Kitty is not a cat” and is in fact a British schoolgirl.
Her comments sparked a flurry of social media posts, with fans expressing their shock and confusion about the revelation.
“Hello Kitty is Hello Kitty and she can be whoever you want her to be – she can be your sister, your mother, it can be another you,” Mr Tsuji says.
Pushed on whether he has any idea why his grandfather decided not to make her Japanese, Mr Tsuji concludes: “London is an amazing city and it was the envy of many Japanese girls, so that may be one of the reasons they decided that she’s from London.”
It may not be the definitive answer her fans are looking for – but after all, Hello Kitty was created 14 years before the younger Tsuji was even born. Half a century since her creation, it is possible that the beloved character’s origin story will continue to be shrouded in mystery for years to come.
– Mariko Oi
(BBC News)
FEATURES
Will JVP/NPP leaders respond to this, while dabbling on populist politics?
Half this year 2025 has also been spent with no answer to how Sri Lanka would begin settling its restructured foreign debts and interests on them, from year 2028 August. When President Wickramasinghe led government began discussing its foreign debt restructuring with the IMF framed within IMF conditions, Sri Lanka had amassed a massive USD 56,092.95 million by end third quarter 2024, the time we were tied to presidential election campaigns.
The last quarter with parliament elections also slotted in, the new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD), sworn in late September last year, had no time to intervene in the economy. Thus the fourth quarter of the year 2024, the first 03 months of President AKD’s rule closed in December with foreign debt increasing to USD 57,133.49 million. An increase of USD 1,040.54 million in 03 months. Sri Lanka had by then agreed with IMF to restructure USD 12.55 billion of its total debts.
According to the IMF agreement signed by President AKD’s NPP government, Sri Lanka has to begin repayments from 2028 August. That would be under AKD’s NPP rule.
Meanwhile Sri Lanka has to settle this year 2025, a total of USD 2,454 million in routine debts including USD 1,085 million as interest, according to Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Anil Jayantha. That, excluding the annual foreign trade deficit the GoSL has to settle every year.
In year ending December 2024, the total foreign trade deficit was USD 6,100 million with an import bill of USD 18,841 million, an increase of 12.1 percent over the previous year, despite fuel imports decreasing. This year 2025, the trade deficit in month of May was USD 473 million, according to the CBSL figures published. This was an increase of 16.9 percent over previous year trade deficit in month of May.
We are in the midst of a two year Middle East armed conflict, that may drag on, even if it does not lead to a cease fire between Israel, Iran and the Hamas armed organisation in Palestine. Uncertainties looming in Middle East may not provide the dollar remittances from migrant labour the government estimated for this whole year and received during the past 05 months. Thus, GoSL may have to face a serious increase in the external trade deficit, if a miracle does not make a change. Assumed the increase would be around 10 percent over the previous year 2024, the external trade deficit may reach or even go beyond USD 6,710 million. To this, has to be added the annual routine debt of USD 2,454 million disclosed by Deputy Minister Jayantha in parliament, to have the total commitment of the GoSL for year 2025. That then would be USD 9,164 million in 2025.
As much as the NPP government, the SJB in Opposition is inefficient and intellectually timid too in responding to governance issues. Thus there is no serious, intellectual debate in how the government could earn the extra USD 9,164 million needed to bridge the trade deficit this 2025. The IMF has no proposal for increased exports to fetch extra dollars. They are only focussed on axing State expenses and increasing “Rupee income” with increased taxing. The IMF thus approved import of luxury vehicles as a source of Rupee income from taxes, wholly ignoring the fact, GoSL would have to burn a heavy load of hard earned dollars including remittances from migrant labour. From January this year till beginning of month of May, Sri Lanka had spent USD 200 million for vehicle imports, according to CBSL Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe. He told media on 22 May, the total value of Letters of Credit opened by then for vehicle imports was USD 450 million. And the NPP government seems happy with a tax collection of Rs.136 billion by end of April.
Now, what is important? Collecting 136 billion rupees, form spending USD 200 million for vehicles, that would need extra dollars for extra consumption of fuel, with greater traffic congestions on urban roads? Fact remains, the IMF has no programme, no proposal to increase the export and service income despite all tax concessions, privileges and State patronage for FDIs and for tourism development given by the State at the expense of the tax payer. The annual gap between import trade cost and the export trade income remains around USD 7,000 to 8,000 million with another USD 2,000 million required for debt servicing.
This should be stressed without ambiguity. The required extra annual income in many millions of dollars cannot be earned with Ministers reducing numbers in their vehicle fleet, from not taking residency in official bungalows, from reducing State expenses in patches, from Ministers stepping into paddy fields carrying a mammoty, or by indicting few officials and politicians of the previous regime.
