{"id":721,"date":"2026-09-08T16:14:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T07:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/?p=721"},"modified":"2026-09-08T16:14:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T07:14:51","slug":"billiken-san-the-american-god-who-found-a-home-in-osaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/archives\/721","title":{"rendered":"Billiken-san \u2014 The American God Who Found a Home in Osaka"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His name is&nbsp;<strong>Billiken<\/strong>, or as we affectionately call him here in Osaka,&nbsp;<strong>Billiken-san<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, let me ask you a question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Where do you think he comes from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Japan?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Actually&#8230;&nbsp;<strong>America!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s right. Billiken was born in the United States around&nbsp;<strong>1908<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the story, an American female artist saw a mysterious little figure in a dream and created Billiken based on what she had seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-border -border01 wp-block-paragraph\">With his pointed head, big smile, and enormous feet, Billiken became popular as a&nbsp;<strong>good-luck charm<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>His name is&nbsp;Billiken, or as we affectionately call him here in Osaka,&nbsp;Billiken-san. Now, let me ask  [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"swell_btn_cv_data":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":729,"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/729"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nbs-truejapan.jp\/member\/premier-guide5273\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}