From a Collectible Card Game to Cardboard Currency: How Pokémon Translates between Japan and the United States

In 1996, the Japanese role-playing game, Pokémon, made its debut in Japan, and quickly gained international popularity in the United States and Europe. Following this large success, Nintendo released a card game that replicated the main aspects of the video game, known as the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG). Like the video games, the Pokémon TCG was also an international hit, with over 34.1 billion cards being sold to date (Puleo). And this popularity is greater than ever, with 3.7 of that 34.1 billion sold since the pandemic started (Puleo). Despite the universal success of the Pokémon franchise and more specifically, the TCG, the translation from the Japanese market to the American market highlights different values in each respective country. While many claim that the success of the Pokémon Trading Card Game in the United States can be attributed to its strategic model that adheres to the American characteristic of competition, I argue that their current booming success is more associated with the profit-driven mindset of most Americans.

To discover the reason for Pokémon’s large success in Japan, let’s first take a look at how the creator, Satoshi Tajiri, came up with the idea. Tajiri spent his childhood in Machida, a rural town west of Tokyo Metropolis. Like many other children in the area, he enjoyed spending his leisure time catching insects and crustaceans and collecting these adorable “pocket monsters” (Sakurai). This experience later led to the foundation for his game Pokémon, (short for pocket monsters). Here lies the framework of his video game 30 years before its debut; Pokémon appealed to the collector-like mindset that many children in Japan shared, especially when it came to creatures they found small and cute. Having grown up in Japan, Tajiri knew his audience and developed a game that perfectly resonated with them by sharing his love for his hobby with others like himself.

So then, how does the success of the electronic game mirror the success of the TCG? The Pokémon TCG was founded on the same key values as the game. With cute little artworks and a hierarchy of card rarities, it “replicates the collecting and trading aspect already existing in the video game and adds the competitive and strategic factor of card games” (Sakurai). We can see how the popularity of the card game parallels with the popularity of the video game because they both appeal to the same traits in Japanese consumers: a hobby that involved collecting a variety of pet-like critters in addition to “the Japanese love for all things ‘cute’ and kawaii” (Sakurai).

For further context, the popularity of cuteness in Japan stems from their values of youth. Small cute animals, like the ones depicted in Pokémon cards, are sought after and embraced in Japan because they are symbolic of young playful figures that children are often attracted to. Older audiences in Japan share this same desire for these kawaii figures in order to emulate these values. It should also be noted that this aesthetic can be representative of an escape from the long and stagnant work life that many people are occupied within Japan.

The translation of the Pokémon TCG from Japan to America took on a different approach. While its initial popularity was for many of the same reasons as its popularity in Japan, in light of its recent success, the explosion of the Pokémon TCG in the United States is largely profit-related. Scalpers have created an artificial demand for these trading cards in the US by camping out at local vendors like Targets and Best Buys to purchase and resell these cards through mediums like eBay and Mercari. Jason Evers, an avid Pokémon card collector, recalls how “this scarcity ultimately culminated in my standing for thirty minutes outside the Comic Book Store in Glassboro, in the freezing rain, in a line that wrapped around the store on the day of the release of the Shining Fates set, only to be told that the cards had been entirely sold out” (Lonsdorf). I can attest to Evers’s experience as well, as my local Target and Best Buy are always depleted in their Pokémon aisles. The booming popularity of the Pokémon TCG currently revolves around buyers looking for cards in the market at retail price and auctioning it off for revenue.

Scalpers primarily target sealed products, and rare Pokémon cards deemed as “chase cards” because these products make the most profit when sold online. What exactly defines a chase card? Chase cards usually depict fan-loved Pokémon such as Charizard and Pikachu and can be characterized by their unique and detailed artworks. Additionally, vintage cards in good condition are also very sought after in the Pokémon card community, with many being sold for hundreds of dollars. Because of the randomized distribution of these chase cards within sealed packs, scalpers are incentivized to buy Pokémon products in large quantities and increase their chance of pulling these cards for greater profit.

Now of course many American collectors also enjoy the hobby for the same reasons as those in Japan, to collect cool and cute artworks similar to the games. I also don’t deny that there is a market in Japan that is also profit-driven in regards to Pokémon cards. However, when considering the circulation and prices of English printed cards in respect to Japanese printed cards, English cards are on average $0.10 more expensive, and each pack is around $2.50 more expensive (Lloyd). This means that the collecting hobby is significantly more financially achievable if you were to collect Japanese cards instead of the English ones, as you can purchase more packs or chances of pulling chase cards. Therefore, the card game in Japan caters to the Japanese value to collect much more efficiently than the card game in English, highlighting a key difference in the translation across countries.