No Public Naming of Tokyo Olympic Mascot

(ATR) The name of Tokyo 2020’s mascot will be chosen by creative professionals not the general public.

Games organizers confirmed to Around the Rings Monday that while a 14-member selection commission will pick a mascot following a design competition in Japan, naming will be the responsibility of others due to the complex legal issues surrounding trademarking.

"We discussed the possibility of asking the public about the name of the mascot. But as you know, it’s a much tougher task [than the design] when it involves trademark rights," said the selection panel’s vice chairman Yoshiko Ikoma, following its meeting today.

"We’ll concentrate on the naming once the design is decided," Ikoma was quoted by Kyodo News. "We’ve yet to discuss how to choose the people who will decide the name, but we have to overcome the trademark issue both in Japan and abroad.

"We need more than a name that sounds cute. It’s not so simple."

The panel, chaired by Ryohei Miyata who led the selection committee for Tokyo 2020’s Olympic and Paralympic logos, will hold further meetings to finalize the mascot selection for submission to the IOC and the International Paralympic Committee by the end of March.

A Tokyo 2020 spokesman said Miyata’s panel has yet to define exactly what demographic of young people will be allowed to offer their input into the design competition. "We are clear that children would be the ones though. Ages or school grades are still under discussion," he told ATR.

The mascot launch schedule is also under discussion. A summer 2018 date is touted by Japanese media.

An independent commission was introduced to select the Olympic mascot following the scandal over the original Tokyo 2020 logo. Kenjiro Sano’s design was said to have plagiarized a theater logo in Belgium and was later dropped by the organizing committee.

With its selection, the Tokyo 2020 mascot will join the Nagano 1998 Snowlets as the only mascots in Japan’s Olympic history. Neither the Tokyo 1964 Games nor the Sapporo 1972 Olympics had mascots.

Reported by Mark Bisson

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