Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek across the Pacific - Softcover

Yano, Christine R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822353636 ISBN 13: 9780822353638

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2013

Synopsis

In Pink Globalization, Christine R. Yano examines the creation and rise of Hello Kitty as a part of Japanese Cute-Cool culture. Yano argues that the international popularity of Hello Kitty is one aspect of what she calls pink globalization—the spread of goods and images labeled cute (kawaii) from Japan to other parts of the industrial world. The concept of pink globalization connects the expansion of Japanese companies to overseas markets, the enhanced distribution of Japanese products, and the rise of Japan's national cool as suggested by the spread of manga and anime. Yano analyzes the changing complex of relations and identities surrounding the global reach of Hello Kitty's cute culture, discussing the responses of both ardent fans and virulent detractors. Through interviews, Yano shows how consumers use this iconic cat to negotiate gender, nostalgia, and national identity. She demonstrates that pink globalization allows the foreign to become familiar as it brings together the intimacy of cute and the distance of cool. Hello Kitty and her entourage of marketers and consumers wink, giddily suggesting innocence, sexuality, irony, sophistication, and even sheer happiness. Yano reveals the edgy power in this wink and the ways it can overturn, or at least challenge, power structures.

About this title

About the Author

Christine Yano is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii. She is the author of Airborne Dreams: "Nisei" Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways, also published by Duke University Press, Crowning the Nice Girl: Gender, Ethnicity, and Culture in Hawai’i’s Cherry Blossom Festival, and Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Pink Globalization

HELLO KITTY'S TREK ACROSS THE PACIFIC

By Christine R. Yano

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-5363-8

Contents

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grabbing the Cat by Its Tail, or How the Cat 
Grabbed Me.................................................................
ix
INTRODUCTION • Kitty—Japan—Global..........................................
1
ONE • Kitty at Home: Kawaii Culture and the Kyarakuta Business.............
43
TWO • Marketing Global Kitty: Strategies to Sell Friendship and 
"Happiness"................................................................
84
THREE • Global Kitty: Here, There, Nearly Everywhere.......................
119
FOUR • Kitty Backlash: What's Wrong with Cute?.............................
163
FIVE • Kitty Subversions: Pink as the New Black............................
199
SIX • Playing with Kitty: Serious Art in Surprising Places.................
230
SEVEN • Japan's Cute-Cool as Global Wink...................................
252
APPENDIX 1 • Sanrio and Hello Kitty Timeline...............................
269
APPENDIX 2 • Artists in Sanrio's Hello Kitty Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibit 
and Catalogue..............................................................
273
NOTES......................................................................
277
REFERENCES.................................................................
299
INDEX......................................................................
313

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

KITTY AT HOME

Kawaii Culture and the Kyarakuta Business

I define kawaii as things that could make me a fantastical world.For example, there are always great dreams that I want to get, butit is impossible to get the dream. Kawaii gives me some hope. Ialso think kawaii products or persons let me express my maternalinstinct. It is limited to girls and women. It is part of our nature.

—M. Y., twenty-eight years old, personal communication, February 10, 2005

I personally think that kawaii concept has something to do withan expressionless face. I used to like Hello Kitty and Miffy [a DickBruna character] when I was still in junior high school. I especiallyliked Miffy. She had a no-expression face, but I still thought shewas really cute. Stuff I really thought cute all had in common thatthey have no smile or other expression. Hello Kitty also has nosmile or anything.

—S. N., thirty years old, personal communication, March 17, 2005

There is some notion of obedience or weakness in the concept ofkawaii. We [Japanese] often use the word kawaii for babies andpuppies that are smaller, weaker, and thus need to be protected.Kawaii has lots of components of femininity, such as obedience,dependency, and weakness.

—T. M., twenty-seven years old, personal communication, March 8, 2005

Basically, kawaii is associated with infancy that covers feelings ofthe need to protect the object. In other words, kawaii is a symbolof dependency. However, girls started to describe so many thingsas kawaii recently, so my definition of kawaii changed to includethe meaning of "trendy."

—K. A., in her thirties, personal communication, February 8, 2005

Hello Kitty in the 2000s is one of the most widely known commercialkyarakuta (character) in Japan, and kawaii is the most common descriptorof her. The Japanese women in their twenties and thirties quotedabove whom I interviewed may have different definitions of kawaii, butall agreed that Hello Kitty falls squarely within the concept. She representsvariously fantastical dreams, hopes, expressionless faces, maternalinstincts of protection and nurturance, weakness, docility, dependency,childhood, and, more recently, trendiness.

