Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries revives dank meme for seafood campaign 

Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (abbreviated as MAFF) launched a campaign aimed at encouraging the nation to consume Japanese fish and seafood on September 7. The campaign’s unconventional visual managed to grab hold of the public’s attention instantly, as it references an “old but gold” meme that had circulated on Japanese social media a while back. Surprisingly, the ministry’s attempt has not been labeled cringe and has even earned the response of Fate/Grand Order artist K-SUWABE, the originator of the meme. 

In their X/Twitter post, the MAFF introduces the idea behind the campaign and presents the campaign’s visual – the phrase “Taberuze Nippon!” (which translates loosely to “Let’s dig in, Japan!”) is written out in a flashy font against a white background. The ministry encourages users to create images using the logo and share them on social media, providing examples of what they mean. 

But what makes this image so sensational? The font, color and juxtaposition of the image all caused Japanese users to unanimously remember a particular dank meme from the past. The vintage meme in question is the “I want five thousand trillion yen!” meme, which was inadvertently created by illustrator and game artist K-SUWABE back in 2016. 

Something about this plain white background image yelling “I want 5000000000000000 (five thousand trillion yen)” in a needlessly dramatic, bevel and embossed font with no context whatsoever struck gold with Twitter and Pixiv communities, and it became fodder for endless memes, with users even creating a generator that writes out any words in the iconic font and a similar Google Chrome plugin. Perhaps the phenomenon can be compared to the viral Retro Wave text generator memes. 

By some flash of genius, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries thought to excavate this relic and employ it to spread awareness about a completely serious matter. And they did it authentically, too – Internet detectives were able to determine that the ministry’s logo was not created using the previously mentioned free generator, as the characters of the phrase end up muddled when attempting to do so. This means that the ministry had someone sit down and recreate the font from scratch. And their efforts were rewarded – FNN Prime Online reports that this post, with over 16 million views, is the ministry’s most highly viewed post ever since the account was made in 2014, and that their followers have increased by the hundreds since it was published. 

Inevitably, users rushed to contact the founding father of the meme, illustrator K-SUWABE, who denied being involved in the campaign and politely thanked the government for using their design.