5&5 Studios
Quick answer: Oshi-katsu (推し活) is Japan's fan-support marketing system — participation like collecting, posting, wearing, and visiting functions as both purchase and earned media. It underlies categories far beyond fan merchandise, including beauty, FMCG, and retail. Brands access it through capsule drops, themed pop-ups, collectible merch, and creator partnerships, usually by attaching to existing IP rather than building a fan base from zero.
The Sanrio Character Awards have run every year since 1986. Fans vote — at Sanrio shops, online, through the monthly Ichigo Shimbun newspaper — to rank their favorite characters. Top-ranked characters get more product appearances and exposure the following year. The 40th edition was held in 2025.
That's not a fan club. It's a marketing system. The name in Japan is 推し活 (oshi-katsu), and most international brand plans never use it.
The mechanism
The mechanism is straightforward. A consumer's affinity for an oshi — the object of devotion, whether a character, a person, or increasingly a brand — translates into participation. Participation becomes purchase. But not in the order Western funnels assume: the purchase is the participation. Each act of collecting, posting, wearing, or visiting then becomes earned media that compounds the next purchase decision in their network.
This isn't new. The lineage runs back to Japan's patron culture — wealthy supporters directly funding kabuki and dance performers — and has expanded through idols, anime, voice actors, athletes, and V-Tubers.
Why it matters beyond fan marketing
Oshi-katsu isn't a fan-marketing niche. It's a behavioral substrate underneath beauty, FMCG, café, retail, alcohol, and fashion in Japan. Brands access it through a few modalities.
Capsule drops with character or talent IP. Lawson × anime, Uniqlo UT × manga, beverage brands × idol voice actors. The product is ordinary; the IP attachment makes it collectible.
Themed cafés and pop-ups. Short-window experiences where the location becomes a pilgrimage site. The food revenue is often secondary to the photo, the merch, and the LINE story it generates.
Merch as participation. Acrylic stands (アクスタ), member-color product variants, items designed to be worn, displayed, and photographed. These aren't product extensions — they're how fans show the strength of their feeling.
Influencer and creator partnerships are one expression of the same pattern, where the creator themselves is the oshi. They get most of the Western attention, but they're not the most important modality.
What this means for a Japan plan
The strategic question for international brands isn't whether oshi-katsu applies to your category. It usually does. The question is what to attach to: which IP, which character, which moment. The fastest path is rarely a fan economy of your own — it's borrowed credibility from existing oshi infrastructure that already has an audience's trust.
This is one of the parts of Japan that doesn't translate cleanly from a global marketing playbook, because it sits underneath the channel question, not next to it. Whichever platform a campaign runs on, it performs differently in Japan if it plugs into oshi-katsu than if it doesn't.
Frequently asked questions
What is oshi-katsu?
Oshi-katsu (推し活) is the Japanese practice of actively supporting an oshi — an object of devotion, whether a character, a person, or a brand — through participation like collecting, posting, wearing, or visiting. It functions as a marketing system, not just a fan-club behavior, and underlies categories from beauty to FMCG to retail in Japan.
How can international brands use oshi-katsu marketing?
Brands typically access oshi-katsu through capsule drops with character or talent IP, themed cafés and pop-ups, merchandise designed for display and photography, and influencer or creator partnerships. The key question is which existing IP or moment to attach to, since borrowed credibility from established oshi infrastructure usually works faster than building a fan economy from scratch.
What is an example of oshi-katsu in Japanese marketing?
The Sanrio Character Awards have run every year since 1986, with fans voting to rank their favorite characters and top-ranked characters receiving more product appearances the following year. Other examples include Lawson x anime capsule collections and Uniqlo UT x manga collaborations.