Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek across the Pacific 9780822395881

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Pink Globalization

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•••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• Pink Globalization •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• hello kitty’s trek across the pacific •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• Christine R. Yano •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• •••••••••••• duke university press  durham and london  2013

© 2013 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper ∞ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Chaparral Pro by Copperline Book Services, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­ Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Hello Kitty® is a trademark of Sanrio Company, Ltd. The references to and use of third-­party images and material in this book, including the images and materials of Sanrio Company, Ltd., are made under the fair use/fair practices provisions of U.S. and Japanese copyright law, which protect the appropriate reproduction of a work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. This book is not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by Sanrio Company, Ltd., or any third party.

Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data Yano, Christine Reiko. Pink globalization : Hello Kitty’s trek across the Pacific / Christine R. Yano. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-5351-5 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-5363-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Hello Kitty (Fictitious character).  2. Japan—Commerce.  3. Exports— Japan.  4. Character merchandising.  5. Globalization.  I. Title. hf3826.5.y36 2013 306.3—dc23 2013005285

This book is dedicated to Elaine — a friend, great helper, and true Hello Kitty fan with a big heart — without whom I would never have thought to grab this cat’s tail.

Contents





Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Grabbing the Cat by Its Tail, or How the Cat Grabbed Me introduction   •  Kitty — Japan — Global

1

one   •  Kitty at Home: Kawaii Culture

43



and the Kyarakutā Business two   •  Marketing Global Kitty: Strategies





84

to Sell Friendship and “Happiness” 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

Preface and Acknowledgments Grabbing the Cat by Its Tail, or How the Cat Grabbed Me

My interest in Hello Kitty as a research topic began in 1998, when I introduced the subject as part of a course I began teaching in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai’i on Japanese popular culture. I had grown up in Hawai’i, and Hello Kitty was part of everyday commercial fare from Japan. After giving my first lecture on the subject, I jokingly mentioned to Elaine, the department secretary who had also grown up in Hawai’i in the 1950s and 1960s, what I had discussed in class. To my surprise, she showed me her computer where she had bookmarked Sanrio’s website. Although Elaine may not have literally grown up with Hello Kitty, she was my first Hello Kitty fan! Poring over the website, I was agog at the richness and complexity of the Sanrio world — a pink realm of fictitious characters, relationships, and of course goods, but also a world in which a consumer might live in interaction with a corporation and its products. I began to pay closer attention. Elaine had in fact provided me with my first textual (website) and ethnographic (fandom) components that have proven to be the basic blocks of what has become Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific. This was the start of a long, rich journey that began in the classroom, delved into research, and traversed different terrains many times over. During well over a decade of thinking, talking, and writing about Hello Kitty, I have taken a bit of ownership of the cat and its many, many lives — inasmuch as I fear that the cat has taken ownership of me. Like many anthropologists, I have inhabited the village of this subject matter over the longue durée, observing changing circumstances and whimsies of popularity, folding these into interpretive analyses. In fact, this research had to compete with several other projects, from Japanese American beauty queens, delicatessens, and flight attendants,

to Japanese divas, emoticons, and television shows (e.g., Katsuno and Yano 2007; Yano 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010a, 2011). Hello Kitty became a research hobby: whenever I traveled to another city, I searched out Sanrio stores and fans.1 Whenever I gave a talk on Hello Kitty, I asked audience members to join me and send me their “Kitty sightings”; over the course of several years, many did — far too many for me to include here. But the deluge of sightings gave me a greater and richer sense of the phenomenon than I could have surmised on my own. The long and sporadic durée provided me with different opportunities and insights of engagement. Every year when I taught the course on Japanese popular culture, I surveyed students about their knowledge of Hello Kitty. In some semesters I had students interview people about Hello Kitty. In other semesters I interviewed Japanese students about the concept of kawaii (cute). I began conducting interviews at Sanrio itself in 2002, when I traveled to South San Francisco and interviewed several employees (at the time, this was where the main branch office in charge of company operations in the Americas was located),2 and to Tokyo to interview representatives at Sanrio corporate headquarters. I returned to both locations and conducted further interviews in several subsequent years. Because of the structure of the organization — which had a more formal vertical structure in its Japan headquarters than in branch offices — I had relatively greater freedom in the South San Francisco office to wander through hallways, meet a wide variety of employees, and get to know people. Over the course of my twelve years of research, some of the key personnel changed, particularly the spokespersons and marketing directors at both locations (Doug Parkes in Tokyo, Bill Hensley in South San Francisco), who were my primary contacts. I also conducted e-­mail and phone interviews with fans, critics, and artists. In all, my methods include store observations, interviews (face-­to-­face, e-­mail, phone), Internet, archival research, and textual analysis of company publications from 1998 through 2010.3 I recorded and had transcribed thirty-­one formal interviews, but engaged in countless more informal conversations from which I jotted down field notes. The formal interviews took place at company headquarters in South San Francisco and Tokyo, as well as with other Sanrio employees and consumers in Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Conducting research over such a long period of time has had its pluses and minuses. With this kind of time depth, I have been able to follow Hello Kitty through ups and downs, and especially through a relax  •  preface

tively new wave of interest spawned by Japan’s “cool” moment identified in 2002. I see great benefit in the fact that my research began in the incipient stages of Japan’s “moment,” because I take the Cool Japan frame as only one historical part of the story. The downside of such time depth is the sheer amount of material and its management. This is a subject with which I have lived (and on which I have given many public presentations) for the better part of my career as an anthropologist. It is time to get this cat off my back, and the best way I know to do it is to provide a comprehensive discussion in the form of a book such as this. Consider this publication my own personal form of (temporary) closure upon a subject that seems never ending. A word about the format of the book: I feel strongly that Hello Kitty lives most richly in the complex variety of voices that give her meaning, from those working within Sanrio to far-­flung consumers and critics. I have thus chosen to include excerpts from transcribed interviews, which I’ve presented in conversational form. (Note that the names of Japanese speakers and figures throughout the chapters and references follow the Japanese format of family name, followed by personal name. Names of Japanese Americans appear in the English format of personal name, followed by family name.) My goal is to showcase the speakers as persons, as well as their thoughts, embedded within the interaction that generated the words. I identify Sanrio employees and entrepreneurs —  many of whom started out as avid consumers — by name and position. However, I have chosen to keep the names of the fans anonymous, identified only by pseudonymous initials, even if most fans gave me permission to use their names. In part, some of these interviews were conducted so long ago that I was not sure how they would feel now about such an intimate outpouring in print. I was also not sure that I could contact all of them to re-­ask their permission. But the primary reason was to ensure that the story I was telling was a more generalized one, told through the specifics of individual lives, but retaining a certain amount of their privacy. Granted, I value these interviewees for their highly personal stories; however, I did not want their stories to be so tied to a specific name that they could not mesh into the woven texture of the book’s overall narrative. I did not necessarily select the interviewees whom I quote at length as representative of all fans or even specific segments of fans. I selected them because of the inherent interest in and variety of their stories. They may represent a cast of outliers — or not — but I felt compelled to showcase the breadth and depth of their preface   •  xi

responses to my questions about Hello Kitty. In many cases, their words knocked me off my feet. As this book traces not only the myriad permutations of Hello Kitty in form, shape, place, and identities globally, but also the fan productions of meaning surrounding these, a mere anthropologist can only raise a glass of Hello Kitty wine in delirious resignation, waiting for the next newest feline thing.4 Undoubtedly, I will be astonished.

••••• A long-­standing project such as this incurs many debts along the way. First and foremost, I would like to thank all those whom I interviewed, especially the staff at the Tokyo and South San Francisco offices of Sanrio. Those at Sanrio who were particularly helpful to me were Kazuo Tohmatsu and Doug Parkes in Tokyo, and Bill Hensley, Dave Marchi, Dan Peters, and Becky Hui in South San Francisco. I am also very grateful to interviewees who have taken interest in following my work and asking about its progress (a reasonable question, especially after several years’ interlude): Don Sizelove, Adeline Tafolla, Frank Mauz, and many others. Second, I thank colleagues at home and in far-­flung places whose queries, comments, and Kitty sightings shaped this work along the way, including (alphabetically) Neal Akatsuka, Ted Bestor, Keith Brown, Anne Cheng, Nancy Cooper, Pensri Ho, Todd Holden, Yoshikuni Igarashi, Keiko Ikeda, Koichi Iwabuchi, Hirofumi Katsuno, Bill Kelly, Aya Kimura, Mark McLelland, Laura Miller, Mara Miller, Jane Moulin, Susan Napier, Carolyn Stevens, Joe Tobin, Bill Tsutsui, Corky White, Gavin Whitelaw, and Jun Yoo. I have been invited to give talks on Hello Kitty at numerous venues, and I am grateful for each opportunity to establish a broad network of “Kitty sighters” and ongoing feedback. These include International House of Japan, University of Hawai’i, University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, Yale University, Brown University, University of Wollongong, University of Kansas, University of London, Waseda University, University of Oregon, Earlham College, DePauw University, University of Memphis, Vanderbilt University, Doshisha University, and Japan Society of New York. Third, many thanks to those who helped transcribe my interviews over the years: Paul Christensen, Takashi Miura, Jaida Samudra, Shawn Smith, and Rachel Spitler. Thanks to the University of Hawai’i Shidler School of Business for a ciber research grant that supported the late stages of this research. Thanks as well to Ken Wissoker at Duke University Press xii  •  preface

and his expert staff, as well as two smart, critical reviewers of the manuscript. This is a better work for their gentle proddings. I am entirely grateful to the following who gave me permission to use the visual images I include in this book (listed alphabetically): Leika Akiyama, Leslie Holt, Renee Keanu, Sarah Kobayashi, Scott McKie, Mariko Passion, Amy Podmore (and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum), Jaime Scholnick, Kiki Sonnen, Denise Uyehara, and Marika Wilson. Special thanks to the photographer Indrani Pal-­Chaudhuri who gave me permission to use the spectacular Lady Gaga Hello Kitty image. I also thank the following for permission to include substantially revised versions of previously published chapters and articles: “Flipping Kitty: Transnational Transgressions of Japanese Cute,” in Todd Holden and Tim Scrase, eds., Medi@sia: Global Media/tion in and out of Context (Routledge, 2006); “Monstering the Japanese Cute: Pink Globalization and Its Critics Abroad,” in William Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, eds., In Godzilla’s Footsteps (Palgrave, 2006); “Kitty Litter: Japanese Cute at Home and Abroad,” in Jeffrey Goldstein, David Buckingham, and Gilles Brougere, eds., Toys, Games, and Media (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004); “Reach Out and Touch Someone: Thinking through Sanrio’s Social Communication Empire,” Japanese Studies, vol. 31, no. 2 (2010); “Wink on Pink: Interpreting Japanese Cute as It Grabs the Global Headlines,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 68, no. 3 (2009); and “Pink Globalization: Rethinking Japan’s Cute/Cool Trek across the Pacific,” Bulletin of International House of Japan (2010). As always, my greatest thanks go to my family — Scott, Eli, Marika, and my parents — who have helped me live with this cat, through thick and thin. Scott helped organize the boxes and boxes of materials in my messy home office, read drafts of all chapters, and in the end helped me organize the artwork and permissions. Eli shared some of his enthusiasm for a Sanrio anniversary exhibit in Los Angeles in 2010. Marika took photos, listened to my public talks, forwarded me Internet sightings, and acted as a smart sounding board for my Kitty musings. She has lived and breathed this project as part of her growing intellectual habitus. It takes a village, indeed, to begin to grasp such a multisited, multivalent global phenomenon. The names I list here are only part of the intellectual and social community with which I have tried to make sense of Sanrio’s mouthless cat. For many people in my network, I have been the go-­to person for Hello Kitty news and thus the recipient of the latpreface   •  xiii

est tidbits in an already Kitty-­infused world. While I am ultimately responsible for the words on these pages, the thoughts they circumscribe reflect an ongoing, collaborative conversation around the village well (or office cooler), fueled by bits of gossip, gasps of astonishment, and plenty of conspiratorial giggles. The thought of finishing this book leaves me just a bit panicky at the prospect of going Kitty-­less, cold turkey, after more than a decade of her research presence. The question remains to be seen, can I ever really cancel my “Hello Kitty” Google alert?

xiv  •  preface

Introduction Kitty  —   J apan  —   G lobal

Commodities are not just objects of economic exchange; they are goods to think with, goods to speak with. —John Fiske (1989:31)

Pink makes you happy. —Yamaguchi Yūko, Hello Kitty designer (quoted in Belson and Bremner 2004:69)

This book begins and ends with headlines. And there is good reason for this: headlines create buzz that feeds into celebrity that helps sell products that surround people’s lives that give those objects meanings. Many of the “goods to think with, goods to speak with,” which Fiske notes above, come into our possession through the buzz and celebrity generated by headlines. Further, headlines travel instantaneously across oceans and national borders and by way of interpersonal networks. Let me thus begin with a few headlines of note. In a 2007 “mockumentary” book entitled Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, the journalists Patrick Macias and Izumi Evers chronicle girl-­culture street fashion in urban Japan from the late 1960s to 2007, ending with what they call “Cute Overload.” There, as an example of this overload (see figure I-­1), stand two young women in various shades of pink (with some splashes of red) from head to toe: shocking pink hair adorned with multiple pink barrettes, fuzzy pink kitten earmuffs, pink empire baby-­doll dress, mismatched pink knee-­ high socks, and pink-laced shoes (2007:140). Around one woman’s neck hangs that icon

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i.1. Photo from Macias and Evers, Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno (2007).

of cute: Hello Kitty. Among the barrettes in the other woman’s hair is, again, Kitty. Standing at the entrance to Harajuku — commercial mecca of street youth culture in Japan — they pose, leaning into each other, hands clenched, kitten-­paw-­style at their cheeks. The look is, as Macias and Evers claim, cute overload. But let us examine more closely the “look.” In the insouciant style of these Tokyo women, the look is not sweet but highly ironic, no-­holds-­barred cute. It is in-­your-­face cute as a highly stylized, overwrought visual aesthetic. It is cute that performs for the street — whether the audience includes other Japanese women and men (many equipped with camera-­ready cell phones), or professional photographers who capture and capitalize on the look through online venues, art magazines, and international publications such as FRUiTS.1 The women pose to the multiple gazes, knowing that what they donned that morning might be seen by evening thousands of miles away. The interaction between gazer and gazed-­upon define and reify the spectacle of what I call “Japanese Cute-­Cool.” Nestled within the interaction, tucked among the frills of this Tokyo cute overload rests that mouthless icon of Japanese girl culture, Hello Kitty. One photographer’s click spreads virally to gazers (and sometimes headlines) globally. In that same year, a continent and an ocean away in New York City, Macy’s Eighty-­First Annual Thanksgiving Day Parade featured three new giant helium balloons, one of which was Hello Kitty. Making her debut as “Supercute Hello Kitty” in superhero outfit complete with cape, tiara, and signature bow, Sanrio’s cat floated down Broadway Avenue to marching drums and fanfare in the nationally televised annual broadcast. More than forty-­four million viewers tuned into the parade of stars that included Hello Kitty alongside other icons of American popular culture from Disney to McDonald’s to Sesame Street. Celebrating this most American of holidays in a display of corporate-­media extravagance, at once old-­fashioned (i.e., a parade, especially when viewed in person) and up to date (i.e., broadcast by multiple networks, live and tape delayed, with further iterations posted on the Internet), the inclusion of Hello Kitty within the parade signaled nothing less than membership in the public club of well-­known global characters. The clubbiness of those characters paves the way for some surprising collusions between its members. One example is the Hello Kitty Barbie, which debuted in 2007. As the advertising for this new collector fashion doll proclaims, “There’s something perpetually trendy about Hello Kitty, the globally renowned Sanrio icon that’s embraced by kids introduction   •  3

i.2. Rio de Janeiro street vendor (2007). Photo by Marika Wilson.

and fashionistas alike. And who better to keep fingers on the fun fashion pulse than Barbie?”2 Thus, two iconic figures that may have been considered on opposite sides of the girl-­culture spectrum — curvaceous Barbie and mouthless Hello Kitty — join hands. Note, however, that what is being sold is a Barbie doll — not a Hello Kitty plush — dressed in black and white with pink Kitty accessories. So it is Barbie who may don Hello Kitty as part of a trendy new look, not the other way around.3 Hello Kitty here acts as part of the “fun fashion pulse” for the American adult doll, demonstrating overlapping worlds, colors, and buyers. No longer rival figures but co-­conspirators, Hello Kitty and Barbie — “kids and fashionistas,” respectively, or to a degree interchangeably — lead the charge in a new girl culture that links females from a wide age range. Another vignette: in a tree-­lined square in Rio de Janeiro in August 2007, a thin, wiry street vendor with a twinkle in his eye carries his wares, displaying a novel, moveable store (see figure I-­2). His specialty? Bubbles! Blow into one of the gadgets he is selling and watch bubbles appear, floating before one’s eyes, blown gently away by the afternoon 4  •  introduction

breeze. His bubble makers come decorated in three varieties: Sponge Bob, Spiderman, and Hello Kitty. As he strolls down the street, bubbles trailing after him, he forms a one-­man parade within which Hello Kitty sits pretty. His parade may be only a fraction of the size of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day extravaganza, but it is a spectacle nevertheless that affirms Hello Kitty’s place among global characters. In fact, it is exactly the parade of characters constituting a global spectacle in the 2000s that I examine here. From the trinket-­laden streets of Harajuku to the living rooms of America to the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Japanese Cute-­Cool, as exemplified by Hello Kitty, inhabits a commodified space of pink global visibility. In the 2000s, kittenish Japanese schoolgirls, American media extravaganzas, and Brazilian street vendors alike incorporated Hello Kitty as part of their visual display. The eyes of many parts of the industrial world, it seems, have turned to Hello Kitty as a source of Cute-­Cool. But what, exactly, have they seen? More important, perhaps, what do they want to see? Japanese Cute-­Cool has been touted by the American journalist Douglas McGray as one part of Japan’s “gross national cool” in 2002. Joseph Nye’s “soft power” — that is, the power to indirectly influence behavior or interests through cultural or ideological means, rather than through overt military or economic domination — has been the backbone of much talk about Japan’s “cool” (2004). A now-­famous statement by Nye — “Soft co-­optive power is just as important as hard command power. If a state can make its power seem legitimate in the eyes of others, it will encounter less resistance to its wishes. If its culture and ideology are attractive, others will more willingly follow” (1990:167) — has pushed governments such as Japan’s to take notice. The heated gaze upon “cool” by Japanese government, media, and industry rests in the purported expansiveness of exactly this “soft-power” capital. Cute-­Cool provides global currency in a market trade of youth culture that spans continents and oceans. At a time when Japan’s economic ascendancy has been overshadowed by that other East Asian giant, China; when its political regime faces constant global and domestic challenges; and when natural disasters and nuclear threats stand poised to overturn much of the infrastructure of contemporary life, a retreat into the easy comforts of soft power sounds like a welcome respite. This is the stuff of headlines, large and small, public and private. At the same time, the soft-­power position of Japanese Cute-­Cool comes with its own set of challenges. Even cute can suffer the excess introduction   •  5

of its riches. Thus, Japanese Cute-­Cool prompts a certain amount of internal and external debate (see chapter 4). The concern arises that the new global cultural capital in cuteness trivializes Japan as infantile and superficial. Hiroto Murasawa of Osaka Shoin Women’s University explains, “[Cute is] a mentality that breeds nonassertion” (quoted in Kageyama 2006). Takashi Murakami — an international megastar artist and himself a producer and purveyor of cute images — proclaims that the ubiquity and trade in Japanese Cute-­Cool is symptomatic of Japan’s infantilized, emasculated (even “castrated”), postwar condition (2005a:141; see chapter 7 for further discussion). Critics have found an easy target in Hello Kitty. A 2004 editorial in the Japan Times calls out, “Time for Goodbye Kitty?” and laments the cat’s “potential to embarrass Japan abroad,” proclaiming that, “as a cultural ambassador, Kitty presents Japan as the ultimate kingdom of kitsch” (Japan Times 2004, discussed further in chapter 4). Superficiality, castration, and kitsch: who would have thought that such volatile controversies could trail a figure as benign as Hello Kitty?

Pink Globalization: Kawaii Commodities on the Global Stage In this book, I embed Japanese Cute-­Cool within processes of what I call “pink globalization” — the transnational spread of goods and images labeled kawaii (glossed in English as “cute,” but with different cultural nuances, which I discuss in chapter 1) from Japan to other parts of the industrial world, with a focus on the United States. In using pink I refer to the connotations of the cute and the feminine, as one might expect, and bridge these into particular regions of the sexy embedded within the notion of kawaii. Given the fetishization of schoolgirls in Japan (including their uniforms), practices of rorikon (“Lolita complex”; a fixation upon young girls as sexual objects), and the commercialization of these two in the form of enjo kōsai (“compensated dating,” that is, teenage girls socializing with men for pay), the sexy is not such a far reach from kawaii in contemporary Japan. Although pink draws upon already gendered images of Japan, including that of the geisha, it spins these ever more deeply into youth-­based consumer culture. In these different locales, I query the various meanings given Japanese Cute-­Cool, asking what are the consumerist, gendered, and potentially political aspects of this product, and perhaps more important, what do 6  •  introduction

these aspects enable? What is the sociocultural work they effect and in what global contexts? I ask, what exactly is it about Hello Kitty that allows her to function as a nodal point — a point of juncture and perhaps even rupture — in transnational popular culture flows (see also LaMarre 2009:xxiii; Shih 2007:45)? The answer to that question begins and ends with kawaii (for our purposes here, cute). Shuri Fukunaga, a managing director at Burson-­ Marsteller, which advises global companies in Japan, comments, “Cute is a boom. This style has suddenly become a fashion element among youths around the world. . . . Marketers in Japan are seeing this and are adept at churning out products that incorporate this style for overseas” (quoted in Kageyama 2006:C9). Fukunaga’s comment makes analyzing the phenomenon a bit of a chicken-­and-­egg question: Are Japanese global companies merely responding to demand for cute fashion, or are they generating the wave that creates this demand? I argue in this book that pink globalization connects numerous factors overseas, including the strategic expansion of Japanese companies to foreign markets, coupled with the enhanced distribution of Japanese products from specialty ethnic stores to mainstream megastores. This expansion parallels the rise of Japan’s “gross national cool,” with the popularity of manga and anime paving the way. Electronic simultaneities of access to information and consumption across national borders enhanced by the Internet also provide paradoxically ethereal and material infrastructural networks within which these flows take place. At the same time, rising postfeminism in the West in the 1990s and 2000s has made pink — in other words, feminized, including the possibilities of cute or even sexy — self-­presentation acceptable and desirable for some segments of the female population in the industrial world. Witness the rise of American magazines such as Pink, founded in July 2005, targeting businesswomen, and continuing as an Internet resource (www .littlepinkbook.com), or Victoria’s Secret, the American women’s lingerie and undergarment purveyor known for its sexualized presentations: its line of stores, products, and interactive website geared to a younger crowd called Victoria’s Secret Pink touts itself as a “Pink Nation” with social media posts, horoscopes, campus and other public events calendar, and electronic photo wall of cute sightings (pink.victoriassecret.com). Faith Popcorn, a consumer trends forecaster, explains, “Hello Kitty’s popularity among adult women strikes me as kind of a ‘wink on pink.’ . . . It’s like saying women are complicated — that we can’t be contained. We introduction   •  7

can wear monochromatic Armani suits and whip out Hello Kitty notepads at a moment’s notice. . . . It’s a small but very public act of rebellion” (quoted in Gorman 2005; see chapter 5 for more on Hello Kitty in acts of subversion). Her identification of the means by which cute may be conjoined with cool — specifically by the “wink on pink” work of figures such as Hello Kitty. If “(winking) pink is the new black” in the 2000s, then cute (including kawaii) extends its range as a public signifier. Within this winking-­pink-­infused frame, Japanese Cute-­Cool provides an additional Asian spin upon the scene. Consider ways in which Hello Kitty may figure variously in the following lineup of female consumers: mall-­denizen tweens, Asian American performance artists, Wall Street executives, media celebrities, punk rockers, lesbians, and porn stars (see chapters 3 – 5). Hello Kitty works as part of the visual vocabulary of these female consumers exactly through her iconicity: her recognizability in parts of the global, industrial world makes her a shorthand for irony, humor, girl power — and sometimes, though not always, Japan. Throwback, reconfigured femininity in industrial Euro-­America can be seen as part of a more generalized nostalgic reaction to a highly technologized, depersonalized world. Thus, “cute” — Japanese or otherwise — can represent a turn to emotion and even sentimentality, in some of the least likely places, such as art museums, boardrooms, and banking logos. Or not. In examining Hello Kitty and the meanings attributed to the product, I want to leave an interpretive space that avoids overreadings. A significant number of consumers purchase Hello Kitty for simple reasons, including aesthetics and quality. These consumers do not necessarily care that she is from Japan; nor do they intend to make a public statement by their purchase. They do not talk about their identities as consciously manipulated, compromised, or defined by their Hello Kitty coin purse. Some purchase casually and circumstantially; others purchase intentionally, building up a collection of items (chapter 3); still others purchase subversively (chapter 5). Others receive Hello Kitty passively as a gift. Pink Globalization acknowledges a variety of modes of consumption (casual, whimsical, systematic, fervent, and otherwise) and the meanings given these practices. While some meanings remain superficial, others signal more significant social trends in local settings. This book addresses these disparate but interconnected factors in tracing the global popularity of Japanese Cute-­Cool specifically through Hello Kitty. As Marta Savigliano writes of a world political economy of passion 8  •  introduction

in analyzing Argentinian tango’s global trek across nations, continents, and oceans (1995), let us consider here the possibility of a “world political economy of cute” in the 2000s, of which Hello Kitty is a part. This macroperspective embraces the complex factors that frame the phenomenon of both production and reception: nation-­cultures, political interrelationships, and global economies. At the same time, Pink Globalization seeks to intertwine these with the microperspective of everyday lives — of girl tweens and their badges of belonging, of housewives and their all-­pink kitchenware, of punk rockers and their in-­your-­face co-­ optations, of Asian Americans and their icons of ethnic identity, of media mavens and their newly black pink. These personal stories etch intimacy upon the pink, global encounter. Pink Globalization thus searches for the personal in the political as much as the political in the personal.

Why Kitty? Thinking/Feeling with Kyarakutā I focus on Hello Kitty for a number of reasons. First, in the 2000s, she (I “genderize” her as her fans and producers do) garnered headlines, both in and outside of Japan. Some of the Kitty sightings with which I begin this chapter and scatter throughout this book detail only a small fraction of the headlines — whether in global media or private communications. In short, she is newsworthy. The number and scale of media mentions provides a neat gauge of her celebrity niche — in marketing terms, her “buzz.” Hello Kitty’s celebrity feeds well into Sanrio’s hand: news items act as a form of product placement with far greater impact than paid advertising. Through headlines, Hello Kitty becomes part of the everyday “mediascape” of contemporary global life, rather than a top-­down, heavily promoted commodity. Headlines create and reflect the global gaze upon her, as well as upon Japanese Cute-­Cool and its pink globalization. Second, Hello Kitty has been a global product since the mid-­1970s, and therefore charts different flows of products to and from Japan, the United States, and elsewhere. In fact, Sanrio, the maker of Hello Kitty, always intended this plush toy to be a global figure. Only two years after her “birth” in 1974, she was marketed in the United States in 1976, followed by Europe in 1978, and Asia in 1990 (see appendix 1 for Hello Kitty and Sanrio history). This pathway — from Japan through Euro-­America, and finally to Asia — represents the general direction and status hier­ archy of global flows in terms of prestige and marketing. introduction   •  9

Third, her popularity is long-­lasting. Unlike sweeping fads from Japan such as Tamagotchi (peaking and declining in 1997) and Pokémon (peaking in 2002), Hello Kitty has been a relatively quiet and steady presence on the American consumer scene of young girls and women for decades. Hello Kitty’s global trek predates Japan’s “gross national cool” millennial moment. As a long-­standing member of toy shelves globally, Hello Kitty garners widespread recognition. The recognition is not only of the round orb of her head or blank expression of her mouthlessness; it extends to the assumption of globalism itself in children’s consumer culture, as well as to a broader band of girl culture that more recently includes adult women. Recognition also extends to global consumer culture that originates not in the United States or Europe, but in Asia/Japan. Fourth, Hello Kitty is pure product. Her popularity does not stem from tie-­in cartoons,4 movies, videogames, or electronic handhelds. Rather, it builds on brand alone. Her image graces any number of products primarily through licensing arrangements that expanded the marketing of Hello Kitty multifold in the 2000s. However, whereas media tie-­ins add to the imaging of the figure, especially by providing a narrative backstory or other kinds of consumer involvement, licensing arrangements merely add the image of the figure to a broad range of products. Sanrio saturates the public in multiple modes of consumption without the benefit of a backstory, trading-­card incentives, or gaming schemes. In lieu of these props, Hello Kitty sells untethered as a pure commodity, building upon her image by the strength of past sales in combination with constant new tweakings of the brand. She goes beyond the constraints of narrative and rests in the commodity fetishism of a singular image, which I discuss in subsequent chapters. Fifth, Hello Kitty’s products go beyond targeting female children to targeting their mothers. In fact, by the 2000s, the core customers for Hello Kitty had become adult women, eighteen to forty. These adult products include vacuum cleaners, snowboards, scooters, jewelry, and vibrators (albeit sold as “massage wands”). It is this very extension out of the toy realm to more general and adult consumer goods that makes it possible to surround oneself with a total Hello Kitty environment, from cars to toothbrushes. Sanrio’s move to licensing agreements allows the company to offer a Hello Kitty lifestyle. Further, the extension of goods to include women means that mothers and daughters may form a continuous loop of consumption, tying generations through the fa10  •  introduction

miliarity of the icon. Young mothers may take the birth of their daughters as an opportunity to renew a relationship — now “nostalgized” — to Hello Kitty as a symbol of their own childhood as consumers. How might we think with and through an object like Hello Kitty? What kinds of structures of feeling does Hello Kitty enable? What does Hello Kitty, in effect, do in the private worlds of her fans, as well as in the larger public worlds of global goods? Part of the answer to these questions lies in the Japanese notion of kyarakutā (“character” or “characters”; anthropomorphized cartoon figures), a common part of Japanese consumer life in the twenty-­first century, and a subject that I discuss more fully in chapter 1. In Japan, kyarakutā can be found everywhere, from straps decorating cell phones to billboards instructing the public on issues of health and safety. As Anne Allison points out, kyarakutā exist as “enchanted commodities” that transmit “enchantment and fun as well as intimacy and identity” (2006:16 – 17). Here lies exactly the kawaii effect these figures impart by their very transmission. Allison focuses explicitly on toys and children’s culture. What might this transmission suggest when extended to adult culture, as is very much the case in contemporary Japan, and to a certain extent in the pink-­as-­black marketplaces of industrial nations? I argue that kyarakutā transform the adult world — fraught with responsibilities, dangers, and global matters — into a haven of play and nostalgized childhood. Another way of looking at it is this: if Hello Kitty remained only a child’s toy, her analysis would not be quite so compelling or far-­reaching. By contrast, Hello Kitty’s extension beyond and including children’s culture to adult realms in different parts of the industrial world broadens her impact and the purview of this book. This extension becomes fodder for what may be interpreted as kitsch in Euro-­America (discussed further later in this chapter), with Hello Kitty painting an adult world many times over as mere child’s play. Equally important, most kyarakutā are commodities, bought as souvenirs, collectibles, personal icons, and gifts, primarily by females. In other words, kyarakutā circulate through capitalist realms of exchange and social relations of consumption. Hello Kitty lies at the heart of Japan’s multibillion-­dollar kyarakutā industry, taking its place as one of the most highly recognized figures within and outside of Japan. “Thinking with” kyarakutā such as Hello Kitty spans a variety of processes that lie out there in diverse global markets. These processes coalesce around gender, age, class, place, ethnicity, and nation. As David Howes reminds introduction   •  11

us, “We need to know more about the social relations of consumption . . . , the logic by which goods are received (acquired, understood and employed) in different societies” (1996:2). This book grapples with the social relations of consumption surrounding pink globalization (by way of Hello Kitty), pointing toward the multiply worked commodity logic and critique of Japanese Cute-­Cool.

Globalization from the “Rest” to the “West”: Decentered Critiques Pink globalization flowing from Japan (and other East Asian countries) outward has its critics, but these dissenting voices form a different kind of chorus in comparison with that surrounding Euro-­American-­centered globalization. Referred to by Ulf Hannerz as “Coca-­ colonization” (1992:217), the widespread movement of Euro-­American products signifies far more than mere sales of goods and services. Rather, the goods and services append an overwhelmingly seductive tide of powerful images: modernity, freedom, individuality — as well as cultural imperialism and global empire. It is not so much that these are luxury goods (although they may be for some consumers); rather, it is that their consumption marks participation in global culture. Thus, purchasing these Euro-­American goods signifies membership in a sorority of modern global consumers who have access to these goods through formal and informal distribution systems, disposable income, knowledge, and taste. Arjun Appadurai describes his own seduction, reciting a litany of American products that spelled out modernity itself: “I saw and smelled modernity reading Life . . . , seeing B-­grade films . . . from Hollywood. . . . I begged my brother at Stanford . . . to bring me back blue jeans and smelled America in his Right Guard when he returned” (1996:1). Appadurai’s confessional depicts the bodily, consumerist hunger for these goods, lusting after the larger global membership — specifically led by America — that they represent. This is palpable global desiring, both intimate and grand. Global desiring — and the movement of goods and services it subtends — always occurs within specific times, places, market infrastructures, and political-­economic interrelationships. Likewise, local reactions to global flows arise as a product of these different contexts. Often, the images of the goods and services precede their influx to newly found markets; thus many consumers welcome these products with long-­awaited 12  •  introduction

excitement and anticipation. Current critics of globalization forget the time only a few decades earlier when a community boasted — rather than protested — the arrival of its very own McDonald’s. The welcome mat for these products comes as no accident. As Paul Rutherford explains, an American product such as Coca-­Cola has marketed itself as not simply one drink among many but as “the universal cola, a single, unchanging soft drink” suiting “the taste of everyone —  young or old, female or male, white or black, American or foreign, rich or poor” (1994:44). Here are the features of industrialized modernity —  standardization, reliability, predictability — found in a bottle of dark, sweet liquid. The appeal of Coca-­Cola thus spans pan-­cultural markets with the authority of such late-­capitalist, middle-­class attainment. To drink Coke is to perform one’s own cosmopolitan consumership. Critics of globalization suggest that buying Coke results in a cultural “gray-­ out,” whereby consumers throughout the company’s empire turn their backs upon indigenous drinks in favor of the global beverage (Howes 1996:3). This points both to opting out of local drink choices and more importantly to the omnipresence of Coke within the array of local beverages and the interaction of local beverages in a Coke-­dominated market. The presence of Coke, then, lies both in the actual American-­brand drink, as well as in the influence of the American drink upon indigenous beverages (i.e., a plethora of local colas). In this way, Coca-­Cola becomes constitutive of many soft drinks globally. The argument goes that drinking Coke not only means choosing an American beverage (simply “Americanization”), but more importantly indexes buying a set of goods that consumers share across cultures (“homogenization”). Homogenization arises from the sameness that permeates consumer options worldwide. One may travel thousands of miles and end up shopping at the same stores, wearing the same brand of jeans (or jeans themselves as a genre of clothing), and drinking the same or near-­same beverage. It is the very seductiveness of Coca-­Cola’s images, tempting thirsts with the promise of global consumership that prompts anti-­imperialist, antiglobalization, antihomogenization, anti-­ American opposition made famous in World Trade Organization protests of 1999 in Seattle. The impending threat of a gray-­out lies in the loss of separate colors and cultures, as well as the overpowering of these colors and cultures by the consumer imperialism of the United States. It is significant that this gray-­out has not materialized in exactly the way critics predicted. Consumer-­based studies such as James L. Watson’s introduction   •  13

edited volume Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia provide ample evidence of local meanings that form a buttress against the cultural imperialism of McDonald’s and other multinational corporations (2006). The authors of Watson’s collection describe an interactive process of globalism: McDonald’s effects small but influential changes in East Asian societies, as well as in those societies transforming McDonald’s into local institutions (2006:6). In spite of this interactive process, fears and talk of fears of domineering global corporations and waning local cultures continue. The ongoing wariness points to the ways in which American-­led globalization links the fields of popular culture, economics, and politics in a powerfully overlapping, internally reinforcing web. The fact that these often dovetail within a racial hierarchy only adds fuel to the fire of overdetermined globalization. In this, the putative quotation by Den Fujita, president and chief executive of McDonald’s Japan — “If we [Japanese] eat hamburgers for a thousand years, we will become blond, and when we become blond — we can conquer the world” (LaFeber 1997:365) — underscores the vectors of power along political, economic, national-­cultural, and racial lines, if even in jest.5 When one examines Japan’s pink globalization (including Hello Kitty sales), however, these vectors do not coincide in quite the same way. Analyzing an Asian-­originated global process — linked to “decentered globalization,” as Koichi Iwabuchi has labeled the movement and popularity of Japanese goods and media products in and through Asia (2002) — highlights aspects that are characteristic of transnational flows in general from those that are specific to this Japanese (or Asian) movement. Buying Hello Kitty, for example, does not threaten global customers with a form of cultural gray-­out. Whereas critics within a global homogenization paradigm may question whether or not other nation-­cultures are becoming too American, one does not hear portents of Americans/Europeans becoming too Japanese as a result of buying Hello Kitty — at least in Europe and America. In short, Japan does not command the automatic link of goods with hegemonic modernity in quite the same way as do Euro-­American nations. A Japanese product such as Hello Kitty remains more of a product, and less a bearer of lifestyle or national identity than Coca-­Cola, McDonald’s, or Starbucks. This characterization changes again when one looks at Asia and the reaction to Japanese products within this more circumscribed regional setting. Here, Japan is, at least in the early 2000s, the popular culture hegemon, asserting an alternative Asian-­inflected modernity. The con­ 14  •  introduction

trast reinscribes the importance of examining globalization flows within particular nation-­culture (qua racial) hierarchies and histories. As I discuss in chapter 4, Hello Kitty has her critics, but these look more specifically at the product, isolating qualities such as her mouthlessness, her cuteness, and her representation of Japan, rather than inciting a more generalized cultural panic.