Although Hello Kitty has had her ups and downs in popularity inJapan, she is definitely not a fad and seems destined to stay for thelong haul. This is just as Sanrio would have it. According to Sanrio officialsI spoke with in Tokyo, what the company wants is a product withhigh recognition, broad placement, and long-lasting staying power(Toh matsu, personal communication, May 30, 2002). In this, Sanriohas succeeded superbly. If one seeks a national source and hub of pinkglobalization, then one must begin here. Over three decades after her"birth" by designers at Sanrio, she has become so recognizable in Japanthat one need take but a few synecdochic parts—two ears and a bow,for example, or just the tilted bow itself—to conjure up the cute iconin her entirety. Increasingly, Sanrio itself pushes for this kind of visualshorthand, abstracting the cat, enlarging the bow, and making her referentialityever more subtle. Reducing her elements to greater abstractionhas given her even more visual power.

Hello Kitty can be found in department stores, gift shops, subwaykiosks, toy shops, and souvenir stores throughout Japan. One can purchasehigh-ticket items such as Hello Kitty diamond-encrusted jewelry,customized cars and scooters, and computers, as well as low-priced erasers,cell phone straps, chopsticks, and facial tissue. No matter the size ofone's pocketbook, there is a Hello Kitty item to buy. And this availabilityhas expanded and continued for well over three decades. Consumers seeHello Kitty as much an icon of the 1970s as of the 2000s, with a devotedmultigenerational fan base in Japan.

In other countries, times, and contexts, such ubiquity might run therisk of oversaturation and critique. However, this is far less the case inJapan, where more is better—at least for marketers and a significantnumber of consumers. The appetite for consumerism and tolerancefor sheer commercialism runs high as public symbols of prosperity andachievements of middle-class modernity, even considered Americanstyle (Yano 2004:132–33; Yoshimi 2000:221). Within this framework, tobe modern is to identify with a class position that allows one to purchasewith measured ease, if not abandon, especially given Japan's extendedeconomic recession since the 1990s. This backdrop to consumer culturehelps explain the relative lack of critique of Hello Kitty, Pokémon, andother figures of popular culture in Japan—at least when juxtaposedwith very vocal and public critics in Euro-America (see chapter 4). Consumptionin Japan works as a public performance of status, achievement,knowledge, and identity, banking on the myth of middle-classhomogeneity that increasingly faces dismantling in the wake of recessionaryexigencies. The resulting "ambivalent consumer" finds herselfcaught between historic moralities of frugality, progressive cooperativemovements, what is labeled "American-style" excessive buying, and theludic pleasures of exuberant consumerism (Garon and Machlachlan2006:14–15). Our background look at the development of Hello Kittyconsumption in its country of origin must take these elements of thechanging Japanese market and consumer culture into consideration.

This is not to say that Japan is unique or that Sanrio's clever marketingis universally beloved there. Neither of these is true, and somecritics in Japan, as elsewhere, decry Hello Kitty's ubiquity. But it is tosuggest that such sheer excess and pervasive commercialism have beennormalized in Japan in the 2000s as everyday consumer culture. Inlarge urban areas and even in small towns, no space is too small, no humanarena too obscure to avoid the clutter of advertising and products.The jangling hyperactivity of marketers fuels this bustle of consumerism,even amid a less than robust economy in the 1990s and 2000s.Finding Hello Kitty everywhere is part of that bustle. In fact, Hello Kittymay be a sign of exactly the less-than-prosperous times as the perfectlyaffordable souvenir, as the purchase for oneself or another that reproducesthe "small gift, big smile" company ethos as not only an economicnecessity, but more importantly, a moral stance. In the 2000s, her purchasemay signal that belt-tightening ways need not erode good cheer,social relations, or even intimacy. In short, Hello Kitty has become anexpectation of the changing economic, political, and social landscapescattered throughout contemporary Japan.

But how did this come to be? What are the conditions by which aproduct once associated only with youth and females could be transformedinto a viable part of the generalized marketplace? What is thechanging context in Japan that could give rise to the phenomenon ofHello Kitty everywhere? What, in other words, are the elements of cuteculture in Japan that have enabled the success of this product? In orderto answer these questions, one must situate Hello Kitty first andforemost in the complex jumble of goods and practices of the 1970sand 1980s, a period of unprecedented growth, technological prowess,and cultural nationalism, otherwise known as the bubble period of Japan'sburgeoning economy. The bubble allowed middle-class practicesto become more than the norm; they came to represent an assumptionand hallmark of national achievement as "homogeneous Japan." Theunofficial public doctrine was that Japan had built a "classless" societyby virtue of its widespread prosperity. Although this was far from thetruth, the rise of Japanese cute culture, including Hello Kitty, should beseen within the discursive assumptions of a shared middle class and itsunspoken aspirations.