We need a well designed national development plan that can guarantee annual increase in dollar exports to bridge a trade deficit of about USD 10,000 million. Will the JVP/NPP leadership tell the People what their plan is for such income earning, while going round with their populist propaganda stuff?
– Kusal Perera
FEATURES
Asweddumized fields and sizzling kottu roti: New words from Sri Lanka
FEATURES
Dog-sized dinosaur that ran around feet of giants discovered
The full name of the new species is Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae dinosaur
A labrador-sized dinosaur was wrongly categorised when it was found and is actually a new species, scientists have discovered.
Its new name is Enigmacursor – meaning puzzling runner – and it lived about 150 million years ago, running around the feet of famous giants like the Stegosaurus.
It was originally classified as a Nanosaurus but scientists now conclude it is a different animal.
On Thursday it will become the first new dinosaur to go on display at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London since 2014.
BBC News went behind the scenes to see the dinosaur before it will be revealed to the public.
The discovery promises to shed light on the evolutionary history that saw early small dinosaurs become very large and “bizarre” animals, according to Professor Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist at the museum.
When we visit, the designer of a special glass display case for the Enigmacursor is making last-minute checks.
The dinosaur’s new home is a balcony in the museum’s impressive Earth Hall. Below it is Steph the Stegosaurus who also lived in the Morrison Formation in the Western United States.
Enigmacursor is tiny by comparison. At 64 cm tall and 180 cm long it is about the height of a labrador, but with much bigger feet and a tail that was “probably longer than the rest of the dinosaur,” says Professor Susanna Maidment.
The Enigmacursor was a small dinosaur that lived alongside some of the biggest known
“It also had a relatively small head, so it was probably not the brightest,” she adds, adding that it was probably a teenager when it died.
With the fossilised remains of its bones in their hands, conservators Lu Allington-Jones and Kieran Miles expertly assemble the skeleton on to a metal frame.
“I don’t want to damage it at this stage before its revealed to everybody,” says Ms Allington-Jones, head of conservation.
Conservators Lu Allington-Jones and Kieran Miles assembled the dinosaur onto a frame for display
“Here you can see the solid dense hips showing you it was a fast-running dinosaur. But the front arms are much smaller and off the ground – perhaps it used them to shovel plants in its mouth with hands,” says Mr Miles.
It was clues in the bones that led scientists at NHM to conclude the creature was a new species.
“When we’re trying to identify if something is a new species, we’re looking for small differences with all of the other closely-related dinosaurs. The leg bones are really important in this one,” says Prof Maidment, holding the right hind limb of the Enigmacursor.
When the dinosaur was donated to the museum it was named Nanosaurus, like many other small dinosaurs named since the 1870s.
But the scientists suspected that categorisation was false.
To find out more, they travelled to the United States with scans of the skeleton and detailed photographs to see the original Nanosaurus that is considered the archtype specimen.
“But it didn’t have any bones. It’s just a rock with some impressions of bone in it. It could be any number of dinosaurs,” Professor Maidment said.
Susanna Maidment travelled to the US to look at the original Nanosaurus dinosaur
In contrast, the NHM’s specimen was a sophisticated and near-to-complete skeleton with unique features including its leg bones.
Untangling this mystery around the names and categorisation is essential, the palaeontologists say.
“It’s absolutely foundational to our work to understand how many species we actually have. If we’ve got that wrong, everything else falls apart,” says Prof Maidment.
The scientists have now formally erased the whole category of Nanosaurus.
They believe that other small dinosaur specimens from this period are probably also distinct species.
The discovery should help the scientists understand the diversity of dinosaurs in the Late Jurassic period.
Smaller dinosaurs are “very close to the origins of the large groups of dinosaurs that become much more prominent later on,” says Prof Barrett.
“Specimens like this help fill in some of those gaps in our knowledge, showing us how those changes occur gradually over time,” he adds.
Looking at these early creatures helps them identify “the pressures that finally led to the evolution of their more bizarre, gigantic descendants,” says Prof Barrett.
The fossilised remains are the most complete of any in the world for early small dinosaurs
The scientists are excited to have such a rare complete skeleton of a small dinosaur.
Traditionally, big dinosaur bones have been the biggest prize, so there has been less interest in digging out smaller fossils.
“When you’re looking for those very big dinosaurs, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the smaller ones living alongside them. But now I hope people will keep their eyes close to the ground looking for these little ones,” says Prof Barrett.
The findings about Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae are published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
– Georgina Rannard
Science correspondent
(BBC News)