Mukokuseki: Performing Commodity White Face When I began this research in 1998, I spoke with many consumers abroad who did not know that Hello Kitty was from Japan. Although this situation has changed considerably with the wave of Japan’s “gross national cool” in the 2000s, consumers in the United States and Europe have been buying Hello Kitty for decades previously without necessarily linking the plush toy or image with its country of origin. If one looks back, even some consumers in Japan did not originally know that the cat was a domestic product. With a company enigmatically named “Sanrio” and a cat called “Hello Kitty” (officially “Kitty White”), the national origins of the product and business remain somewhat obscure. A knowing native speaker of English may recognize these monikers as a Japanese version of English known as “Japlish,” but a Japanese (as well as some native-­English speakers) may well not. The process of devising a company name and image followed a careful strategy. What was once a dry goods company called Yamanashi Silk Center Co., Ltd., and established in 1960 underwent a complete makeover in 1973. To reinvent his company from dry goods to the nascent industry of frilly merchandise for girls known as fanshii guzzu (literally, “fancy goods”; stationery and other small items designed for purchase by a primarily young female market), the founder, Tsuji Shintarō (b. 1927), searched for a name that would reflect a fresh approach. Leaving behind the “Japanese odor” of the company’s original name (see Iwabuchi 2002), Tsuji looked abroad for ideas. He devised “Sanrio” from a combination of San (as in many names of West Coast cities in the United States, such as San Francisco and San Diego) and Rio (Spanish for river). The resulting name referenced not so much Spain or any Latin American country, as California, home of his hero and idol Walt Disney.6 One could say that names such as Sanrio and Hello Kitty effectively perform commodity “white face,” conflating nationhood, culture, and race. And yet we have to question assumptions of exactly this conflation introduction   •  15

and query those involved in marketing, naming, and consuming, the answers to which they themselves may not know definitively. Thus, invoking an English-­language (or quasi-­Spanish-­sounding) name may mark modernity, while not necessarily or specifically whiteness, even if these concepts may not be so neatly separated in people’s minds. The ambiguity of the boundaries contributes to the power of the words and images that resides both historically on a macrolevel and contextually in microsituations and surroundings. This attempt to untangle threads of meaning says as much about the domination of Euro-­America in global markets of the 1970s, as about the growing confidence of Japanese companies intent upon competing in the global marketplace. During this period, mukokuseki (without nationality) erasure became the common means for Japanese companies to dodge any negative imaging of cheap, poorly made goods that “Made in Japan” may have held. If Euro-­American goods represented the standard bearer of modernity in the years after the war, then what Tatsumi Takayuki has called “Japanese mimetic desire” shaped the imaging of Japanese companies and products intended to go global in the 1960s and 1970s decades of Japan’s economic ascendancy (2006:9). Processes of mukokuseki erasure first took place in the world of Japanese electronics, where, as Iwabuchi explains it, companies took care not to impart a trace of “cultural odor” in order to make those goods more globally marketable (1994). Electronics was a naturalized home for mukokuseki, especially given the widespread belief that technology was culture neutral. Children’s culture represented a new field of globalized products. But what exactly constitutes “Japanese mimetic desire” of the time? During this period, Walt Disney signified all things global in the world of children’s culture, including that of Japan. With grand ambitions and an ever watchful eye on his idol Disney, Tsuji intended Hello Kitty, his company’s flagship character, to be nothing less than the Japanese cat who would overtake the American mouse, Mickey. Trumping Disney — or even entering the ring of Disney-­led competition — signified gaining parity, on the one hand in the marketplace and on the other in people’s imagination. The mixing of capitalist ambitions and global competitiveness fueled the working and reworking of Hello Kitty into far more than a plush toy. Hello Kitty’s success as a global icon was part of a triumphal discourse of personal, corporate, and national achievement. Disney’s world of America, however, provides merely an umbrella at

16  •  introduction

the symbolic level for Tsuji’s imagining. The details of the storybook world of Sanrio’s characters are to be found elsewhere. In 1976, Sanrio endowed Hello Kitty with a quasi-­British backstory, available on the company website (www.sanrio.com) and through its limited cartoons. Living in London, the Whites are a fairy-­tale family reworked for the twentieth-­and twenty-­first centuries: mother, father, Kitty, a twin sister named Mimmy, grandfather, and grandmother (see chapter 1 for further details). Hello Kitty also has a boyfriend named Dear Daniel. Of these other characters, only Dear Daniel appears occasionally as a plush toy and image on products. The others remain within the imagination of those who peruse Sanrio’s website. (Note that although Sanrio creates a number of characters, each has a separate biography and imagined world, narrated primarily on the company website. Thus the imagined Sanrio world is not an interconnected one for these characters, but several separate narratives with a particular character at its center.) This British biography of middle-­class coziness should come as no surprise, given the place of England as the home of much fantasy in Japan inspired by Western literature, whether for children or adults. As Karen Kelsky notes, “England seems to hold a special place in [Japanese] women’s internationalist narratives as the home of a truly sublime sophistication, an apotheosis of ‘class,’ that is contrasted favorably to the ‘coarseness’ of the United States” (2001:6). England — home of canonical Western literature, “mother country” to the United States, imperialist exemplar, model of the pomp (if not lives) of royalty, and source of nostalgia embedded within classics of English children’s literature —  provides a rich source of borrowings. The veracity of Hello Kitty’s British biography, or the integrity of her imagined pedigree, mixing as it does elements of Britain and the United States matters less than Tsuji’s conjuring of England as the fount of storybook charm and the “natural” home for global, mukokuseki cuteness. Can something deliberately designed to reference Britain (or at least a Japanese version of Britain) truly be called mukokuseki? Is it truly “without nationality” (or culture or race)? I argue yes on both counts, primarily because this form of mukokuseki points to vectors of power and the invisibility of Euro-­American culture as an identifiable marker. Thus, what is interpreted as “without nationality” is actually very much imbued with Euro-­American culture or race — or at least one interpretation of it. To “have nationality” is to exhibit traits that are distinct

introduction   •  17

from Euro-­America. This is the same kind of reasoning that explains “ethnic culture” as “anything but white” or, more specifically, “anything but white, Anglo-­Saxon, Protestant.” Mukokuseki may be analyzed within the framework of Peggy Phelan’s category of “unmarked” culture — that is, elements taken for granted as “the way things are” (1993). Unmarked aspects of culture go relatively unnoticed as the norm, situated in hegemonic positions within structures of power. In Euro-­American culture these include the masculine gaze or white, middle-­class values. Simply put, unmarked elements indicate where normative power lies. By contrast, marked elements — for example, female or nonwhite — highlight the relatively powerless. The use by the Japanese company Sanrio of the visual and narrative vocabulary derived from Euro-­America demonstrates the degree to which that aesthetic had become the unmarked norm in Japan as elsewhere. Like Japlish, it matters less that this version of Euro-­America may differ from what is actually found there. (Checking the “Japanese version” against the Euro-­American one involves matters of imitation and authenticity that are separate from our concerns here.) What matters is that Euro-­ America forms the template for imagining a set of products and aesthetics dubbed variously mukokuseki, white, “Western,” modern, or simply normative. The story, however, does not end there. As commodity white ­face with a twist — painted freshly with what is now recognized favorably as “yellow expression” — the template parses a new framing device embraced by consumers and marketers in the 2000s as part of Cute-­ Cool Japan (see the discussion of official, government-­sanctioned Cool Japan in chapter 7). Cute has arrived as part of this national cool. Given the Cute-­Cool label, mukokuseki has become newly kokuseki (nationality) as more and more people globally construct the chic dimensions of Japanese kitsch. Hello Kitty inhabits this nodal point of transnational connection.

Lost and Found in Translation: Shifting Meanings of Goods Tracing an object’s path across oceans and continents means not only following the “thing” but also maintaining a sense of the physical “thing,” even as it finds meaning in new homes and contexts. The circulation of objects involves movement and displacement, as part of what Nicholas Thomas calls “a jostle of transaction forms” and mean18  •  introduction

ings (1991:123). This jostle changes continually in response to socio­ political conditions, even as it plays a part in constituting those conditions. Thus I argue that an object such as Hello Kitty gains meaning as well as creates conditions for the large-­scale processes of which it is a part. The value of Thomas’s work on the exchange of material goods in the Pacific lies in examining the refractions of meanings and uses on both sides of the trade equation — European and Pacific Islander. These range from the inconsequential and mundane to the parodic and ritualistic (1991:187). Likewise, the movement of a commercial object such as Hello Kitty incorporates multiple uses and processes of meaning makings. From the Japanese side, there is Kitty’s faux-­British biography, creatively co-­opted as a Japanese version of a happy middle-­class life for a global family. From the Euro-­American side, multiple personal meanings fill the image of the cat: some consumers link the cat to Japanese mythology; others interpret Hello Kitty as a symbol of Asian females; yet others imbue the object with a strong sense of personal nostalgia for their own past. From the Asian side, Hello Kitty can be seen as a racially inflected product that happily asserts yellow parity in a previously white-­dominated marketplace; in short, Sanrio’s triumph in the global scene becomes Asia’s achievement as well. Meaning may be flexible, yet not entirely so. Hello Kitty does not circumscribe the terrain of the “floating signifier” — as Claude Lévi-­Strauss famously puts it, “an undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning” (1987:63 – 64). She is not an object without referents whose meaning floats untethered to any embedded set of denotations. On the contrary, Hello Kitty always begins with plenty of meaning in a carefully constructed design of aestheticized, feminized blankness. She inhabits the “thingness” of the “thing” in the physical properties of cuteness she brings to meaning making. The cute thing in particular may be the most “thinglike of things,” an “object par excellence” through its very passivity (Ngai 2005:834). This so-­called object par excellence calls upon interaction —  thing and humans — for use and meaning, including aspects of selection, acquisition, collection, care, display, gifting, reuse, and disposal (see Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-­Halton 1981:1; see also chapter 3). These many-­layered processes contribute to meaning making in significant ways that emphasize the active component of interaction between object and user. Resurrecting Robert Plant Armstrong’s notion of art as an “affecting introduction   •  19

presence” — which I extend here to include commercial objects — helps us analyze the appeal of Hello Kitty (1971). Armstrong argues that material objects carry an emotive force through their association with stories, significant events, or particular cultural codes. Certain objects may be linked even more specifically to positive affective resources —  however defined — as what Sara Ahmed calls “happy objects” (2010). She explains: “Objects become ‘happiness means.’ Or we could say they become happiness pointers, as if to follow their point would be to find happiness” (2010:34). Happiness, in fact, coalesces as an important theme of this book as the notion of Hello Kitty as a source of well-­being is created, marketed, sold, cherished, vilified, and deployed by various constituencies. The emotive forces coalescing around “art” objects make them sites of personal and collective negotiations of identity negotiation. Objects of material culture in the hands of human agency thus help construct identities and meanings, playing an active role in embodying and constituting social relations (Adams 2006:26; Hardin and Arnoldi 1996:16). Ahmed explains the role of the “happy object”: “Groups cohere around a shared orientation toward some things as being good, treating some things and not others as the cause of delight. If the same objects make us happy . . . then we would be orientated or directed in the same way” (2010:35). It is this very active role of a transnational “happy object” such as Hello Kitty in shifting and variable processes of meaning making and identity that I wish to explore here. In this framework, we can consider the relationship between humans and objects and particularly objects such as Hello Kitty, whose blankness may be interpreted as a mirror in her very thingness. But what exactly constitutes the relationship? Here Jean Baudrillard suggests a reflexive mode of regard that ties the collector with the object: “As a mirror the object is perfect, precisely because it sends back not real images, but desired ones. . . . What is more, you can look at an object without it looking back at you. That is why everything that cannot be invested in human relationships is invested in objects” (1996:96; emphasis in original). An object such as Hello Kitty fits this description eerily well, reflecting back desired images (or rather, the image that always fits every situation so neatly), a mute presence that does not look back at you or judge. Many of the fan narratives express these kinds of sentiments and attractions to Sanrio’s mouthless cat (chapter 3). Consider, too, the gendering of the mirror: thus the seeming inevitable links between ob20  •  introduction

jects, mirrors, muteness, blankness, and femininity. Hello Kitty acts as a powerful coalescence of these elements. The simplicity of the design — the abstraction of the face evoking a particular blankness that can subsequently become or reflect all things — has historical precedents in Japanese art.7 As Miyeko Murase writes in a catalogue for an exhibit of emaki (narrative scrolls) that includes twelfth-­century depictions from The Tale of Genji: The conventional figures of men and women are portrayed with no attempt to indicate facial expressions or physiognomic differences. . . . All have small, full, rounded faces that lack individuality; the eyes and heavy brows are straight ink lines, the noses simple hooks, the small rosebud lips are those of young girls. The style, called hikime-­ kagihana (“dashes for eyes, hooks for noses”) was a familiar device in the illustrations of romantic tales. . . . According to one theory, the very anonymity of the characters allowed viewers to identify themselves psychologically with the individuals portrayed in the paintings. (1983:66 – 67) One can see a historical lineage of the practice of hikime-­kagihana (abstracting a face through shorthand stylistic symbols) in subsequent century woodblock prints, through twentieth-­ century seventeenth-­ practices of sketching and twenty-­first-­century computer-­mediated and text-­messaging practices of kaomoji (emoticons) (Katsuno and Yano 2002). In each of these practices, the mouth itself may be depicted with only the smallest of visual gestures or sometimes not at all.8 In briefly mentioning this historic arc, I do not mean to reify Hello Kitty as the inevitable product of “a Japanese aesthetic tradition” placed on a global stage. Rather, I find this historic link useful in providing a background for interpreting mouthlessness as less of a lack (as many Euro-­American observers do) than of situating Sanrio’s design within a historically placed visual repertoire of meanings.9 The thingness of Hello Kitty rests not only in the many extrinsic features of consumerism, identities, nationhood, and transnational flows, but also in intrinsic physical aspects. These may be pared down to specific design elements: a bow (or other decoration) set at an angle over small white ears; simple, round head; dots for eyes and nose positioned almost in line with one another; three lines on either side of the face to indicate whiskers; mouthlessness; pink or red, and white. The inclusion of these design and other elements has varied throughout the image’s introduction   •  21

history, so that by the 2000s, Hello Kitty could be anything but a cat. With no tail and never depicted walking on all fours, she insistently remained a kyarakutā, a cartoon figure. (To prove her departure from feline existence, in 2004, Sanrio added a new member to the White family —  a pet kitten named Charmmy, who sits and walks like a cat.) Scrupulously attentive to the pulse of the times, the “situatedness” of the place, and fresh opportunities for marketing, Hello Kitty appears ever anew: in summer one year, deeply tanned and bikini clad; for the cohosted Korea-­Japan World Cup of 2002, in full Korean costume; for the anniversary of the end of World War II, as a Japanese kamikaze pilot. Meanwhile, in Yokohama’s Chinatown, she appears as a steamed dumpling; in New York’s Times Square, as the Statue of Liberty; in Hawai’i, as a pineapple. The permutations are endless as part of the thingness of the thing. Interpreted within the esoteric spirit of Buddhist henshin (transformation), Hello Kitty changes form: she becomes, accruing and transmitting a certain amount of charismatic and mercantile power with each iteration (Kiriyama 1971). This results in what I have called “emergent authenticity”: “authority and validation accrued over time through processes of imitation, repetition, and tribute” (Yano 2010b:99). Hello Kitty’s emergent authenticity builds as she inhabits every guise. Further, it is not so much Hello Kitty in a kamikaze pilot outfit, but rather Hello Kitty as a kamikaze pilot, that results in the possibilities of cute as a symbolic intervention upon militarism, wartime, and Japan’s extremism during World War II through the Hello Kitty touch. The endlessness of the permutations of what Hello Kitty may become suggests that theoretically anything may be made cute — that is, rendered innocent, playful, guileless, appealing, and ultimately marketable. At the same time, Sanrio’s borrowings of different guises extends Hello Kitty’s reach centrifugally. The processes of revaluation go both ways. To add to this scenario, Sanrio’s move into licensing arrangements with a broad range of manufacturers and tie-­ups with other character brands means that the Hello Kitty figure now adorns an ever wider array of products that keeps growing exponentially. In the 2000s, she could be seen on Airstream Trailers, Toyota Camrys, Compaq computers, and more.10 The thingness of the thing goes beyond resting in the figure of Hello Kitty, to resting in the many types of objects she inhabits. Hello Kitty can also be seen with many other American popular culture icons, including Barbie, as mentioned previously, as well as a monkey by artist 22  •  introduction

Paul Frank. This tie-­up agreement between two (or more) companies makes for a new kind of imagining of commodities crossing nations and character species. A consumer first seeing the cat and the monkey together on a T-­shirt might react with surprise — “I didn’t know they knew each other!” But it is exactly this kind of juxtaposition that soon naturalizes the thingness of the thing, reinforced through a chorus of kyarakutā. Thus, Hello Kitty now has cheery company that is not even of Sanrio’s making. Instead, she shares space in a community of characters, cementing her membership in global children’s culture. She joins that club as ambassador of Japanese Cute-­Cool. Finally, the thingness of Hello Kitty rests in the commodity fetishism that surrounds her. In classic Marxist terms, commodity fetishism denotes “a definite social relation between men, that assumes . . . the fantastic form of a relation between things” (Marx 1906:83). A “thing” such as Hello Kitty becomes a stand-­in for the expression, mediation, transformation, and objectification of the social relations that produced and surround her. She is not simply an object or image; she is specifically an object/image for sale, attributed with special powers derived in part through the multiple manifestations of late-­capitalist excess. In short, the commodity fetishism of Hello Kitty lives in and through excess. Governed by the market logic that more is better, Hello Kitty can only get better by inhabiting more spaces, adorning more and different objects. Saturation does not seem a threat to Sanrio, which monthly issues hundreds of new products, separately in Japan and in its overseas markets. Nor does it seem a threat to Hello Kitty’s more avid fans, some of whom work hard to keep abreast of all the newest products by means of the company website, magazine, newsletters, word-­of-­mouth information, and stores (see chapter 3). Rather, in affirmation of commodity fetishism, saturation is nothing more or less than the fabric of life of consumers built around objects and given meaning, as Baudrillard puts it, through the very “relationship of consumption — of consuming and being consumed” (1996:218 – 219). The question remains, What kinds of significance do these objects and their consumption hold for fans globally? What are the processes of cultural translation surrounding a global commodity? How is Japanese Cute-­Cool interpreted in marketplaces as diverse as Milwaukee, London, Hong Kong, and Honolulu? And how are these meanings engaged as shaping and shaped by nations, cultures, and peoples? I discuss further the shifting meanings given Hello Kitty, including the personal introduction   •  23

and group uses to which she is put, in chapters 3 and 6. One need only enter a convenience store here, a department store there, a children’s products website anywhere, and find the image of Hello Kitty. Given this, it is but a short leap from Hello Kitty’s pink world of excess into the semantic domain of kitsch.

Cute as Kitsch Defined variously as “something of tawdry design, appearance, or content created to appeal to popular or undiscriminating taste” (Random House 2001:733), or succinctly put, “pretentious trash” (Dutton, 1998), kitsch implies critique based in social class in its very conceptualization (cf. Adorno 2001). Taste and class shape the word and concept: from Viennese turn-­of-­the-­century slang verkitschen etwas (to knock off or cheapen something) to a 1925 pamphlet entitled Der Kitsch by the Austrian art critic Fritz Karpen deriding the vulgarity of “high art” imitations within mass-­produced items, kitsch targets the excesses of those vying to emulate upper classes (Ward 1991:12). The art critic Clement Greenberg’s well-­known pronouncement “Kitsch is the culture of the masses” softens some of the vitriol, even as it defines the class foundations of the concept (1939). The term drips exactly with the kind of class-­based disdain that Pierre Bourdieu inscribes in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984). According to Bourdieu, one’s aesthetic choices rest ineluctably in the power dynamics of social class; thus, working-­class choices are made in the shadow of the aesthetic of the dominant class (1984:41). Kitsch exists as part of that shadow. Mimicking the trappings of upper classes without the “refinement” of breeding and education, kitsch signifies that worst of sins — acting beyond one’s station. The pretensions of the nouveau riche prompt the class-­based clucking of the kitsch label. The pejorative dimensions of kitsch — even when displayed ironically — outline value judgment and critique focused on excess. Thus, while emotion may be part of the human condition, the sentimentality of kitsch suggests emotions out of control, knee-­jerk pandering to the lowest common denominator of taste. The defining moment in locating kitsch lies exactly in the borderline of taste crossing into the unrestricted territory of excess. Of course, excess lies very much in the eyes of the beholder, embedded in a particular time and place. A figure such as Hello Kitty might be derided as kitsch by some, while embraced 24  •  introduction

favorably by others as simply and overtly kawaii. The judgment call on Sanrio’s cat is not unanimous; rather, it varies by and within cultures, as well as through time. The shifting “kitschiness” of Hello Kitty exemplifies the “moral economy” surrounding goods that Igor Kopytoff discusses, assessing value as a project infused with sociocultural meaning and judgment (1986:64). As Susan Stewart puts it: “The kitsch objects offers a saturation of materiality, a saturation which takes place to such a degree that materiality is ironic, split into contrasting voices” (1993:167). The contrasting voices of Hello Kitty juxtapose the child and the adult, the innocent and the sexy, the cute and the cool — thus constituting the semantic overview of kawaii. It is not so much that Sanrio’s cat necessarily represents class-­based kitsch. One does not normally associate Hello Kitty with “tawdry design, appearance, or content” or even with “pretentious trash.” Rather, many of the qualities she embodies — sentimentality, cuteness, commercialism, and even the excesses of her omnipresence — make Hello Kitty and kitsch associative bedfellows. Hello Kitty shares that bed with other usual suspects — including the American icons Cabbage Patch Kids (“ugly-­cute” dolls produced by Coleco, popular in the United States in the 1980s), Strawberry Shortcake (the licensed character of a girl dressed in strawberry-­plastered pink, owned by American Greetings since the 1980s), and Precious Moments (the dewy-­eyed, quasi-­religious collectible figures designed by a self-­professed born-­again Christian, Sam Butcher). To wit, Hello Kitty manages to rise above the rest as a particularly clever, high-­quality, aestheticized, Japanese image. She claims a space in the marketplace as one of the best and cleverest of the cute lot. Moreover, there is nothing exactly cheap about Hello Kitty. The Japanese product sold abroad commands a midrange price, and the quality of goods tends to be high. Yet some would contend that cuteness itself, especially its extension into items for adults and its saturation of the marketplace, threatens to veer into the critical territory of kitsch. Kitsch colors the ground upon which Hello Kitty treads abroad as an icon of Japanese Cute-­Cool. Instead of acting beyond one’s station, the kitschiness of Hello Kitty lies in adult consumers acting below their age-­graded station, clinging on to the relics of what might more properly be considered children’s goods. Hello Kitty links with kitsch particularly in the hands of women (or men) still attached to cuteness. Marita Sturken outlines the connections between children’s aesthetics and adult kitsch: “It is not incidental introduction   •  25

to this critique of kitsch as innocent and naive taste that kitsch is an important aesthetic for children’s cultures. Thus, the cute cultures of children’s aesthetics form a continuum with the cute cultures of adult kitsch” (2007:19). However, what befits the child appears mockingly infantile in an adult frame. Critics of Hello Kitty police the kitsch terrain for the cuteness she represents and the excesses of her ubiquity. She becomes kitsch in the transgressiveness of her adult appeal (discussed further in chapter 4).11 According to Sturken, however, kitsch holds the potential for more than simply transgression. As a form of comfort amid the stresses of the contemporary world, as a means of escaping confrontations with hard-­edged political realities, and as a source of consumer delight that may crop up in times of tragedy, kitsch plays a potentially critical role in public culture. Sturken’s analysis of the production and sale of kitsch objects surrounding national traumas such as the September 11 attacks upon New York’s World Trade Center details ways in which these objects and their consumption produce an illusion of comfort, banality, and ultimately national innocence. Sturken’s analysis of “consumer practices of security and comfort . . . [and their] attendant politics of affect” in post-­9/11 United States draws upon “the promise of the kitsch object . . . that innocence can be regained” (2007:5, 285). In the chapters that follow, I examine ways in which Sanrio, Hello Kitty, and a cult of cute may be embedded within related practices of the global production of commodified innocence.

Cute as Cool: The Winking Oxymoron Cute and kitsch fit neatly together, the sentimentality fitting the maudlin like a glove. Cute and cool, however, fit far less neatly. The frisson of this coupling, in fact, lies in the wink of Hello Kitty’s global appeal, at least for certain segments of her fandom in the 2000s. Here is the “wink on pink,” as coined by Faith Popcorn (mentioned earlier). As Lewis MacAdams warns, “Anybody trying to define ‘cool’ quickly comes up against cool’s quicksilver nature. As soon as anything is cool, its cool starts to vaporize” (2001:19). It is exactly the “quicksilver nature” of cool that maintains its location at the forefront of trends, ever moving, ever shifting, claiming the edge as its own. The trendiness of cool requires marketers and consumers alike to constantly capture its fleeting status, to identify who or what or where is cool and for how 26  •  introduction

long. (This is the problem with Japan’s governmentally backed cool moment that includes the cute culture of Hello Kitty, as discussed in chapter 7.) Suggesting more than mere popularity, cool refers to a certain subcultural appeal, a certain distance from the status quo or mainstream. In fact, some of Hello Kitty’s global fans hail her exactly as the non-­Disney, non – Precious Moments cute figure (see chapter 3). In their minds, her distance — and Japan’s — from the Euro-­American mainstream makes her cool. Their fandom may be seen as a small act of rebellion against other American products in favor of this Japanese one. Dick Pountain and David Rogers take cool as an attitude tied directly to a strong version of this kind of distancing (see chapter 5 for subversive uses of Hello Kitty): “Cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals to express defiance to authority. . . . Cool [is] a permanent state of private rebellion, . . . a new secular virtue” (2000:19; emphasis in original). This overtly defiant aspect of cool may get lost in Japan, where cool is more likely to devolve into a consumer choice label as mere style.12 (Note that the Japanese loan word kuuru does not necessarily carry as subcultural connotations that are as strong as the English word cool; it refers more generally to stylishness.) Peter Stearns ties current usage of the term not to a consumer style, but to an emotional style best characterized by detachment: “Being a cool character means conveying an air of disengagement, of nonchalance. . . . Cool has become an emotional mantle, sheltering the whole personality from embarrassing excess” (1994:1). Here we can see why cool and cute/kitsch seem to be fundamentally at odds with one another as they fall on opposite sides of the fulcrum of emotion. Cool may also be seen as an aesthetic, associative style that Robert Farris Thompson refers to as “a deeply and complexly motivated, consciously artistic, interweaving of elements serious and pleasurable, of responsibility and of play” (1973:41). Thompson cites the closely related English terms “cool, composed, collected” as resulting in a “mask” of coolness (1973:41). That mask is often gendered male, creating another point of contrast with cute/kitsch. The American image of the rebel — in particular the coolness of the teenage rebel of the 1950s and 1960s, James Dean style — relies heavily on a masculinist code of self-­presentation. His self-­ control, composure, and social equilibrium combine with rugged individualism performed as an aloof, sangfroid stance. Daniel Harris calls introduction   •  27

coolness “an aesthetic of the streets, a style of deportment. . . . Coolness grows out of a sense of threat, . . . giving rise to a hyper-­masculine folk religion that fetishizes poise and impassivity” (2000:52 – 53). By contrast, cuteness calls upon sweet dependency performed as an infantilized state of neediness. In fact, it is the overdetermined nature of the gendered divide between cool and cute — the impassive, distant male versus the earnestly yearning female — that may require extra symbolic effort to be overcome. That extra symbolic effort lies in the wink, a brief ocular tic that resolves the contradictions of cute and cool through the frame of play. This is not to say that cute and cool become one. Instead, the frame of the wink allows us to retain both elements and derive meanings from their juxtaposition. The wink creates the possibility of two-­way inter­ actions whereby cute might be cool and vice versa, kitsch might be art and vice versa, Hello Kitty might become anything at all and vice versa. It is the possibilities of the two-­way, double move that interests us here. Chapter 1 traces the thirty-­year path in Japan by which Hello Kitty became cool (and cool embraced cute) — in Sanrio’s words “kuuru de kyuutu” (cute/cool) from 1998 to the present (see appendix 1). Notably in this most recent period of her iteration,13 Hello Kitty often takes the form of a winking cat, thereby creating a semantic and visual space that is critical for our discussion. Examining Hello Kitty as a wink in the 2000s enables us to tie together various strands of pinkness central to this book — girl culture, play, sexuality, exotica, even kitsch. A wink frames Hello Kitty specifically as play (including irony, parody, and sexual innuendo) and, more importantly, it gives Hello Kitty creative license to play. The wink resolves logical inconsistencies — a child’s toy fetishized by female adults — and provides a no-­holds-­barred shield behind which Hello Kitty can truly become anything, anywhere, anytime, and still remain Kitty. The wink creates divides of knowing — front stage and back stage — with membership extended to those who understand and assume the frame of play (see chapter 5). Producers and many adult consumers understand implicitly the value of the wink and deploy it as a fundamental component of the Cute-­Cool positioning of Sanrio’s cat. The semantic space opened up by the wink is, rather than a trivial matter, a part of the very fabric of cute as cool (and vice versa), of “pink as black” globalization, and of Sanrio’s strategically commodified innocence. Here lies the soft-­power

28  •  introduction

hopes and hypes of Japan’s nation branding by way of its Cute-­Cool (see chapter 7).

Kitty as Global Children’s Consumer Culture Even as Japanese Cute-­Cool (and thus a young adult market) dominates Sanrio’s output and marketing, the global production of commodified innocence rests in the continued association of Hello Kitty with the world of young consumers. In fact, Sanrio’s cat garners our attention as a Japanese veteran on the block of globalized children’s culture. Because Hello Kitty has been part of globalized children’s culture for more than three decades, it is possible to examine an entire generation of youth-­based consumption, as well as the effects of multigenerational ties through purchasing the Japanese cat. Although my field research did not include interviews with children, Hello Kitty as part of youth-­based consumer culture forms one part of the necessary backdrop for our discussion. Hello Kitty is part of the “market-­culture of childhood” of the twentieth century and the twenty-­first, including what the sociologist Daniel Cook calls “pediocularity” — that is, reconfiguring the world from the viewpoint of a child — here, specifically for commercial purposes (2004:2). Whereas previously, marketers assumed that parents (i.e., mothers) bought goods for their children, in the United States since the 1930s merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers targeted children as consumers in their own right. This change in perspective resulted in “pediocular” goods, retail spaces, and advertising techniques, including the use of popular characters decorating age-­graded, gendered retail spaces (2004:3). Cook historicizes the transition during the 1920s and 1930s in the United States of reconceptualizing the child from customer — a person involved in an economic transaction — to consumer — “a continuous identity regardless of whether purchases are being made at any given time” (2004:70). Decades later, Hello Kitty inhabits this child-­as-­consumer marketplace. Cook’s point, however, goes beyond examining who is doing the looking and shopping; rather, he argues that the very act of buying spells out a new construction of childhood as a “status of more or less full persons” based in consumption (2004:3). Children buying Hello Kitty — and other youth-­oriented products — confirm their status as fully functioning capitalists, even as financed by parents. Increasingly, the toy shop in which children in

introduction   •  29

industrialized countries eagerly partake has been global and, more specifically, led by Japan and the United States (with China rising quickly) (Cross and Smits 2005:880). Although Hello Kitty can be found in toy departments in many industrial countries, she is not strictly a plaything. Even now, when one purchases a Hello Kitty plush toy, she represents not so much something to play with as a visual symbol accompanying a child through daily life. She is less doll than kyarakutā, marking her territory with the scent of kawaii. Her place within toy departments globally signifies the pediocularity of which Cook speaks, effectively making children’s spaces as their own within the vernacular of commercial idioms. One may see this kind of visual nesting as a gendered domain built upon the appeal of a physical environment that is personalized and aestheticized with cute, matching decor. It is not so much that little boys do not like personalized, aestheticized spaces, but that this stereotyping of little girls’ desires fulfills gendered notions of female domesticity, regardless of age. Part of the genius of Sanrio lies in offering the Hello Kitty imprint upon any number and variety of goods. Whether a girl purchases one item, two items, or ten, they link easily into a well-­coordinated suite (e.g., backpack, pencil case, notebook, as well as mug, toothbrush, and chopsticks), in effect a symbolic cocoon of age-­graded, gendered identity. Furthermore, as a transnational emblem of cuteness, Kitty’s lifestyle branding helps female youth from Asia to North America and beyond share in a consumerist, global girlhood. Buying Hello Kitty marks shared membership in a newly minted, underage shopping cohort, imbued with all the coolness of global modernity. Hello Kitty’s highly marketable “coolness” circumscribes the market-­ driven birth of the “tween”14 — the female between eight and twelve who has been newly asserting her peer-­driven identity through practices of consumption since the late 1980s in industrial nations. In fact, it is objects and practices of consumption that constitute not only the hallmark of the mercantile age grade, but also part of the birth of the very category.15 As Daniel Cook and Susan Kaiser argue, “The case of the tween girl underscores . . . how social persons, cultural positions and consumption cannot be conceptualized as separate entities that occasionally come into contact with and influence each other; rather, they mutually constitute each other in multiple ways” (2004:223 – 24). This book concerns itself specifically with this very nexus of the social, the cultural, and the global marketplace for tweens and other consum30  •  introduction

ers of Sanrio’s cat. Hello Kitty lies on the outer cusp of coolness for the middle-­school crowd, particularly because she references earlier age grades, from toddler through elementary school years. From Sanrio’s perspective, however, tapping into — and helping create — the tween market has become invaluable to Hello Kitty’s success (Tohmatsu, personal communication, May 30, 2002). Thus, in the 2000s, tie-­ups with other female tween icons, such as Paul Frank’s monkey, are critical for establishing the continuing cool of Kitty. The monkey cannot do it alone. Part of what keeps Hello Kitty from falling off the cliff of acceptability for the middle-­school set rests in linking her with the larger wave of “Cool Japan” (see chapter 7). Running alongside the global popularity of manga, anime, and Japanese videogames, Hello Kitty draws on the passing moment of the soft-­power hype. As well as being a functioning capitalist the buying child, according to Lauren Berlant, is an “infantile citizen” whose private acts of consumption critically and creatively engage with media and the marketplace (1997:6). Consumption (along with sexuality) forms part of the new politics of the intimate, a private sphere that defines citizenship. Sarah Banet-­Weiser’s study of the American children’s cable network Nickelodeon helps us understand the complex linkages — that is, consumerism as the basis for constructing citizenship, which may include children as audience members, consumers, and members of class positions (2007:12). Youth-­based brand membership and loyalty fit right into the practices of such underage consumer citizenship. The private-­in-­public link of consumption creates interpretive communities built around the circulation of objects and information, creating what Banet-­Weiser calls “the nation of the brand” (2007:20). In markets globally, brand loyalty functions as its own kind of citizenship practice, built around affect and enabled through class structure. Identity — including that of children consumers — is not simply sold through branded, fetishized consumer objects; “it is created and made meaningful by . . . brands” (Banet-­Weiser 2007:22). Hello Kitty leads the way in this global process of identity making through (often underage) consumption. Youthful middle-­class consumers in industrial countries recognize the power of brands implicitly. With little concern for the political and cultural ramifications of soft power or globalization, they understand the practices and affiliations of brand loyalty. They learn these lessons early and often, through practices of purchase and use (Bourdieu 1984:78). Increasingly the marketplace includes goods from far-­off introduction   •  31

lands, as a function of cheap labor, and more importantly as a growing shared pool of merchandise and taste. Kid consumers assert and articulate their own consumer citizenship as they browse the global toy shelves. Some of them browse the Internet as well, making connections with other Hello Kitty fans around the world. In doing so, they assert the global nature of their own citizen-­consumer selves, celebrating the commodified childhood. To adult critics who see in this process the manipulation of innocent youth, a purchase by tweens essentially mimics the middle-­class proliferation of goods that nurtured their emergence as consumers, every step of the way. As Juliet Schor argues, in many ways, tweens were (born and) bred to shop (2004). Whereas other children’s branded goods make their mark specifically through age-­graded niche marketing, Sanrio cleverly surpasses these boundaries by attempting to appeal as broadly as possible. No longer only a part of children’s consumer culture, Hello Kitty serves less as a generational divide than as a shared bridge. How it manages to do so — that is, convincing consumers within a broad span of ages of the desirability of the global icon, of the irresistibility of Japanese Cute-­ Cool — is in large part the subject of this book.

