Why Did Oshi Plushies Boom in Japan? Nui-Dori, Nui Clothes and a Market That Grew 1.7x

If you’ve ridden a train in Japan lately, you’ve probably noticed more people with a small stuffed toy hanging from their bag. Nui-katsu, the habit of carrying a plushie around and photographing it on outings, has created demand not only for the plushies themselves but also for dedicated outfits and storage gear.

Our glossary covers how to enjoy nui-katsu and tips for nui-dori, plushie photography. This article looks at why nui-katsu spread, using fans’ buying motives and market data on related products.

Three Buying Motives Behind the Boom

There isn’t one reason nui-katsu grew. Three different motives flowed into the same products at the same time.

• Fashion: an accessory hanging from your bag. Labubu’s popularity widened this entrance all at once
• Oshi-katsu: carrying a plushie modeled on your oshi to show you’re a fan
• Comfort: not tied to a particular character or oshi. Being together is the whole point

A report by ITmedia PC USER sorts nui-katsu into these three types (ITmedia PC USER, in Japanese). What matters is that the three don’t compete for the same customers. Someone who came in through fashion buys an oshi plushie; someone who kept one for comfort buys plushie clothes. With three doors in, the market thickened in three directions.

Nui-katsu marketOne product, many buyers

• FashionA bag accessory; Labubu widened this door
• Oshi-katsuA plushie modeled on your oshi
• ComfortBeing together is the point

The three motives don't compete, so each one adds customers instead of taking them from another.

Timeline: How the Word Went Mainstream

The moment these three motives overlapped shows up clearly in the sales figures.

1. 2011Oshi-men nominatedNominated for the buzzword awards
2. 2021¥50.4 billionSales at 34 related firms
3. 2023¥68.2 billionSame 34 companies
4. 2025Nui-katsu nominatedLabubu becomes a global craze
5. 2025¥84.9 billionAbout 1.7 times 2021
6. Aug 2026Market tripled in 10 yearsNikkei's long view

The word and the money rose together.

Tokyo Shoko Research, a Japanese credit research firm, tracked 34 nui-katsu-related companies and found their sales grew about 1.7 times, from ¥50.4 billion in 2021 to ¥84.9 billion in 2025. Net profit roughly doubled, from ¥2.8 billion to ¥5.4 billion. In 2025, 30 of the 34 companies (88.2%) stayed profitable (Tokyo Shoko Research, in Japanese).

The same tally shows that the number of companies with rising profits fell from 19 in 2024 to 15 in 2025. The market is growing, but fewer companies are managing to grow with it, a sign the boom is entering a maturing phase.

For the longer view, the business daily Nikkei ran a story on August 31, 2026, headlined, in our translation, “Adults are hooked on nui-katsu too, living with their plushies: the market has tripled in 10 years” (Nikkei, in Japanese). A trend that started with young people has spread to older generations.

How It Works: Low Prices, Yet a Real Market

Compared with the market’s momentum, what each person spends is surprisingly modest. In a survey of women aged 15 to 24 by SHIBUYA109 Entertainment, the average purchase was ¥3,282 per plushie, and average annual nui-katsu spending, including clothes and storage items, was ¥6,644 (ITmedia PC USER, in Japanese).

Honestly, that’s small for oshi-katsu spending. It doesn’t even cover one ensei, the trip to a live show. A market forms anyway, because the spending doesn’t end with a single purchase.

• Buy the plushie: around ¥3,000
• Buy or make clothes: more with every season and every costume change
• Buy gear for carrying it: a nui pouch, an ita-bag, miniature props for photo shoots
• Pay for care and repair: when a plushie is damaged, fans fix it rather than replace it

1. 01Buy the nuiAround ¥3,000
2. 02Dress itClothes for every season
3. 03Carry itPouch, ita-bag, props
4. 04Care for itRepair instead of replace

The main item is cheap; the economy lives in everything around it.

