Dumpling Deluge
'Dango' Tune Inspires Japanese Craze

Stefanie Berry Special to The Washington Post  
August 3, 1999; Page C1

The latest fad to take off running in Japan has nothing to do with brand-name labels or computer technology. Unbelievably, what's hot in Japan is a dumpling. It's called dango, an age-old Japanese snack that until recently was favored only by elders.

But suddenly dango (pronounced DON-go) is in. The treats--dense, sticky, jawbreaker-size balls made from rice flour and coated with soy-based sauce or red bean paste and stuck on a skewer--are selling like hot cakes. And so are dango key chains, dango toys, even dango cell-phone carrying cases. Vendors at outdoor shrine sales, which are part food market, part fair and part flea market, carry inflated dangos and dango stuffed toys, and grown men have been spotted sporting dango shirts. There are even dango games in video arcades.

How did an ordinary morsel rise to celebrity status and attract the kind of following Elvis would envy? The answer lies in a children's cartoon and its accompanying song, "Dango San Kyodai," or "Three Dumpling Brothers."

The cartoon, shown on the NHK educational channel, tells the story of three dango brothers (think three rice balls, with faces, on a skewer) dipped in soy-based sauce. The brothers, Chonan, Sannan and Jinan, each with a distinct personality, go on adventures, quarrel, make up and hope they'll ultimately wind up together again on another stick in their next incarnation, this time coated with sweet red bean paste.

The cartoon is cute, but it's the song that has Japan humming. The catchy, infectious, tangolike "Dango, dango, dango" is playing throughout Japan, emanating from shops, street fairs, hand-held radios and even karaoke bars.

Spitted on a stick, dumplings, dumplings

All three in a row, dumplings, dumplings

Drenched in soy sauce, dumplings, dumplings

Dumpling brothers three

One day the three were fighting, fighting

About who looks best cooked, fighting, fighting

And they broke up, dumplings, dumplings,

But at once were friends again.

Today we napped in the closet, closet,

Three together in the closet, closet,

Carelessly we overslept

And in the morning were too hard!

Masahiko Sato is the man behind the dango fad. Considered a television commercial genius who knows how to hook listeners with his jingles, he wrote the lyrics to the dango song.

When broadcaster NHK chose it as the January theme song for the long-running children's program "Okasan to Issgo (Together With Mommy)," the network received hundreds of calls and decided to release a CD single of the song. In March, it soared to the top of the pop charts, selling 3.3 million copies in just 12 days. Stores throughout Japan sold out of the dango ditty almost instantly, unable to satisfy demand. The score for the song is also a popular item at bookstores.

The fever even has hit the United States. Bookseller Kinokuniya's East Coast and L.A. stores had no copies of the CD left; its San Francisco store had just two. "We're sold out," said Nao Araki, a sales associate in the L.A. store. "They went at a good pace. I'd say it was a good sell."

Soon after the CD's release, a slew of hilarious parody lyrics began circulating in offices and on the Internet. (The above lyrics translation is from the Web site http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Flats/2126/dango/dumplings.html.) It helps that the word dango, which means dumpling, also means "bid rigging," and rhymes with the word for "overtime," causing even Japanese businessmen to take up the tune.

Some businessmen are taking the dumpling brothers seriously, coming up with endless money-making dango endeavors. Hundreds of companies have applied for the right to slap a picture of the charming dumplings on their products. Just one--Bandai, the company that launched the best-selling Tamagotchi virtual pet--won licensing rights for 30 dango products.

The song also has ignited sales of the humble dumplings. All over Japan, people are gobbling up dango, now available in fine department stores as well as at the street stalls that hawked them faithfully through the years. Seibu Ikebukuro Department Store introduced dango for sale in March, the Japan Times reported, and sold 400 in three hours.

And, in a plus for the businesses, because there are only three dango brothers, most dango makers are getting away with serving only three balls to a stick rather than the customary four. (The word for "four" in Japanese sounds like the word for "death" and therefore isn't ideal for a jolly children's tune.)

Interestingly, it's not the first time a cheery children's song has lifted spirits in Japan during years of economic hardship. The country's best-selling hit of all time (which "Dango San Kyodai" may soon surpass) was another upbeat tune geared to children. And it, too, was about food. "Oyoge! Taiyakiku" or "Swim! Fish-Shaped Pancake" sold 4.5 million copies in Japan in economically bleak 1975.

Why this steady diet of food-related songs? Both dango and taiyaki, a fish-shaped pastry filled with sweet red bean paste, are traditional snacks usually sold at food stalls or small shops in older neighborhoods. Perhaps they remind people of a sweeter time of youth, family and simple, happy lives.

And when we are born again

Please let us be together again

And give us lots of bean jelly

Spitted together dumplings, dumplings…

(To hear a free Sound Bite of the dango ditty, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8166.)