Nearly 60% of Japanese mothers enjoy hobby activities to support their favorite celebrities or characters, a recent survey by Interspace, which runs an information website for mothers, showed.
The online survey found that 58.3% of responding mothers enjoy the oshikatsu activities to support their favorites such as pop idols, actors, anime characters, athletes and sports teams.
Most of them, or 68.5% of the total, spend less than ¥50,000 a year on the activities. Those who spend ¥50,000 or more and less than ¥300,000 accounted for 20.7%.
The share of those who spend ¥300,000 or more and less than ¥1 million stood at 5.7%, and 5.1% spend ¥1 million or more.
Interspace conducted the survey in April and analyzed answers from 792 mothers.
"Oshikatsu seems to allow mothers who are busy with child care and might be alienated from society to spend time for themselves and relieve stress," an Interspace official said.
"If new communities are created among these mothers through exchanges on social media, relationships between fans may become stronger," the official said.