Everything’s Coming Up Pink? Hello Kitty as Global Girl Culture That desirability is a highly gendered phenomenon. Hello Kitty flourishes as part of global girl culture — whether bought by tweens, housewives, secretaries (“office ladies” or ol, in Japan), punk rockers, female business executives, or gay males (for whom pink, at least in some Euro-­ American urban subcultures, has become emblematic). Herein lies the widespread demographics of pink globalization. But what does Hello Kitty’s pink signify to these and other consumers? It is not so much that Hello Kitty herself is always depicted as, or in, pink (in fact in her original 1974 image she was dressed in primary colors of red bow, blue overalls, yellow nose), but that pink as a concept has become a touchstone for Sanrio and its cat. Walk into Sanrio headquarters in Tokyo or any of its stores throughout the world in the 2000s, and the message of pink is clear. Inasmuch as pink is Sanrio’s color and Hello Kitty is the company’s flagship character, the mouthless cat is encoded by both marketers and consumers as inhabiting the world of pink. Symbolically, Hello Kitty is as pink as they come. 32  •  introduction

In our tracing of pink globalization, it is useful to pause briefly and consider the color pink in Euro-­America, as well as Japan. According to the social chronicler Karal Ann Marling, pink did not become strict gender coding for girls in Euro-­America until after World War II as part of the standardization of children’s apparel and accessories during the postwar baby boom (1994:39). But even before then, pink had often encoded various gendered meanings, especially in consumer culture. Here I discuss a few twentieth-­century American consumerist icons who made pink their signature color in order to suggest some of the previous uses and meanings of the hue. One of these was Elizabeth Arden, a businesswoman tycoon, who established a cosmetics empire in the 1930s around “Arden Pink,” a vibrant signature hue adorning all salons, packaging, and apparel. In her book Hope in a Jar, detailing the history of America’s beauty culture, the historian Kathy Peiss argues that Arden used “pink femininity” as a weapon and image, concealing cutthroat business practices, tough negotiations, and personal turmoil (1998:80). During that same period, the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli promoted “shocking pink” — and its associations of “zany, unpredatory sexiness” — as a splash of color that could perk up the drab, subdued palette of the economic belt-­ tightening of the 1930s (Marling 1994:39). “Shocking pink” was also the name of Schiaparelli’s perfume issued in 1936 and sold in a bright pink hourglass-­shaped container (reputedly the shape of buxom actress Mae West). Another businesswoman of an entirely different reputation also used pink as a signature color: Brownie Wise, a single mother who made Tupperware parties a household word in the 1950s and sponsored the hybridization of a color named “Tupperware Rose.” The pinkness with which she surrounded herself — including pink furnishings, a pink Cadillac, and a canary dyed pink — symbolized the feminine connections that drove the company and sales techniques built on housewife sociality (Clarke 1999:132). In fact, pink was a dominant decorative color of America in the 1950s. First Lady Mamie Eisenhower (from 1953 to 1961) proclaimed pink her favorite hue, after which “First Lady Pink” (also known as “Mamie Pink”) became a recognized color for apparel, accessories, dishware, bathroom fixtures, and home furnishings (Marling 1994:38). “First Lady Pink” contrasted with “sassy pink,” a candy shade with a hint of rebellion preferred by the sex idol Jayne Mansfield and even introduction   •  33

rock-­and-­roll phenomenon Elvis Presley. Whether it was Mansfield in her pink swimming pool filled with pink champagne, or Presley fans paying tribute to “The King” with lipstick named “Heartbreak Hotel Pink,” this bolder pink added spice to the palette of commercial popular culture in the 1950s. In Marling’s words, “Pink was young, daring — and omnisexual. . . . The sudden ubiquity of pink seemed to signify a culture in love with novelty, change, and visual stimulation” (1994:40, 41). Or at least the vibrant, sassy version of the color did. In what might be considered a generational and class divide over which pink to celebrate, ladylike older women decorated bathrooms in powder-­puff “Mamie Pink,” while their teenage daughters painted their lips with the hot hue of rock and roll to match the swish of their pink poodle skirts.16 The competing pinks of America in the 1950s echo other earlier twentieth-­century references, when pink was both the color of youth and innocence, as well as the chosen hue of worldly exotica, romance, sex, and commerce. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel — aka “The Pink Palace” —  was built on the shores of Waikiki Beach in 1927 to evoke Spanish-­ Moorish architecture; later, the industrial tycoon Henry J. Kaiser (1882 – 1967) flaunted his signature color of shocking pink in the design of hotels, vehicles, and even housing developments in 1960s Hawai’i (Time 1960). Note as well the ease with which pink veers into kitsch, especially when mass produced (e.g., pink flamingos of the 1950s). Pink kitsch derives its meaning through iconic associations with the feminine, the exotic, and the emotional — especially when multiplied manifold. Here I only briefly suggest some of the associative derivations of the many meanings given the color, emphasizing not so much their natural bases, as the uses to which these may be put.17 Pink is the color of flowers, with a host of symbolic meanings differing by culture. In an Anglo-­ centric global world, pink is the color of female newborns and youth in general. It is the pan-­racial color of erotic orifices: the mouth and its tongue, the vagina, the anus. In fact, the word Eros — Greek god of love and desire — might be analyzed as encompassing the word rose anagrammatically (Schawelka 2006:43). Pink, along with being the color of a healthy glow (“in the pink”), is also the color of a sexual glow or, more complicatedly, a blush. As the artist Barbara Nemitz argues, “Pink is more closely associated with emotions than any other color” (2006:26). These run a gamut; however, all include a sense of heightened intensity spilling over the bounds of control, whether in anger, rage, excitement, or embarrassment. The gendered blush combines knowledge, shame, 34  •  introduction

morality, and masking: one may blush for various reasons, of course, but the act of blushing and its interpretation assumes the presence of an audience (which may include one’s self) (Schawelka 2006:46). It is the self-­revelatory aspect of blushing — one’s emotions exposed bodily — in combination with the fact that certain individuals or categories of persons may blush more easily than others, that links the act to vulnerability.18 This vulnerability is not that of the infant; instead it is that of the socialized child, suggesting that knowledge is critical for triggering this form of blood rushing to one’s face. Blushing is a social act that performs a position of powerlessness and thus symbolizes those in less powerful positions — particularly young females. Although others blush as well, when young females do, they enact their positions by fulfilling social expectations. Becoming pink thus feminizes the actor. One particular icon of pink from the 1950s and continuing in popularity through the 2000s is not associated with blushing — Barbie, a doll of adult attributes and imaging created by the designer Ruth Handler for Mattel Corporation in 1959. Handler’s Barbie both wears pink and accessorizes her life with a pink car, house, and furnishings. The social historian Stephanie Coontz situates Barbie within the contradictions of the 1950s: “The marketability of toys like Barbie . . . was a logical, though ironic, extension of 1950s gender roles, marital norms, and consumerist values. . . . Indeed, an explicit theme in 1950s pop culture was that both types of women [the wholesome and the sexy] wanted the same thing in the end” — that is, a man to take care of them (1999:41). Barbie thus fully inhabits and manipulates a woman’s role in a male-­dominant world, ensnaring a man in particular through the curves of her body. Although Barbie’s pink world of adult mores superficially contrasts with that of innocent Hello Kitty, perhaps the differences are less important than the similarities. Both pink worlds depend less on who a female is and more on what she represents: the one through the adult come-­on of sexuality, the other through the infantilized allure of dependency. Thus the pinks they share only reinforce the symbolically laden domain of femininity. That contrast between the pink worlds of Barbie and Hello Kitty has shrunken considerably, as evidenced by the Hello Kitty Barbie, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. These combined worlds find a fitting place in what has been identified by an author and mom, Peggy Orenstein, as “the new girlie-­girl culture” of twenty-­first-­century American tweenhood in a book provocatively entitled Cinderella Ate My introduction   •  35

Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-­Girl Culture (2011). Connecting the American media and commercial dots of Disney media productions, American Girl dolls, Pottery Barn Kids, preschool beauty pageants, online female avatars, and her own observations as a mother of a tween, Orenstein chronicles a pink sparkly commercial world of girlhood of the 2000s that shades the cute and the sexy in alarming ways. Angela McRobbie critically circumscribes this girlie-­girl culture as “the whole pink and frilly world of affect and emotion within which the girl herself is permitted to ‘become,’ the intensity of focus on body and its surfaces, and of course the heteronormative assumptions underpinning these endless rituals of sexual differentiation” (quoted in Banet-­Weiser 2007:124). Furthermore, these “endless rituals” with a “focus on body and its surfaces” take place within a growing marketplace that plies the waters of girlie-­girlhood. In short, the pink tools of the trade — cute and sexy — need to be bought. While most Disney or American Girl doll executives would likely disavow promoting sexualized images of girls in their “wholesome” products and productions, the juxtaposition with underage beauty pageant strutting in an overall American culture of twenty-­first-­century everyday princesses creates leaps of shared pink images and meanings. The blur of the leaps makes common “girlie-­girl” currency of (Barbie) sexuality and (Hello Kitty) cuteness in the United States in the 2000s. In contemporary Japan, the shared pinku (pink) of sexuality and cuteness finds expression in the fetishization by adult men of young girls.19 Known as rorikon, this practice leads to enjo kōsai and pornography that features not underage females but adult females whose personas enact their own infantilization (discussed further in chapter 1). In short, rorikon extends the possibility that Hello Kitty (the infantilized female) may become Barbie (the sexual object). The shared pink of sexuality and cuteness colors media as well, in particular through a major genre of soft pornography known in Japan as pinku eiga (pink films). Low-­budget and independently produced, pink films resurrected a flagging movie industry when they began in the 1960s, and they continue as a major source and revenue from films in Japan. The attractions of pink films derive in part through an aesthetic built upon censorship laws, which officially prohibit all depictions of pubic hair and genitals.20 The resulting dance of veiled eroticism utilizes strategic camera angles, well-­placed objects, and extreme close-­ups (e.g., armpit hair shot to look like pubic hair) as the centerpiece of the genre (Domenig 2002). In many 36  •  introduction

ways, it is this very dance of ambiguity — the seen but not seen, the innocent who is not so innocent — that infuses the voyeuristic sexiness of pink in Japan. As Allison comments, whether the veil is built into the visual expression, or layered in postproduction as overt marks of censorship (e.g., blurring, blackening, or masking with a digital mosaic), “desire is stimulated by simulating something that can never be entirely had” (1996:170). The question that I raise is, To what extent does Sanrio play with this desire and ambiguity in its marketing of the pink world of Hello Kitty? Is the cat (or its maker) really so innocent? Ambiguity surrounding pink exists outside Japan, as well. With the rise of postfeminism in the United States and elsewhere, media expression of pink as a power hue is part of this newer trend. For example, Cynthia Good, the founding editor and ceo of the magazine Pink, writes in an article entitled “Pink Power,” “Throughout your life pink has been symbolic. . . . At times pink was confining, girlish, degrading, liberating or all of these. But today a growing number of women who are at, or heading for the top, are comfortable with their own pinkness — the color, the attitude, and the opportunity it represents. They are embracing their femininity along with their strength, their compassion and resilience, power and passion” (Good 2007). The magazine Pink thus calls upon women to assert themselves specifically as women, albeit in a man’s world. In a postfeminist era, frilliness and dominance may coexist, resulting in the sly pink-­as-­black comment quoted earlier. Hello Kitty, presiding over a quintessentially pink domain, is part of this new “power” position, sharing the authority of black. However, within these contemporary contexts — including businesswomen trading consumer goods with tweens — what does pink-­as-­black mean? What kinds of positions or power does it enable? And at what price? Moreover, given the globalism of Hello Kitty, what elements are shared as part of trans­ national “girl culture”? Within the climate of Euro-­American postfeminism of the 1990s and 2000s, “girl culture” — or as it is more pointedly framed by marketers and media, “girl power” — rests in part upon the easy acceptance of individual practices, ignoring the group politics that have paved the way to create the “look” of empowerment without the ramifications of the feminist struggle (see chapter 5). Postfeminist “girl culture” turns away from politics and critiques of power and instead turns toward practices of the marketplace and boardroom to celebrate the “girl” or even the underage “girlie-­girl” as a newly crowned consumer citizen, as a newly introduction   •  37

configured feminine — not feminist — player. Hello Kitty and Japanese Cute-­Cool nestle comfortably within this global pink milieu, whose shifting complexities concern us here.

Scope and Limitations of the Book Sanrio divides the company’s and Hello Kitty’s history into three phases: (1) 1974 – 86, Hello Kitty’s birth and growth; (2) 1987 – 97, the Hello Kitty boom in Japan, especially in its appeal to the adult female market; and (3) 1998 – present, Hello Kitty’s global reach, becoming a “world idol” (Sanrio 2004:144 – 55; see appendix 1). This book focuses on the third phase of Hello Kitty’s history, which coincides exactly with the period of my research. Although I am concerned with “pink globalization,” it is difficult for one researcher to truly cover the globe. Thus, my purview attempts to be inclusive yet is necessarily uneven. For one, my focus is on Hello Kitty outside of Japan. For the most part, I do not include interviews with Hello Kitty fans in Japan, although they are numerous and fervent in their collecting practices. Many of their attitudes are shared by other Hello Kitty collectors globally. Instead, I glean information on Hello Kitty in Japan primarily through corporate interviews, textual analysis, and observations. I take this as a backdrop of kawaii culture from which Hello Kitty arose in the 1970s (discussed further in chapter 1). Second, an important part of the discussion of pink globalization should rightfully include a comprehensive study of Asia and the popularity of Hello Kitty there. Asia is where Hello Kitty makes headlines with lines of customers waiting for hours to obtain the latest McDonald’s Hello Kitty premium in cities such as Singapore. Asia is where Hello Kitty adorns maternity wards in order to calm anxious mothers-­ to-­be in Hau Sheng Hospital in Taiwan in 2006. A hospital owner, Tsai Tsung-­ji, explains, “When new moms feel anxious and lost about how to deal with their new babies, Hello Kitty can make them more relaxed and reduce their sense of discomfort while giving birth.”21 Asia is also where an airline (Taiwan’s eva) decorates their airplanes and departure lounges completely with Hello Kitty. Asia (specifically China) is the site of the first Hello Kitty theme park outside of Japan. Partnering with the Chinese company Zhejiang Yinrun Leisure Development, Sanrio has scheduled a 2014 opening for its park, with an area of 95,000 square meters, in Anji County, Zhejiang Province. Asia is also where Hello 38  •  introduction

Kitty has been used as a form of punishment for Thai police. Reported widely from the Associated Press to bbc to cnn International to Kyodo News to Al-­Jazeera, the story revolved around a new strategy devised by Bangkok police to discipline their own male patrol force (Mydans 2007). Any delinquent officer would be shamed into compliance by being forced to wear a bright pink Hello Kitty armband. Asia is also the site of a Cat Museum at North City Hall in Kuching (a town whose name means “cat”), Sarawak, Malaysia, which includes a colorful display of Sanrio’s cat.22 Asia is where heads would not necessarily turn in surprise at the monthly shadow play held on the grounds of the Yogyakarta Palace to see the older distinguished male leader of the gamelan (Javanese orchestral ensemble) in elegant formal attire complete with headgear and sacred keris (dagger) tucked in his waist band, carrying a large Hello Kitty bag.23 Asia is also the site of a three-­year touring Hello Kitty musical begun in 2008 entitled Hello Kitty’s Dream Light Fantasy, which traveled from Beijing to Malaysia and Singapore, and eventually to the United States. The list goes on, continually updated and often covered in non-­Asian foreign media, as part of the global face of contemporary Asia. Hello Kitty forms part of an intra-­Asian pop culture flow, of which Chua Beng-­Huat writes: “The result is the emergence of transnational communities of consumers variously constituted through their collaborative practices and modes of consumption, through a body of shared knowledge about the East Asian pop culture scene” (Chua 2008:88). Undeniably, a separate edited volume cries out to be written on Hello Kitty as a significant node for those Asian transnational communities of primarily, but not exclusively, young female consumers.24 In short, Asia is the site of a complex flow of goods, images, and meanings surrounding Hello Kitty that deserves far more critical analysis than I can do justice here. I leave it to other scholars to fill this important gap.25 Third, a full account of pink globalization should also include Latin America, where Hello Kitty’s market and fandom are extremely strong. Perusing Sanrio’s Hello Kitty fan website one easily finds many fans from Latin American countries. In fact, Brazil has become one important center of Sanrio’s licensing division. Pink globalization should also include Europe and Australia as further significant markets, with flourishing stores and customers.26 Unfortunately, although Kitty may travel easily and readily, an anthropologist’s grounded purview is much more limited. My coverage of the Kitty-­infused globe, then, is admittedly uneven, with far greater introduction   •  39

detail in those cities in which I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork of varying lengths outside Japan, such as Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Toronto, and far less detail elsewhere, for which I have had to rely on secondary sources, Internet connections, and e-­mail interviews (see the preface). Rather than attempt to cover the globe with equal depth and breadth, my discussion of pink globalization raises issues that may be generated in America but are not necessarily exclusive in their relevance.

Overview of Chapters The rest of this book analyzes the path, meanings, critiques, and subversions of pink globalization by way of Hello Kitty, from Japan to different arenas of the industrial world. Chapter 1, “Kitty at Home: Kawaii Culture and the Kyarakutā Business,” locates Hello Kitty within kawaii culture in Japan, both historically and in the present. It discusses key concepts: kawaii, shōjo (young, unmarried female), and kyarakutā guzzu (character goods). The chapter also provides an overview of Sanrio history and the thirty-­fifth anniversary celebration of Hello Kitty in 2009 and 2010. Chapter 2, “Marketing Global Kitty: Strategies to Sell Friendship and ‘Happiness,’ ” analyzes some of Sanrio’s marketing techniques and strategies in the process of building a customer base in the United States. The chapter takes the model of “friendship” created by Tsuji, the president of Sanrio, and analyzes the strategies of extending pink globalization beyond Japan. The chapter also examines the place of Hello Kitty’s designer, Yamaguchi Yūko — now a celebrity herself — in projecting the image of Sanrio’s cat as artisanal product. The employees at Sanrio’s South San Francisco office project their own informal ethos of “happiness,” tying this to their cute products and marketing strategies. Chapter 3, “Global Kitty: Here, There, Nearly Everywhere,” examines the consumption of Hello Kitty outside Japan, primarily in those parts of the West where I conducted fieldwork. The chapter interweaves extended fan interviews drawn from fieldwork with my analysis. My goal here is to show a range of adult female fans, from whites to Asian Americans to Latinas, as well as one heterosexual male. Gathering these disparate voices, I focus on consumer meanings in the fandom surrounding Hello Kitty, especially as these meanings etch issues of gender, class, nation-­culture (“Japan”), and nostalgia. 40  •  introduction

Cute in Euro-­America comes with its own set of critiques. These range from Internet flamers to teenagers who wish to distance themselves from childhood toys. Chapter 4, “Kitty Backlash: What’s Wrong with Cute?,” looks at how critiques of Hello Kitty point to engagement with specific sites of “public and personal danger.” What are the charges laid upon Hello Kitty that arouse critics’ ire? What are critics policing by these critiques? And how do the critiques become themselves fodder for anti-­Kitty commercial products? Chapter 5, “Kitty Subversions: Pink as the New Black,” examines the subversive uses to which Hello Kitty has been put by consumers. These include punk appropriations, gay and lesbian fandom, and pornographic citations. In these subversions, how does “Japan” or “Asia” become a reference point? How does Sanrio itself subsequently adopt some of these subversions in the interest of marketing to a newly expanded group of potential consumers? (And what is suggested by the fact that even subversion may be commodified?) Chapter 6, “Playing with Kitty: Serious Art in Surprising Places,” discusses how, in the 1990s and 2000s, certain artists in Euro-­America and elsewhere have constructed whole pieces around Hello Kitty, building on the cat’s very iconicity. This chapter details these forays into pink-­ infused aesthetics, including works linked or curated by Sanrio for the thirtieth and thirty-­fifth anniversaries of Hello Kitty, as well as those created independently. Chapter 7, “Japan’s Cute-­Cool as Global Wink,” reflects on Joseph Nye’s soft power and the place of Hello Kitty – led pink globalization within it. How has Hello Kitty become a spectral presence shaping Japan’s global reach? I offer an assessment of Japan’s “gross national cool” moment and its inevitable passing from the global spotlight. Hello Kitty and Cute-­Cool provide a “Superflat” veneer of play that glosses daily life. That play culminates in the wink she provides that is simultaneously corporate and individual, national and subcultural, mainstream and subversive, global and “Japan.”

introduction   •  41

Chapter One Kitty at Home

Kawaii Culture and the Kyarakutā 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, but it is impossible to get the dream. Kawaii gives me some hope. I also think kawaii products or persons let me express my maternal instinct. 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 with an expressionless face. I used to like Hello Kitty and Miffy [a Dick Bruna character] when I was still in junior high school. I especially liked Miffy. She had a no-­expression face, but I still thought she was really cute. Stuff I really thought cute all had in common that they have no smile or other expression. Hello Kitty also has no smile or anything. —S. N., thirty years old, personal communication, March 17, 2005

There is some notion of obedience or weakness in the concept of kawaii. We [Japanese] often use the word kawaii for babies and puppies 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 of the need to protect the object. In other words, kawaii is a symbol of dependency. However, girls started to describe so many things as kawaii recently, so my definition of kawaii changed to include the meaning of “trendy.” —K. A., in her thirties, personal communication, February 8, 2005

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Hello Kitty in the 2000s is one of the most widely known commercial kyarakutā (character) in Japan, and kawaii is the most common descriptor of her. The Japanese women in their twenties and thirties quoted above whom I interviewed may have different definitions of kawaii, but all agreed that Hello Kitty falls squarely within the concept. She represents variously fantastical dreams, hopes, expressionless faces, maternal instincts of protection and nurturance, weakness, docility, dependency, childhood, and, more recently, trendiness. Although Hello Kitty has had her ups and downs in popularity in Japan, she is definitely not a fad and seems destined to stay for the long haul. This is just as Sanrio would have it. According to Sanrio officials I spoke with in Tokyo, what the company wants is a product with high recognition, broad placement, and long-­lasting staying power (Toh­matsu, personal communication, May 30, 2002). In this, Sanrio has succeeded superbly. If one seeks a national source and hub of pink globalization, then one must begin here. Over three decades after her “birth” by designers at Sanrio, she has become so recognizable in Japan that 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 icon in her entirety. Increasingly, Sanrio itself pushes for this kind of visual shorthand, abstracting the cat, enlarging the bow, and making her referentiality ever more subtle. Reducing her elements to greater abstraction has given her even more visual power. Hello Kitty can be found in department stores, gift shops, subway kiosks, toy shops, and souvenir stores throughout Japan. One can purchase high-­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 of one’s pocketbook, there is a Hello Kitty item to buy. And this availability has expanded and continued for well over three decades. Consumers see Hello Kitty as much an icon of the 1970s as of the 2000s, with a devoted multigenerational fan base in Japan. In other countries, times, and contexts, such ubiquity might run the risk of oversaturation and critique. However, this is far less the case in Japan, where more is better — at least for marketers and a significant number of consumers. The appetite for consumerism and tolerance for sheer commercialism runs high as public symbols of prosperity and 44  •  chapter one

achievements of middle-­class modernity, even considered American style (Yano 2004:132 – 33; Yoshimi 2000:221). Within this framework, to be modern is to identify with a class position that allows one to purchase with measured ease, if not abandon, especially given Japan’s extended economic recession since the 1990s. This backdrop to consumer culture helps explain the relative lack of critique of Hello Kitty, Pokémon, and other figures of popular culture in Japan — at least when juxtaposed with very vocal and public critics in Euro-­America (see chapter 4). Consumption in Japan works as a public performance of status, achievement, knowledge, and identity, banking on the myth of middle-­class homogeneity that increasingly faces dismantling in the wake of recessionary exigencies. The resulting “ambivalent consumer” finds herself caught between historic moralities of frugality, progressive cooperative movements, what is labeled “American-­style” excessive buying, and the ludic pleasures of exuberant consumerism (Garon and Machlachlan 2006:14 – 15). Our background look at the development of Hello Kitty consumption in its country of origin must take these elements of the changing Japanese market and consumer culture into consideration. This is not to say that Japan is unique or that Sanrio’s clever marketing is universally beloved there. Neither of these is true, and some critics in Japan, as elsewhere, decry Hello Kitty’s ubiquity. But it is to suggest that such sheer excess and pervasive commercialism have been normalized in Japan in the 2000s as everyday consumer culture.1 In large urban areas and even in small towns, no space is too small, no human arena 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 Kitty may be a sign of exactly the less-­than-­prosperous times as the perfectly affordable souvenir, as the purchase for oneself or another that reproduces the “small gift, big smile” company ethos as not only an economic necessity, but more importantly, a moral stance. In the 2000s, her purchase may signal that belt-­tightening ways need not erode good cheer, social relations, or even intimacy. In short, Hello Kitty has become an expectation of the changing economic, political, and social landscape scattered throughout contemporary Japan. But how did this come to be? What are the conditions by which a product once associated only with youth and females could be transformed into a viable part of the generalized marketplace? What is the kitty at home   •  45

changing context in Japan that could give rise to the phenomenon of Hello Kitty everywhere? What, in other words, are the elements of cute culture in Japan that have enabled the success of this product? In order to answer these questions, one must situate Hello Kitty first and foremost in the complex jumble of goods and practices of the 1970s and 1980s, a period of unprecedented growth, technological prowess, and cultural nationalism, otherwise known as the bubble period of Japan’s burgeoning economy. The bubble allowed middle-­class practices to become more than the norm; they came to represent an assumption and hallmark of national achievement as “homogeneous Japan.” The unofficial public doctrine was that Japan had built a “classless” society by virtue of its widespread prosperity. Although this was far from the truth, the rise of Japanese cute culture, including Hello Kitty, should be seen within the discursive assumptions of a shared middle class and its unspoken aspirations.2 Our discussion follows multiple strands from this period, beginning with the figure of the shōjo (young unmarried female) as person, symbol, fetish, object, and, ultimately, consumer, from the 1970s on. The shōjo and her “girl culture” marked the rise of kawaii as a galvanizing touchstone of female, youth-­oriented, affective, aestheticized, commodified Japan. These qualities circumscribe a genre of products known as fanshii guzzu (Japlish; literally, “fancy goods,” typically frilly commodities oriented to girls), of which Sanrio has been a chief purveyor. In fact, Sanrio’s complete makeover in the 1970s from a dry goods business dubbed “Yamanashi Silk” to fanshii guzzu specialist with a linguistically ambiguous name has been the key to its corporate success. As a company, Sanrio shifted its target consumer from an older group of women engaged in practical household activities, such as sewing, to a younger group — that of the shōjo — with discretionary income enabling the purchase of the frilly accoutrements to a not-­yet-­housebound lifestyle. The range of goods of Sanrio concomitantly shifted from the practical to the decorative (including the decorated practical), and from the sober to the cute, accompanying a new generation of consumers. Eventually, as the acceptability of cute spread to a wider age range, Sanrio’s market extended back again to the housewife, who could purchase cute items for her kitchen as well as her young child. Although not seamless, this spread tended to skip middle ­school and high school years during which Hello Kitty was considered too infantile for teenage cool. Part of the story of this chapter lies in how Hello Kitty became acceptable once 46  •  chapter one

more to a group that temporarily shunned it. This chapter details the process by which cute became cool in Japan. The shift to fanshii guzzu may be related to another group of commodities that arose during this period, kyarakutā guzzu (Japlish; “character goods”). Whereas fanshii guzzu were meant to appeal strictly to females, kyarakutā guzzu could appeal to both male and female youth. The development of kyarakutā as commodities for sale, as well as their proliferation in the public visualscape, lends an anthropomorphized sense of kawaii-­based empathy to contemporary Japan. In this chapter I analyze kyarakutā as part of a new mode that mixes emotion and identity within a commodity aesthetic of kawaii. The rise of Hello Kitty in the mid-­1970s, then, must be contextualized within several interwoven strands of cute: shōjo, fanshii guzzu, kawaii, and kyarakutā. These form the shifting backdrop by which we may more fully grasp the pervasiveness of cute-cool culture — and Hello Kitty within it — in contemporary Japan. Another strand important to understanding Hello Kitty in Japan is an 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 maintaining social ties fuel Sanrio’s marketing strategies. The sociocultural premium placed upon these ties makes Sanrio’s position as purveyor of gifts unassailable. Gifts form not only the rationale behind Sanrio’s sales, but also guide the company’s interactions with its customers. According to Sanrio, a successful transaction between customer and company is not purely a rational, economic practice; rather, it is part of an ongoing social relationship that accrues with each sale. This relationship generates future brand loyalty. The gift culture of Japan, then, seals the Sanrio deal — facilitating relationships between people, as well as between customers and the products they purchase. As a case study in the ways in which these strands intertwine, I note some of Sanrio’s activities surrounding Hello Kitty’s thirty-­fifth anniversary, celebrated from 2009 to 2010. These form a significant apex of kawaii goods and consumer-­driven lifestyle that is Hello Kitty’s purview in Japan. The corporate celebration activities glorify Hello Kitty as both a domestic and international icon, representing the ultimate in what might be known in a global setting as Japanese Cute-­Cool. Hello Kitty as Japanese Cute-­Cool signifies youth-­oriented, feminine Japan, which has gained global popularity in the 2000s. In short, pink globalization kitty at home   •  47

finds peak natal expression as corporate culture in these carefully designed and publicly executed paeans to Japan’s quintessentially Cute-­ Cool icon.

