About

Irasutoya (Japanese: いらすとや, lit. "Illustration Shop", Domain: irasutoya.com^[1]) is a website created by Japanese illustrator Takashi Mifune (みふねたかし), which provides free artworks available for commercial use. Since the late 2010s, individuals, major companies and government bodies have often utilized this clip art gallery in their publications, advertising campaigns, and public service announcements.

History

According to Japanese Wikipedia^[2], Mifune started Irasutoya's website and Twitter^[3] on January 31st, 2012. From the beginning, he continued daily updates by responding to users' requests as quickly as possible.

In late February 2016, Irasutoya caught attention for the first time with his works reflecting current affairs. "Children playing with broken hand-held game consoles", posted on February 22nd, was inspired by a famous female violinist getting criticized for smashing her children's Nintendo 3DS on the grounds of discipline (shown below, left). "Hardly-Hit Gacha" on the 24th was based on Grandblue Fantasy, which got flamed as it allegedly manipulated Gacha's winning rate (shown below, right).

Between September and December 2016, online news sites J-TOWN Net and J-Cast published a series of articles titled "We find ourselves that there is the Irasutoya's all over Japan"^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} and "Illustrators plea Irasutoya steals their jobs.".^[10] These news reports suggested Irasutoya's free illustrations filled many shop adverts and even city officials' publications at that point (shown below). In 2017, Irasutoya launched its Instagram^[11] account and started offering its original character merchandise. Also, large companies and popular media titles came to feature Irasutoya in promotional campaigns.

From Top Left to Bottom Right: Warning Sign in A Bicycle Parking, Poster for Public Sports Festival, Display at Electric Retailer,
Screencap of Evening News Show, Cautions for Wild Crafting by Japan's Health Ministry, PR Paper of City Council

In January 2021, Mifune announced he would stop the daily updates after his website went into its 10th year due to the press of business. Afterward, the website was updated occasionally. Meanwhile, Mifune started another project called Irasutoya Party (いらすとやパーティ, @irasutoyap)^[12], a short webcomic series featuring his original animal characters, on November 20th.

Irasutoya was awarded by the Japan Society for Digital Archive for "Continues archiving modern society in the unified format" in 2019^[13] and by the Association of Media in Digital for "Contributes to various kinds of content creations for a decade" in 2022^[14] respectively.

Features

Irasutoya runs under the Freemium business model, offering the illustrations for free while earning revenues via Google AdSense and collaborations with other companies. Its gallery has more than 25,000 illustrations, most of which came through Mifune's continuous daily updates for nine years till January 2021. Mifune's drawings cover a wide range from rare objects/situations to current affairs and are always cute, humorous, and sincere, even when tackling social issues. Mifune often provides male and female versions of his artwork, and sometimes stickman or animal versions. Anyone can use the illustrations for free, regardless of commercial purpose, by following the rules.^[15] Usage fees are required when one commercial publication or media content uses more than 21 items from the gallery.

Highlights

In Parodies

Shortly after Irasutoya came into the spotlight on the Japanese internet in March 2016, Twitter users started hashtags "Recreate Video Games' Box Art with Irasutoya-san" (#いらすとやさんでゲームパッケージを再現する)^[16] and "Recreate Classic Films/Albums' Cover Art with Irasutoya-san's materials" (#いらすとやさんの素材で名盤を再現してみる).^[17] These online parodies had soon grown enough to be covered by online news media.^[18][19] Later, this style spread to opening/ending parody videos on Niconico.^[20]

Left: Zombie Land Saga | Right: Pop Team Epic

Vomiting Water Puffer Fish

A 2019 parody and redraw trend, Vomiting Water Puffer Fish, started with Irasutoya's work published on March 9th.

Natural Disasters and COVID-19 Outbreak

At the Osaka Earthquake in June 2018^[21], Irasutoya started providing awareness illustrations showing safety measures in disasters just 2 hours after the main quake (shown below, left). Mifune's quick response at that time was received positively among Japanese people as it made media and official bodies easily with the incident in publications or at disaster sites.^[22] During the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020-2021, Irasutoya again caught up with the ever-changing situation with quick updates and assisted awareness campaigns to prevent the further spread of infection in schools, stores, medical facilities, local governments, and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan (shown below, center and right).

Collaborations

Since 2018, major companies and media franchises have collaborated with Irasutoya in advertising campaigns and official merchandising.

From Top Left to Bottom Right: Pokémon, Jujutsu Kaisen, Golden Kamuy, One Piece, Made In Abyss

In 2018, the Japanese manga I'm standing on a million lives^[23] published a free edition of its fifth volume entirely recreated with Irasutoya's clip art (shown below, left). On October 2nd, 2020, its anime adaptation released a special edition of its first episode on YouTube, which was produced in the same way (shown below, right).^[24]

In June 2020, Japanese musical band Golden Bomber^[25] released a "100% Irasutoya version" music video for their song "The Bubble Was Good" on YouTube, which was made by the members by themselves.

In April 2022, Japanese public broadcasting station NHK started a program "Masterpiece Theatre in 100 Seconds", in which masterpiece stories are animated with Irasutoya's works.^[26]

Search Interest

External References