Our discussion follows multiple strands from this period, beginningwith the figure of the shojo (young unmarried female) as person, symbol,fetish, object, and, ultimately, consumer, from the 1970s on. Theshojo and her "girl culture" marked the rise of kawaii as a galvanizingtouchstone of female, youth-oriented, affective, aestheticized, commodifiedJapan. These qualities circumscribe a genre of products known asfanshii guzzu (Japlish; literally, "fancy goods," typically frilly commoditiesoriented to girls), of which Sanrio has been a chief purveyor. Infact, Sanrio's complete makeover in the 1970s from a dry goods businessdubbed "Yamanashi Silk" to fanshii guzzu specialist with a linguisticallyambiguous name has been the key to its corporate success. As a company,Sanrio shifted its target consumer from an older group of womenengaged in practical household activities, such as sewing, to a youngergroup—that of the shojo—with discretionary income enabling the purchaseof the frilly accoutrements to a not-yet-housebound lifestyle. Therange of goods of Sanrio concomitantly shifted from the practical tothe decorative (including the decorated practical), and from the soberto the cute, accompanying a new generation of consumers. Eventually,as the acceptability of cute spread to a wider age range, Sanrio's marketextended back again to the housewife, who could purchase cute itemsfor her kitchen as well as her young child. Although not seamless, thisspread tended to skip middle school and high school years during whichHello Kitty was considered too infantile for teenage cool. Part of thestory of this chapter lies in how Hello Kitty became acceptable oncemore to a group that temporarily shunned it. This chapter details theprocess by which cute became cool in Japan.

The shift to fanshii guzzu may be related to another group of commoditiesthat arose during this period, kyarakuta guzzu (Japlish; "charactergoods"). Whereas fanshii guzzu were meant to appeal strictly tofemales, kyarakuta guzzu could appeal to both male and female youth.The development of kyarakuta as commodities for sale, as well as theirproliferation in the public visualscape, lends an anthropomorphizedsense of kawaii-based empathy to contemporary Japan. In this chapterI analyze kyarakuta as part of a new mode that mixes emotion andidentity within a commodity aesthetic of kawaii. The rise of Hello Kittyin the mid-1970s, then, must be contextualized within several interwovenstrands of cute: shojo, fanshii guzzu, kawaii, and kyarakuta.These form the shifting backdrop by which we may more fully graspthe pervasiveness of cute-cool culture—and Hello Kitty within it—incontemporary Japan.

Another strand important to understanding Hello Kitty in Japan isan older extant culture of gift exchange (including souvenir) and sociality.As Sanrio puts it, the company is a purveyor of gifting in Japan.Thus, assumptions of the central place of gifts in establishing and maintainingsocial ties fuel Sanrio's marketing strategies. The socioculturalpremium placed upon these ties makes Sanrio's position as purveyorof gifts unassailable. Gifts form not only the rationale behind Sanrio'ssales, but also guide the company's interactions with its customers. Accordingto Sanrio, a successful transaction between customer and companyis not purely a rational, economic practice; rather, it is part of anongoing social relationship that accrues with each sale. This relationshipgenerates future brand loyalty. The gift culture of Japan, then, sealsthe Sanrio deal—facilitating relationships between people, as well asbetween customers and the products they purchase.

As a case study in the ways in which these strands intertwine, I notesome of Sanrio's activities surrounding Hello Kitty's thirty-fifth anniversary,celebrated from 2009 to 2010. These form a significant apex ofkawaii goods and consumer-driven lifestyle that is Hello Kitty's purviewin Japan. The corporate celebration activities glorify Hello Kitty as botha domestic and international icon, representing the ultimate in whatmight be known in a global setting as Japanese Cute-Cool. Hello Kittyas Japanese Cute-Cool signifies youth-oriented, feminine Japan, whichhas gained global popularity in the 2000s. In short, pink globalizationfinds peak natal expression as corporate culture in these carefully designedand publicly executed paeans to Japan's quintessentially CuteCoolicon.