Shōjo, Fanshii Guzzu, and the Creation of Girl Culture in Japan Our discussion of the development of cute culture centers around the shōjo as an actual consuming figure, as well as a complex symbolic space before the public eye. In parallel with Daniel Cook’s discussion of the historical structuring of childhood through the market idiom of the children’s clothing industry in the United States, so, too, might the development of the fanshii guzzu industry in Japan be analyzed as part of the structuring of the “girl” or girl culture in Japan, of which Hello Kitty is iconic (2004). Cook’s analysis demonstrates ways in which a capitalist society develops a demographic category of person in part through marketing and consumption practices. In glib terms, if the “hat makes the man,” then here the fanshii guzzu makes the “girl” or shōjo. But how does that making through marketing take place? The steps involved in developing shōjo consumers are threefold: (1) create a sense of the shōjo symbolically, (2) ensure that the shōjo is an active consumer, and (3) extend consumer citizenship — that is, a sense of national purchase as membership in the buying club of Japan — to her by offering goods that are attractive and affordable, such as Hello Kitty. This scenario, however, does not do justice to the role of the shōjo herself. The development of shōjo culture in the 1970s and 1980s includes the role of the shōjo in developing her own expressive means dialectically, from the home and streets to the corporate boardroom and back again. Here, then, besides existing as a commodity, Hello Kitty acts as a highly manipulable symbol by which shōjo may define and perform themselves. The historical structuring of the shōjo in contemporary Japan suggests both growing “girl power” and public concern (even moral panic) for policing her limits (Kinsella 2005:145). This shōjo web of ambiguity and ambivalence provides Hello Kitty with a broad range of meanings and uses. Creating the shōjo has been a historical process. Here, instead of focusing on her Meiji era (1868 – 1912) beginnings (see Robertson 1998: 63 – 65), I focus on her postwar configuration within the context of rising economic and national-­global power of the 1960s and 1970s. The 48  •  chapter one

iconicity of the shōjo developed through media such as books, magazines, plays, songs, film, television, manga, and anime. In many of these depictions, the shōjo is simply a girl-­child,3 often with infantilized facial features (not unlike Hello Kitty herself, except perhaps for the size of the eyes): large, round eyes, outsized in proportion to an inconspicuous nose and small mouth.4 The shōjo as a girl-­child functions as a nostalgic figure for adults who see in her a state of natural grace and immanent possibilities for the adulthood that lies just ahead. Quite simply, she is Japan’s innocent girl next door. Jennifer Robertson argues that historically the category of the shōjo “implies heterosexual inexperience and homosexual experience” (1998:65). In other words, shōjo innocence assumes intimate ties (“passionate, but supposedly platonic”) with other girls and women, while relegating boys and men to a separate, more distant sphere (68). This kind of highly acceptable same-­sex intimacy typically occurs in school among sports team or club members. However, in some depictions from the 1970s on and particularly by the mid-­1990s, hints of heterosexuality fall within the realm of shōjo purview, not so much as subject herself, but as object of voyeuristic fascination. During this time period, manga artists and others begin to draw her body as changed from that of flat-­chested girl-­child to the eroticized category of sex-­child with womanly breasts, buttocks, and long legs (Masubuchi 1994:83). The erotic charge lies in the eerie, Photoshopped quality of the image: she has a child’s face and a woman’s body. Let me note here that the visual depiction of shōjo eroticism only placed in bodily terms what some would argue was already there in unspoken heteronormative pedophilia (see Allison 1996:29).5 The real or fictive nature of the sex-­child image matters less than her public circulation as symbolic dream girl, at least for some men. It also lies in the purported fleetingness of the condition, as all too soon the child becomes an adult. The attraction, then, at least for her pedophilic admirers, is not for the woman but for the child. And it is as child that she becomes precious as a transitory figure threatened by impending adulthood. That threat can be performatively quelled through masquerade: adult women may dress as children, speak or act as children (e.g., the figure of the burikko, the woman with high-­pitched baby talk who feigns the child, primarily to appeal to men), or cling to symbols of childhood (e.g., Hello Kitty) (Miller 2004b:148). This masquerade sets the stage for performances of shōjo-­the-­virgin, remade. Sanrio aids and abets this, especially with the development of goods for the adult fekitty at home   •  49

male market from the late 1970s on. These include Hello Kitty stockings, makeup, sanitary napkins, and even condoms.6 The simultaneous presence of both these versions of the shōjo —  girl-­child and sex-­child — creates some of the public tension and ambiguity surrounding what has become a sometimes controversial icon. Both versions draw on that most public of shōjo symbols — the schoolgirl uniform, of which the most iconic is the navy blue sailor style (Mori 1985). The public sees actual shōjo most typically in uniform, commuting to and from school, walking the sidewalks and riding public transportation, wearing the uniform even on weekends and at nonschool functions.7 The public also sees the symbolic shōjo through quotations of her schoolgirl uniform in manga, anime, bars, and pornography. How do we interpret both versions of the shōjo, both uses of the schoolgirl uniform? The problem lies categorically. To the question “Is she a child or an adult?” the answer must lie not only between the two, but that she is both. The uniform worn as easily by a seven-­year-­old as a thirteen-­year-­old covers the breast buds of womanhood. The shōjo is a child whose eroticism rests in adult male desire for prepubescent females, a phenomenon dubbed rorikon (“Lolita complex”) in Japan. Ironically, the same uniform meant to contain sexuality becomes itself a tantalizing, sexualized icon. That desire draws not so much on bodies and uniforms — although these are necessary objects of scopophilic attention — but on the powerlessness and passivity they inscribe. It is the erotic charge of innocence as foreplay, of guilelessness as sexual position. One source of public fascination with the shōjo, then, rests exactly in her construction as the source of such forbidden pleasure, in what the feminist Naito Chizuko has called the “loliconization” of Japanese society — that is, “the commodification of children, young girls (shōjo), and young women as sexual symbols in society” (2010:328). For example, the fashion magazine for females in their late teens and early twenties, Cutie for Independent Girls, which began publication in 1989, shows the shōjo as part of explicit sexualized consumer culture.8 Although targeting a post-­shōjo audience, this magazine builds upon a referentially shōjo-­based consumer culture that includes Hello Kitty. The May 1998 issue features Yuki, a wide-­eyed female model (pop singer) with rosy cheeks and braids on the cover. Clearly Yuki, regardless of her actual age, is meant to convey the idea of shōjo. Inside, a six-­page photo spread presents Yuki in poses of bondage and sadomasochism (see figure 1.1), asking “Who’s next?” Even if this photo spread were meant as a fashion 50  •  chapter one

1.1. Photo from Yuki spread in Cutie for Independent Girls (May 1998).

joke (as explained to me by several young Japanese men and women), that joke can only be viewed as disturbingly complicit with female sub­ jugation, at both sexual and consumer levels. In this, rape becomes a form of kawaii chic with the sex-­child shōjo featured as nothing less than a fashionable victim. Given the readership of the magazines — the audience for chic rape, the victims themselves — a photo spread such as this raises alarming questions of media responsibility in Japan.9 This does not necessarily say much about shōjo themselves — except perhaps as muse or wannabe perusers of fashion magazines that may contain such explicit images. (In this, others may peer over her shoulder.) Whereas much of the mediated presence of the shōjo tantalizes the heteronormative public with her presumably Lolita-­like presence, kitty at home   •  51

for girls themselves this same historic period marks the rise of their own agency in terms of consumer and subcultural expressive power. Sanrio’s success — including that of fanshii guzzu, kyarakutā, and other cute products — could only take place within the context of an emerging girl culture, including a new generation of active young, female shoppers. During these bubble economy years of the 1970s and 1980s, shōjo staked a claim at the marketplace, cutting their eye-­teeth on Sanrio and its fanshii guzzu. They gained this claim through the general rising affluence of this period, on the one hand, and through the shrinking birthrate, on the other. In effect, fewer offspring meant proportionately larger gifts for children; in Japan the gift of choice — especially the large amounts given to children as otoshidama (literally, year’s gem; money wrapped in ceremonial envelope) for New Year’s celebration — is typically money.10 The saying “children have six pockets” refers to the two parents and four grandparents who regularly and readily draw deeply from their own pockets to fill children’s purses with the means to shop. Another take on the same phenomenon is the “five-­pocket child” — that is, one who receives money from five sources: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, and family friends (Creighton 1994:78). In the case of the shōjo, what she buys are the girl-­culture goods that arose during this period and after, such as Hello Kitty. The consumer power of the shōjo has been matched by other assertions of rapidly changing girl-­culture practices, some of which have been interpreted as threatening to the status quo. Girl culture as deviant subculture in the 1970s and 1980s includes maru-­moji (round script) and slang (often deliberately reconfiguring words with childish intonations), extended through graphemes enhanced by computers and cell phones in the late 1990s and 2000s as gyaru-­moji (girl graphs). As Laura Miller explains, “[Japanese] girls use this writing style to confront gender socialization, in which femininity is linked to elegance and refinement not only in their comportment, but in how they fashion their writing of language” (2011:16). Educators, parents, and other adults consider these girl-­culture expressions as deviant, even if the sense of societal disruption may be mild compared to same-­age delinquents in the West. This form of bottom-­up (no pun intended) cute culture suggested girls out of control; however, what it really portended was girls gaining control of their consumer lives and in-­group expression.11 That sense of girl-­culture threat only grew, especially with the emergence of a highly public bad-­girl shōjo by the 1990s. She was the kogyaru 52  •  chapter one

(shortened from kōkōsei-­g yaru, high school girl or gal; sometimes abbreviated simply as gyaru), a highly transgressive version of the shōjo, who combined variously modified schoolgirl uniforms (e.g., ultrashortened skirts), chapatsu (hair dyed brown), and extreme makeup (deeply tanned faces, eyes made up with light eye-­shadow, heavy mascara, and eyeliner to emphasize round, “doll-­like” eyes). The transgressiveness of the kogyaru should be understood within the context of kosoku (school rules) that have long regulated details of dress, accessories, undergarments, hair, makeup, and behavior for students in Japan (White 1993:223 – 26). In addition to challenging the kosoku, the kogyaru look upended more traditional standards of beauty: black hair, pale skin, almond-­shaped eyes (Miller 2006:21). The kogyaru also inhabited a consumer lifestyle that carved out her subcultural territory with iconic urban spaces (e.g., Tokyo’s Harajuku and Shibuya), quickly shifting fashion accessories (e.g., variously, platform shoes, Burberry scarves), activities (e.g., purikura, shortened Japlish from “print club” — photo booths where one may easily produce decorated stickers of oneself — launched in 1995; see Miller 2005), and magazines (e.g., Egg, which began publication focusing on the kogyaru and her offshoots in 1999). If the kogyaru sported Hello Kitty accessories, she did so with a sense of irony for the girl-­child she was publicly leaving behind. More importantly, the kogyaru challenged more traditional standards of language and comportment: demureness, modesty, self-­effacement (Miller 2004a). Kogyaru stormed the urban stage as highly public young women laying claim to a comparatively brash persona with little concern for future adult responsibilities and great concern for the pleasures of the present. They became the first of a parade of successive deviant girl-­culture personae, such as the dark-­faced, raccoon-­eyed ganguro (literally “face black”), the yamamba (“mountain witch”) with “witchy” dyed hair (Kinsella 2005), and at the opposite extreme, Gothic Lolita, dressed in outlandish, fairy­ tale frills. These rebel faux shōjo took the street as their own stage, parading in an endless stream within particular enclaves of Tokyo. Their street fashion, including the occasional Hello Kitty accessories that complete the look, has garnered the incessant gaze of Japanese and foreign photographers, whose photos of these post-­shōjo have been compiled in several art magazines and books (see the introduction). The combination of shōjo, sex, shopping, and girl subculture came to a media head in the late 1990s, when newspapers, magazines, and television shows jumped on the bandwagon reportage of enjo kōsai (“comkitty at home   •  53

pensated dating”).12 If adults previously wagged their tongues at corrupted handwriting, language, and dyed hair, the idea of shōjo selling their social and sometimes sexual attentions for sizeable spare change confirmed the worst societal fears. These girls looked to be entirely out of control. Notably, enjo kōsai became associated with kogyaru, to the extent that elements of the kogyaru look became visual codes for the business of paid socializing. With the skirts of their schoolgirl uniforms hiked impossibly high and prim white knee socks scrunched to a baggy slouch (dubbed rūzu sokkusu, “loose socks”), the girls turned everyday hangouts such as McDonald’s into illicit meeting places to hook up with clients. The 1997 hit film Baunsu Kogyaru (Bounce Kogyaru) by Masato Harada further cemented the association of kogyaru with enjo kōsai by depicting schoolgirls trading sexual favors for cash. What made matters worse were the stereotypical reasons given for engaging in such a trade, namely, that girls needed the money so that they could shop to their heart’s content. These shōjo traded up: they relinquished Sanrio in favor of Louis Vuitton. The public outcry was not so much against the (older, male) customers; rather, it was against the shōjo as the schoolgirl gone irreparably bad. Enjo kōsai raised alarm bells around the shōjo and her cute culture: Had consumerism gone too far? Was this a sign of the moral turpitude of the time? Although kogyaru and enjo kōsai may seem a far cry from the safe world of fanshii guzzu and Hello Kitty, they are not. Rather, in Japan, these various meanings of shōjo coexist in constant tandem, the one providing the backdrop for the other and vice versa. It is the juxtaposition of girl-­child and sex-­child, of lunch boxes and condoms sharing a logo of Sanrio characters, of sadomasochistic bondage and cute goods within the same magazine, that generates a deep and variable pool of meanings given the shōjo and her evolving girl culture. Thus, one set of images of the shōjo invokes at some level the full range of contradictions. One sees and “not-­sees” the range of images and meanings continually, focusing on one and then the other in a type of wink, cross-­ referencing them playfully and provocatively. This is not to say that all adults and children throughout Japan see this full range, but that the range exists as widely circulating public discourse. The eye upon the shōjo includes all of these images, even if parts of it may be selectively focused or blurred at any one time. This holds true whether the viewer is a marketer, a parent, a peeping tom, or even a shōjo herself. The various meanings given shōjo play a part in both the identity categories 54  •  chapter one

as well as the subjectivity of girls. Sanrio juggles all the images at the same time, extending them further by playing them off each other. It is the corporate wink that officially decries the co-­optation of the Hello Kitty massage wand as a vibrator by seekers of Internet porn (see chapter 5), at the same time as creating a promotional poster seen in a Sanrio store in Yokohama of a seminude young woman coyly covering her breasts while taking a photo with a Hello Kitty camera. Here is the seeing-­but-­not-­seeing work of the wink. Sanrio’s corporate wink teases the multivalent symbol of the shōjo — girl-­child, sex-­child, consumer-­ child. Through the blurred image of the shōjo, the line between innocence and sexuality, between childhood and adulthood is not so neatly drawn in contemporary Japan. Hello Kitty as symbol of the shōjo and her girl culture, which moves from street to corporate to street again, plays upon this blurring.

Kawaii as the Emotional Touchstone of Girl Culture What remains consistent throughout the blurring is the concept of kawaii. Our goal here is not necessarily to define kawaii or enumerate its typologies, since these kinds of exercises have been conducted numerous times by others.13 Rather, it is more productive for our purposes to note ways and contexts in which the concept may be invoked in contemporary Japan, as exemplified in the quotes with which I began this chapter. In other words, I ask, What is the work that kawaii effects as a discursive strategy? How does it circumscribe the social, emotional, and gendered context of Hello Kitty in Japan? Objects or people described with squealing excitement as kawaii may vary by individuals — from infants to centenarians (at least those without debilitating physical infirmities), from pink handbags to serious works of art, from young animals to quaint buildings. With this kind of range, being able to come up with an all-­inclusive definition matters far less than examining the sociocultural work its label accomplishes. As Sharon Kinsella notes, kawaii has been called “the most widely used, widely loved, habitual word in modern living Japanese” by crea magazine, and a brief overhearing of conversations, especially among shōjo in contemporary Japan, is enough to confirm that claim (1995:220 – 21). Yet such benign ubiquity calls forth its own cadre of detractors. Critique of the ubiquity of kawaii in Japan tends to come variously from intellectuals, conservatives, fringe youth subcultures, kitty at home   •  55

and sometimes shōjo themselves (McVeigh 2000b:136). Nevertheless, this ubiquitous word in contemporary Japan takes its form relatively recently, changing from kawayushi (early twentieth century to 1945) to kawayui (1950s to 1970) to its present kawaii (1970s on) — in general, sharing overlapping meaning with the English cute, but with an added layer of vulnerability derived from its etymological link with kawaisō (pitiable, pathetic). The link between the cute and the vulnerable rests in the Japanese concept of amae (dependency), based in the prototypical child-­mother dyad. According to the psychologist Doi Takeo, the fundamental link between child (as one who amaeru, “depends on, including solicitations of dependency”) and mother (as one who amayakasu, “is depended upon, including making oneself available to fulfill such dependency”) acts as a socially valued, emotional template for any number of relationships in Japan, including that between adults (1971). Kawaii acknowledges that template, invoking the “relationality” — ongoing connections between one person and others, as well as with objects — that lies at the core of the concept (Allison 2004:43). In fact, kawaii relationality overlaps with Anglo-American “cute.” The film critic Mary Ann Doane (1989) analyzes what European and American marketers have long known: certain kinds of commodities invoke empathetic — even motherly — responses from adult female consumers. Those commodities are “cute.”14 Building on “consumer empathy,” cute commodities generate what Lori Merish calls “a structure of emotional response that assimilates consumption into the logic of adoption. Thus, the special relevance of cuteness to one particular commodity: the doll. . . . What the cute stages is, in part, a need for adult care” (1996:187) . Hello Kitty functions as exactly this kind of cute commodity, generating what Merish dubs “sentimental [maternal] materialism” (2000). Hello Kitty and other kawaii objects act as prompts for an empathetic response of caregiving, as Merish describes. However, in Japan there is an additional twist: some consumers do not only want to adopt the cute commodity; as discussed above, they want to become it. As Kinsella notes: “Cute fashion in Japan was more than merely cuddling cute things; it was all about ‘becoming’ the cute object itself” (1995:237). Becoming Hello Kitty may not literally mean transforming oneself into a cat; rather, it suggests becoming the kawaii object that calls out for other’s people’s nurturance, as exemplified by Hello Kitty. This temporary return to the land of kawaii is part of the masquerade of adult women as shōjo. In this way, the fandom in Japan surrounding cute commodities, from aidoru 56  •  chapter one

(“idol”; young popular singer-­entertainer) to Hello Kitty, embraces both a strong sense of caring as well as becoming the object of care that constitutes an escape into the very doll-­like qualities of kawaii.15 Herein lies the retreat of kawaii as an amae-­based concept. The kawaii retreat is more complex than a strict dichotomy between the powerful and powerless (see McVeigh 2000b:141 – 42). Rather, kawaii outlines a particular gaze upon the world, including people and objects, that establishes a relational position of the gazer and the gazed-­upon. Instead of an inherent quality of an object or person, kawaii is a mode of regard. That is, by dubbing some object or person as kawaii, the viewer proffers a gaze that is both softened and charged with empathy, intimacy, and emotion (144). Invoking kawaii says as much about the viewer as the viewed. In this, kawaii becomes part of an intransitive verb: kawaii suru (my theoretical linguistic construct), suggesting to endow an object with endearing qualities and thus establish a relationship of care and intimacy. Although this is what Doane and Merish call a “maternal” impulse of adoption, one may “nativize” the act in Japan and call it an assertion of amae. The heightened valence of kawaii and the nostalgia for an idealized childhood that it circumscribes directly points to adulthood as burdened with responsibilities and obligations (Allison 2004:40). This kind of nostalgia pits the freedom of childhood against the restrictiveness of adulthood. Within this context, kawaii represents a temporary state of abnegation. Surrounding oneself with kawaii objects may be interpreted as pure escapism. This is not to say that men do not suffer from the pressures of adulthood, but only that culturally sanctioned forms of escape may be gendered. For women, one can be both “childlike” and “maternal,” both the cared for and the caregiver, by way of kawaii. This way of being says as much about the desirability of shōjo as well as the expectations placed upon adult females. Perhaps one of the most instructive lens through which to distinguish kawaii from cute is to briefly examine what consumers outside Japan say about their differentiation. This is exactly what global fans of Hello Kitty do, as I discuss further in chapter 3. They remark on the creative flexibility of Hello Kitty. Crafted in ambiguity, Hello Kitty encompasses innocent childhood, on the one hand, and its own distancing commentary through clever, sly, even tongue-­in-­cheek, play, on the other. This perception stands in contrast to what they see as the straightforward, more unidimensional expression of American kitty at home   •  57

characters, such as Precious Moments (Christian-­linked sentimentality) or Disney figures (often tied to specific narratives, such as blockbuster children’s films). What many global fans recognize and tout is the relative complexity of Japanese kawaii, compared to Anglo-­American cute. Part of that complexity is the inclusion of contradictory elements within one concept such as kawaii. This perceived contradictory mixing includes the possibilities of physically deformed elements, such as missing limbs or misshapen figures, resulting in “sdk” (superdeformed kawaii) as a genre of kawaii renderings. It also includes the possibilities of socially deformed elements, such as scowling anticute children of the popular artist Nara Yoshitomo (b. 1959), whose underage subjects often smoke, swear, and overtly defy notions of etiquette.16 Sianne Ngai contends that cuteness contains within it the possibilities of provoking “ugly or aggressive feelings, as well as the expected tender or maternal ones. For in its exaggerated passivity and vulnerability, the cute object is as often intended to excite a consumer’s sadistic desires for mastery and control as much as his or her desire to cuddle” (2005:816). The very deformability of the cute — the tweaked “ugliness” of kawaii — is part of its vulnerability. The broad umbrella of kawaii, then, extends to include these ironic, playful, even crushingly subversive elements that wax and wane through time as the very stuff of “cool.” Here I am not suggesting that all stuff kawaii is and always has been cool, but that the coolness factor has been variously attached to a moving target of kawaii as it transforms over time. It is important to historicize the complexity of kawaii that global fans acknowledge. The flexibility of Hello Kitty may be seen as a by-­product of both her physical blankness that was the genius of her rendering from the outset, and the inherent contradictions within the concept of kawaii, as well as Sanrio’s extended marketing a decade after her birth. In effect, the blank slate with which she was drawn, as well as the playfulness of kawaii, contributed to her adaptability as logo, and her adaptability as logo enabled her extension to new products and markets. A word, though, about the blankness with which Hello Kitty has often been described: this is not sheer blankness, but one couched always in kawaii, always made appealing by playing upon vulnerability. In short, this is blankness to a purpose, with that purpose resting precisely in the affective, feminized tug of kawaii. The original Hello Kitty from 1974 was a simple mouthless cat in primary colors, seated to the side with head facing forward,17 adorning 58  •  chapter one

children’s goods such as lunch boxes, coin purses, and pencils. The image is flat and abstract, pared down to the most basic lines and shapes that lead one to imagine the rest. Here is the blank slate as the jejune of childhood, both in the image as well as in the objects she adorned. However, by the late 1970s and 1980s, when Sanrio decided to extend the market for Hello Kitty to adult females (described earlier as reclaimed shōjo), the kawaii expression of Hello Kitty goods included added layers that might appeal to a broader age range: new colors in an extended palette, varied costumes, more accessories, new bodily positions, other linked commodities.

••••• While not losing its young consumers, Hello Kitty as logo placed on a variety of goods targeted to an older crowd became a commentary upon kawaii itself. The very juxtaposition — childhood logo placed upon adult-­oriented items — affirmed the expanded purview of kawaii. I contend that the wide variety of objects or persons described as kawaii in Japan connects with this extension of children’s goods and images into adult realms. This kind of generalized “cutification” of Japanese society ties directly to marketing practices, which I discuss further in the next section. I am not here claiming causality: this is not a chicken-­and-­egg question of which came first, marketing practices or extension of kawaii. Rather, it is important to note their parallel emergence in Japanese contemporary society from the 1970s through today. Our discussion thus necessarily includes shōjo, girl culture, fanshii guzzu marketing, and kawaii as closely intertwined parts of an era. Kawaii as developed through consumer goods takes childhood as only a starting point. Innocence — or its seeming expression — becomes the raw materials from which to develop more complex, multilayered imagery. Like the seen-­but-­not-­seen aspects of shōjo, kawaii as exemplified by Hello Kitty includes cute and its distancing through twists of meanings, commentaries, and nuances that fall within the framework of asobi (play). In fact, it is the culturally sanctioned field of asobi that extends meanings and uses into surprising places. As depicted on the cover of a 1998 Kitty Goods Collection (figure 1.2), the extended range of expressivity in colors, bodily positions, and costuming allows Hello Kitty to take leave of her original moorings of the 1974 image. Literally taking wing, these flights of Sanrio fantasy take each Kitty iteration to the edge, affirming and reaffirming her appeal to children and adults alike. She is drenched kitty at home   •  59

1.2. Cover of Kitty Goods Collection, vol. 2 (1998).

in asobi. Here lies the process by which cute becomes cool in Hello Kitty’s development, leaning on asobi as a critical link. Such a framework encompasses the seen but not seen, enveloping shōjo, kawaii, and other elements of consumer culture in contemporary Japan.

Kyarakutā as the Embodied World: The Koizumi-­Shishiro Dance That cultural framework of asobi is fundamental to the ubiquitous presence of kyarakutā, such as Hello Kitty, filling the visual- and social-­ scapes of contemporary Japan. Tracing the extension of kyarakutā from childhood decoration into the adult world parallels the rise of shōjo and kawaii. These three elements intertwine as follows: all kyarakutā are kawaii, tying them to youth, including shōjo; the widespread proliferation of kyarakutā suggests the overall feminization (by way of shōjo) 60  •  chapter one

and “cutification” (by way of kawaii) of contemporary Japan. The 1970s in this way witnessed the rise of kyarakutā, jumping beyond the bounds of children’s goods into gradually more and more of the general adult world. By the 1980s, many companies, institutions, and large-­scale events felt need for their own kyarakutā mascot, whether designed anew or licensed from preexisting, well-­known cartoon figures. This includes, for example, (1) banks with kyarakutā hypervisible on advertisements and other paraphernalia (e.g., Tom and Jerry as the Bank of Yokohama mascots; Hello Kitty as the Japan Credit Bureau [jcb] mascot);18 (2) governmental institutions using kyarakutā to convey public-­ service messages (McVeigh 2000b:150 – 53); and (3) large-­scale events, such as Expo 2005, held in Aichi prefecture with kyarakutā mascots Kiccoro (Forest Child) and Morizo (Forest Grandfather).19 Kyarakutā refigure the material world into a personalized one, full of cute characters who beckon, soothe, and only gently admonish, as Laura Miller clearly points out (2010).20 Miller analyzes the use of animal figures in public culture in Japan, past and present, as a “zoomorphic urge” that follows principles of displacement — that is, “the psychological mechanism that allows us to redirect attention and emotions away from areas thought to be indelicate or troublesome” (2010:69). A world suffused with kyarakutā is thus softened through its investment in emotion, always holding the potential for comforting sociality. On the one hand, use of cute kyarakutā by businesses means appealing directly to that segment of the population with increasing buying power — young females. Branding a company or institution through particular kyarakutā makes them not only distinctive one from the other, but distinctively kawaii and thus appealing. On the other hand, use of cute kyarakutā by governmental institutions “softens” their image and message for the general populace. This is the affective labor of kawaii. Kyarakutā allow more typically distant, formal institutions, such as police departments, to seem congenial and approachable. Through kyarakutā, government may be imaged as friend rather than authority figure. This serves important functions, especially because the trade in support and assistance is supposed to run mutually between government and citizenry: government is structured as the citizen’s friend yet the citizen is theoretically government’s ally. Thus, kyarakutā as both commodity and ally outline the disarming presence of kawaii, suggesting an ingenue mask of power. As developed from the 1970s through the 2000s, kyarakutā funckitty at home   •  61

tion by steps: (1) emotionalizing and humanizing the everyday material world through embodied kawaii, and (2) commercializing that same world. Although not all kyarakutā are commodified, those that are bought and sold allow the consumer to take a part of that figure home in what Anne Allison calls “pocket intimacy” or portable companionship (2004:45). Surrounding oneself with kyarakutā creates a nest of comfortable familiarity, both knowable and knowing (Steinberg 2012:81). The convenience of their miniaturization means that that nest is as portable as the cell phone strap in one’s purse.21 In fact, the cell phone strap offers the convenient opportunity of customizing one’s surroundings with kyarakutā, turning an everyday appliance into an expression of kyarakutā-­based identity. Ownership of kyarakutā guzzu holds forth the possibilities of buying into and creating an intimate relationship with some part of what the figure represents. The flexibility of kyarakutā lies in the fact that they are not only objects, but more commonly, transferable logos — that is, branded, visual, recognizable symbols that identify goods. And as logos, they can “mark” their territory endlessly, increasing the number and variety of goods for sale. This is exactly the process of Sanrio, as it extends Hello Kitty products manifold through licensing agreements. Sanrio, of course, is not alone in this. The character licensing business in Japan, as elsewhere, continues to grow, reaching new markets, cultivating new strategies, and developing new means to extend itself. In effect, Hello Kitty as logo is perfectly encapsulated by one of Sanrio’s smaller, cheaper items. This is a pair of cardboard-­framed hologram lenses through which any concentrated light source magically transforms into an outlined image of Hello Kitty.22 The Hello Kitty hologram glasses are nothing short of marketing genius. Through the logo principle, any surface or object can be decorated with a kyarakutā such as Hello Kitty, thereby stamped indelibly as kawaii and linked to a company or institution.23 In fact, the work of logo goes both ways, especially as two recognizable commodities enter into a mutual licensing agreement: as one example of many, Hello Kitty (cute) on a Fender guitar (cool) suggests that the hard-­rock world of the guitar is made more accessible to the kawaii world of shōjo, at the same time as Hello Kitty and kawaii are given a new tongue-­in-­ cheek wink of meaning. The wink defines cute as newly cool. The proliferation of these logos means more than the cutification of the everyday world; it suggests the corporatization of kawaii and its brand of asobi through kyarakutā. As Allison argues, “No longer con62  •  chapter one

fined to particular objects . . . , spaces . . . , or times . . . , ‘play’ [through kyarakutā] becomes insinuated into far more domains of everyday life. The border between play and nonplay, commodity and not, increasingly blurs” (2004:47). The resulting kyarakutā overload potentially turns the everyday world visually into an elaborate, excessive playground of logos whose every detail is planned, executed, and coordinated around cartoon figures. Furthermore, this very overload creates a hunger for more, as Marc Steinberg explains: “The generation of consumer desire depends in large part on the material ubiquity of the character image and its proliferation across media forms” (2012:42). Here is the work of the Hello Kitty glasses. Call this a “theme park” for the visualscape of kyarakutā, including its foundationally commercial impulse. Certainly, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty theme park, Purorando (Puroland), is an overt manifestation of the principle. But I argue that the logo-­driven proliferation of kyarakutā makes of urban Japan a kind of visual theme park of kawaii as an embodied, commodified world. This is a world that Steinberg characterizes as “anymovement, anywhere, anytime,” referring to the portability of small kyarakutā merchandise, found in all places (“stickerability”), marking the urban-­and mediascape at any given moment (2012:79). Not only can any object or surface become stamped or stickered with kyarakutā by way of logo; real-­life figures may themselves transform into kyarakutā through processes of caricaturing, miniaturization, and subsequently commodification. Consider the following: when the popular prime minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro is rendered in stylized cute caricature, he can become a kyarakutā.24 This is exactly what the Liberal Democratic Party did when it created the kyarakutā “Shishiro” (Mr. Lion, referring to Koizumi’s trademark wavy “mane” of hair; Koizumi himself played up the image with the nickname “Lion Heart”) at the outset of Koizumi’s rule in 2001.25 In truth, Shishiro was not a real lion, or even a real cartoon lion, but a caricatured human figure (recognizable with Koizumi’s face and hair) dressed in lion costume.26 Furthermore, as in many caricatures, Shishiro was drawn from particular visual and personality elements taken from Koizumi himself. Thus Koizumi’s “cool” was drawn into Shishiro’s cute physicalization. With Shishiro’s cartooned image sketched on public messages, his doll figure bought and sold on goods ranging from T-­shirts to mugs to hand towels, his figure prominent on the governmental website, Koizumi as kyarakutā proliferates. Although a photo can have the same degree of proliferakitty at home   •  63

tion, the efficacy of kyarakutā renders him endearingly approachable, much as one might know, recognize, and pleasantly regard a cartoon figure. Shishiro draws upon and creates appeal from an image that is fixed, stylized, and contained. Here one can invoke the principle of migawari (self-­other exchange; surrogacy), with Shishiro acting as visual stand-­in for Koizumi. Takie Lebra argues that, in Japan, surrogacy carries special legitimate cultural weight: the dainin (surrogate) holds symbolic credibility of its own, connected to and enhancing the honnin (actual figure) (1994:113). I call this process “emergent authenticity” by which surrogates multiply the power and legitimacy of the actual person (Yano 2010b; see the introduction). Just as dainin may carry responsibility in representing honnin, so, too, may the many Shishiro kyarakutā each carry significance for Koizumi himself, amplifying his presence through each iteration. In effect, Shishiro accomplishes what a photograph cannot: by its own sense of embodiment, kyarakutā take on personality and being as a truly multidimensional figure. This is what enables migawari. The dialectic between Koizumi and Shishiro works multiply: Koizumi provides the fundamental material from which Shishiro is drawn; Shishiro as kyarakutā renders Koizumi even more kawaii than he might be. Thus, Koizumi and Shishiro — honnin and dainin; person and kyarakutā —  together engage in a dance of emergent authenticity.27 This dance of emergence exists in other Japanese cultural forms, as well. For example, Otsuka Eiji cites the process in traditional retellings —  dramatic adaptations and citations of shared stories in kabuki and Japanese puppet theater — whereby “the competence or originality of an author is judged by examining the appearance of various small narratives from a shared grand narrative” (2010:111). He links this to more contemporary fan activities such as dōjinshi (fanzine), in which the grand narrative is also shared (original author and subsequent fan authors) and emergent (interaction of original work and subsequent fan-­based works). In migawari, kabuki, puppet plays, dōjinshi, and various other cultural productions that build on a sense of repetition, authenticity, worthiness, and even identity emerge as process, rather than a singular product. Likewise, through the process of becoming kyarakutā, Koizumi transforms into more than a person, more than a prime minister; he becomes a “mediatized,” commodified figure with suprahuman powers both grand and intimate. These powers lie in the endearing qualities of 64  •  chapter one

kawaii. In effect, Koizumi gains more through his miniaturization as kyarakutā by assuming the kawaii position to disarm. The process of miniaturization itself makes Koizumi more “graspable,” more understandable, more endearingly kawaii, and far less political (see Schattschneider 2003:204).28 As one Japanese man in his thirties comments: “I feel Shishiro doesn’t have any political odor. I don’t see any connection between the character and Koizumi’s identity as a politician” (personal communication, June 17, 2011). A Japanese woman in her thirties echoes this sentiment: “[Shishiro has] good appeal to kids and probably to young girls, who don’t have any interest in politicians. They don’t care what Koizumi thinks or even who he really is. But if the [Shishiro] character is cute, it’s just fine” (personal communication, June 17, 2011). Instead of political prowess, Shishiro amplifies Koizumi’s limelight by lending a new apolitically cute twist to his public presence. These powers also lie in the seductions of excess. Whereas less was more through miniaturization, more is unremittingly more through oversaturation. This is what kyarakutā offer: Shishiro can inhabit the intimate spaces of people’s homes as easily as the public spaces of urban sidewalks. Note here that Koizumi the kyarakutā is not considered any less “masculine” by way of his cutification as Shishiro. Rather, he offers the Japanese public a new form of masculinity that is a deliberate break from a long line of staid politicians — a fashion trendsetter with his long wavy locks, unthreatened by his miniaturization, strengthened by his willingness to adopt the kawaii position. Koizumi the kyarakutā also gains more as commodity because he can then become an object of ownership. Imagine the “pocket intimacy” of a politician in one’s purse: becoming kyarakutā transforms a symbol of authority into a fetish of consumption. It is easy enough to dismiss kyarakutā as the “cutification” of the material world, as many might in response to the constant barrage of cartoonish figures dotting the urbanscape of contemporary Japan. While not denying such critique, it is equally productive to assess the cultural and socioeconomic resources that might generate the widespread use of kyarakutā, such as Hello Kitty, as well as suggest some implications wrought by their ubiquity. What do kyarakutā as an industry and as a way of life suggest about Japan? The question here is not only why kyarakutā, but also why kyarakutā now? What, in other words, do Hello Kitty and other cartoonlike figures say about contemporary Japan? I suggest that as well as looking to current issues of kawaii and shōjo, we kitty at home   •  65

examine past practices in seeking answers. It is this combination of the past in the present that gives the kyarakutā phenomenon — including Hello Kitty — particular significance. The proliferation of kyarakutā suggests cultural processes at work that define particular, ongoing relationships to material objects. The work of Ellen Schattschneider on spirituality and human-­made resemb­ lances — first in the mountain asceticism of northern Honshu (2003) and subsequently in bride dolls at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine (2009) —  transforms our discussion of kyarakutā in contemporary Japan from mere commercialism to culture past and present, in its most profound sense. Schattschneider draws specifically on two Japanese concepts to interpret objects: mitate (referentiality) and migawari. She utilizes the theory of mitate (to see + to arrange) — the bestowing of objects with often oblique meaning — to understand processes of intertextual reference. Dubbed by the Japanese anthropologist Yamaguchi Masao the “art of citation,” mitate rests in the human act of juxtaposition in order to create semantic linkages (1991:58). Yamaguchi explains: “When an object is displayed on ceremonial occasions, . . . a classical reference [in history or literature] . . . is assigned . . . so that the . . . object merges with . . . [that which] is being referred to. . . . Mitate, then, is the technique used to associate objects of ordinary life with mythological or classical images” (58). Mitate, in effect, operates within a continual, highly referential mode of citation, the circulation of meaning extending backward and forward in time. Although kyarakutā such as Hello Kitty may not reference mythological or classical images, cute icons work on a symbolic level as “citation” of particular places, times, or objects, especially those associated with childhood. Mitate is useful in thinking through kyarakutā because it assumes the power of objects and figures as loci of referential meaning. Rather than seeing simply a mouthless cat, one sees a highly codified figure that calls up nostalgia, childhood, or the multivalent shōjo. In fact, the meaning system of mitate can connect objects with the spirit world. Schattschneider emphasizes the fluid relationship between the mortal and the divine — the one becoming, representing, and quoting the other at any given moment — so that the potential for both is omnipresent (2003:55). That potential is actualized through human acts of imitation and representation, including that of migawari. Dolls and other anthropomorphic figures act as “prophylactic guardians” that “ease people through personal and cosmopological transitions” 66  •  chapter one

(2009:302). Seen in light of Schattschneider’s analysis, kyarakutā — as dolls, as surrogates, as guardians — may be interpreted as not mere decorations, but as buffering protectors, easing the stresses and strains of daily life. The buffering presence of migawari acts in two ways. First, kyarakutā can act as surrogates for specific persons or institutions where anxiety may be housed. Shishiro is a prime example of a kyarakutā surrogate for a figure of authority. In this, kyarakutā render potential elements of fear or discomfort kawaii, and thus more approachable. Second, kyarakutā can act as a more generalized comforting presence in daily life. Here it may be one particular kyarakutā, as well as the overall proliferation of these figures that provide comfort. This is akin to what childhood psychologists call a “transitional object” — something that helps the child shift from the dependence of the home to a more independent state. The classic transitional object in Euro-­America is the much beloved blanket or teddy bear carried by toddlers around everywhere. Here, kyarakutā such as Hello Kitty serve as transitional objects bridging the gap between the “wet” uterine warmth of the family to the “dry” detachment of individual life, for adults and children alike.29 The omnipresence of kyarakutā frames daily life as always accompanied, constantly swaddled in public and private by cute talismans of anthropomorphized form. Guardianship by way of kyarakutā runs parallel with Japanese ideals of infant mothering, which is characterized not so much by verbal inter­ action (American style), but by physical copresence (Lebra 1976:139 – 40). Kyarakutā, like mothers, provide “wet” comfort and nurturance by simply being there. It is the constancy that counts. We can thus reinterpret Hello Kitty’s oversaturation as part of the very constancy that makes her into a comforting presence. By this cultural logic, familiarity does not breed contempt, so much as intimacy.30 That presence does not need to be bought. Even if one is not a purchaser of kyarakutā guzzu, one may be an inadvertent, visual consumer by virtue of their proliferation. In that mode of excess, kyarakutā animate the material world as a sensate, emotional womb. These miniature mascots suggest life always accompanied, sharing intimacies with the support group of pocket pals. Hello Kitty is one of these pals. Her mouthless countenance provides a sounding board to synchronize with the mood of her viewer. She is the “blank” mirror that never fails, providing the right touch at the right moment (see chapter 3 for further discussion of this process). In fact, Hello Kitty needs her fans to sustain kitty at home   •  67

her commercial viability, as much as her fans may need her to sustain their lives. Without their purchase, Hello Kitty dies a quiet death. Furthermore, her inveterate cuteness speaks to the helplessness that is part of her appeal. She draws people to her through her vulnerability. In a very real sense, it is the mutuality — Hello Kitty and consumer, each dependent upon the other — that locks the relationship. She leans on them as they lean on her. She can thus become the one-­cat kyarakutā support group upon which one may continually and unabashedly “interdepend.”

