Old Tobidashi Bōya "Running (or Jumping?) Boy" Sign in my Kadoma-shi Neighborhood

One day, while out on a jalan-jalan ("walking for nothing") with my camera I happened upon this very old sign. It was located on a storage garage at a Showa-era house in Kamishima-cho in Kadoma-shi.

The sign looked familiar, but I did not know what it really was or what the character on the sign was called. So I did a little AI research...

I uploaded the photo to Google Images and its AI said it was a pictograph or geoglyph. I guess the AI was fixated on the white lines. When I added more information ("Kadoma-shi, Osaka, Japan"), the AI said it was probably something from the Nazca Lines in Peru, because Japanese scientists had done research there (luckily I was familiar with the Nazca Lines after seeing them on the Ancient Aliens show on the History channel...). I typed "no, try again," and the AI said it was an image of Anpanman ("no"), Doraemon ("no"), and then Hoshio-kun (the Baby Star Ramen mascot). I then decided to give up with the AI and try to use my own memory.

I knew I had seen the sign and character before and then I finally found it on another jalan-jalan.

The sign, in flag form, was at an old tako-yaki shop near my home. I asked the master (after I ordered some tako-yaki, a benefit of ethnographic research) if I could take a picture of it. He said yes, of course, and added that the flag had been at the shop for a long time, since the time his father ran it.

I now had a new image to search, and when I did, I found out it was the Tobidashi Bōya (飛び出し坊や, or "Running Boy" or "Jumping Boy"). This character was made by Yasuhei Hisada for the city council of Yokaichi, Shiga Prefecture in 1973 as a warning sign that was adopted by local PTAs and neighborhood associations who placed them around schools and other areas to remind drivers to drive slowly and watch out for children in the street. Tobidashi Bōya spread to other communities who made their own versions.

So the sign I photographed is the Kadoma-shi version (I have seen it in Neyagawa-shi as well). The Kadoma-shi version has made it to also indicate a safety spot (business or home) for children to get help or call 110 to get emergency assistance from the police. I recently noticed that the small hospital behind my house puts the flag up whenever they are open.

Takeaways from this experience? 1) The sign, while severly weathered, is not as old as I thought it was... 2) My memory, also extremely weathered, along with fieldwork, seem to be superior to AI.

For more information, see "50 Years with the "Tobidashi Boy" Sign | Higashiomi, the Birthplace of the Tobidashi Boy Sign": https://tobidashibouya.com/

See also "An Exhibition of Tobidashi Boy": https://www.lmaga.jp/news/2016/08/14038/