Decoding the cultural signifiers of Japanese poop-candy packaging

Japanese food items have frequently struck European and American visitors as weird or outlandish. Among Japanese food items unknown to Western consumers, however, unchi-kun candy may be one of the biggest oddities found in Japanese stores. These turd-shaped gummy candies, or alternatively chocolate lollipops, are often sold in anthropomorphised brightly coloured, turd-shaped containers complete with kawaii facial expressions. The wrapping of the candy is see-through, imprinted merely with the name of the candy in hiragana spelling うんちくん (poop-kun, the anthropomorphising honorific -kun usually denoting junior status, e.g. a little boy), and the logo: A smiling turd, sometimes imprinted with the English word CANDY. The message of this simplistic design is clear: The idea is to market the tongue-in-cheek shape of the candy itself: A sweet pile of gummy poop. The shape of the candy is the packaging.

Westerners visiting Japan have repeatedly documented their encounter with this Japanese “curiosity,” from somewhat alienated blog posts to YouTube videos. Within a European semiotic framework, marketing a food item by associating it with fecal matter strikes us as morbid or absurd. After all, advertisers for European markets aim to disassociate even toilet paper from its culturally taboo primary function and rely instead on the comfortable fluffiness of the Charmin bear or puppies to sell their product. In Japan, however, poop has different associations as a cultural signifier: Here, it is often used a symbol of good luck. The most common explanation for this status lies in the homophony between the words 運 (Un, meaning luck) and the first syllable of unchi (poop). The association between poop and good luck is thus based on wordplay. Some Western fans of the product have hence proposed the translation “Lucky Poop Candy.” It has furthermore been suggested that establishing poop as a pun for good luck is partly based in religious tradition: In Shintoism, says Takeshi Mitsuhashi, “bodily functions are very important — think what a problem it would be if a person couldn’t defecate or urinate properly — so it’s natural that people worshipped deities linked to these functions.”

The unchi-kun candy is therefore not the only offspring of a culture in which poop is positively connoted with luck, but is indeed just another entry on a long list of products which have elevated poop to a signifier with pop-cultural impact. Akira Toriyama, best known to Western audiences as the creator of the Dragon Ball franchise, made poking poop with a stick the hobby of his android heroine Arale in his immensely popular breakthrough manga Dr. Slump (1980–1984) and the two subsequent anime adaptations, eventually introducing poop as a “race” in the Dr. Slump universe with merchandise opportunities in tow.  (Dr. Slump also impacted the popularity of the poop emoji in Japan and thus secured that a smiling turd emoji would become part of Western messaging systems). Where South Park’s Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo was 1997’s “most disturbing cartoon image,” the 2009 anime show Unko-san starring a poop-shaped fairy with the ability to bring good fortune to others received a PG-rating in Japan.