The Business of “Social Communication”: Generative Gifting Although Hello Kitty may be considered a person’s portable, commodified support group, she enables a larger circle of sociality through her function as a gift. As many scholars have noted, gift giving has long oiled the wheels of social “embeddedness” in Japan, through practices of reciprocity, obligation, respect, hierarchy, and mutuality (Befu 1968; Rupp 2003). Gift giving balances the precise ledger of social obligations between and among individuals, families, businesses, and institutions.31 Marcel Mauss covered this social terrain well, explaining ways and means by which gifts create and maintain whole social networks in numerous cultures and through time (1967). Although this may be standard social fare, gift exchange in Japan has a particularly coercive quality to it that generates heavy burdens of obligation. In practices of exchange, gifts establish and maintain a tightly interwoven system of relationships in Japan. The contexts of exchange range from highly codified chūgen (midyear gifts) and seibo (year-end gifts) between families and businesses, to the more individuated, but no less codified, practices of exchange at weddings, funerals, and other occasions. At all levels, gift exchange generates regular, large-­scale flows of goods and services, with whole industries built around the requisite practices of social embeddedness. Sanrio understands gifting as sociality well. The company claims its part of an industry in “social communication” — here specifically targeting females from tweens to young adults. This “communication” takes place through old-­fashioned letter-­writing tools of pencils, pens, and stationery, and also more centrally through gifts. By calling itself a promoter of social communication, Sanrio adopts the unassailable position of enabling and even enhancing Japan’s interpersonal ties. Whereas 68  •  chapter one

stationery stores, small gift boutiques, and souvenir shops may have been doing much the same thing, Sanrio made social communication a genre and a central part of its brand. Through social communication, the company claims to uphold the very fabric of social life in Japan, providing readily bought solutions to threats of anomic, urban living. Placed within the framework of the 1970s period of Sanrio’s corporate development, the rationale addresses the meteoric rise of Japan as a global economy, made possible in part through the intense urbanization and movement of people from the countryside to cities. “Social communication” also addresses the rise of shōjo, Sanrio’s target market. Here I do not mean to overhistoricize gift giving and Sanrio’s place in the industry. Undoubtedly, gift exchange carries great historical depth in Japan, playing an important sociocultural role from premodern times to the present. Yet, Sanrio’s clever branding of itself as a gifting center focuses attention not so much on economics as on emotion. The company thus created itself during the rise of the “girl” in an era during which people raised fewer questions about the quantity of life (i.e., the prosperity of the 1970s and 1980s), and far more about the quality of life (i.e., the spiritual, emotional, and social well-­being of people in large cities). Even when questions of the quantity of life have returned in recessionary Japan of the 1990s and 2000s, Sanrio’s adoption of social communication as a brand promise addresses the handle of quality-­of-­ life questioning. In fact, social communication has been recontextualized in the 1990s and 2000s to address millennial concerns with iyashi (healing), yearning for the soothing life to ameliorate daily stresses.32 Although purchasing a cute Hello Kitty souvenir as a gift for a friend can be an individual act, it can be interpreted as addressing a national need to assert and sustain emotional ties between people. These ties go beyond the social, with its obligations and responsibilities, and into the realm of affect. Following company logic, inasmuch as Japan needs a strong interpersonal network of citizens sustained through practices of gift exchange, and inasmuch as that network comes under threats of modernity and stresses of daily life, Sanrio plays its part in addressing a national need. According to its position of social communication, Sanrio handles that need not through rigid, formal ties that bind, but through informal, flexible bonds of kawaii. This is not business so much as it is old-­fashioned social and emotional healing. That healing falls upon the shoulders of girls and women. Much as household gifting remains the responsibility of women, here Sanrio’s kitty at home   •  69

practices of gifting are primarily female. In fact, females take part in both old-­fashioned obligatory gifting and newer forms of informal exchange, as authorities of the social.33 Girls and women become familiar loci of “wet Japan” — that is, a Japan based in emotion, sociality, and intimacy (Yano 2002:102). These are small yet vital pleasures of the heart, materialized in the form of a Hello Kitty cell phone strap, and given to another. The affective labor of the gift and practices of its giving hold to a small, warm, and ultimately feminine accountability that works within the premises of kawaii. Sanrio is not part of the industries built around formal presentational gifts, group to group, set within social hierarchies, precisely calculated. Those come at high prices, preselected by custom, wrapped for showy presentation.34 Rather, Sanrio gifts are small, personal, informally wrapped acts — what McVeigh calls “trafficking in sentiment” (2000b:177). They are the anti-­chūgen, anti-­seibo exchange. Although some Sanrio gifts may be given in obligatory fashion (e.g., souvenirs of a place visited), most are exchanged informally, as prestations of affection. Especially when given laterally — female to female — they form part of the intimate bond of shōjo culture. The sincerity of gifting and the emotive healing that accompanies it are assumptions of Sanrio’s social communication positioning. Sanrio’s company slogan — “Small gift, big smile” 35 — encapsulates its position as both a center and a catalyst of such exchange. The slogan creates a clever measure of affect: for the price and ease of a small gift, one may receive a big smile in return. The message suggests that Sanrio makes this exchange possible by providing gifts for all people, budgets, and occasions. The inherent strategy of the company lies exactly in this flexibility. If one has a large budget or special occasion, one may purchase expensive items, such as Hello Kitty diamond-­encrusted watches. However, more commonly, if one has a limited budget or even when money is not an issue, Sanrio can offer gifts that may be modestly priced and pleasing. This is everyday gifting of the (purposely) “small gift.” Sanrio’s attraction for consumers revolves around kawaii goods, whose production does not necessarily rest in large sizes or prices. It is the gift that can be purchased casually and frequently — “gift lite,” if you will, but more importantly, “obligation lite,” because this is the gift that does not require the receiver to repay in any specific form or expenditure. Here is the hallmark of the fanshii guzzu industry: the cheaper gift — not only in actual price but in its seeming trivialness — the closer to the spirit of kawaii. This is reflected in the generally female colloqui70  •  chapter one

alism that a nedan (price) may be considered “kawaii”; that is, besides inexpensive, it is attractively and artlessly so.36 This results in expressions such as kawaii nedan (“cute” price) or nedan mo kawaii (even the price is “cute”). By these criteria, what could be more kawaii than a Hello Kitty eraser, cell phone strap, or coin purse? Here, size matters: smallness carries significant cultural weight as link to shōjo, kawaii, fanshii guzzu, and kyarakutā. These elements form the affective cornerstone of the large-­scale empire of gift giving called Sanrio. In fact, Sanrio includes its own “small gift” to its customers whenever anyone makes a purchase, as part of the wrapping (see Hendry 1993). This is a premium (omake) — typically a small toy attached to the Sanrio bag or wrapping paper.37 By including a small gift as part of the trans­ action, Sanrio practices what it preaches: even the smallest of gifts can elicit the biggest of smiles. This is not about money so much as affect that structures an ongoing social relationship — here, customer to company, person to object. Part of the smile is in the very lack of obligation appended to the “small gift.” Within the context of a burdensome gift exchange culture, this in itself is noteworthy. The very smallness of the gift may generate a personal impulse to give — that is, the goods themselves, including their kawaii appeal and accessible pricing, may prompt gift giving at a nonobligatory level. It is this generative gifting — informal, voluntary exchange prompted by the kawaii nedan of the object in conjunction with affect — that becomes Sanrio’s social key. (Note that the kawaii nedan also fits the pocketbook of young children.) In these ways, gifting by way of Sanrio may occur not necessarily as a means to balance a ledger of social obligation, but as a more spontaneous act of care and consideration. Sanrio’s array of small gifts presents the possibility of affective interaction — as well as its manipulation. With the availability of small gifts (generating big smiles), then one may regard social exchange — whether as giver or receiver — as a constant and unexpected possibility. One may gift another casually and intermittently, which alters the social calculus. With the possibility of gifting ever present, prestation can be built upon a whim — whether of sincere emotion or impulse buying — rather than upon codified practice. It is exactly the element of surprise that Sanrio enables, leading to “heartfelt communication.” (The surprise gift is embedded in Sanrio’s structure, as can be seen in the name of some of its corporate boutique stores globally — Sanrio Surprises.)38

kitty at home   •  71

Kitty on the Go: Traveling Souvenirs, Trinket Seductions One form of gifting that comes as no surprise is that of the miyage (souvenir; often used with honorific as omiyage).39 Social etiquette in Japan demands that any traveler return with a miyage for all to whom one is socially obligated and from whom one has received a senbetsu (a going-­ away gift; typically money). Those on the long list of “giftees” can range from a company boss to fellow employees to family and friends. The weighty obligation of miyage acts as one of the most burdensome aspects of travel for Japanese (some even going so far as to keep their trip a secret to avoid the gifting obligation). Sanrio joins other companies in anticipating travelers’ needs, providing miyage for every imaginable tourist site throughout Japan, as well as many tourist sites abroad. What goes into the making of a souvenir? To serve the purposes of Japanese travelers for whom souvenir purchases (often as gifts for others) are not optional but requisite, a souvenir should invoke the stereo­typical, visual icons of a place. Dean MacCannell calls this form of souvenir a type of “sight displacement” by which “an individual seeks to identify himself [sic] with a sight by sacralizing one of its markers” (1999:124). The “operation of the souvenir” thus lies in the ready perception of the relation between the object and its sight (Stewart 1993:146). In pragmatic terms, the souvenir must provide such iconic visual reminders, while remaining affordable and portable (preferably small, easily packed, and unbreakable). The affordability of the souvenir varies by the requisite size of the gift. A person to whom one is greatly indebted and from whom one has received a large sum of money as senbetsu warrants a more expensive souvenir than does a casual acquaintance. The calculations are easily made, weighing the cost of the miyage against the senbetsu received. What the souvenir industry of Japan has thus developed is, first, a standard set of purchasable icons of a place and, second, a range of prices within which recognizable icons may be bought. Thus, if dried seaweed is a specialty product of an area, then a souvenir shop may carry a range of price offerings of the seaweed, from 1,000 (approximately $10) to 5,000 yen (approximately $50). Sanrio, too, offers a range of products as place-­based souvenirs, from a Hello Kitty –  decorated cell phone strap for 500 yen (approximately $5) to a Hello Kitty ceramic plate (approximately $50). The development of Hello Kitty as a prime souvenir throughout Japan has only increased her ubiquity. Roaming the Japanese archipelago, 72  •  chapter one

one encounters Hello Kitty as souvenir seemingly everywhere. If travel may be visualized as a series of snapshots of famous places, then each of those views now includes a “Kitty-­ed” image. Thus, as MacCannell puts it, the Kitty souvenirs act as “displaced replicas or effigies of the sight they mark, serving simultaneously as one of its markers and as a little sight in its own right” (1999:124). Hello Kitty had long been regionalized through fairly simple modifications to the product, showing the cat in the context of famous sites. However this process has escalated in recent years through Sanrio’s gotōchi (regionally based identity) line of Hello Kitty goods, catalogued in three volumes for fans, and constantly expanding (Sanrio 2005, 2008, 2010).40 The mouthless feline greets one at souvenir shops throughout the country, taking different local guises. And in the tradition of meibutsu (famous products associated with a place, developed as part of regional identity and as souvenir goods), Hello Kitty takes on the identity of every tourist destination. She does so with the ease of the blank canvas, the simplicity of her rendering physicalizing her relative storylessness. The wizardry of Sanrio lies in releasing Hello Kitty from the confines of “cat-­hood”; rather, she may become anything. This makes any distinctive feature or product of a tourist destination fair game: in Yokohama’s Chinatown she is a steamed dumpling; in Kyoto’s Gion district she is a maiko (geisha apprentice); in rural Tosa she is a fighting dog; in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward (known for its industrial pollution and obake ghosts seen in the smoke), she can even be the smoke emitted from factory chimney stacks.41 She both takes on the distinctive characteristics of each place, as well as marks each place with her scent. Maps throughout the two catalogues depict Japan as a series of Hello Kitty souvenirs, each keyed to the famous sites or products of the locale. Theorists of tourism and souvenirs such as MacCannell and Susan Stewart talk about the quest for authenticity in the exotic, resulting in the “souvenir of the exotic” (MacCannell 1999; Stewart 1993:146). However, the work of the Hello Kitty souvenir is twofold as an object both foreign and familiar (see chapter 7). The souvenir provides the requisite visual representation of the “exotic” or “foreign” (here I use the words to reference “not home”) place, even while framing that representation through the very familiar Sanrio icon. Furthermore, even the exotic is represented only through iconic representations — dumplings, geisha, fighting dogs, industrial smoke. The code of the souvenir only works within idioms of familiarity. A product from Hello Kitty’s gotōchi line thus embodies a “souvenir of the familiar.” kitty at home   •  73

In the process, Hello Kitty develops quite uniquely not only as a souvenir, but also as the ultimate Japanese souvenir, a chameleon-­like national meibutsu — always the same, always different. Like brands elsewhere, she retains her distinctiveness, even as she adapts to new contexts. Through the gotōchi line of goods, all places become Kitty, even as all places fall within the umbrella Japan. In fact, if one is to take a postmodern view of the flexibility of signs, all places become Japan through Kitty. This is overstating the case. And yet the possibility exists that if Hello Kitty has become a symbol of Japan, then her imprint upon various domestic tourist destinations marks each of these with her version of the nation. That version of Japan marked by Hello Kitty includes cuteness, commodity, orientation toward youth, femininity, playfulness — and cool. Kitty’s gotōchi line typically focuses on small, portable items, such as cell phone straps. Thus, not only is Kitty found seemingly everywhere at each famous destination; she may be bought and personally taken everywhere.42 Like a charm bracelet whose individual charms may represent particular personal experiences or places visited, Kitty gotōchi cell phone straps represent an individual’s personal history or — as a gift bestowed by friends — one’s friends’ travels. Each souvenir must be bought in situ, proof of a traveler’s journey. Migawari — in other words, surrogacy — works here as well. Owning a cell phone strap of a particular place means that you, interchangeably with one’s friends and kin, have traveled there. Thus the distinction between honnin and dainin — the person and the surrogate — is erased in the souvenir. The Hello Kitty gotōchi line forms a collection and, as such, a consumer practice that is endless by its very constitution. In other words, Sanrio’s issuing of a gotōchi line as a collection makes possible ever new goals for consumers — that is, amassing the most complete set of items as possible. Note, however, Sanrio’s manufacture of desire: an individual’s gotōchi collection can never be complete so long as the company keeps producing ever new souvenirs of ever new destinations, in a simultaneous movement outward to additional places with a more intricate move inward to smaller and smaller divisions of previously covered places. For example, within Tokyo, Sanrio has created “gotōchi special area limited” designs that include individual wards of the metropolis, seasonal festivals, transportation vehicles, and key sights. The impulse to collect a set of physical mementoes based upon one’s travels is not, of course, unique to Japan or to Sanrio. But I would argue that in Japan, 74  •  chapter one

collecting these mementoes becomes part of the experience of being in a place and can exist outside the realm of commerce. This includes photographing oneself at iconic sites. It also includes the practice of stamping: at each train station and at many famous sites, one finds a table with a red ink pad and one or more large stamps, which indicate the name of the place and some identifying physical marker; by stamping one’s book or sheet of paper, travelers may create a record of the places they have visited. This practice costs the traveler nothing, and denotes ways in which the practice of souvenir collecting may exist outside any kind of economic enterprise. Hello Kitty’s souvenir travels to and throughout Japan extend and embed her reach. In fact, her ubiquity makes her ties to mobility and modes of transport seem inevitable. She decorates bicycles, scooters, cars, taxis, and buses through license plates, interior accessories, and exterior customizing. Particular train lines within the Tokyo metropolis, especially those that take passengers to Sanrio’s Purorando theme park, carry her imprint. From 2005 to 2009 Taiwan’s eva Airways offered specially decorated Kitty planes on flights to and from Japan (including a Hello Kitty – decorated departure lounge at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport). And at major international airports in Japan — such as Narita, Osaka, and Fukuoka — one finds Kitty goods sold in departure lounges, tempting would-­be shoppers with one last opportunity to buy Japan’s ultimate kyarakutā. Recognizing the power of the cat, the Japanese government in May 2008 named Hello Kitty as the country’s official goodwill ambassador of tourism welcoming visitors from China and Hong Kong (discussed further in chapter 7).43 As Sanrio gloated, word of this marketing feat shot around the news media globally, complete with a photo of a pink kimono – clad Hello Kitty (a costumed actor) receiving her certificate of appointment from the head of Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism, Tetsuzo Fuyushiba. Sanrio’s head, Tsuji Shintarō, called the appointment “an honor,” pledging to “work hard to attract many visitors” (msnbc 2008). Undoubtedly, this public relations coup for the company is the result of much hard work that begins and ends with gifting as its corporate trademark.

kitty at home   •  75

Case Study: Sanrio’s Anniversary Celebration in the Twenty-­First Century I end this chapter with an analysis of some of the activities in 2009 – 10 surrounding Sanrio’s thirty-­fifth anniversary celebration of Hello Kitty, whose “official” birth date is November 1, 1974. I examine Sanrio’s web­ site coverage of “anniversary news” (Japanese and English); Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary Book (in Japanese); Hello Kitty Memories (in Japanese) (Sanrio 2009a); and Three Apples: An Exhibition Celebrating 35 Years of Hello Kitty (in English) (Sanrio 2009b), a catalogue of a Hello Kitty – themed exhibit organized by Sanrio in the United States and held in Los Angeles in fall 2009 — as a case study in the practices of the company. (I discuss Sanrio art-­related activities more fully in chapter 6.) This analysis inevitably points us outward from Japan toward Hello Kitty’s global audience, the subject of the rest of the book. One of Sanrio’s first projects in celebrating the anniversary was to create a marketable theme, distinctive design, and associated products. The company chose the theme of Thirty-­Fifth Anniversary Hello Kitty Colors, distilled and expressed through a rainbowlike display of her tilted bow in five shades, with meanings given in Japanese and English: red (nakayoku, friendship), pink (kawaii, cute), yellow (omoiyari, heartful), green (kibō, wish), and lavender (yasashii, sweet). Each of these elements deals directly and purposefully with the social and emotional — that is, social communication. For each of these colors, Kitty’s bow becomes a billboard of English: for example, “Red has a meaning of friendship” for the red bow, “Pink has a meaning of cute” for the pink bow, and so forth. English here acts semantically, aesthetically, and symbolically, as simultaneously conveying information, embedded as a pure design element, and referencing the ongoing prestige of English in Japan. By presenting Kitty’s bow in these anniversary colors as an interconnected unit, Sanrio taps into the marketing impulse to purchase the related items as a set, one in each shade — whether it is a set of plush figures, pencils, cell phone straps, or coin purses. For each of the anniversary products, the colored bow covered with a subtle background patterning of English words signifies not only Hello Kitty, but also her thirty-­five years of longevity. In fact, Sanrio’s design decision to distill Hello Kitty’s image to simply a bow has meant ever bolder abstraction. In the anniversary goods, Sanrio has enlarged Hello Kitty’s bow over her left ear to the point of 76  •  chapter one

dominating the image. The larger the bow, the proportionately smaller the face, creating an even greater sense of “neotenous” chic in beret or turban fashion.44 In some products, Hello Kitty’s design has been pared down to an outsized bow, below which are placed two dots (eyes), a circle (nose), and three parallel lines radiating on each side (whiskers). In other products, all that remains is the bow itself. Such carefully calibrated abstraction creates myriad symbolic and marketing opportunities: a large bow in one’s hair may be all one needs to signify a whole cat; a red bow appears throughout the Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary Book as a logo theme; the bow at times references the ribbon on a gift, making whole pages of the Anniversary Book appear as a present for the consumer. Glancing through the print and Internet materials for Hello Kitty’s celebration makes it quite clear who the target consumer was in the 2000s — young women. Although Hello Kitty may have originally been conceived within the framework of coin purses, lunch boxes, and pencils for young girls, none of the above are part of the anniversary book or website, except as part of a historic look at the past thirty-­five years of marketing. Instead, the anniversary book presents couture fashion and other high-­ticket items in thematic black, with red accents, for grown-­up “girls.” These items include a black sequined bag by fashion line Anteprima (50,400 yen; $543 in 2010), black Reebok sports shoes (13,650 yen; $147), and a Swarovski crystal pendant (48,000 yen; $518) — all with Hello Kitty emblazoned throughout. Although these may not represent the apex (i.e., most expensive, such as diamond watches) of Hello Kitty shopping, clearly neither are they meant for young girls. In fact, shōjo act as a marketing reference point to define what Sanrio calls “girlish culture” (in English, but also included in the book in Japanese as onnanoko-­rashii). Within the context of the thirty-­ fifth anniversary, Sanrio defines “girlish culture” as objects, such as Hello Kitty, which “capture the feelings of girls, no matter what age” (Sanrio 2009a:10). For the occasion, Sanrio has issued a special edition of Hello Kitty goods themed green and red with notably two bows — a green one by her left ear and a larger red one positioned in her lap to make Hello Kitty herself appear as a gift. The anniversary book contains a profile of Hello Kitty filled with faux data of her “biography.” If anthropologist Igor Kopytoff calls for a “cultural biography of things,” then Sanrio heeds such a call on its own terms, providing a complete backstory and biography of Hello kitty at home   •  77

Kitty (1986:64). Much of this had been on Sanrio’s website for years (with Kitty’s family members and friends introduced in 1976), but I contend that the backstory was never crucial for Hello Kitty consumption, which was relatively untied to narrative, whether on corporate websites, through television shows, or books.45 However, the company has taken the anniversary celebration as an opportunity to reiterate Kitty’s story as a three-­part, detailed data sheet: (1) Kitty’s Profile, (2) Kitty’s Family, and (3) Kitty’s Friends (Sanrio 2009a:6 – 7). We find out that she — like other storybook characters46 — is British, having been born just outside of London on November 1. We learn details of her physical self, including weight (three apples), height (five stacked apples), blood type (A; the most typical among Japanese, as noted in Sanrio’s profile of Kitty, and thus purportedly indicative of particular character traits), and exact anthropometric dimensions (in mock centimeters, height, face width, length of head, distance between eyes, length of nose, width and length of torso, length of feet).47 These details provide the materiality that helps make Kitty physically real. Other details make her socially real by embedding her within a kinship tree. We learn her full name, Kitty White, along with members of her family and their individual characteristics — her father, George (a salaryman with a sense of humor); mother, Mary (a housewife who likes to bake apple pies); identical twin sister, Mimmy (who wears her bow over her right ear); grandfather Anthony (who paints as a hobby); and grandmother Margaret (who makes puddings). (It seems more than coincidence that the names of her parents and grandparents — George, Mary, Anthony, Margaret — echo that found in British royalty, who, like Kitty, also live outside London.) Sanrio’s “fact”-­filled details, including specific dates, laboriously flesh out the quotidian dimensions of this product’s life. We learn that Hello Kitty’s hobbies include tennis, piano (with ambitions to become a classical pianist, supported by her parents, who purchased a grand piano for the family in 1981),48 eating cookies her sister Mimmy bakes, and playing with her childhood “boyfriend” (hatsukoi, first romance) Dear Daniel. Furthermore, the anniversary book includes three pages of Hello Kitty trivia (“Kiti no Himitsu, Naze Nani Tribia” [Kitty’s secrets trivia]), formed around thirty-­one questions (Sanrio 2009a:40 – 42). We learn, among other things, that Kitty’s favorite flower is a daisy (in Japan, symbolic of childhood), her favorite Christmas present is a teddy bear she received from her father in 1982, and the country she most likes to travel to is Japan, where she can wear a kimono. The more detailed the 78  •  chapter one

information, the more Kitty’s image solidifies into a living, breathing fictional character. Importantly, one of the trivia questions, question 27, is the query of many foreign observers: Why does Kitty have no mouth? Sanrio’s answer: Kitty has no mouth so that she may better reflect the feelings of those who look upon her (2009a:42). (The company does acknowledge that in some earlier animated renditions, Hello Kitty was drawn with an operating mouth.) The first thing to note is that Sanrio creates and uses these biographical details in a process of constant authentication. Information acts as a narrative force, providing details that flesh out Hello Kitty (and her family and friends) as not simply a plush or logo, but an individuated, agentive being. Through these fictionalized details, kyarakutā become true, individuated characters with whom one may form relationships. Although American companies such as Mattel may create backstories for dolls such as Barbie, Sanrio provides a rich narrative and physical details for an anthropomorphized, highly stylized cat. Here lies the work of animism, imbuing animals, objects, phenomena — and Hello Kitty is all three — with a soul and lifeworld akin to humans. Some may interpret this endeavor as particularly Japanese. However, I also interpret this endeavor as particularly mercantile. The eagerness to suspend reality in the commercial production of an entirely fictionalized kyarakutā world suggests a culturally based investment in the viability of such a dreamscape of consumption. Second, in all of these myriad details, Sanrio presents Hello Kitty as a middle-­class quasi-­British girl with “American accents,” living the quintessential, comfortable life in a white family (as if cats were racialized), coincidentally named White. The only elements that tie her to Japan are her blood type and an appreciation for certain things Japanese, such as wearing a kimono. The inherent ironies of such a fictive possibility do not faze her Japanese consumers in the least. Hello Kitty speaks to their own cosmopolitan possibilities in a Japanese version of the global world, enhanced by the horizon of both Sanrio’s and consumers’ imagination. Thus Hello Kitty is neither Japanese nor a cat; she is a kyarakutā. Third, and most importantly for our discussion, this backstory draws her as not a mere blank slate; instead, she is knowable and knowing through her global typicality. Hers is the Euro-­American-­based (albeit Japanese re-­created) storybook life that children in many parts of the industrial world may recognize and share. She sounds and feels familiar. kitty at home   •  79

Hello Kitty as in-­filled kyarakutā jumps off the page and into the personalized relationality that lies at the heart of social communication and affect. Although I contend that many consumers in Japan and abroad do not know or care about the narrative details included in the anniversary book pages (or Sanrio’s website), what concerns me more is the fact that Sanrio took pains to create such a biography, thereby inviting the possibility of a particularistic relationship, consumer to cat, and cat to consumer. The details layer further dimensions by which a consumer may choose — or not — to engage with Hello Kitty as a personality.49 Fourth, the details of Hello Kitty’s biography position Sanrio’s cat exactly where she was always intended, as a global figure. It is, in part, as global figure that Hello Kitty fulfills the promise of her thirty-­five years. Sanrio’s celebration of those years includes proof of just how global she is, even before a primarily domestic audience (i.e., the anniversary book in Japanese). In short, an important component of Hello Kitty’s middle-­aged achievement lies in her popularity outside Japan, expressed in the anniversary book as “sekai-­chū kara Love Call” (Love call from round the world). Here we find the “Love Call” cool-­quotient affirmation of American female Hello Kitty fans, such as the singers Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears; the actress Cameron Diaz; and the celebrity rich girls Paris and Nicky Hilton. The “Love Call” extends to everyday people, as well, in photos of Sanrio stores on every continent: New York, Hamburg, Kent, Paris, Bogotá, Seoul, Shanghai, Moscow, Dubai, and Oman. Hello Kitty’s strong Asia connection proves an important stronghold, expressed as a large drawing of Hello Kitty in pink qipao (cheongsam), waving at readers with the Mandarin greeting “Ni-­hao” (How are you?). Calling Taiwan a “Kitty Tengoku” (Paradise), the article provides details on the Hello Kitty Resort Cottage, Kitty Café (serving Kitty Cake), and countless Kitty goods everywhere found in foreign Asian destinations. Clearly, Kitty’s thirty-­five years in business could be marked most clearly by the breadth of her reach “everywhere.”

Sanrio’s Nostalgia: Creating the Intimacy of Looking Back That reach extends not only laterally across oceans, but also backward in time. A large part of Sanrio’s celebration of Hello Kitty’s anniversary lies in creating and performing the very historicity of the cat, embedding her in each of her thirty-­five years. To this end, all anniversary celebration narratives (Sanrio’s website and all three books) include a 80  •  chapter one

retrospective of Hello Kitty, tracing year-­by-­year changes. Sanrio’s website and publications emphasize Hello Kitty’s original 1974 image as a visage from one’s childhood. However, even as consumers may have grown older, Hello Kitty does not. She remains continually youthful, like the shōjo she represents. In fact, the Sanrio website provides two retrospective series: one for images and one for products. Through images, one may chart Kitty’s transition from the original 1974 seated Kitty in red, white, and blue, to the suddenly trendy 1987 “monotone Kitty” with Kitty in white outline against a solid black background, to the predominantly pink Kitty of the 1990s, to the thematic black, white, and pink Kitty of the late 2000s. The retrospective display of products includes key moments in product development, inevitably including the first coin purse, but quickly moving to the plethora of goods through the years. Just as 1987 produced the suddenly trendy black-­and-­white Kitty image, so, too, did products from that year onward include more and more goods for young adult women; these include black bikini underwear (1987), men’s neckties, to give as presents (1996), pink cell phone holders (1997), pink sake sets (1999), wine openers (2002), and Fender guitars (2007). The Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary Book even includes a retrospective of “premiums” — the free “small gift” attached to Sanrio packaging (Sanrio 2009a:32 – 33). There is more than objects at stake here. By sketching the historic arc of products and design, Sanrio traces the development of a Hello Kitty lifestyle. The book Hello Kitty Memories displays the developing array of Kitty objects for use by adults (primarily women) in home decor, tableware, cooking, cleaning, entertaining, and relaxing (e.g., aromatherapy). The Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary Book illustrates “Yoga Kitty,” with both Hello Kitty and a human model assuming poses. In short, these books present thirty-­five years of Hello Kitty as a lifestyle brand. Sarah Banet-­Weiser’s work on the American children’s network Nicke­ lodeon is useful for our discussion here. Banet-­Weiser suggests that Nickelodeon develops as a “way of life” as part of a relatively new culture of branding “akin to other citizenship practices, such as national affiliation and loyalty” (2007:81 – 82). A Hello Kitty way of life touches each aspect of consumers’ existence, from day to night. And if one began as a consumer of Hello Kitty in one’s childhood, the opportunities for the Hello Kitty lifestyle extend through time, for as long as thirty-­five years of Sanrio-­based citizenship. Thus, Kitty’s history becomes one’s own. This is why the Sanrio retkitty at home   •  81

rospective may speak with such poignancy to longtime fans. One may chart one’s own life through Kitty products: each object serves as, in Marita Sturken’s words, a “technology of memory,” each design a visual, Proustian “madeleine” (2007:9). Because Hello Kitty does not get older throughout her thirty-­five-­year history, she can represent eternal, blissful childhood, the perpetual shōjo — in other words, one of the most powerful sources of nostalgia in Japan. This kind of nostalgia making becomes nothing short of nostalgia marketing, as Kitty slips effortlessly into yet another bin of consumer desire. The beauty of Hello Kitty is that she never changes, yet never stays the same. Trading on the familiar, Hello Kitty’s adeptness rests in always providing the consumer with something new to buy. Sanrio thus fashions the thirty-­fifth anniversary of Hello Kitty as a long-­standing shopping opportunity managed through affective responses to a constructed, purchasing (or gifting) past, as well as looking ahead to the future. That past can only be accessed through a sense of memory. In fact, Sanrio takes memory seriously as a central part of its business and a key element in the affective labor of “social communication.” Sanrio informally refers to what they do as omoide no o-­shigoto (memory work) — the production of nostalgia. “Memory work” involves more than a sense of the past; it includes deliberate manipulation of affect, resulting in a positive imaging of that past. Furthermore, memory work, instead of being restricted to a person’s particular past, may be fictionalized as a general sense of the past that Hello Kitty’s consumers may or may not know firsthand. Sturken’s notion of cultural memory — “memory that is shared outside the avenues of formal historical discourse yet is entangled with cultural products and imbued with cultural meaning” —  informs our discussion (2007:3). Here, the cultural product of Hello Kitty imbues a faux-­European storybook past with Japanese cultural meaning. This is memory as reworked image, marking someone else’s past (more to the point, an imagined version of someone else’s past) as one’s own. The constructed past, then, becomes a resource for nostalgia, packaged and commodified, fairy-­tale style. For example, one of Hello Kitty’s 1985 product lines detailed as memory work in the anniversary book is named “Country Series” (Sanrio 2009a:37). Here the “country” is America, and the memory is of cherry pies baked as part of life in San Francisco (dubbed “American lifestyle”). Sanrio physicalizes this “memory” in deep “cherry” reds, sepia-­tone backgrounds with checkerboard patterning, and the English words “Down Home; Kitty’s 82  •  chapter one

best home cooking” (2009a:37). This form of memory work creates and commodifies a fictive American (or British admixture) past as nothing more than a style resource. Nostalgia operates in two ways here: first, to pull the consumer back to her own childhood filled with Hello Kitty objects, and second, to remind us that those objects typically reference a storybook past set in England/America, with mothers who bake pies and fathers who tell jokes while smoking a pipe. Nostalgia as a style resource situates “Hello Kitty the product” as ever the same, ever changing. The shifting “retro-­intimacy” of Hello Kitty deliberately places Sanrio’s cat outside of time and within the highly marketable realm of commodified memory. This appeal — far more to adults, far less to children — demonstrates Hello Kitty’s many reconfigurations from her original coin purse image. In fact, she is all grown up, even as she remains a child. This neat trick of imaging occurs within the frame of Sanrio’s invention of the affective industry labeled “social communication.” Directly addressing a human need for connection, Sanrio positions Hello Kitty as, in effect, an enabler of communication, providing the decorative infrastructure of sociality (e.g., old-­fashioned stationery, new-­fashioned cell phone straps). Through the disarming quality of kawaii, Hello Kitty embodies intimacy itself, whether through gifts or communiqués. That she does so with a global reach only adds to the luster and achievements of her thirty-­five years. Why this cat? I argue that it is exactly Hello Kitty as enabler of intimacy — bridging people through “heartfelt communication,” prompting generative gifting through kawaii nedan (small gift, big smile), providing the affective labor of kyarakutā, appealing simultaneously to female children and adult women in their shared girlhood, spanning generations of consumers, leaping oceans to transnational fame, transcending years through nostalgia — that drives Sanrio’s marketing claims. At the very least, Hello Kitty offers the seeming “benign-­ ness” of kawaii as it sweeps through Japan and outward to global points beyond.

kitty at home   •  83

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Chapter Two Marketing Global Kitty

Strategies to Sell Friendship and “Happiness”

Sanrio means “Saintly River” or “Pure River.” It is a name that reflects the spirit of our company, and the goal that we set for ourselves: to help build a sincere, virtous [sic] society. . . .Through our wide range of communication media, including Social Communication gift merchandise, greeting cards, music, films, books, and live entertainment, Sanrio aims to help link the many tributaries of good will and camaraderie around the world into one ever-­ broadening confluence of friendship. — Sanrio company philosophy as presented on its website (www.sanriolicensing .com/philosophy.php, June 20, 2010; no longer available)

We [Sanrio marketers] kind of build friends [through celebrity outreach] and then let someone else discover the story. —  Bill Hensley, Sanrio, Inc., marketing director, personal communication, June 19, 2002

There’s something about working with characters and a brand that makes other people happy that somehow filters its way through us. —  Sarah Walsworth, Sanrio, Inc., visual merchandiser, personal communication, March 25, 2010

You can never have too many friends. — Kitty White, aka Hello Kitty (hello-­kitty.sanriotown.com/, September 29, 2012)

Sanrio establishes its global networks as an “enabler of intimacy” through locally derived marketing practices. This chapter takes the words of the founder, Tsuji Shintarō, as expressed in the company philosophy given above as a quasi-­religious

calling that stands above capitalist desirings to inculcate unassailable values of friendship and happiness. According to this position, the company is less interested in profit and more interested in spreading goodwill — or more specifically, the company is interested in the profits that might be wrought from creating a “sincere, virtuous society” built upon friendship and happiness. This chapter details ways in which capitalism and idioms of secular spiritual calling intertwine in the everyday workings of producing and marketing Hello Kitty. One might call this, tongue-­in-­cheek, the making and marketing of the “way of Kitty,”1 expressed through company aphorisms, as given above. As of 2010, Sanrio maintained seven worldwide licensing offices in the following locations: Torrance, California (serving North America); São Paulo (South America); Hamburg (Europe, Russia, Africa, and the Middle East); Seoul, Korea; Taipei, Taiwan; Shanghai, China; and Hong Kong (other parts of Asia, including India, and Oceania). In fact, with domestic sales in a slump, the company relies exactly on these offices to generate a significant portion of the company’s global revenues. In 2007, for example, of the 44.3 billion yen in sales, revenue from Sanrio’s overseas markets amounted to almost one-­quarter of the total (Otake 2008). At the same time that Sanrio’s overall sales fell 3.9 percent from the previous year, sales from overseas operations rose almost 30 percent (Otake 2008). This demonstrates the importance of pink globalization to Sanrio as a critical component of the company’s viability. The global nature of Hello Kitty’s thirty-­fifth anniversary celebration, with separately planned events and publications in Japan as well as in the United States, demonstrates the degree to which the icon’s home is as much the world (at least specific parts of the industrial world) as Japan. In this chapter I provide further details of Hello Kitty’s world in and outside Japan, with a focus on Sanrio, Inc.’s, South San Francisco offices and marketing in the United States. Although this book as a whole focuses on consumption and its meanings, including extensive interviews with fans beginning in chapter 3, I analyze here Sanrio’s general corporate philosophy, strategies, and practices with a focus on the United States, as an important backdrop for the tale. Part of that backdrop rests in the Japanese media spotlight upon Tsuji Shintarō (b. 1927), Sanrio’s founder, who has maintained a personal interest and say in the company from the outset to the time of writing. Part of the media spotlight also focuses on Hello Kitty’s designer Yamaguchi Yūko. Here, too, Sanrio emphasizes Yamaguchi’s relamarketing global kitty   •  85

tionship with her fans, and the ways in which Hello Kitty emerges only and specifically from that relationship — an industrial artisanal product of “friendship.” This chapter also details some of Sanrio, Inc.’s corporate practices of “friendship” as a backdrop to the consumer voices that follow in subsequent chapters. Together — corporate and consumer (chapters 2 and 3) — the intersection of voices provides some of the inter­ related complexities in the globally situated meanings given Sanrio’s cat.

