Hakata-san

About

Hakata-san (Japanese: 伯方さん), previously called “Shio-tan” (塩たん), is a moe gijinka character for a Japanese table salt called "Salt of Hakata" (伯方の塩), which was born in a MAD video meme for the salt on the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND). It has been a mascot for the salt among Japanese internet users since 2009.

Origin

In the middle of 2008, the sound logo of “Salt of Hakata” became to a popular audio resource for MAD videos on NND, and Nico Nico Pedia’s article for the salt made in June of that year had earned many voices from users in its comment board^[1] which also had Oekaki^[2] board system. Hakata-san was born in that board when anonymous users were confessing lewd imaginations for the salt in the beginning of 2009.^[3]

Translation:

70 ： Anonymous：2009/01/26(Mon) 02:02:50 ID: I5wHdzGN+X
I want to lick Hakata-no-Shio-tan’s salty pussy and melt it up.
71 ： Anonymous：2009/01/26(Mon) 02:19:48 ID: Gv95C2/IzB
Hakata-no-Shio-tan must be a little boy

These 2 nonsensical comments inspired people’s imagination to a gijinka character for the salt. Then on February 4th, a NND user ERsansuu (ER算数)^[4] drew a rough illustration for “Shio-tan” on that Oekaki board, which was a character wearing on tricolore-colored Mexican hat and poncho, where the source for that solar salt was taken in that country.

“Actually, I was born in Mexico!!”

Spread

By getting an incarnation, Shio-tan grew up rapidly through followers jokingly comments and illustrations posted to that board^[5], and its personality was formed to a disgraceful person wearing no underwears. On the other hand, its sex was defined unknown or neutral as same as NaCl’s pH level.

Then, the subsequent increase in popularity in the outside of that board was brought by an animated video of Salt-tan posted by Lamaze-P, a very famous vocaloid creator known for his previous works Po Pi Po and Get Down. In this video, he sliced the sound logo and reconstruct the phrase “Hakata-san, Hashitanai” (lit. Hakata-san, How Disgraceful!) and mixed into his original song. This video was posted to NND on February 19th, 2009^[6], and more smooth animated edition was made by another user and posted on the same day (shown below). Since after the hit of this video, This gijinka character became to be better known as “Hakata-san” rather than “Shio-tan”.

【ニコニコ動画】誰も得しない伯方さんremixをアニメっぽく

Nowadays, Hakata-san is featured on a hundred of NND videos related to “Hakata no Shio”^[7], and it gets hundreds of parody or fan illustrations on illustrators communities pixiv^[8] and Nico Nico Seiga.^[9]