Japan’s ‘Dumpling Brothers’ Dish Up Chart-Topping Ditty

In this land of fashion and fast-moving trends, there’s a wacky new hit in town: dumplings.

Yes, dumplings. A children’s song featuring three animated dumplings has rocketed to the top of the pop charts, selling 3.3 million compact discs in just 12 days. It now looks likely that “The Three Dumpling Brothers” will become the best-selling single ever released in Japan, breaking the previous record of 4.5 million copies for a tune back in 1976.

The dumpling song, which is catchy and charming enough to have earned the affections of millions of adults as well, is now blaring from shops, elevators and street speakers across the country. It is being sung not just in kindergartens but also in karaoke bars.

Newspapers have begun printing the times at which the dumplings will perform on television, and those who haven’t already had a mind-numbing dose can even tune in to a cable radio channel that plays nothing but the dumpling song--24 hours a day.

Sales of traditional Japanese dumplings have exploded. The sticky balls, which are made of kneaded rice and then slathered with soy sauce or sweet bean paste, had come to be seen as something of a fuddy-duddy food favored mainly by the elderly. But several store chains have seen a 20% surge in sales since the song appeared. At one famous downtown dumpling purveyor, the Takagiya, sales have increased a hundredfold in the past month, manager Masako Ishikawa said.

“My kid didn’t used to like dumplings, but ever since the song came out he wants to eat them,” said Minako Tokoi, mother of an ardent 6-year-old fan.

The dumpling rage has caused great merriment--and not a little bewilderment--in this recession-struck and somewhat dour-humored nation.

“I really don’t understand why it’s become such a big boom,” confessed Asato Izumi, a columnist and pop culture critic. He compared the fad to the United States’ erstwhile obsession with Cabbage Patch dolls.

“The Three Dumpling Brothers” was created for state-run NHK television’s “Together With Mommy,” a popular program that is Japan’s answer to “Sesame Street.”

With simple animation, it tells of the adventures of three dumpling siblings skewered together on a single stick.

In fact, Japanese dumplings are usually sold four to a stick, but the number “three” sounds better to the ear than “four,” which can also sound like “death” in Japanese. And because the word for dumpling, dango, rhymes with “tango,” the song is set to a thumping tango beat.

Dango also rhymes with the Japanese words for “overtime” and “bid rigging,” sparking hilarious imitation ditties sung by salary men that are circulating in offices and on the Internet.

The dumpling brothers fight and make up, view cherry blossoms in spring and the moon in autumn, and turn dry and hard when they sleep in the cupboard overnight.

After the two-minute song segment was first shown in January, NHK began receiving up to 700 calls a day from viewers asking for replays, prompting the network to arrange for a CD release, said spokeswoman Akiko Toda. When the CD was released by Pony Canyon Inc. on March 3, it instantly muscled its way to the top of the charts, elbowing out a pop tune by a red-hot band called the Kinki Kids.

The dumpling merchandising frenzy has only just begun. More than 250 companies have applied for the right to slap the dumpling brothers’ picture on everything from T-shirts to cellular phone covers, an NHK spokesman said.

On Wednesday, Bandai--the company that launched the Tamagotchi virtual pet--announced that it had won the licensing rights for 30 products.