The Man behind the Cat: Tsuji Shintarō To understand Sanrio and Hello Kitty, its flagship character, one must understand Tsuji Shintarō. His unmistakable stamp (scent?) is everywhere — in offices, websites, publicity brochures, events, and products. In truth, Sanrio represents his lifelong project, and therefore Hello Kitty is his baby. His continued involvement with Sanrio, even in his eighties, is legendary. One of his managers in Japan tells me that he receives e-­mails daily from Tsuji. Tsuji visits Purorando, Sanrio’s theme park, twice a week. In person, Tsuji is direct, charming, energetic, and seemingly always bemused (Stevens 2007). Within the environs of Sanrio, he is known as “Papa” or “Senior” (to distinguish him from his son Kunihiko, who is destined and groomed to take over the business at some point). His 2000 autobiography, Kore ga Sanrio no Himitsu (This is Sanrio’s secret), reconstructs his past as a path carved out of emotional hardship and wide-­ranging experiences to lay the founding elements of the Sanrio philosophy and practices.2 Although he was born into a wealthy family, his mother died of leukemia when Tsuji was thirteen and he was subsequently sent to live a lonesome life with relatives who were less than warmhearted. Tsuji links this emotionally traumatic experience to his yearning and appreciation for “social communication” (the foundation of Sanrio’s goods). When he was younger, he was sent to a Christian-­based kindergarten, where he became exposed to acts of giving and celebration: first in the form of charitable gifts to beggars, and, second, through children’s birthday parties that were celebrated monthly at the school. Both of these were new to him and made a great impression. Tsuji links charity experiences to adopting the notion of public benevolence. He links the birthday party experience to valuing the pleasures of informal, “obligation-­lite” gift giving — thus, Sanrio’s motto of small gifts making for big smiles (see chapter 1). Tsuji’s earlier life thus laid the conceptual building blocks for an empire built around 86  •  chapter two

gifts, friendship, and happiness, as well as the cute characters that would encourage people enacting these ideals. Even in terms of personality, Tsuji’s matches Hello Kitty’s. As Ken Belson and Brian Bremner write, “His [Tsuji’s] good nature and very outgoing . . . friendliness match Kitty’s perpetual cheerfulness. The two are so bound together that they even look out for each other, metaphorically speaking” (2004:32). The authors suggest that Tsuji may be his own worst enemy in “his artistic impulse, his entrepreneurial risk taking, his sometimes obsessive trust in the stock market” (32), but Hello Kitty stands at the ready to bail him out with successful global sales. The authors also point to parallels in Tsuji’s life with Hello Kitty’s: in the mid-­1990s, Tsuji underwent surgery for polyps in his colon, an experience that brought him face to face with his own mortality in a life-­changing way; during that same period, Hello Kitty’s fortunes also turned in a dramatic upswing of popularity generated by her association with leading pop female stars, such as Kahara Tomomi. Tsuji’s presence is felt more in Japan than elsewhere. For example, he writes an editorial column in the monthly Japanese in-­store news­letter Ichigo Shimbun (Strawberry news), in which he calls himself “Strawberry King” (also the name of a Sanrio kyarakutā from 1975). He has also published books on his “strawberry-­king” philosophy (Tsuji 2007).3 With a shared birthday (December 7) and position at the top of the enterprise/kingdom, Strawberry King acts as an alter ego for Tsuji. This intimate link between Tsuji and the kyarakutā Strawberry King has parallels in other examples of migawari (self-­other exchange; surrogacy; here between humans and kyarakutā), as discussed in chapter 1. More important, this willingness to identify with and be identified as a cute kyarakutā sets the stage for Hello Kitty transmogrifications. If Tsuji can become Strawberry King, then Hello Kitty can become anything or anyone. Furthermore, Tsuji provides a role model for close relationships with kyarakutā. In this case, the exact relationship is as “grandfather” to young offspring.

Hello Kitty as Socially Produced, Artisanal Product: Focus on Yamaguchi Yūko If Tsuji is Hello Kitty’s grandfather, then the female designer Yamaguchi Yūko is “Kitty’s Mama.” Yamaguchi has been Hello Kitty’s designer since 1980 (preceded by two other earlier female designers, Shimizu Yūko, marketing global kitty   •  87

1974 – 76, and Yonekubo Setsuko, 1976 – 80) and in the 2000s serves as a creative director and member of the Board of Directors of Sanrio.4 Sanrio’s practice of spotlighting Yamaguchi results in an enhanced personal encounter with Hello Kitty. Sanrio’s (and Yamaguchi’s) cat becomes far more than a finished product. Rather, one sees both puppet (Hello Kitty) and puppeteer (Yamaguchi), both doll and its maker, in an ongoing process of refinement and enactment. Hello Kitty — through Yamaguchi’s media presence — emerges as a socially produced, artisanal product.5 Along with being heavily involved in Sanrio promotional events in Japan as the designer of Hello Kitty, Yamaguchi in 2009 published her autobiography entitled Kiti no Namida (Tears of Kitty). Those tears, she writes, are tears of joy and gratitude in recalling the success of her life’s path, taken alongside Kitty (2009:206). In her public appearances, she functions as the human face behind Hello Kitty, garnering a Japanese fan base that she shares with Sanrio and its iconic cat. By spotlighting Yamaguchi, Sanrio places a very personal and idiosyncratic figure at the helm of the cat’s current creation. For Japanese fans, this pairing allows Hello Kitty to emerge not from the faceless confines of closed-­ door, male-­dominated corporate boardrooms, but from the individuated space of one young woman and her life. Yamaguchi’s media presence frames Hello Kitty as a highly crafted, dynamic creation, molded by design decisions in interaction with public trends (see the consumer trends of various subcultures in chapter 5) and, more importantly, personal tastes. Yamaguchi does not take the mantle lightly. In a 2004 interview with Japan Times, she talks about her role — rescuing Hello Kitty from consumer and corporate boredom, drawing upon fan responses as inspiration for her creative process. She explains: About five years after its [Hello Kitty] birth [c. 1979], . . . consumers got bored with the character and no one [among designers at Sanrio] volunteered to become a new designer. . . . I myself did not like Kitty very much at that time, so I decided to eliminate the previous images and do a complete makeover. . . . For example, I removed the black outline of the character to help soften its overall image. Gradually, I saw the number of fans attending my autograph session increasing. . . . I owe Kitty’s success to fans. New ideas came to me as I heard their opinions. (Quoted in Kaneko 2004) 88  •  chapter two

Yamaguchi draws a clear picture, positioning herself as aligned with fans, sometimes in opposition to more conservative decision makers at Sanrio (Kaneko 2004). Yamaguchi traces some of the changes that she has overseen in the course of thirty years of designing Hello Kitty, from middle-­class pianos to teddy bears to boyfriends. “I constantly try to give Kitty a fresh angle. . . . The first Kitty I ever designed was at the keyboard of a grand piano, very gingerly playing a single note. That was because all the middle-­class Japanese girls at that time played the piano, and a grand piano was something they all longed for.” In the early ’80s, when Teddy bears were all the rage in Japan, Kitty was seen clutching a bear as her special friend. In 1987, after Yamaguchi received a letter from a high-­school girl asking for “the sort of Kitty a grown-­up could have,” Kitty hit the shops in then-­ trendy black-­and-­white attire, and sales for this line went through the roof. The overwhelmed staff at Sanrio started consciously aiming to expand the target age group. (Katei Gaho International Edition 2004) Yamaguchi thus plays a direct hand in Hello Kitty’s flexibility (discussed in terms of “play” and “subversion” in chapter 5) — her “fresh angle” — as a character and as a design. Yamaguchi talks about her own close identification with Hello Kitty. In an interview in 2009, she said: “I met Hello Kitty thirty years ago. Thirty years ago we were friends. Ten years later, she became my second identity. What she does, I do, and what I do, Hello Kitty does. Right now Hello Kitty is my partner in life.”6 With such close identification between Yamaguchi and Hello Kitty, Japanese adult female fans can more easily appreciate the cat as the artistic creation of a woman not entirely unlike themselves. In many ways, it is Yamaguchi’s relative ordinariness in contemporary Japan that works here. Aside from the particularly jejune styling of her hair — dyed a bright orange-­red with bangs and two pigtails7 — she looks like a slightly flamboyant version of a housewife. In fact, Yamaguchi is known as “Kitty Mama” — or, the mother of Hello Kitty, reinforced by the language of her biography that uses the verb sodateru (to raise, as a child) to describe her relationship with Sanrio’s icon (Yamaguchi 2009).8 Yamaguchi likens her relationship both as mother to child and as manager to aidoru (idol) — typically a young, popular singer-­entertainer, who themselves may be seen as commercial prodmarketing global kitty   •  89

ucts made ready for market by intense training (see Aoyagi 2005). The relationship between Yamaguchi and Hello Kitty, then, takes sodateru as a fundamental process of molding, here giving birth to a product that will sell. The relationship is even more complex, as Yamaguchi herself explains, “Kitty is not my child, but rather my partner” (2009). Put more precisely, Hello Kitty holds the position of ultimate intimacy as the child who becomes a partnering life companion. Yamaguchi’s book traces the twists and turns of that relationship, as she endows Hello Kitty with some elements from her own life (e.g., playing the piano, in parallel with Yamaguchi’s early aspirations to become a concert pianist; Yamaguchi 2009:39). Throughout her narrative, fans can see the ongoing intimacy between Yamaguchi and Kitty, as it develops from creator and created, to life partners, resulting in the designer’s name and figure indelibly linked to Sanrio’s cat. The red-­haired, pigtailed designer emerges as a distinctive figure and idol in her own right, particularly for having created Sanrio’s aidoru kyara (idol character) during the past three decades (Yamaguchi 2009:171). For the Japanese public, the two — the designer and her creation — exist as interlocking, interdependent personalities, even a form of migawari (surrogacy). In this way, Yamaguchi as Kitty (or Kitty Mama) acts as a living, breathing conduit to further enhance Japanese fans’ relationship with Hello Kitty. She helps make Kitty real. Yamaguchi’s blog (in Japanese) that she began in October 2008, entitled (in English) “Yuko Yamaguchi in Wonderland,” depicts the designer as a broadly smiling, slightly overweight, middle-­aged woman, with her signature hairstyle, holding a Hello Kitty figure (Yamaguchi n.d.). Yamaguchi’s blog provides two parallel capsule profiles — one for herself and one for Hello Kitty — including their shared aspects (blood type, A, and a favorite beverage, milk). What the blog conveys most clearly is the degree to which Yamaguchi herself has become a celebrity by way of her creation, partner, and alter ego, Hello Kitty, including monthly missives about her life, listings of her latest public appearances, and fan letters. Those missives perform their own femininity, with emoticons, orthographic expressiveness (especially the use of the exclamation mark), and starstruck excitability (cf. Katsuno and Yano 2007). In fact, the entire blog may be interpreted as a Japanese feminine space with its predominant pink color, tone of chatty intimacy, and abundant Hello Kitty imagery. Yamaguchi positions herself not as a distant celebrity, but as a wide-­eyed fellow fan of other celebrities and blogger of her 90  •  chapter two

life. She is one with whom Japanese adult female Hello Kitty consumers may identify. Japanese fans’ identification with Yamaguchi only enhances Sanrio’s position: by this, the company’s flagship character is not mere corporate product, but personal, socially derived expression developed by a particular individual (“one of them”) in tune with their needs and wants. Most importantly, by making Yamaguchi the designer an important public face for Hello Kitty, Sanrio spotlights the design process itself, as well as the personality behind that process. The positioning of a nose, the pattern of a skirt, the angle of a bow, then, transform into a collaborative decision between Yamaguchi and her fans. Here is the industrial process as personal, collective, te-­zukuri (handmade, artisanal) expression. The valorization of a product as handmade carries important aesthetic weight in Japan, and contributes to the object’s status as “art,” or at least “artisanal.” Hello Kitty, an obviously industrial product, approaches symbolic te-­zukuri status by foregrounding the process of its creation. Japanese fans of Yamaguchi may establish a personal relationship with overlapping entities — designer, object, and company — and thus confirm the artisanal status of Sanrio’s cat. Although my discussion has focused on Japanese fans, global fans are not excluded from this process. For example, Time magazine featured Yamaguchi in 2008 (August 21), answering queries from fans globally in an article entitled “10 Questions for Yūko Yamaguchi” (Time 2008). The article identifies the questioners by name and place of residence, with most coming from the United States but one each coming from Canada, Dubai, and Malaysia. Yamaguchi answers some of the most commonly asked questions from global fans about Sanrio as follows (Yamaguchi’s responses indicated by “Y. Y.”): — Why doesn’t Hello Kitty have a mouth? Sandi Saksena, Dubai. Y. Y.: It’s so that people who look at her can project their own feelings onto her face, because she has an expressionless face. Kitty looks happy when people are happy. She looks sad when they are sad. For this psychological reason, we thought she shouldn’t be tied to any emotion — and that’s why she doesn’t have a mouth. [This echoes Sanrio’s response to the same question, given in chapter 1.] — W hy is Hello Kitty from London and not somewhere in Japan? Courtney Bower, Des Moines, Iowa. marketing global kitty   •  91

Y. Y.: When Hello Kitty was created, many girls in Japan had read Alice in Wonderland and adored Britain. Also, there were other characters [created by my company Sanrio] who were supposed to have been born and raised in the U.S., so Kitty was born in London as a way of differentiating her. [See the discussion of mukokuseki in the introduction.] — Do you consider a global audience when you’re designing? Ignacio Meza, Los Angeles. Y. Y.: In the past, I was designing only for Japanese fans. But lately I’ve been designing for Kitty fans in general. I don’t think so much about where they come from as how delighted they’ll be if I do such and such a design. (Time 2008) Although the global fans in this article engage with Yamaguchi, and although she has made numerous appearances outside Japan, her fame is undoubtedly far greater in Japan, especially given her blog and book in Japanese. For these fans and others, Yamaguchi as Kitty Mama represents the ongoing process of sodateru, creating the artisanal product, shaping design through collaboration. Hello Kitty may be viewed as art (or artisanal), because fans have become familiar with the artist herself. Yamaguchi’s spotlight conveys the sense that both design and social sensitivity infuse the milieu from which Hello Kitty emerges. This sets the stage for Sanrio’s leap into the art worlds of corporate celebration (discussed in chapter 6). The combination of fine-­tuned design and connection with fans also becomes a template for the processes of production, marketing, and company ethos for both Sanrio in Japan and abroad.

Corporate Kitty Abroad: Strategies of “Friendly” Marketing from Tokyo to the United States Visiting the headquarters of Sanrio, Inc., in South San Francisco several times since 2002 has provided insights into the day-­to-­day operations of pink globalization. The relationship between Sanrio, Inc., and Sanrio headquarters in Tokyo resembles that between child and parent, in which the hierarchy persists, even as the child matures and attempts to spread her wings. Thus, the American operation (which, since my initial fieldwork in 2002, has extended to Los Angeles as well as South San 92  •  chapter two

Francisco) negotiates its autonomy from the Tokyo offices. Although product design originates primarily from Japan, the American team was able to generate and develop some designs of their own with approval from Sanrio in Japan. As Bill Hensley, the marketing director at Sanrio at the time of our interview, whom I quote at length throughout this chapter, describes the process: “Most of the design relationships between Tokyo and us are more consultative: there’s design work being done here, planning work being done in Tokyo, the designer paired here with the planner there, determining what the full line’s gonna be for that design theme, and then executing for the specific items for that design theme” (personal communication, June 19, 2002). In the 2000s, Sanrio stores in the United States carried both product lines, especially for collectors always tuned to the minutest details of difference. Since that time, designers in the United States say that the Tokyo head offices first gave them more autonomy, and then after establishment of collaboration with Nakajima USA in 2004, which I discuss later in this chapter and in chapter 3, took away the autonomy. One of the roles of Sanrio, Inc. (prior to the Nakajima USA link), has been to localize the Japanese company’s products to better suit an American market. Japanese and American Sanrio products may be distinguished by particular color palettes (e.g., Japanese hues tend to be more subtle and often more subdued) and particular items (e.g., the sizes and shapes of lunch boxes or stationery differ in the two countries). Sanrio wisely pays close attention to local differences in taste, product design, and utility, even within the United States. Peter Gastaldi, executive vice president of Sanrio, Inc., at the time of our interview, provides this kind of detail: “Pink and frilly sells very well in the South [United States]” (personal communication, June 19, 2002). What one sees in a Sanrio store abroad, then, is a mixture of Japanese-­originated products selected and sometimes localized for the specific market, products developed by Sanrio in the United States and products designed for Japan. Since Nakajima’s collaboration, there has also been a clear distinction between Sanrio/Nakajima products from Japan — which, according to company sources I spoke with, tends to be more conservative — and those goods produced by licensed arrangements with different companies — which may be more “adventurous.” These different sources of products hold different kinds of meanings and cachet for various consumers abroad. The casual buyer may hardly differentiate between types of products and may buy on the basis of personal preference. But more serious American marketing global kitty   •  93

collectors may want the more unusual, difficult-­to-­obtain products designed for Japan because of their perceived authenticity. (Hensley notes that Japanese collectors shop at American stores for the exact opposite: they want the American products, which are difficult to obtain in Japan.) As Hensley describes the general process of Sanrio operations in the United States, the flow of activity moves from a product design and planning team that reviews the product plan for the coming year, including specific design lines, followed by a merchandising team that selects goods and orders them, followed by receipt of order and distribution to approximately five thousand (as of 2002) accounts, followed by sales and its review of customer acceptance (personal communication, June 19, 2002). This process goes on regularly, constantly, and relentlessly, especially with Sanrio’s practice of releasing hundreds of new products monthly in Japan and elsewhere (Hensley estimates in 2002 approximately four thousand new products yearly in the North American market alone). In effect, there is always something new to be sold, always something new to buy. Even as a consumer, one can never keep up. The process — like the myriad products — is purposely endless. The process is also personal — that is, determined at the level of personal taste. During one of my visits to Sanrio, I was able to sit in on a meeting of the merchandise team, a small group of male and female employees of whom half were Asian American (and half were white), as they perused the catalogue of available Sanrio products from the home office in Tokyo and decided on which items to carry and quantities of each. Their decisions seemed based on personal preference and anecdotal knowledge of the recent past history of sales of similar Sanrio products, rather than detailed research. During this meeting no one came with charts, tables, or sales figures. No one even came to the meeting with a computer. Instead, the group sat around a table looking at a color inventory of products, much as an individual customer might do browsing through a mail order catalogue. The mood was relaxed and informal. In fact, this rather informal process provides the localizing touch to more global corporate strategies from Tokyo. As a Japanese company keen to develop and respond to local markets, Sanrio can do no better than to listen to the locals in each of its offices globally. Thus, marketing strategies may begin in a broad sense in Tokyo, but they are fully fleshed out in company practice in local offices worldwide exactly through the personal touch.

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Celebrity Outreach and Other Sanrio “Friendships” The personal touch of the selection process extends to Sanrio’s approach to marketing. Sanrio claims to forego straightforward advertising in favor of “publicity,” with special focus on celebrities. In fact, walking into the South San Francisco offices of Sanrio, Inc., one may peruse binders full of news clippings, including those picturing celebrities with their Hello Kitty accoutrements. Hensley explains the process: We don’t do a whole lot of marketing in the traditional Western sense of big ad budgets and all. This year, we’re really not spending any ad dollars. We put our primary emphasis in getting the new product story out to magazines, newspapers across the country, television stations, leveraging that story because the news media is celebrity obsessed. So if we can say that, yes, Mariah Carey is a big Hello Kitty fan, and it’s not just us saying it, because she’s not a paid spokesperson for us, but, here’s the proof, because she’s on mtv showing her Hello Kitty T-­shirt, because she’s photographed in People and Us [popular “gossip” magazines] carrying her Hello Kitty boom box, we kind of spin that back, and then that story feeds on itself. (Personal communication, June 19, 2002) Instead of strict advertising, then, Sanrio relies on becoming “news­ worthy,” part of a “story,” — and thus, on celebrities, whose media attention transforms into a spotlight upon whatever they wear or do, resulting in inadvertent endorsement. The celebrity focus personalizes Sanrio and Hello Kitty as not merely a large distant corporation, but one chosen by influential persons in the know. In short, Sanrio aims to keep building “the story,” to create “buzz” about their products as lifestyle choices by celebrities. That choice may not come about by accident. Hensley explains what he calls “celebrity outreach” or “prospecting” — in effect, plying the field of celebrities for potential Hello Kitty users, regularly sending out free products to those who might already be, or hold the potential for becoming, a fan. At the time of our interview in 2002, Sanrio was sending items to between fifty and seventy different celebrities (with some admitted overlaps) every quarter. In the words of Sanrio, this is a process of “building friends.” It’s kind of like prospecting. It’s with the same [marketing] organization that represents us for tv and film [product] placements, so they marketing global kitty   •  95

have access to how to get products to the celebrities. We get nice letters back [from celebrities]. Yesterday I got one from Tara Lipinski, who had a little story to tell: “You know I loved this stuff when I was a kid, and I still collect it.” . . . It’s the difference between celebrity fans versus celebrity endorsement, and we’re not paying anyone to endorse us. There’s the self-­acknowledged list of celebrities. Then there’s the list [of those] that may or may not have an interest [in Hello Kitty] that we’ve sent products to. (Hensley, personal communication, June 19, 2002) But how does that potential list get generated? How does Sanrio decide who might be a potential fan? Hensley explains with the succinct example of Lisa Loeb. Often it’s based on a comment. Let’s take our friendship with Lisa Loeb: We read in an article someplace her saying “I really wish I had a Hello Kitty rice cooker.” It’s like — done! Here’s the rice cooker! And then she gets back to us saying “I love your stuff; can we do something?” It’s like, “Well, we’re working on a story for next month’s feature on our website; why don’t we do a story on your new album and on your Hello Kitty collection?” So for her it’s great exposure to have all the eyeballs that go to Sanrio-­dot-­com see something about her and her new album. For us, it’s interesting content and implied endorsement. (Personal communication, June 19, 2002) The paradigm of “friendship” (quoted in the epigraph to this chapter) and fandom resulting in “implied endorsement” guides the way in which Hensley and others discuss Sanrio’s business practices. The benefits of friendship work both ways, one celebrity enhancing the status and circulation of another. The resultant Lisa Loeb album from this Sanrio collaboration illustrates just how embedded one celebrity identity can be in another, friend to friend, so to speak. The two best-­friend identities intertwine in mutually lucrative ways. The cover of Loeb’s 2002 album Hello Lisa (Artemis Records) graphically demonstrates the nested identities between singer and cat: Hello Kitty holds a cd cover of Lisa Loeb, who wears Hello Kitty ears and bow (figure 2.1); Loeb holds a mirror that reflects a Hello Kitty winking image, wearing Loeb’s trademark glasses. Further, the title of the album, Hello Lisa, obviously references Hello Kitty, especially when written in the same curly font as Sanrio’s product. In a related video for “Underdog,” one of the cuts from the Hello 96  •  chapter two

2.1. Hello Lisa by Lisa Loeb (2002) (Artemis Records).

Lisa album, Hello Kitty appears playing guitar, while Loeb plays guitar and sings in a kitchen filled with pink Hello Kitty products, concluding with Loeb stroking Kitty’s cheek affectionately.9 Later that same year, Loeb appeared in Sanrio stores promoting her album, as well as at the Japanese mtv Music Awards with Hello Kitty. The “friendly” product tie-­ups intertwine multiply, creatively, exuberantly. Sanrio’s approach to celebrities has continued through today. Dave Marchi, the brand marketing manager in 2010, explains what he calls the company’s “guerrilla tactics”: The whole celebrity culture has gotten even more insane, and it’s just . . . celebrities rule . . . not rule all, but celebrities do make a big impact on the general public. We still don’t do traditional advertising and rely more on word of mouth and we’re kind of that niche brand that people enjoy. We don’t have movies and television shows and all that, so we do rely on guerrilla tactics, or just word of mouth tactics to get the brand out there and build buzz. We definitely don’t do endorsements. We will never pay a celebrity to hawk Hello Kitty or be a representative of Hello Kitty. Rather, if we know that a certain marketing global kitty   •  97

celebrity is a fan, we work that relationship. (Personal communication, March 25, 2010) Marchi gives the example of the popular singer Lady Gaga, whose spectacular Hello Kitty photo shoot (figure 2.2) made headlines and flooded the Internet. Lady Gaga, perfect example. That came about because she showed up in our San Francisco store before she became what she is now [very famous]. She showed up in our San Francisco store, and I just happened to be talking to the manager, and they said, “Oh, Lady Gaga was in here.” And I’m like, “No way, that’s great. She’s some cool club performer.” And she was saying “Oh, I’m Lady Gaga. I’m a huge Hello Kitty fan.” And I think she asked if she could either get a discount or free stuff or something like that and they said, “No,” because they didn’t know who she was. I’m like, “Well, you should’ve given it to her,” because I knew who she was, and she was cool. A couple months later, we were presented with the opportunity to do a photo shoot as part of this reality show for these celebrity photographers. They wanted us to be part of it, and basically all we had to do was to book a photo shoot with a celebrity and then it would be part of the reality show, so we said, “Ok, why don’t we ask Lady Gaga. We know she’s a fan.” And this was when she was continuously on the rise. So we asked her, and then she said, “Great. I wanna do it. It sounds fun.” That all worked out, and we had these amazing photos. We didn’t have to pay her or anything like that. (Personal communication, March 25, 2010) In short, Lady Gaga in over-­the-­top Hello Kitty outfits builds “buzz” for Sanrio — for free. In this case, it was not so much Hello Kitty adding value to Lady Gaga (although every public iteration builds and shapes Lady Gaga’s evolving image), but Hello Kitty gaining a tremendous boost of ironic cool from the pop diva. Here is the stuff of headlines: well beyond product placement, celebrity overlaid upon celebrity, images lapping each other in a referential loop. But how to police which celebrities may be appropriate for the image of Hello Kitty? Celebrities — or people who have gained some kind of fame in a media-­saturated world — pose their own kinds of challenges for Sanrio and must be screened carefully. Marchi explains that celebrity tie-­ups with Hello Kitty have to be approved by the head office in 98  •  chapter two

2.2. Lady Gaga in/as Hello Kitty (2010). Image by Markus Klinko and Indrani Pal-­Chaudhuri, fashion by GK Reid.

Tokyo. (And the Lady Gaga project almost did not meet their approval, primarily because they did not know who she was and found her image questionable.) However, some other cases arise on the spot, and Sanrio people in situ have to make quick decisions. Marchi tells the following story of a porn star Hello Kitty fan (discussed further in chapter 5): A porn star showed up to the Three Apples [exhibit in Los Angeles in celebration of Hello Kitty’s Thirty-­Fifth Anniversary], and I’m like, “What do we do? We can’t say, ‘You can’t come in.’ ” She came as a huge fan. Her name is Tera Patrick [née Linda Ann Hopkins, b. 1976]. She’s apparently a really big porn star, and she’s a huge Hello Kitty fan. In fact, her husband at the time, who was also a porn star, sent me photos of her wearing Hello Kitty bikini underwear, and he’s like, “Hey, we wanna use these for our calendar. Can you give us approval?” And I said, “You know, unfortunately we can’t.” I didn’t say, “Because you are a porn star and we don’t wanna associate the brand with that.” But it’s just not in our best interest to do that. (Personal communication, March 25, 2010) Celebrity connections thus come with their own perils that include a thumbs up for Lady Gaga and apparently a thumbs down for the likes of Tera Patrick. Here lies the fraught terrain of “buzz.” These tie-­ups and “friendly” connections through celebrity outreach and associations draw close parallels with that of product placement, acting to securing places for Sanrio products in media such as film and television. These places hold increasing importance in a consumerist world of incessant branding by which every available surface and space may act as a potential billboard. Like other companies, Sanrio enlists the services of a branding agency that specializes in connecting celebrities, media, and products, acknowledging the importance of these links not so much in producing things as in producing and reinforcing brands. Naomi Klein’s pathbreaking book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies addresses these processes: “Creating a brand . . . requires an endless parade of brand extensions, continuously renewed imagery for marketing and, most of all, fresh new spaces to disseminate the brand’s idea of itself” (2009:5).10 Product placement and celebrity outreach create these “brand extensions,” “renewed imagery,” and “new spaces.” Hello Kitty has been especially successful in product placement in major Hollywood films and mainstream American television in recent years. Hensley points out that sometimes this placement comes about through a celebrity’s specific 100  •  chapter two

request: for example, the actor Mike Myers requested a Sanrio store and Hello Kitty appearance in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). In other words, Hello Kitty’s fame precedes her globally so that Sanrio may have to rely less, perhaps, on branding agencies and more on the manufacture and presence of carefully crafted “buzz.” At the very least, this is what Sanrio would like the public to believe. In the business of such mutual branding, there is little place for overexposure. There is only, in Klein’s words, “brand extensions,” “renewed imagery,” and “new spaces” (2009:5).

Research and Surveillance of “Friends”: Creating Market Success What is critical to the Sanrio image is imparting a sense of the personal touch — rather than the corporate touch — creating “friends,” relying on affective relationships, in spite of (or maybe by way of) Hello Kitty’s mediated presence. According to Sanrio’s scheme of things, the company does not so much create desire as respond to consumer wishes. In this, Sanrio says that it stays close to the ground, constantly keeping a pulse on its customers. Hensley explains: We do interviews and mini focus groups, but it’s not really just showing products and getting feedback on it. We’re speaking to customers; we’re observing customers in the store; we’re monitoring what they say on-­line, what they feed back to us, different chat rooms that talk about Hello Kitty. We have comment cards in all of our company-­owned stores and we read every one of those that come in, to see what’s good and bad about the Sanrio experience. It’s an ongoing thing. Additionally we go out just about every year to six or eight markets and do interviews in a dyad format where we bring in a girl and her best friend. We’re not necessarily looking for Hello Kitty fans — they could be totally indifferent to us or dislike us greatly — but we do this to truly find out what’s happening in the market and where Hello Kitty fits in that market. (Personal communication, June 19, 2002) Part of “finding out” lies at the hands of marketing research, which one can assume every producer conducts. Some may see Sanrio’s research as surveillance; others may see it as smart marketing to the fickle customer base that ranges from tweens to young female adults. Sanrio’s approach, however, is slightly different from most, because the company’s marketing global kitty   •  101

goal, according to Hensley, is not necessarily to capture the hearts of every single potential consumer. Instead, the company wants to satisfy the needs of those who are already amenable to Sanrio products. “I have no idea of percent of population, but it’s not like we’re striving for 75, 80 percent of the population to be Hello Kitty fans and buying all the stuff. Our market success is with a core interested group” (personal communication, June 19, 2010). According to Hensley, the connection between producer and consumer, then, is part of Sanrio’s effort to develop products responsive to customers’ needs, not necessarily to create desire. This positioning places brand loyalty in the laps of consumers, with Sanrio as their faithful servant. Sanrio cautions that it does not want a huge boom in its product sales, either in Japan or abroad (chapter 1). In contrast with the smash hit of Pokémon or Tamagotchi, Sanrio prefers Hello Kitty to fall below the radar of wildly popular “fad-­dom,” developing customer loyalty with a more low-­key approach that emphasizes individual choice and possibly a longer shelf life. You know, to us success is really not a world where everybody’s a Hello Kitty fan. ’Cause that implies that there’s gonna be a huge drop off at some point. So we want to create things of functional value, functional lifestyle value, that are fun, that are cute. So rather than us spend a huge ad budget to try to convince them of something that maybe they’ve decided against, we want to move with a smaller, but more committed, more interested group in developing our products. It’s a lifestyle decision that is right for some, not right for everyone. (Personal communication, June 19, 2002) This kind of decision making places the onus of responsibility on the consumer, rather than on the company. It allows Sanrio to occupy a place untainted by consumer manipulation (e.g., creation of desire) and sanctified by individuated choice. Consumers thus are reconstituted as a self-­selected group (“smaller, more committed”), rather than as a mass of marketing dupes. According to Hensley, by offering a variety of products in relatively low quantities, Sanrio avoids the possibility of big failures in sales, on the one hand, and enhances the wearing and encoding of personal identities, on the other: The breadth of the product offering is the core of the Sanrio experience. You know, we’re making things in low quantities — every indi102  •  chapter two

vidual item — so if it fails, you know still it’s gonna sell through. It’s not like we’re gonna be stuck with 800,000 units of something in the warehouse that is a dead item. So it’s not just that we can promote just one, say, backpack, and that leads the way. We might make a backpack in quantities of the low thousands as opposed to the hundreds of thousands like a Jansport [major American backpack company]. But we make thirty-­two different styles and they all have different designs. The idea is that the customer can have something that’s unique to them. So that’s part of the story that we tell, and that’s part of the customer experience that is the reality of the Sanrio experience. It’s a slower build, but a greater payback. (Personal communication, June 19, 2000) With this “slower-­build-­greater-­payback” approach, Sanrio deliberately distances itself from large-­scale manufacturers, arm-­twisting advertising, and large runs of the same product. (Note, however, that the business plan of offering a number of items in low quantities can be the approach of a collectibles industry, such as Beanie Babies.)