The low price of the plushie lowers the barrier to entry, while the surrounding purchases raise spending per customer. The economics of nui-katsu turn on the periphery, not the main item. The plushies people carry split roughly evenly between “oshi nui” and “character nui,” with “nameless nui” adding about 30% on top. This isn’t a market that only buyers of a specific IP can sustain.

What Happened on the Supply Side

Another factor is the widening base of people who can make plushies. Many official idol and VTuber plushies are produced under contract at OEM factories in China, and some manufacturers will make plushies from a run of one. Small-lot manufacturing has become realistic, so even small groups and individual creators can release official plushies. It’s the three-dimensional version of what happened in the history of acrylic stands, where smaller print runs democratized merchandise.

Meanwhile, a sales method from overseas lit a different fire. Labubu, from the Chinese toy maker POP MART, is sold in blind boxes where you can’t see what’s inside. Paired with social media unboxing videos, it became a global craze. BLACKPINK’s LISA attaching one to her bag is said to be one of the sparks, and in Japan, too, it has brought scarcity, steep resale prices and counterfeits (Impress Watch, in Japanese).

This “sell it unseen” structure works on the same mechanism as K-pop random goods. Where Japan’s oshi plushies have mainly been sold in regular or lottery sales with the design shown in advance, Labubu grew on the thrill of the gamble. Same plush toy, different sales lineage.

Japan

Oshi nui

• Design shown in advance
• Bought out of attachment to an oshi
• Around ¥3,000

Blind box

POP MART types

• Contents unknown until opened
• Bought for the thrill of the pull
• Resale and counterfeits are routine

Overseas

Jellycat / Squishmallows

• Design shown in advance
• Bought for touch and collecting
• Trades between collectors

Japan's oshi plushies sell on attachment; blind boxes sell on chance.

Culture: From “Taking Them Along” to “Living Together”

However they were sold, what happens once a plushie arrives is much the same. The fun of nui-katsu is that involvement deepens in stages. At first you just hang it from your bag. Before long you’re photographing it on trips and changing its clothes, and eventually you’ve bought it a bed.

The clearest symbol of this deepening is the supply and demand at plushie repair services, nicknamed “plushie hospitals.” One of the earliest grew out of a shop opened in 2013 and began repairs in 2014. In its first year alone it received about 3,000 requests against a capacity of under 100 a month, and early on, the wait from admission to discharge reportedly stretched to three years (Nikkei Xtrend, in Japanese).

When the plushie hospital first opened, the wait from admission to discharge reached three years. That tells you a plushie is treated not as something you replace when it breaks but as an irreplaceable individual. Fans say they “welcome” a plushie home (omukae) rather than buy it, and talk about a “homecoming visit” (satogaeri) when they part with one. The vocabulary comes from the same feeling.

A Stand-In for the Selfie

There’s one more use that has grown stronger recently. People who don’t want to put their own face on social media photograph a plushie as their stand-in. One example describes friends on a trip taking a group photo of just the plushies, separate from the group photo of the people, and posting it (ITmedia PC USER, in Japanese).

You can keep a record of the trip without showing your face, and you’re no longer the star of the picture. A plushie that is both your oshi’s stand-in and your own is what sets nui-katsu apart from other merch cultures.

Others hate the idea of a plushie getting dirty or damaged outside, and deliberately keep their nui-katsu entirely indoors. Worth remembering: going out isn’t the only right way.

The Etiquette Debate

Around May 2026, whether it’s acceptable to put plushies or acrylic stands on restaurant tables and photograph them became a topic of debate on social media. Some voices rejected the practice outright; others said it’s fine as long as it doesn’t inconvenience the venue. Opinion is still divided.

The practical lines people currently share are the venue’s permission, how much table space you take, and whether other customers appear in the shot. Avoid busy times, don’t spread things across the table, and put down a small mat rather than placing the plushie directly on the surface. Because the rules aren’t written down, asking the venue first is the fastest solution.

