Japan’s airports boast many entertaining features but now one has gone a step further, becoming the first official Hello Kitty-branded airport in the world.
Hello Kitty, also known as Kitty White, is a fictional children’s character, represented by an anthropomorphic kitten with bows in its “hair” that has seen enormous success since its creation in 1975 by Yuko Shimizu. The cat’s backstory is that she lives in London with her family, and thanks to Japan’s kawaii or “cuteness” culture, her appeal has grown from the young girls to whom she was originally marketed to adult consumers as well.
Kitty has been featured in animated series, games, and comics, and appeared on many consumer items, from pencil cases and lunchboxes to keyrings and mousepads. Owned by the Japanese company Sanrio, she is estimated to have a brand value of around $4 to $5 billion a year.
And now the popular little pussycat girl has spread her empire to engulf an entire aviation hub in Oita, on Japan’s Kyushu island, about one hour from Osaka by air and four by rail. Despite being a region of hot springs and great scenery, the airport tends more towards domestic traffic than international renown. Of the 530,033 visitors handled by the airport last month, 80% were domestic flyers.
But the Hello Kitty rebrand, which will last until October in honour of World Expo 2025, is intended to help change that. “We hope to encourage more tourists, particularly those who typically visit high-traffic destinations like Tokyo and Kyoto, to travel to Oita instead,” a spokesman from Oita Prefectural Government’s tourism bureau said, speaking to CNN.
Sanrio too will surely get a boost from the extra visibility. With Hello Kitty greeting incoming flyers on the boarding bridge and luggage conveyors, the firm’s Harmonyland theme park which just happens to be in the prefecture, might receive more visitors who’ve seen Kitty at the airport, alongside Sanrio’s other characters, such as My Melody, Little Twin Stars and Pochacco. She may need their star power, because, unbelievably perhaps, Kitty only came fifth in Sanrio’s 2024 popularity ranking.
“We are filled with the hope that this airport will become a bridge connecting countless smiles,” Sanrio Entertainment President Aya Komaki said during the initiative’s recent launch, waving a flag bearing Hello Kitty’s motto at the airport: “Hello from Oita to the world.”
Hello Kitty is well travelled herself. Not only is she now undertaking airport adventures but she also debuted on the livery of Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains in 2018, despite being only “five apples tall.”