Consumer Life Cycle of Hello Kitty Fans Instead, Sanrio identifies what Hensley calls “the consumer life cycle” from “Introduction” to “The Change,”11 to “Rediscovery,” to “Nostalgia.” Here I quote Hensley at length to give a sense of the flow of that cycle, and Sanrio’s response with age-­appropriate products: The customer life cycle. She enters elementary school and is introduced to Hello Kitty. It’s all about bright colors, the large Hello Kitty image, functional stuff, where Hello Kitty is big, primarily pink or red or brightly colored. As she moves through elementary school she can use a wider and wider selection of what we make, all the pencils, pens, notebooks come into play. She hits middle school, and we refer to that period as “The Change,” where not just Sanrio, but with characters in general, during which she starts to question “Is this part of me being a kid and now I want to be a teen? So where does a character fit in to that?” The decision at that time is “Do I leave characters behind or do I bring them with me?” So at that point, the design theme changes to something that’s a little bit more subtle, more iconic, generally or more often using Hello Kitty’s face as just an icon on the design as opposed to a marketing global kitty   •  103

large image in bright colors. So the colors can change, the size of the character on the product can change, the functionality of the product can change. Things that are more functionally appealing to an older girl. She’s no longer gonna wear the big pink backpack — she’s done with that. So the Hello Kitty backpack might be a large leather-­ bottomed bag with a smaller Hello Kitty emblem on it. Having said that, some girls really never go through that Change — they’re Hello Kitty all the way. Others that go into the “Change” will leave characters behind altogether. A good percentage will emerge with confidence as a teen, what we refer to as the “Rediscovery,” and at that point they’ve assigned sort of an unwritten set of rules for character merchandising. You don’t go over the top with it. You keep it subtle, you keep it functional, and you keep a lot of it in your room. So that the social me out there as a sixteen-­year-­old might say, “Well, I’m cool hanging a Hello Kitty keychain off my backpack and putting a bunch of stuff in my backpack. So that’s a big part of it, but where she might have only a few things on her social self, inside the room could be totally different, where there’s [Hello Kitty] things everywhere. And she goes over the top still. So as long as she’s staying within those kind of rules that she’s set, you’ll meet the Hello Kitty fans that have the T-­shirt, everything. At the late teen and adult age, sometimes what comes back is, the really youthful stuff. Kind of a “Nostalgia Thing.” Faith Popcorn [a consumer trends analyst; quoted in the introduction] called it a “wink on pink” — that’s the women in the boardroom, it’s almost like a surprise factor: “Don’t think you know exactly who I am, ’cause I’m likely to surprise you.” The Gucci bag with the Hello Kitty notepad and pen inside. Or the Hello Kitty bag or purse that you just wouldn’t expect because it’s going with the Armani suit. That kind of stuff. The juxtaposition of cute with total fashion. (Personal communication, June 19, 2003) In Hensley’s identification of this consumer cycle — Introduction, the Change, Rediscovery, and Nostalgia — Sanrio aims to create a Hello Kitty bubble in which a female may move through life with only occasional blips. In effect, each phase of a female’s life can be boiled down to these marketing terms that makes of her relationship with Hello Kitty both an individuated psychosocial interaction, as well as an age-­graded expectation. At times the movement through that cycle questions char104  •  chapter two

acters in general; at other times, the consumer’s decisions may be made for Hello Kitty specifically. The point, however, is that no matter where a girl/woman is in the cycle, Hello Kitty is there. She exists as a constant presence — if even in different forms — waiting only for the readiness of the consumer. As Hensley cautions, this bubble is not for everyone. But for those who choose, Hello Kitty serves as an industrially designed, ready, dependable strategically marketed, affectively laboring, ever-­ companion. Hello Kitty becomes a lifelong friend. Here it is important to situate some of the details of what Hensley says historically, because since the time of our interview in 2002, Sanrio has issued many more products that are likely to blend these different phases of the consumer life cycle. Since 2002, Cool Japan (discussed more fully in chapter 7) has framed Japanese Cute-­Cool in different ways as well, providing further sustenance to the notion of pink globalization itself. More specifically, teens may have less trouble convincing their peers of the coolness of Hello Kitty in 2010, so long as she chooses the “right” Kitty stuff.

Interview: From Employee to True Believer — Dan Peters Dan Peters (b. 1968) is tall and good-­natured with a constant twinkle in his eye. His hair is spiked and somewhat disheveled, his body typically strikes relaxed poses, and his desk is littered with humorous items including Hello Kitty. He projects “art student” (which he was, with a professional certificate in digital design; his undergraduate degree was in literature from the University of California, San Diego) far more than company man (which he is and has been since he took a job with Sanrio in 1996). I interviewed Dan a number of times over the course of my fieldwork, during which he advanced from Sanrio’s senior promotions designer in the Marketing Department, in 2002, to the art director of Marketing Stores and E-­Commerce in 2010. To his admitted surprise, the company becomes him and he wears his tenure there well. I include these coupled, condensed interviews conducted on June 19, 2002, and March 25, 2010, with Dan not only as an employee profile, but to note the very ethos of Sanrio as eloquently expressed by one of its quirky members. First, from 2002, Dan discusses Japanese Cute-­Cool and the dimensions that he finds appealing: D. P.: Part of what I find to be of great appeal of Sanrio is the Japanese quality of it. So I, for lack of a better term, I don’t like to marketing global kitty   •  105

like Disney-­fy everything into this kind of cookie-­cutter American culture type of this of what’s acceptable. I love the fact that Sanrio is different. And so, I could very easily edit things and smooth them out into Sleeping Beauty type, you know, kind of like descriptions. But I love the quirkiness. And I think that’s part of our appeal. At least to me it is. You know, so, yes, I do that in a sense, but I think it’s even harder to try and keep some of the original flavor, the unique quality, you know, that I think is part of the charm, you know. C. Y.: I mean, you just mentioned sort of Japanese qualities. How would you put a finger on that? D. P.: See, that’s the thing is you can’t. Every time I think I can, a new character will show up that turns himself into pudding. I saw this one cartoon which I thought was the most existential brilliance of one of our characters, Pompom Purin, his name means “pudding,” and so basically he’s this yellow retriever, and he’s sitting there eating a cup of pudding, and then like a tear runs down his face, because he kind of looks at it like he’s eating himself. And it’s just this four-­panel cartoon, and I might be misinterpreting it, ’cause I can’t read Japanese, because part of that character is you’ll see him as, like a flan. With a smile on the flan. And then they’ll show him as a golden retriever. So he’s a golden retriever that turns himself into pudding. I thought, this is brilliant. This is like . . . Disney would never do this. So that kind of quirkiness I think is just really appealing, you know. C. Y.: Do you think American consumers get it? D. P.: Depends. In my cynical feelings, probably not. I think like, there are certain people, certain types of consumers that understand the irony, but I think the majority of who we’re targeted to don’t. They’re just looking — hey, that’s a cute dog or hey, that’s a cute cat, my kid’ll like this. And obviously most of the kids are too young. To understand all of that weirdness. I mean, I think like people who — my friends who are artists and designers get it. They’re the ones who, I show stuff like that to, or buy them stuff like that for their birthdays or Christmas, but other than that, I’d say as a whole, probably not. I 106  •  chapter two

don’t think that they do. But I don’t even know if it was meant to be a joke. That’s the whole gray area. I don’t if the original designer, maybe they just thought it was cute. I think there’s a different sense of what’s cute and what’s acceptable as cute in Japan. Pompom Purin, for example — his artwork, he has a little x on his butt to show where the anus is, which in Japan is very cute. And I remember when that first came over here, [at Sanrio, Inc.] we’re like, I don’t know if we can show that. ’Cause, you know, people like — it’s just meant to be a cartoon, we’re not meant to have that kind of realism. Maybe we’re somewhat repressed, our culture is, so we’re like, “No, no, no, you can’t do that.” But I show that to my friends, who get it, and they’re just like, oh, this is great! Yeah. C. Y.: So what is your reaction to working at Sanrio? D. P.: Well, at first, just taking a job at Sanrio I thought was just ironic and ridiculous. But I thought about it, I’ve always been somebody who grew up with Mad Magazine, grew up just drawing sketches of little cartoon people, my whole life. And I find that I genuinely like a lot of it. It’s not just like, “Oh, ha ha, this is what I do for a living.” It’s like, “Wow, I really like this character.” Or, “I really like that design.” Before I had this job, if I walked by a Sanrio store, I doubt that I would have gone in and explored. But now, being a designer there, and actually dealing with the characters on a daily basis, I really can see the appeal of it. In our interview in 2010, Dan discussed what he sees as the Sanrio message more explicitly — from designers becoming like the characters they create, to the general goodwill of the company. It is telling that Dan sees the antithesis of Hello Kitty to be Barbie — that is, plastic, in­ authentic, superficial. Hello Kitty represents the non-­Barbie companion, the Sanrio “real” alternative in consumers’ lives. What does Hello Kitty mean for a key employee who has worked at Sanrio, Inc., for about one-­ third of his life? Dan’s quick answer: “All things cute, innocent, and . . . the wonderment of life.” But he also explains the “real heart behind what we do,” the “authentic feeling” behind the product. Just as Hello Kitty may be “real” for consumers, she also represents the “real” for many Sanrio employees such as Dan. He believes this truly, sincerely, without the least trace of irony. marketing global kitty   •  107

D. P.: When we had a team of designers here, I could tell some of them were actually, sort of, turning into their characters a little bit. C. Y.: Really? D. P.: Like our Badtz-­Maru [black penguin figure] designer was . . . she just . . . emanated Badtz-­Maru. C. Y.: The designer. D. P.: Yes, yes. You could just tell the way she smiled, like . . . when she’s drawing him or working with this character, she had this mischievous quality, which granted she had before she started designing with him, but it’s funny that you can see that when you’re so devoted, as she was — she was a fantastic designer, and you could tell that she really got into it. And it showed in her work. She did beautiful work. So I would say sometimes, again as in art directing, some of the designs that I’ve seen, you can tell when people are just putting Hello Kitty on something, “Oh, just throw Hello Kitty on it, and it will work,” versus really thinking about the essence of who Hello Kitty is and what might work best. C. Y.: What kinds of changes have you seen in the Hello Kitty product line since you started here? D. P.: We do have some partnerships in Japan with some very cool designers that I didn’t even know about that we do collaborations with, where you’ll see Hello Kitty and Baby Milo’s one . . . just different characters that create this very cool, Japanese-­ looking, not typical Sanrio style, so I’ve seen more of that in the last five, ten years of kind of . . . us dealing with different people who I wouldn’t normally associate us with, and I think there is . . . the way I was trained, there was more protection over Hello Kitty of who she should and shouldn’t associate with, and she should represent all things that are cute and innocent, but I think there is a little bit more of “it’s OK to put her on the edge a little bit more” now. That’s actually a big change I’ve seen since I started, because I was trained a certain way and we’re meant to represent a certain kind of view on life, and I think now there is more acceptance to be a little bit 108  •  chapter two

edgier, and try different things and that of course appeals to older target audience. I would assume that as long as the Sanrio message “Small Gift, Big Smile,” the social communication, the . . . sharing and having a positive worldview and world message, if that is consistent, no matter what the product is or the collaboration, if it’s still about making somebody smile and feel good, then I think it’s OK. C. Y.: So, in your mind, what is the essence of Hello Kitty? D. P.: Yeah, it’s interesting because I have this discussion with other designers and we talk about how . . . Hello Kitty can be all things to all people. She doesn’t have a mouth, and so basically, it’s the . . . whatever you’re feeling, she’ll embody it, because she doesn’t have that expression to . . . we can make her have angry eyes and do things like that if you want. But I think, I mean, to me, I still view her and her design as just perfection of innocence and cuteness. I really think because she’s such a simple, basic design, especially the original design like right there, 1974 . . . it’s . . . she’s all things cute and just kind of the wonderment of life to me. So that’s very open ended. Here is this little icon that personifies, in a way, it’s hope, innocence, and . . . and some of the artists, of course, play on that to do some kind of ironic pieces, and . . . something edgy, but I still think they’re playing off of what represents just this perfect design of cuteness and innocence, and any single person, that if you tell them to describe Hello Kitty, “cute” will be one of the top three words. C. Y.: Sure, undeniably. D. P.: Or I’ll . . . I often challenge people and say to them, “Describe this without using the word cute.” But . . . it’s very, very difficult to do. C. Y.: And for you, saying these things, you’re saying it totally straight, without any sense of irony yourself. D. P.: No, absolutely, absolutely. And I’ve seen a lot of character designs that we do, and a lot from other companies, and I still think, as far as just being the embodiment of cute and innocence, I think, especially, like . . . I love old-­school Hello Kitty. marketing global kitty   •  109

The newer stuff, I still like, but to me, the original is just . . . it just makes me smile and makes you feel good. And I think all of our staff hopefully does that, but it’s just . . . as a designer, I look at it and go, “Wow, somebody drew that, and it’s so simple, but yet so complicated in its simplicity.” C. Y.: As a design, here I’m talking really about the visual sense of it and maybe thinking about the original one, what do you think makes it work so well? D. P.: That’s always . . . you’ll hear that from a lot of people. If Sanrio could do it, they would obviously create a hundred of them, but I think, just based on design, I think round things are very comfortable, so having a nice big round marshmallowy head, I think is just extremely . . . in fact, actually, one of the designers that used to work here, she always asked me, “How’s the marshmallow?” because she felt like working here was like working in a marshmallow. And so . . . and I say, “Well, sometimes it seems like it gets a little hard in the areas, but still . . .” She’s like, “How’s the marshmallow?” which is great, because that’s kind of how I view her. I mean she looks soft, not overly designed. There is not too much detail to either be confusing or . . . I mean just the use of primary colors, I think, invokes childhood. C. Y.: Earlier you used the word authenticity. Could you tell me something of what you meant? D. P.: I think especially in this day and age when you have, as I was pointing out, with technology, the ability to create a brand or create a product in two seconds. You can scan it and make T-­shirts, and use all of these different sites, like Etsy and all these different places that you can just upload an image and they’ll put them on T-­shirts and you can sell them at that website. I think that you’re seeing, A, it’s hugely competitive out there, but I think you’re also seeing kind of watered-­down brands and items that are out there that have nothing behind them other than somebody drew something they thought was cute and are trying to sell it on whatever they possibly can, and I just feel that, as I mentioned with the detail of the original Hello Kitty design, and as a company, part of the 110  •  chapter two

reason I love working here is I feel that there is real heart behind what we do and what we’re trying to get across to the consumer. C. Y.: So you really believe that? D. P.: Yeah. I mean, not always. I’m not blinded by it. But obviously with licensing expanding, etc., etc., there are things which I don’t think we should be on or be representing, but I think overall, what I understand from people who really love our brand, that’s what they love about it. They love that there is an authentic feeling behind it, that it’s not just the latest item that we’re trying to sell, but that it really is this cute, well thought out thing that is different from what they’ll get at Target or Walmart or . . . there is a “je ne sais quoi.” C. Y.: But it’s not as if Sanrio is any less interested in making money than anyone else, do you think? D. P.: No. C. Y.: So what’s the difference? D. P.: I guess the difference is upholding the kind of message that Tsuji Sr. wanted when he created the company, and which was that “Small Gift, Big Smile” idea of creating something little . . . it doesn’t have to be a huge, like, backyard jungle gym set. You can give a child just a little item that, just based upon the quality of that item, that they’re just as happy as if you’d bought them a new pink car. So, just, sort of, upholding that we’re still trying to sell all sorts of things, but if you come down to the essence of who we are, it stems from that original concept of sharing that with people, sharing experiences and communicating positive feelings with others. I don’t know, to me, Barbie doesn’t really do that. C. Y.: So in your mind, if you were to take the exact opposite of Hello Kitty, it might be Barbie? D. P.: It might be Barbie. Again, it’s sort of like, Barbie goes hip-­hop and just kind of . . . there is the whole . . . which is ironic . . . the fakeness of the Paris Hiltons, and Paris Hilton, to me, embodies Barbie. Ironically, she’s a huge Hello Kitty fan. To me, marketing global kitty   •  111

personally, that’s not who I really want representing our brand, because, to me, she personifies the plastic. C. Y.: And there has never been a Barbie-­Hello Kitty tie-­up? D. P.: Yes, we do have it. It’s a Barbie wearing Hello Kitty items [mentioned in the introduction]. So she’s got like Hello Kitty clothes on, things like that. So if Barbie went into a Sanrio store, this is what she would wear. C. Y.: So Barbie is kind of the opposite, but actually there is some collusion as well. D. P.: [Laughs] Yeah, we’re just making Barbie feel better by wearing sweet, innocent Hello Kitty.

Inculcating Happiness as Company Ethos Peters is not alone in his assessment of the core brand message of Hello Kitty as happiness. Dave Marchi, agrees, his normally low-­key voice rising slightly in intonation: She [Hello Kitty] just embodies this kind of pure happiness. You can look at her and whatever it is, her countenance or the way she’s designed or her style, just embodies pure happiness. Ultimately people who are her detractors can say, “Oh, she’s just there to sell products and you just slap her on things.” But when you really look at it, she’s just there to bring happiness and make friends and share with your friends, and it’s something that you can share and enjoy. Does that make sense? And I say this totally, completely unironically. Yeah, 100 percent, without being the branding person or anything like that. I honestly can say, it’s [about] happiness. (Personal communication, March 25, 2010) It is hard not to agree, especially when these words are spoken with such passion and zeal — even amid the fatigue of a workaday world. Some might cynically say that it is Marchi’s job to agree, to promote Sanrio as an altruistic company in the unassailable business of selling happiness. Indeed, Marchi’s responses, as Peters’s, sounds as scripted as any company ideology might be. And yet, walking the halls of Sanrio, Inc., one cannot help but notice an overall mood of the place and its employees. The physical environ112  •  chapter two

ment is fairly neat, clean, and, in many places, literally pink. One sees Hello Kitty in promotional displays, on desks, on shelves — a mix of personally owned items and company-­owned products. The presence of the cat is not relentless but casual, some items strewn as part of midstream work. I am not suggesting here a closed equation: neat + clean + pink = mood of happiness. I am also not suggesting that every single person in Sanrio’s employ glows with a company idiom of feeling good. Nor am I suggesting that Sanrio is a workplace devoid of conflict. However, I am raising the possibility of ties between employees and products, and of a workplace that might run relatively smoothly because of employees acknowledging, accepting, and ultimately promoting the worthiness of the product. These are smart workers, capable of irony, as true believers. In other words, key workers in positions of responsibility with whom I spoke share a strong belief in Sanrio and its ethos of sociality and happiness as expressed in one of its iconic figures, Hello Kitty. Here lies the potential for emotional contagion — that is, the transferring of emotions between people in close proximity (Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson 1994). The emotional contagion transfers in this case not only between workers, but also from product to employee — much as Peters mentioned with designers and the characters they draw. I met Sarah Walsworth (b. 1970), a Filipina American who serves as Sanrio visual merchandiser of Sanrio, Inc. She explains the relationship between many Sanrio employees and the characters that are the daily staple of their work: “It’s an extension of us now. It’s just who we are” (personal communication, March 25, 2010). And part of “who we are” materializes in the Sanrio products owned and displayed by employees. Walsworth recalls a recent example when she was trying to gather older Hello Kitty products for a promotional display: “Everybody’s got something [Sanrio on their desks]. Even our vps. Just like a connection. Everybody’s got something [Hello Kitty] in their lives that’s like from way back that they still hang onto, that’s still part of their lives” (personal communication, March 25, 2010). Thus, for many employees, being surrounded at work (and home) by cute characters such as Hello Kitty creates possibilities for the general mood of innocent happiness rubbing off, icon to employee. Walsworth suggests that some of the warm ethos of the workplace at Sanrio has to do with the nature of the product: I think it has a lot of do with what we work with . . . I mean we can have a meeting, and we’re deciding on Kitty’s nose . . . I mean it’s a marketing global kitty   •  113

serious meeting, but then you have to take a step back and laugh and go, “Oh my god, look at this. We’re talking about her nose or her suspenders not being straight!” I mean those are the kind of decisions that we make. They’re important decisions, but the content of what you’re talking about . . . It’s just like working in a toy company and you’re just testing products to see how fun it is. That’s kind of like what it is! It would be a lot different if we were working with something that’s like . . . I don’t know . . . bullets and guns versus Hello Kitty. (Personal communication, March 25, 2010) So serious discussion about cute noses and suspenders — about the fun aesthetic of products — may result in laughter, rather than raised blood pressure. And “making other people happy” rebounds back upon workers in significant ways that affect who one is or believe themselves to be. If Hello Kitty represents childhood, then closely identifying with the product sometimes means feeling protective toward Sanrio’s cat. Walsworth explains: Being a core fan, it’s like giving your baby to somebody else who knows nothing of the brand. They would like to get their hands into the brand, and give their spin on it. So, knowing our designs and how Kitty is applied on the product and colors, we know what’s best for Kitty. We’re very protective of her. When licensing first started taking off, it was a real big turn-­off. It was like, “Oh my god, I would never stick those colors with that,” or “I would never put Kitty wearing heels” or “I would never have Kitty dressed as a punk rocker or a pirate.” It was aesthetics for one thing, and the other thing would be, we were protective of our brand. (Personal communication, March 25, 2010) Sanrio employees such as Walsworth feel protective of Hello Kitty because, in some sense, she represents them. The identity issues emanating from and through the workplace profoundly affect workers. Trying to decide what is causal (Hello Kitty makes workers happy) and what is selective (those who have an affinity for Hello Kitty or the attitudes surrounding Kitty end up working successfully at Sanrio) is less important than the confluence of workers and what many of them consider to be the Sanrio/Hello Kitty ethos of friendship, social communication, innocence, and ultimately, happiness. This is happiness itself defined by connections through childhood 114  •  chapter two

innocence to its simplest forms: that is, not necessarily happiness built upon adult complexity of experience, but simplified as an experience of childhood. However, note that employees and fans situate Hello Kitty’s ethos as separate from the maudlin sentimentality of a line such as Precious Moments. Rather, childhood itself — especially in these Japanese hands, as detailed in chapter 1 — gains multiple dimensions through Hello Kitty. Here are employees — true believers — who put in extra hours at work, often not out of response to a top-­down assignment (with paid overtime), but because of their own self-­generated enthusiasm and sometimes ideas (see chapter 6 for a discussion of the Three Apples exhibit). This is the mood of people who believe in the worthiness of their product and their endeavor, even if outsiders may view that product as childish or “abnormal” for adults. Some of these employees — especially females — come to the job, already fans of characters such as Hello Kitty. Others — primarily male — learn the brand as part of their on-­the-­job training. Both meet in boardrooms with a sense of commitment to what Peters and Marchi identify as the core message of the brand. Here is a brief excerpt of a conversation between Dave Marchi, Sarah Walsworth, and myself that took place on March 25, 2010, at Sanrio, Inc.: D. M.: I go through the airport, and my bag has Hello Kitty on it, my laptop has Hello Kitty on it. I don’t even think about it. S. W.: That’s how it is with our vps as well. They don’t think twice about having [Hello Kitty] pens sticking out of their shirts and stuff. It’s just normal. C. Y.: And you’re not doing this [carrying Hello Kitty] because you’re working for Sanrio? D. M.: Absolutely not. No. Absolutely not. I mean if I were to stop working for Sanrio, yeah, I probably wouldn’t be as Hello Kitty – fied or Sanrio-­fied as I am, but I would still have the fondness and the understanding for the brand and the products, for sure. I couldn’t go back. S. W.: There is a definite distinction between people who get it and those who don’t get it. C. Y.: [Laughing] It sounds as if Hello Kitty is almost like a cult or a religion or something. marketing global kitty   •  115

D. M.: Totally. C. Y.: You think so? D. M.: Totally, in certain ways, yeah, for sure. C. Y.: Like how? D. M.: People who get it and people who don’t get it. And, I think, if you’re a Hello Kitty fan, depending on how big or small your fandom is, you understand that. S. W.: That’s true. [At Sanrio] we all kind of share the same family culture of Hello Kitty-­ness . . . it’s like a family . . . working is really like a family setting, and I think Sanrio does that. I don’t know if it’s Hello Kitty necessarily, but Sanrio has that kind of corporate culture. This is a company culture that relies on a family idiom of inclusiveness, loyalty, affect, and social ties. As Walsworth puts it, “It’s a little bit laid back, little bit softer around the edges. We would never just barge into an office and go, “Give me these numbers.” We have respect for each other” (personal communication, March 19, 2010). What employees tell me is that the opposite of a worker upholding the Sanrio ethos is someone who comes in fresh out of college, holding a strictly “corporate” attitude and background. In other words, this is someone who thinks of a job as a set of cut-­and-­dried rules set down in a handbook, a “structured way of doing things” as one person put it. These “corporate” types assume that simply following the rules results in a paycheck. Longtime employees distinguish themselves from these types, pointing to passion and zeal — elements not written in handbooks or employee manuals — as hallmarks of the Sanrio “family” of workers. One may see the corporate model as rational, contractual, large scale, and essentially modern; the “family” model, by contrast, may be considered emotional, relational, small scale, and nonmodern. Whereas the corporate model may be learned in business schools, the family model is acquired experientially, on the job, among “true believers.” I asked Walsworth about the possibilities of exploitation, given special projects that might require long hours and no overtime pay. Me, personally, I have never felt that, only because I know I put that [project] on myself. It’s not asked of me. It’s not expected of me, but 116  •  chapter two

I do it myself. The only time that it [exploitation] ever comes up is if my husband would say, “Why? Why are you doing it? Just relax.” And that’s when you go like, “OK, relax.” He’s just like, “Just don’t do it or stretch your time out.” And it’s like, “You know what, I can. You’re right.” We have enough freedom to actually work around it, but with as many projects as we have, it’s like we get to those crunch times. Maybe it’s poor planning, maybe we didn’t have enough people — whatever the case may be, we just made it happen, and we didn’t complain until it was like, “Ok, it’s been two days since we’ve slept.” And we know nobody else can help us. I think, part of it, too, is that we aim so high. It’s like we really wanna make this just spectacular, and it was hard for us to say no to things. So we kind of put it on ourselves. (Personal communication, March 19, 2010) A sense of exploitation thus only comes about when one is robbed of the agency to conceptualize and execute a project of one’s own. Sanrio wisely gives free rein to its employees, who have the freedom to come up with projects and find ways to execute them. These are employees led by their own emotional attachment to the product, from designer Yamaguchi Yūko in Japan to merchandisers such as Walsworth in the United States. Part of that attachment derives from “getting” the message of Hello Kitty. According to Peters, Marchi, and Walsworth, the brand promise of Sanrio (and Hello Kitty) is a message that someone may or may not “get,” but once they do, they always have “it.” As Marchi says, “I couldn’t go back.” Although talking about Sanrio (and Hello Kitty) as a religion may be lighthearted banter, at least some of what was said is not so far from spiritual discourse — conversion narratives, the leap of faith invested in “getting it,” distinguishing between believers and non­ believers, an evangelical belief in their mission, even a bit of persecution at the hands of the general public. Employees I spoke with — those in positions of responsibility within the company — profess a personal affinity for what they see as the innocence of pink and firmly believe in its message of hope and happiness. Pink globalization and Japanese Cute-­Cool seem to become them, both in the sense of the progressive unfolding of a person, as well as in the sense of enhancing, fitting, and suiting their lives. As the quasi-­religious and capitalist intertwine, I can only note the sincerity with which these employees speak, structured around a busimarketing global kitty   •  117

ness model and product that have found a home in numerous global locations. A company ethos of happiness tinged with pink sounds like a hugely naive, manipulative enterprise, and that, in fact, may be exactly what it is. However, critique of this position comes far too easily. In my mind, it is more challenging to bring skepticism to bear in understanding the very framework of their sincerity, to acknowledge possibilities of emotional contagion, to untie and retie knots of the human spirit that may live within such highly manipulable endeavors. As Yamaguchi Yūko has done in Tokyo, so, too, are these American employees situating their lives within Sanrio’s core brand message of “happiness” as interpellated subjects. They may be true believers in “the story” — that is, small-­gift-­ big-­ smile friendship and notions of emotional well-­ being — raising skeptical Adorno-­arched eyebrows of disbelief. But this critical reaction may say more about the necessity of our intellectual posturings than about their own lives.

118  •  chapter two

Chapter Three Global Kitty

Here, There, Nearly Everywhere

People who live with animals value the charm of muteness. — Ursula K. LeGuin (2005:19)

Ever since I was little, Hello Kitty was just the only character. . . . I’ve seen it everywhere. It’s like imprinted in my mind. Her face. I really don’t know. It’s weird. I just always see her face in my mind. It’s scary. —  Hello Kitty fan, twenty-­four years old, personal communication, May 5, 2011, Honolulu

I feel like I’m a walking advertisement. —  Becky Hui, fan and Sanrio employee, twenty-­seven years old, personal communication, June 21, 2002, South San Francisco

Happiness tinged with pink, in fact, seduces as a mysterious presence in the confessions of many adult fans, as quoted above. The seemingly inexplicable attraction of Hello Kitty makes many consumers in various parts of the globe speak of her with both intimacy and awe as something they hold close yet do not fully understand. This may not be quite as mysterious as it seems; after all, as Thomas LaMarre explains, “We can never quite be sure what it is that we are enjoying (or why): something of our experience always remains obscure to us, remains unconscious” (2009:242). And yet, the inexplicable nature of fans’ pleasure of Hello Kitty generates a certain amount of their talk about her. In their narratives, she is at one and the same time an affecting presence, a mouthless sphinx, and, unmistakably, a product. She poses the kawaii al-

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lure of not just being cute, but so cute, particularly through her “charm of muteness,” as the novelist Ursula LeGuin expresses it. In global fans’ talk, mute cuteness itself carries the force of obfuscation. This chapter examines Kitty consumption among different segments of her fandom among adults outside Japan as constituent elements of pink globalization. It combines the corporate backdrop provided by chapter 2 with first the sites of consumption, then the personal stories of consumers to address the complex set of interactions, practices, and most importantly, meanings given Hello Kitty in her “here, there, nearly everywhere” settings. If, as we saw in the previous chapter, Sanrio itself emphasizes friendship and happiness as the core message of its cat, then this chapter examines ways in which that core message embeds itself in the settings of consumption and people’s lives. How does she become a friend? And more to the point, what kind of (mute, cute) friend is she? The fact that she is a friend dependent on her purchase or whose relationship may be summed up as “a walking advertisement,” as expressed above, does not bother Hello Kitty fans in the least. For them, the seductiveness of her allure and the excitement of continued consumer acquisition building a growing and unending collection stoke the fires of an ongoing “friendship.” Hello Kitty’s global span did not reach out and touch everyone equally or all at the same time. Kitty’s trek in the United States began in Asian American – based enclaves and corporate stores in the 1970s, eventually moving into all-­American merchandising meccas such as Walmart and Target, as well as specialty shops such as fao Schwarz (toys) and Hot Topic (youth-­oriented, popular-­music-­inspired culture), and inevitably to online shopping sites. By the 1990s and 2000s, the ubiquity of Hello Kitty normalizes her presence in global consumer cultures that transcend their original youth market. This chapter focuses on Hello Kitty’s multiple market vectors primarily in the United States, including Asian American, Hispanic, mainstream (children and adult “girls”), and even male niches. Although my observations and conversations regarding Hello Kitty consumption have spanned different continents, my in-­ depth interviews have been with these American fans. My telling of Hello Kitty’s global story moves in this and subsequent chapters to places of purchase and voices of fans. A specific sector of voices that I analyze here is that of the collector, a particular subset of Hello Kitty consumers that many would consider extreme in psychology and practices. In fact, several of those whom I interviewed 120  •  chapter three

readily admit to the obsessive nature of their fandom, often laughing self-­deprecatingly as they tell me their stories. Here is unabashed commodity fetishism in its classic Marxist formulation. These extreme fans are familiar with the snide glances and overt scorn of other consumers and nonconsumers alike who are critical of such Kitty-­based excessiveness, especially over what some interpret as a mere child’s toy. They have learned to live within such critique; some even build identities from it. Of course, not all fans of Hello Kitty are as extreme as these. The greater majority profess liking Sanrio’s cat, but not necessarily making a hobby of purchasing her. In this chapter I gather various consumer voices in order to address the attractions of Sanrio’s cat and the ways in which she has become embedded in their lives. Some readers may feel that the fan interviews I quote here represent an overload of sentiment, a barrage of capitalist frenzy, a besotted attachment to a commodity. Without apology, I agree, and suggest that these readers skip over the interviews themselves and head to the conclusions I draw from them at the end of the chapter. But, in my mind, this overloaded barrage is exactly the point. Most fans I spoke with concur that their desire for such feline acquisition goes far beyond rational explanation into the realm of insatiable hunger. The question that this chapter circumscribes is, Hunger for what (in the collective plural)?