Shojo, Fanshii Guzzu, and the Creationof Girl Culture in Japan

Our discussion of the development of cute culture centers around theshojo as an actual consuming figure, as well as a complex symbolicspace before the public eye. In parallel with Daniel Cook's discussionof the historical structuring of childhood through the market idiom ofthe children's clothing industry in the United States, so, too, might thedevelopment of the fanshii guzzu industry in Japan be analyzed as partof the structuring of the "girl" or girl culture in Japan, of which HelloKitty is iconic (2004). Cook's analysis demonstrates ways in which acapitalist society develops a demographic category of person in partthrough marketing and consumption practices. In glib terms, if the"hat makes the man," then here the fanshii guzzu makes the "girl" orshojo. But how does that making through marketing take place? Thesteps involved in developing shojo consumers are threefold: (1) createa sense of the shojo symbolically, (2) ensure that the shojo is an activeconsumer, and (3) extend consumer citizenship—that is, a sense ofnational purchase as membership in the buying club of Japan—to herby offering goods that are attractive and affordable, such as Hello Kitty.This scenario, however, does not do justice to the role of the shojo herself.The development of shojo culture in the 1970s and 1980s includesthe role of the shojo in developing her own expressive means dialectically,from the home and streets to the corporate boardroom and backagain. Here, then, besides existing as a commodity, Hello Kitty acts asa highly manipulable symbol by which shojo may define and performthemselves. The historical structuring of the shojo in contemporaryJapan suggests both growing "girl power" and public concern (evenmoral panic) for policing her limits (Kinsella 2005:145). This shojo webof ambiguity and ambivalence provides Hello Kitty with a broad rangeof meanings and uses.

Creating the shojo has been a historical process. Here, instead of focusingon her Meiji era (1868–1912) beginnings (see Robertson 1998:63–65), I focus on her postwar configuration within the context of risingeconomic and national-global power of the 1960s and 1970s. Theiconicity of the shojo developed through media such as books, magazines,plays, songs, film, television, manga, and anime. In many of thesedepictions, the shojo is simply a girl-child, often with infantilized facialfeatures (not unlike Hello Kitty herself, except perhaps for the size ofthe eyes): large, round eyes, outsized in proportion to an inconspicuousnose and small mouth. The shojo as a girl-child functions as a nostalgicfigure for adults who see in her a state of natural grace and immanentpossibilities for the adulthood that lies just ahead. Quite simply, she isJapan's innocent girl next door.

Jennifer Robertson argues that historically the category of the shojo"implies heterosexual inexperience and homosexual experience" (1998:65).In other words, shojo innocence assumes intimate ties ("passionate, butsupposedly platonic") with other girls and women, while relegating boysand men to a separate, more distant sphere (68). This kind of highlyacceptable same-sex intimacy typically occurs in school among sportsteam or club members. However, in some depictions from the 1970s onand particularly by the mid-1990s, hints of heterosexuality fall withinthe realm of shojo purview, not so much as subject herself, but as objectof voyeuristic fascination. During this time period, manga artistsand others begin to draw her body as changed from that of flat-chestedgirl-child to the eroticized category of sex-child with womanly breasts,buttocks, and long legs (Masubuchi 1994:83). The erotic charge lies inthe eerie, Photoshopped quality of the image: she has a child's face and awoman's body. Let me note here that the visual depiction of shojo eroticismonly placed in bodily terms what some would argue was alreadythere in unspoken heteronormative pedophilia (see Allison 1996:29).

The real or fictive nature of the sex-child image matters less than herpublic circulation as symbolic dream girl, at least for some men. It alsolies in the purported fleetingness of the condition, as all too soon thechild becomes an adult. The attraction, then, at least for her pedophilicadmirers, is not for the woman but for the child. And it is as child thatshe becomes precious as a transitory figure threatened by impendingadulthood. That threat can be performatively quelled through masquerade:adult women may dress as children, speak or act as childrene.g., the figure of the burikko, the woman with high-pitched baby talkwho feigns the child, primarily to appeal to men), or cling to symbols ofchildhood (e.g., Hello Kitty) (Miller 2004b:148). This masquerade setsthe stage for performances of shojo-the-virgin, remade. Sanrio aids andabets this, especially with the development of goods for the adult femalemarket from the late 1970s on. These include Hello Kitty stockings,makeup, sanitary napkins, and even condoms.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Pink Globalization by Christine R. Yano. Copyright © 2013 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822353636
• ISBN 13: 9780822353638
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336