Promotional Event Held for ‘Spring UMIGOMI Zero Week 2024’Attendees include Deputy Mayor of Fukuoka, Parliamentary Vice-Minister of the Environment, cartoon character Sazae-san

To promote “Spring UMIGOMI Zero Week 2024,” being carried out from May 30 to June 9 as part of a nationwide cleanup program organized by The Nippon Foundation and Japan’s Ministry of the Environment to address the increasingly serious issue of ocean debris, the World Cosplay Cultural Development Association held a Cosplay de UMIGOMI Zero Challenge 2024 event on June 1 in the city of Fukuoka at the Canal City Hakata commercial complex. The event featured an opening ceremony followed by a trash cleanup in the surrounding area including the Nakasu entertainment district.

The event was held to raise awareness of UMIGOMI Zero Week and roughly 400 people attended. In addition to a large number of cosplayers (people dressing as their favorite characters from anime films, manga comics, video games, etc.), many of whom have large numbers of social media followers and regularly pick up trash in areas where they film and photograph, participants included representatives of McDonalds Japan and other cooperating companies and of the Japan Coast Guard, as well as the popular cartoon character Sazae-san and the director of the Hasegawa Machiko Art Museum (Machiko Hasegawa created Sazae-san while living in Fukuoka in 1946).

In response to the sentiment increasingly being expressed along Fukuoka Prefecture’s coastline, especially along the Sea of Japan, that even when trash is picked up, more still flows in from overseas, the main cleanup took place along a large river at a point just before if flows into the Sea of Japan, to convey a message of “All countries must cooperate with each other to reduce debris.” To promote this message, cosplayers from Busan, South Korea (a sister city of Fukuoka), and Cebu in the Philippines, both places where debris is likely to flow to and from Fukuoka, also participated. Video streams connected the opening ceremony with locations around Japan and in South Korea and the Philippines, and after the ceremony the cleanup event took place in Nakasu, generating exposure in an area with a great deal of pedestrian traffic.

UMIGOMI Zero Week has been ongoing since 2019, and this year more than 70,000 people nationwide have expressed an intention to participate (as of May 20). As an event facilitated through assistance to an organization that is promoting cosplay culture around the world, Cosplay de UMIGOMI Zero Challenge helps to spread the word to a wide audience including young people that roughly 80% of ocean debris originates on land and flows through rivers into the ocean, making it important to address the issue on land.