Nintendo Gets Trademark For Amaterasu, Japanese Sun Goddess’ Name? [Could Nintendo Have Trademarked The Japanese Sun Goddess' Name Amaterasu?]
That whole “It’s on like Donkey Kong!” trademarking thing a while back? Not only had everyone forgotten about it but now it doesn’t even register compared to what Nintendo have just gone and done. You know that rising sun symbol on the Japanese flag, and how it’s known as Land Of The Rising Sun? Also how the name of the country basically means “sun-origin”? That all pretty much has to do with the Emperor’s claimed divine descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu, the Japanese word for which Nintendo has just received a patent for.

We’re not sure if this action is liable to stir the sort of protest that something like this applied to other major religious figures would draw in Western, or other Eastern cultures, since apparently Amaterasu is more of a cultural icon than anything else, only having a more traditional role in World War 2 propaganda, and only the first name has been trademarked, not the full one, and of course Amaterasu has been used as a video game character before, most notably in PlayStation 2 masterpiece Okami. Definitely one of Nintendo’s stranger moves.
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