¥3,282

Average price per plushie

¥6,644

Average yearly nui-katsu spending

1.7x

Growth in sales, 2021 to 2025

3 years

Opening-period wait from admission to discharge

Cheap to enter, expensive to leave behind.

Sources: ITmedia PC USER (spending, in Japanese); Tokyo Shoko Research (sales, in Japanese); Nikkei Xtrend (plushie hospital, in Japanese)

In Practice: What to Check Before You Bring One Home

Because the lines aren’t settled, checking beforehand pays off.

• Check how you can get it: Regular sales at official stores, lottery sales and blind boxes differ wildly in difficulty. Assume lottery and blind-box items may not be buyable through official channels and you’ll avoid burning out
• Avoid resold and counterfeit items: Counterfeits have been reported for popular plushies, Labubu included. Look up the official price first, then check the going rate
• Decide on a size standard first: Plushie clothes are sold in standard sizes such as 15 cm and 20 cm. Measure the plushie you have before buying and you’ll make fewer mistakes
• Check the line on derivative works: Homemade plushies and plushie clothes depend on the rights holder’s guidelines. Treatment changes depending on whether it’s for personal use, involves social media posts, or is for sale
• Set up a storage environment: Direct sunlight and humidity are fabric’s enemies. For the periods when you’re not carrying it, the same thinking as the storage basics protects it

Rights are the area with the most misunderstanding. Legally, making plushies or plushie clothes modeled on a character without the copyright holder’s permission can infringe the rights of reproduction and adaptation. In Japan, many rights holders tacitly tolerate personal-scale making, but it has been pointed out that posting on social media goes beyond “personal or home use” (chosakukenhou.jp, in Japanese). More IPs are publishing guidelines, so checking the official text before you start is the surest route. For individual cases, consult a specialist.

The Past Year

December 2025, “nui-katsu” becomes an everyday word: ITmedia PC USER ran “Why has nui-katsu become popular?”, covering the buzzword-award nomination, Labubu’s popularity, the SHIBUYA109 survey and the psychology of young people. That a general IT outlet rather than a fan-focused one took the topic head-on is itself a sign of how far it has spread.

Hotels respond: The Toyoko Inn chain offers a stay plan that lends out a bed and bathrobe for plushies, one example of services that treat a plushie as someone to stay with reaching mainstream hotel chains. Oshi-katsu accommodation has moved from a specialist niche into general infrastructure.

Notes From The Oshi Lab: A Plushie Is a Product You Live With, Not One You Own

We don’t think oshi plushies belong on the same shelf as other merch. If acrylic stands and trading cards are products you display, line up and protect, a nui is a product you take out, dress up and heal. The experience doesn’t end the moment you buy it; the relationship deepens over time. An admission-to-discharge wait of three years when a plushie hospital first opened shows that this category is closer to living together than to owning.

For companies, this carries two implications. One is that after-sales service becomes a differentiator. Repairs, cleaning, replacement parts and published size standards, the ways of supporting a buyer after the purchase, are still untouched by most official brands. The other is that reliance on the thrill of the gamble becomes a long-term risk. Blind boxes grow on short-term buzz, but counterfeits and resale flood in at the same time and erode the brand’s credibility. The plain strength of Japanese official plushies, that you can buy as many of what you want as you want, is an asset that pays off over years.

The most practical conclusion for fans is that you don’t have to do all of nui-katsu from the start. Hanging one from your bag and stopping there, or keeping it entirely at home, both count as real nui-katsu. As a market grows, an atmosphere of “you should own more” and “you should shoot more” appears, but this culture’s original motive was to be quietly together. The full picture of market size is in The Oshi-Katsu Market Size (2026 Edition).

For consultations on merchandise planning and oshi-katsu-friendly services, contact KAZAORI Inc. (in Japanese). Our Oshi Score check (free diagnostic) is also available.

Related articles: What Is Nui-Katsu? (Glossary) / What Is Nui-Dori? / What Is a Nui Pouch? / Storage Ideas for Oshi Merch