Geographies of Purchase: Asian America and Beyond Let us turn first to the physical and virtual contexts in which that hunger may be constituted and fulfilled. The anthropologist Elizabeth Chin, who studied African American girls’ consumption patterns, points out the importance of going beyond examining what people buy into where they buy it: “Geographic spaces . . . are as important to consumption as are individual desires, likes, and dislikes. . . . Aside from providing children with different commodities to purchase or covet, these distinct geographic locations open up (and close off) various spaces for play, fears, and fantasies” (2001:176 – 77). Thus purchasing Hello Kitty within the ethnic enclave of a small Chinatown or Japan town shop becomes a different kind of experiential foray than purchasing the cat in a Walmart megastore or at Target.com. In short, the context of buying — from location of shop to floor space to aesthetic display to type and range of goods to individual shop seller — imbues the act of purchase with different kinds of associative meanings. The link with other goods and sites carves out a semantic global kitty nearly everywhere   •  121

space for the cat. Buying a Hello Kitty key chain in a small Chinatown shop crammed with other Asian items — from incense burners to black bean sauce — contextualizes Hello Kitty in highly particularistic ways, tying the cat constantly to Asia as a geopolitical space and to myriad other culturally linked items. Hello Kitty in this specifically Asian American setting exists as one of many products from overseas, sometimes in dusty plastic wrapping, bound to an immigrant setting that is itself historically embedded and constantly changing. For many Asian Americans who have since left these settings, Hello Kitty may nostalgically remind them of these earlier experiences, shopping “Asia” in America. Another form of shopping Asia in America may be found in the numerous Sanrio stores throughout the United States (as well as Sanrio’s website, www.sanrio.com, that calls itself the “Home of Hello Kitty”). Because the physical stores exist outside ethnic enclaves, in suburban shopping malls and central urban areas, the success of these Sanrio stores suggests the first corporate moves of Hello Kitty goods toward a broader public in the United States. The first of these opened in 1976 in Eastridge Mall in San Jose, California, serving a population that included a high proportion of Asians and Asian Americans. As of 2010, Sanrio products are sold in more than twelve thousand locations in North and South America, including department, specialty, national chain stores, and more than eighty-­five Sanrio boutiques, called Sanrio Surprises. In 2010, those boutiques came to be operated not by Sanrio, but by another Japanese corporation, Nakajima USA, Inc. (a subsidiary of Nakajima Corporation; aka Nakajima Japan), which has taken over much of Sanrio product design and manufacture in the United States.1 A full account of Hello Kitty in the United States, thus, must attend to the day-­to-­day operations and decision making that are handled by Nakajima USA, rather than by Sanrio. Founded in 1919 as a family-­run company, Nakajima Corporation has been in the business of creating its own plush, collectibles, and seasonal toys and gifts, and more importantly, managing other companies with similar specialties. The Nakajima USA website explains the relationship with Sanrio, developed to address a changing marketplace in a short article entitled “The Power of Brand”: “Within this changing retail landscape, Nakajima has collaborated with Sanrio, Inc. to develop new products, redesign and rollout innovative store formats and implement strong in-­store promotions” (Nakajima USA:n.d.). Thus, Nakajima USA obtained stewardship of Sanrio and its products as a brand strategy in the 2000s. A glance at the Nakajima USA 122  •  chapter three

website shows some of the different directions that this company is taking Sanrio and its products. For one, whereas in my previous interviews at Sanrio, Inc., headquarters, managers explicitly stated that part of Sanrio’s policy was not to advertise, the Nakajima USA website displays more aggressive promotional campaigns. Second, whereas previously Sanrio, Inc., seemed like a fairly close-­knit operation — with many employees firmly committed to its products, and especially to Hello Kitty (as detailed in chapter 2) — now under a larger corporate umbrella, the relationship between Nakajima USA employees and Sanrio products seems more distant and contractual. After all, Sanrio is only one of several brands that Nakajima USA manages. In 2010 other brands managed by Nakajima USA include potential Sanrio competitors in the field of Asian (American)-­influenced girl culture: Angry Little Girls, originally a self-­reflexive Asian American video and comic series by Leela Lee in 1998, expanded to products featuring Kim, the angry little Asian Girl (“She’s one short-­tempered little girl. Grrr!” www.angrylittlegirls.com); and Harajuku Lovers, a clothing and product line launched by the singer Gwen Stefani in 2005, inspired by the youth culture of Shibuya, Tokyo. Both Angry Little Girls and Harajuku Lovers form distinct American-­ based extensions of pink globalization. These two brands, combined with Sanrio, make Nakajima USA a notable empire of Japanese Cute-­ Cool and its derivatives in the United States. Nakajima USA’s website provides further insights into the target market and image for its umbrella of branded products, including Hello Kitty. A photo gallery on the home page of www.nakajimausa.com displayed child and adult female models cuddling and wearing primarily Sanrio products. Of the fourteen photos displayed in June 2010, two showed adult women in their twenties, one depicted a very young elementary-­school girl, and the rest pictured girls in the category known as tweens. Besides age, race plays a significantly marked category in the photos. The photo gallery presents a multiracial display of blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, and mixed-­race females. None of the photos shows a white girl by herself; instead, whenever there is a white model, she is always juxtaposed with a girl of color. Girls of color, however, are displayed by themselves or with others.2 In short, girls of color perform center-­stage in Nakajima’s imaging. The photo gallery sheds light on the marketing and imaging of Hello Kitty in the United States. First, the use of amateurs as models (as indicated by a casting call on Nakajima USA’s website) provides a sense of verity, proof of the widespread popularity of Hello Kitty that goes beglobal kitty nearly everywhere   •  123

yond celebrities. Second, suggested by the photos, Hello Kitty is no longer necessarily only Asian (American); she is multiracial, multicultural, and, to an extent, multigenerational. More specifically, Hello Kitty reflects a youth-­oriented, female, Southern California – branded blend of races and cultures that includes whites, but only in the context of African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and admixtures of the above. Third, the racial mix of Southern California stands in for the United States itself, or at least that segment of the American population that might be interested in goods branded by the corporation. Nakajima USA presents Hello Kitty as an icon in this Southern California melting pot of consumerism focused on Asian-­linked goods. Of course, it is difficult to know exactly who might access the Nakajima USA website, and for what purposes. Never­theless, given that Nakajima USA, with Sanrio, Inc., now takes responsibility for much of the branding, including boutique stores, it is safe to assume that the message and general direction of the website pervades most Sanrio merchandising throughout the United States. In this age of Internet shopping, there are many kinds of Asian-­linked sites — besides the obvious Nakajima USA and Sanrio websites — that tie Hello Kitty to Asian American images in different ways. Even when Asian Americans do not run these Internet sites, the link to Asia or Asian America is clear through the language, graphics, and goods themselves. The website All Things Kawaii, established in August 2001 by Valerie Franek, originally posted cute photos and items; however, more recently it lists various shopping sites for those who want to consume Asian cute goods, including Hello Kitty. In addition to the use of the Japanese word kawaii as part of the name of the site, the logo is notably a Hello Kitty – like cat (sans bow). All Things Kawaii lists 228 shopping sites of Asian cute goods (as of June 2010), complete with ratings and reviews. For example, one such shopping site, the Canadian Dreamkitty, focuses on Hello Kitty, as well as other Sanrio characters (www.dream kitty.com). The frequency with which All Things Kawaii and various other shopping sites reference Hello Kitty provides some indication of the central position of Hello Kitty within what I call pink globalization. One shopping website that handles Hello Kitty among a myriad of popular culture goods from Japan is J-­List (“a wonderful toybox of things from Japan”; www.jlist.com) and its companion J-­Box (for those under eighteen, or not interested in “adult goods”; www.jbox.com). Established in 1996, J-­List and J-­Box are run by “Peter,” a forty-­one-­year-­old American, former English-­language teacher, and San Diego State University 124  •  chapter three

graduate who has been resident in Japan since 1991, and his Japanese wife, Chiharu. “Peter” sets the tone for the website, which is chatty, informal, and humorous. The website staff of thirteen includes Americans, Japanese, and Europeans, and its primary office is maintained in Isesaki (Gunma prefecture, north of Tokyo), as well as another in San Diego, California. On such a website, Hello Kitty rubs shoulders with the following kinds of items: Japanese magazines, photo-­books, dating-­sim games, manga, dvds, calendars, anime, T-­shirts, toys, items for kosupure (“costume play”; wearing costumes of characters, typically from anime or manga), food, bentō (lunchbox) paraphernalia, as well as R-­rated sex toys, dvds, calendars, and Asian pornography. In other words, Hello Kitty shares the electronic stockroom shelves with the very products of Cool Japan (including schoolgirl pornography) discussed in chapters 1 and 7. Websites such as J-­List and J-­Box demonstrate the range of associative meanings given Hello Kitty through this shared stockroom, here run primarily by Americans resident in Japan and Japanese engaged in the English-­speaking world. Pink globalization of Hello Kitty in the 1990s and 2000s engages in this kind of electronic connection directly to Asia. One particularly noteworthy Asian American site selling Hello Kitty is Giant Robot, in both its physical and online retailing manifestations. Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong, both University of California at Los Angeles graduates, began Giant Robot in 1994 as an alternative-­culture magazine about all-­things-­cool-­and-­Asian, inspired by their own backgrounds in the punk rock zine scene. The beginnings and ethos of Giant Robot embody a deliberately created subcultural niche that may have begun with an independent zine/magazine, extended to small stores in Los Angeles and San Francisco selling subcultural niche products such as toy robots, figurines, and T-­shirts, and further extended to Internet sales and blogs. According to their website, half of their customers are of Asian ancestry.3 The items sold by Giant Robot differ from that of J-­List and J-­Box in that they exhibit more of a punk aesthetic, reflecting the founders, Nakamura and Wong. Unlike the expat-­American preferences of those resident in Japan (e.g., J-­List and J-­Box), Giant Robot provides a decidedly hip Asian American take on things Japanese. Here is Asian American “cool,” and Hello Kitty within it. Sanrio’s product within the Giant Robot setting thus shares the virtual and real stockroom shelves with the hipness of toy robots, humorous art (including that by the Japanese artists Takashi Murakami and Nara Yoshitomo), street or graffiti T-­shirts (e.g., Shepard Fairey’s obey line),4 and other items that circumscribe an art-­infused, global kitty nearly everywhere   •  125

ironically framed, politically directed, alternative-­culture lifestyle. Hello Kitty within this setting may be interpreted as an Asian-­based counterculture to an American mainstream, especially as designed and directed by politicized Asian American youth. Hello Kitty items preselected and framed within a Giant Robot setting thus signify the possibilities of pink globalization inhabiting an edgy, alternative Asian American lifestyle. One last context of Hello Kitty consumption that needs mention has little to do with Asian America but everything to do with American-­based globalization — that is, McDonald’s. Since 1999, Sanrio and McDonald’s have sporadically cooperated in offering Hello Kitty toys and other goods as premiums with McDonald’s Happy Meals. Creating this kind of cooperative agreement with a major global company such as McDonald’s only confirms, in fact and image, Sanrio’s place within a major hub of global consumption. In fact, media coverage of this tie-­up focused far more on its manifestation in Asia (especially Singapore) than in the United States or elsewhere. Because these McDonald’s/Hello Kitty premiums are limited to those who purchase or receive them with other McDonald’s offerings, and who do so within a limited time frame, the resultant objects can easily become collector’s items, for sale in places such as eBay to the highest bidder. Hello Kitty in conjunction with McDonald’s thus participates in the limited-­edition framework of value for collectors, even as it spreads throughout the globe, arm in arm with industries of mass consumption aimed in part, though not exclusively, at children. In fact, it is Hello Kitty’s associative meanings as inclusive global figure that positions the work of pink globalization at its extreme: thus, no longer exclusively Asian, Asian American, youth, or female; simultaneously retaining all, some, or none of these at some level. Here lies the ambiguous wink of Hello Kitty. Not all Hello Kitty fans would necessarily agree with, for example, Giant Robot’s selection of items for sale nor the kinds of meanings given Sanrio’s cat by McDonald’s Happy Meals. Nevertheless, with the unmistakable imprint of Hello Kitty, the contradictory yet overlapping set of meanings is exactly the sweet punch of pink globalization in its trans-­Pacific trek.

Hello Kitty as Mall Denizen, from Tweens to Adults One of the most obvious links between Hello Kitty and at least some of her fans is her feline nature: it stands to reason that among Hello Kitty’s global fans, a number may be cat fanciers. One such fan is K. S., a 126  •  chapter three

white female in her sixties who works as an executive director of a social service organization in Minnesota and is a cat lover. She describes her encounter with Hello Kitty as follows: I bought a ceramic Hello Kitty in the 1970s. I was a student at the University of Minnesota at the time and saw it in a gift store near campus. I didn’t know her name until years after. I bought it because it was cute. I used it for many years as a decoration on the placemats for my pet cats’ feeding and watering bowls. Then about three years ago I was at a cat show and many of the exhibitors had maneki neko [Japanese figurines of begging cats used in business to encourage sales] on top of their cat cages. . . . So I started looking for one for myself. Last summer I went on vacation to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore and I finally found some in gift stores there. One of the clerks gave me an information sheet about maneki nekos. He said that a loose translation is “Welcoming Cats” and that that derived into “Hello Kitty.” I was so surprised! Here I had had a maneki neko all along! Last December while Xmas shopping at the Mall of America, I came upon a whole store full of Hello Kitties. It was like heaven for me! I bought a whole bunch of stuff then. So since then my husband and I give each other Hello Kitties and maneki nekos whenever we can. They look great massed in a collection. (Personal communication, June 16, 1999) Although based on a fictitious (and erroneous, as far as I can tell) connection between the Japanese figurine maneki neko and Hello Kitty, what draws K. S. to Sanrio’s icon is cats. She shared with me photos of her cat display at home (see figure 3.1), which includes framed images of her cats (past and present), maneki neko, and Hello Kitty. K. S. changes the display seasonally. Although some Sanrio consumers such as K. S. vividly recall their first encounter with Hello Kitty, others remember only a gradual co­ existence with Sanrio’s cat from an early age. This may come about in the form of small gifts here and there, and then extend into active buying. For example, one Honolulu woman in her thirties recalls: “I can’t even remember how young I started. I only remember my mom giving me little gifts. But even now when I go into Sanrio stores I feel the same as I felt before [when I was a child buying Hello Kitty], excited. I want to buy everything! It’s weird. It doesn’t change. I’m like, ‘My god! I’ve gotta get that, I’ve gotta get this!’ ” (personal communication, July 2, 2002). global kitty nearly everywhere   •  127

3.1. Display of one fan’s Hello Kitty collection (1999).

What I find striking is the ways in which many adult fans express exactly this kind of helplessness in the face of such consumer desire. For them, to know Kitty is to want to own her — repeatedly, obsessively.

Interview: Adult Female Fan Profile — R . K. The first fan interview transcript I include in this book is with R. K., a white, middle-­aged (b. 1962) female resident of Hawai’i (originally from Columbus, Ohio), who worked for the U.S. Navy as an information technology specialist at the time of our interview. I begin here and include this transcript as one of the longest in the book, embedding R. K.’s words within an interaction that often includes my own astonishment. R. K. represents an extreme fan — a “girlie-­girl” by her own admission, known as “Ms. Kitty” to her coworkers, sporting a tattoo of Hello Kitty on her ankle, protective of Kitty’s image, surrounding herself in a Kitty bubble, 24/7. She takes Sanrio’s icon as her personal totem with equal parts humor and reverence. I arranged to meet R. K.at a bookstore in Honolulu on April 27, 2006. Unlike other fans whom I interviewed, R. K. was introduced to Hello Kitty as an adult — in fact, after moving to Hawai’i, while shopping for her son’s school supplies. R. K. remembers the first time she laid eyes on Hello Kitty and describes the moment as life changing. She talks about her own defenselessness in being drawn to Sanrio’s cat, so much so that she simply has to buy it. Indeed, buy it she does, from jewelry to furniture to the Kitty tattoo she sports on her ankle. She finds commonality between different women who also buy Hello Kitty, suggesting that liking the cat means a host of shared consumption patterns — feminine fashions, willingness to spend money on designer bags and jewelry — quite apart from any Sanrio goods. Off-­tape she confessed that in planning her upcoming wedding, she wanted it to be a Hello Kitty ceremony, and that she plans to renovate their house with a Hello Kitty swimming pool and as much Hello Kitty decor as she can. Why? Because Hello Kitty represents an upbeat character and mood — in her words, “girly,” “happy,” and thoroughly, unremittingly pink. In R. K.’s words one may find echoes of Baudrillard’s notion of objects as mirrors upon their owners — here, not so much owner projecting herself upon the object, but the object projecting itself onto her (1996). C. Y.: So tell me, how did you get introduced to Hello Kitty? R. K.: Well, my son was going to Lanakila Baptist School, and we were shopping. I remember back in Waipahu [area of Honoglobal kitty nearly everywhere   •  129

lulu] in the town center they used to have a Sanrio store. It was years and years ago. And my son wanted Keroppi [a Sanrio frog]. He said he wanted some school supplies like that and I saw Kitty in there, and I said, “She is just the cutest thing I have ever seen!” So that was just amazing! C. Y.: And you had never seen Hello Kitty before? R. K.: No, I had never seen her before. C. Y.: About what year was this? R. K.: Like ’91, when I moved here [to Hawai’i]. And I saw these Sanrio stores [in Honolulu], and I said everyone here is crazy about these things. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I just thought it was just so girly, so happy. It’s a happy thing. It makes you feel good. And so I just started getting little things here and there. C. Y.: And when you saw Hello Kitty for the first time, what went through your mind? R. K.: Well, the first thing is she had no mouth. C. Y.: What did you think of that? R. K.: I thought it was strange because it’s so happy but there’s no smile. Do you know what I mean? It’s like how can it put a smile on your face and she doesn’t have a smile? That was my first impression and then I thought, “It’s just too cute!” I just had to get it. Something draws you to it. C. Y.: Now when you first saw it, did you know it was from Japan? R. K.: I had no idea. It’s interesting ’cause when I was a kid and you saw a product from Japan, you immediately thought it was cheap. But now, when I learned it was from Japan, I thought it must be a quality product. C. Y.: So the image of Japan has changed from when you were a kid? R. K.: Tremendously. C. Y.: Now, you were describing Hello Kitty as girly. Would you describe yourself as girly? 130  •  chapter three

R. K.: Yeah, always. Always loved pink. C. Y.: From when you were little? R. K.: From when I was little. So it was just like a natural evolution for me. C. Y.: In what ways besides Hello Kitty do you express your girliness, now? R. K.: Love of pink, love of anything feminine. Yeah, always got to get the pink nails. I have a lot of pink. I love Victoria’s Secret Pink; I love Juicy Couture and the pink bags. C. Y.: What else do you like and feel is girly? R. K.: I like scrapbooking, and Hello Kitty’s just gotten into that area as well. So I just bought their scrapbooking supplies. . . . I have Lucy Liu and Sophia, my two Chihuahuas, and they wear Hello Kitty by Little Lily [designer dog wear]. I always buy pink for them. So they have the pink outfit — it has like a little Marilyn Monroe kinda leopard collar and then it has Kitty on the back. C. Y.: Oh my gosh. R. K.: And they love Kitty, but they’re dogs; they like her. They have their own room and it’s all Kitty. C. Y.: You’re kidding! R. K.: I have like a four-­bedroom house and it’s just me and my boyfriend and my son that live there, so we have a couple extra bedrooms. So I did one for the babies [Chihuahuas], so they have their own room with their clothes and a bed. C. Y.: Now you’re talking about your Chihuahuas? R. K.: My Chihuahuas, yeah. They have the Hello Kitty thing over the bed. It’s netting. Their room is purple Kitty and my master bedroom suite is pink Kitty. C. Y.: And what does your boyfriend make of all this? R. K.: He buys me a lot of this kind of stuff — he puts up with it. All my friends always buy me Kitty. Although now it’s hard because they don’t know what to buy because I have so much. global kitty nearly everywhere   •  131

C. Y.: You’re not running out of space are you? R. K.: Ummm [laughs] I’ve kinda given up on the dolls, and I go more towards the Japanese Kitty, the porcelain Kitty. In my job a lot of our folks go to Japan and they will bring me back the porcelain Kitty, the guys that go. So I’ve collected those, and then they have the pictures with the traditional Japanese ware — I have that in my room. C. Y.: Have you ever been to Japan? R. K.: No, and everyone tells me not to go because I’ll be broke. No one wants me to go there — that’s out of the question [laughs]. I’m forbidden, not allowed to go. My best friend, she’s from here and she’s Japanese [American] and she’s been [to Japan] several times. And she just says, “You can’t go.” First of all you’ll have a nervous breakdown ’cause there’s so much and you won’t know what to get. And Christmas stuff, oh good lord! I have a Christmas Kitty tree, I have pictures of it. ’Cause it’s all in the years of her, ’cause they come out with collector’s items, and they have the collector’s ornaments and bells and all that, so I have a white tree in my master bedroom. It’s totally Kitty Christmas, every year. C. Y.: Is it strange or ironic that here you are working for the navy, which might sound like sort of a more masculine kind of thing, and you’re a real girly girl with the Hello Kitty kind of thing? R. K.: Yes, and besides, there’s hardly any women who do what I do [information technology]. Computers, men have just taken over that — it’s crazy. And they kinda give me a lot of leeway and understand because I like doing graphics and I do a lot of content, I’m a content manager. So the guys, they know the graphics people like me are kinda different, so they kinda accept it that way. C. Y.: Does anybody ever put any kind of constraints on you as far as work and Hello Kitty stuff goes? R. K.: Oh no, never. In fact I was telling the department head that I was gonna meet you and he goes, “Make sure you tell her we’re 132  •  chapter three

an anti-­Kitty environment!” [laughs]. But no, she’s [Kitty] all over my cubicle, screensavers, everything. In fact I think at one time while we were moving and I didn’t have ’em [Hello Kitty decor] up, some of the guys who always complain about it said, “Well I kinda really miss her” and “Are you gonna bring her back?” C. Y.: Now you said some guys do complain. What do they complain about? R. K.: I think they complain because they like to tease me about it. Like, “Oh I can’t stand her [Kitty’s] face” or like my boss will always go, “When are you gonna get rid of that stupid cat?” You know, she’s a Kitty, not a cat. And then he’ll just start laughing. Or he’ll e-­mail me pictures of ugly-­looking cats. They like to tease me about it. But they’re not serious. One of the developers — he’s real accurate with rubber bands — he can like get a cockroach off the wall just by shooting — you know what I’m talking about? So he used to say, “Look I can hit Kitty’s nose from this distance!” Like fifty feet! And he’d take the rubber band back and say, “See? I got the nose!” That kind of thing. C. Y.: Do you think it works, does it affect them at all that you have a Hello Kitty space in their environment? R. K.: I don’t know. I think it makes them happy. I think it’s something, people like to come visit when I’m helping them with web design and they enjoy looking at everything. And a lot of the guys will come in and they’ll say, “Oh, my daughter would love it here” or “I feel like I walked into a Sanrio store.” But really I don’t have that much there. I have lamps, Kitty lamps, all the stationery, and a few dolls, and well — I have a lot, OK [laughs]. But not compared to home. C. Y.: Of all the things that you have, what Hello Kitty item is most valuable to you? Not necessarily in terms of money but in terms of how you feel? R. K.: Oh, my tattoo. C. Y.: Oh, tell me about getting your tattoo. global kitty nearly everywhere   •  133

R. K.: I saw on the website that girls were getting Hello Kitty tattoos and they were getting them like on their shoulders and stuff, and I always thought that I wanna get a Hello Kitty tattoo. And then I just happened to be in Waikiki and, actually this Kitty was on my checkbook cover, and he [tattooist] said he could do it, and he sketched it, and I got it done right on my ankle. C. Y.: When did you get it done? R. K.: Probably about a year and a half ago. C. Y.: And how did you feel about it? R. K.: Oh, I loved it. It’s my favorite. I have a couple of tattoos, like I have heaven and earth, the Japanese writing, and then I have a honu [turtle] the Hawaiian for my son on my back, but this is the only one that shows Kitty. C. Y.: How do you feel now that you have a tattoo, a Hello Kitty tattoo on your ankle? R. K.: Great! She’ll always be with me. I just wanted to have that happiness with me. I mean it may sound weird, ’cause I’m in my forties and I love Hello Kitty and it’s kinda odd. C. Y.: So how much do you estimate you spend a month or a year on Hello Kitty? R. K.: Oh gosh. I’d say when I make a trip to the Sanrio store and they have something new. C. Y.: Which is every month? R. K.: Yeah, like they just had the garden stuff, the wind chimes and the pots, too, I just bought all that. Maybe a couple hundred a month. Christmas a little more, the off-­season a little less, you know, Neiman Marcus, ridiculous. C. Y.: So can you just tell me what you bought at Neiman Marcus, sort of high-­ticket-­item Hello Kitty things? R. K.: Oh, I bought the necklace, which is like my bracelet, and she has the Pave diamonds on the top, and then jewels with the white head, these went around $750 each. So the bracelet and 134  •  chapter three

the necklace that would be $1,400. And then the watch was $1,500 when I bought it, but they’ve gone up recently to $1,900, and I didn’t like the band so I bought the Neiman Marcus band to go with it. So that was another $200 to $300. And then the ring of course was $2,000. And then I do have the little ring, the white head ring and that’s only like $250 [laughs]. C. Y.: And you bought these over a span of about how much time? R. K.: Well, this line only came out about a year ago. C. Y.: Do you wear these things every day? R. K.: Every day. C. Y.: So it’s not as if you put them on for this interview or anything like that? R. K.: No. I’m true to Kitty. C. Y.: Is there anything in particular that you’re sort of coveting? R. K.: Oh, yeah, the furniture. C. Y.: The furniture? R. K.: They have a Kitty armoire, and a computer desk, and a bed, and side tables. C. Y.: How much are they? For example the armoire? R. K.: They’re expensive, like $500. C. Y.: What color scheme, in general? R. K.: Pink and white. And it’s got the glass — it’s kinda like a smoked glass and then it has the etching, it’s really nice. I want the armoire to hang my Chihuahuas’ clothes in. But I just can’t justify it; I just can’t. Not when they have their own closet [laughs]. C. Y.: Now you said that there are other women who are collectors at the Sanrio store, so there’s kind of a connection, or something. Could you just talk about that a little bit? R. K.: Yeah, it’s funny because sometimes you just kinda look around at the clientele and you see what kind of people are shopping global kitty nearly everywhere   •  135

in there. And I’m like, “Oh my god, they’re like me!” Like the girls in there, you can tell we like the same things outside of Kitty. C. Y.: How can you tell? R. K.: Because we’ll be wearing the same jewelry. C. Y.: And it’s not even Kitty? R. K.: It’s, yeah. Like I said Tiffany and Company seems to be really in with Kitty people [fans], with Sanrio people. And designer bags like Coach or L. V. [Louis Vuitton], that kinda thing, Prada. C. Y.: So this is not even Hello Kitty, but it’s like a certain kind of person buying certain things? R. K.: Right, yeah. Like I like Lilly Pulitzer clothes ’cause they’re bright and pink, and I see a lot of people [at the Sanrio store] with this same thing that I like. Or like Juicy bags, Juicy Couture is very pink and feminine, and so it’s just weird. C. Y.: If you were to describe your type of people or this type of people, besides pink and feminine, are there any other adjectives that you could think of that could sort of get at that? R. K.: I think you can’t be an unhappy person and like Sanrio. ’Cause I don’t think people who aren’t happy with themselves and happy with life would like it. It’s bigger than the Kitty; it’s something about the way you are. It’s not just about Kitty, it’s about being able to get what you like in life and be happy with it. And that kinda sums it up. C. Y.: Do you ever find yourself projecting yourself onto Hello Kitty? R. K.: The opposite maybe. I mean she projects onto me. C. Y.: Oh, how? R. K.: How I perceive her makes me feel better. Like if I feel really down or something and I go to the Sanrio store and buy something and I see her — I’m happy. So she projects out like, I can smile. It’s kind of an escape.

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C. Y.: Did you ever see the Kitty line at Hot Topic? R. K.: Yeah, the bad Kitty. C. Y.: Do you like it? R. K.: No. C. Y.: OK, why not? R. K.: I like pink; I like happy. C. Y.: So that was more black and red. R. K.: Yeah. And they had bad Kitty and she had piercings — I didn’t like that. So I don’t want Hot Topic products, ’cause she’s not bad. That’s awful. It’s just not right. There’s a lot of unsanctioned products out there. I don’t care for that. They’re cheap; they’re tacky. Someone mentioned one to me that really made me mad. C. Y.: Really? What was it? R. K.: It was the vibrator. That really upset me ’cause I think that’s disgusting. Some guy at work told me about it, “Hey, I was surfing on the web the other day and you won’t believe what I found.” I said, “I’m not speaking to you for a week,” and he said, “If that’s all it took I would have told you about it sooner” [laughs]. C. Y.: But at least they can kid with you. They wouldn’t even say that to you if they didn’t think you could take it. R. K.: Oh yeah, definitely. In fact it’s funny ’cause the girls, the secretaries, call me “Ms. Kitty.” C. Y.: They call you Ms. Kitty? R. K.: Yeah, today we took them out for lunch, and I get them something and I write on the bag “From Ms. Kitty.” They say, “Thanks, Kitty!” C. Y.: That’s great! This has been so interesting talking with you. Thanks, Kitty!

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Asian American Fans: Consuming Selves Although white American fans may not initially recognize Hello Kitty’s direct tie to Japan, one segment of consumers knows that tie well — that is, Asian Americans. In fact, the place of Asian American females in the first wave of Hello Kitty’s overseas fandom is too often ignored by journalists and scholars eager to track the spread of Japanese goods in global markets. Asian Americans females were among Hello Kitty’s first North American fans, through both gifts sent from Japan and early distribution centered around Asian-­linked stores. One Japanese American woman I interviewed, who grew up in the Los Angeles area during the 1970s, recalls that during her childhood Hello Kitty was considered such an Asian American item that one of her girlfriends was nicknamed “Hello Kitty” because of her fondness for Sanrio’s cat, as well as the roundness of her face. In fact, she notes with regret that Hello Kitty’s widespread availability in the 2000s makes her nostalgic for the days when the cat was “exclusively theirs” [Asian Americans’] and stood as an ethnic female symbol. She is not alone. Other Asian American females I spoke with express a combination of ethnic pride, possessiveness, and identification with Hello Kitty. They feel both pleased that she has been so successful (“hometown cat made good”), as well as wistful that Sanrio’s very success has propelled Hello Kitty out of the confines of ethnic enclaves into the anonymity of Walmart or even online shopping. In fact, the trek of Sanrio’s cat parallels their own: just as many Asian Americans have left Chinatowns and Japan towns behind, so, too, has Hello Kitty. Leaving ethnic separateness for more integrated neighborhoods have been marks of a certain kind of assimilative achievement, both for Asian Americans and for Hello Kitty. This parallel suggests that “blending in” among goods on Walmart’s shelves may coincide with “blending in” of Asian Americans in corporate boardrooms, government offices, and university settings. Indeed, Hello Kitty may serve all too well as a model-­ minority symbol — a quiet, unobtrusive, feminized presence. There is yet another aspect to Asian American consumption of Hello Kitty — the possibilities of diasporic “remittances.” For instance, Kandice Kido, an assistant manager of the Sanrio store in Honolulu at the time of interview, noted that among her regular customers are Asians (Chinese, Filipinos) whom she strongly suspects are sending Hello Kitty items back to Asia. “There’s this one customer — she spends a lot. Like maybe every time she’s there [at the Sanrio store] she spends maybe 138  •  chapter three

like $500. I think she’s from, she’s Chinese, I think she’s foreign. She might be sending it to her family, I think. And there’s some Filipino families that spend a lot of money to send it over to the Philippines for their kids. They spend a lot of money!” (personal communication, July 2, 2002). In this sense, then, Hello Kitty can be thought of as the Japanese cat who crosses the Pacific to the United States and effectively becomes part of refracted transnational gifting from one Asian setting to another. The lines of gifting follow gendered and kin ties, maintaining trans-­Pacific relationships and obligations. Within this context, Hello Kitty is the quintessential Asian diasporic commodity of choice.

Interview: Asian American Fan Profile — Becky Hui One of Hello Kitty’s biggest fans I interviewed is Becky Hui (b. 1975), a second-­generation Chinese American (parents born in Hong Kong) who grew up in San Francisco. At the time of my interview in 2002, Hui worked for Sanrio, Inc., as a Home Office Stores supervisor — a dream job for a Hello Kitty fan. In fact, she is Sanrio’s dream employee because of her enthusiastic fandom, and she has been featured as a superfan on the company website. With long, straight black hair and eyes that sparkle whenever she talks about Hello Kitty, Hui recounts at length her Sanrio-­filled life history. She talks about her life as a series of encounters with different Sanrio characters, from My Melody the bunny and Little Twin Stars, boy and girl siblings; to Keroppi the frog; to Badtz-­ Maru the black penguin; and finally to the most intense, long-­lasting relationship — or inexplicable “obsession,” as she puts it — with Hello Kitty. Here is Baudrillard’s concept of “serial intimacy” (1996). Hui’s story is particularly valuable as a frank discussion of a relationship with Hello Kitty as an “evocative object” (Turkle 2007). In no small way, Hello Kitty has been Hui’s “thing to think with” (Fiske, quoted in the introduction; Turkle 2007), and even more significant, a “thing to feel with” — braving dentist offices (see the following interview) and friends’ censure, extending a hand of sociality, confident in her mantle of Kitty-­ infused happiness. In other words, Hello Kitty acts as a material conduit for Hui’s thoughts and emotions. Aside from Hello Kitty offering her cute, comforting companionship, Hui says that she cannot explain the attraction she initially felt toward her. For Hui, though, Kitty’s message is clear and simple: happiness and friendship, believed with a fervor that can approach the evangelical. She shares that belief with other Sanrio employees (see chapter 2) and collectors, most of whom support global kitty nearly everywhere   •  139

each other, and a few of whom vie with each other for particular objects to add to their stash, resulting in what Baudrillard calls a “sequestered object” — a prize rendered valuable for its hoarding (1996:105). The following is a condensed version of my interview with Hui, conducted on June 21, 2002, at Sanrio, Inc., headquarters in South San Francisco. C. Y.: When did you start working for Sanrio? B. H.: In 1993. Eight and a half years ago. I actually started in the Union Square store downtown, San Francisco. And I moved here [corporate headquarters] a year later, in 1994. C. Y.: What made you want to work for Sanrio? B. H.: It was my childhood dream. C. Y.: Really? Tell me something about how you got interested in Sanrio products. B. H.: Well, when I was little, my sister used to take me to the Sanrio store right across the street from Union Square; I used to shop there. Every Saturday, my mom would bring me and then my sister would bring me to another mall to visit a Sanrio Surprises, and I used to buy surprise bags, you know, you don’t know what’s inside, but it’s exciting. And I’d get little things like pens and candies and my mom would buy me things before I’d go to school on Saturdays, ’cause I’d go to Chinese school, every Saturday. It started with little things like that. Here and there. And then I guess as I got older, things got bigger, purchases got a little bigger, and then when I had my own money to spend, things got really big. C. Y.: What did you think of those Sanrio things that you had? B. H.: I loved it! I actually used to keep everything. I don’t throw anything away, and I even have albums where I would have candy wrappers from when I was little. And I have the little pencils that are sharpened down to like an inch size, and I still have all of them, all the pens that ran out of ink, everything, in drawers. C. Y.: From the beginning then, when you were a child, you had a collector’s kind of mentality. Like not wanting to throw anything away? 140  •  chapter three

B. H.: Yeah, I guess so. Because I still have all my albums of all my stickers and wrappers and everything. C. Y.: Oh my god! Now you said you went through different characters, you went through different phases. Can you tell me what they were? And about how old you were? B. H.: When I was little I actually didn’t like Hello Kitty for some reason. I don’t remember exactly but when I think back I must have liked My Melody and Little Twin Stars [other Sanrio characters], because I notice that’s what I have. C. Y.: Is this about elementary-­school age? B. H.: Younger, younger. Like when it really started, maybe like, six or younger. Probably but just like right from the beginning. Because that’s when I had little coin bags, you know those really classic looking ones and then in, probably junior high, I think I started liking Keroppi [Sanrio frog character], because from then I went to high school and in my high school book somebody drew me a really large Keroppi and everything was Keroppi. Right after I graduated from high school was when I started working at the store, and I remember every time a different line of Keroppi would come, I’d buy it, almost every single item in the line, after work. So I went through my Keroppi phase. And then when Badtz-­Maru [a Sanrio black penguin character] came out, I went through my Badtz-­Maru phase. Everything was Badtz-­Maru — I had to buy everything Badtz-­Maru. And then when My Melody was refeatured, ’cause they brought her back for a while, I went through my My Melody phase. And then after that, around my early twenties, I started liking Kitty and from then ’til now it’s just all about Kitty. . . . And I’m wearing Hello Kitty shoes! C. Y.: Oh! So in your mind, why did you go from one character to another? B. H.: I don’t know exactly what it was. But with Badtz-­Maru I think it was because he was brand new and he was so different, and that just caught my attention and I just like fell in love with him for awhile. But with Keroppi I was seriously in love with him. People used to joke that my kids would turn out looking global kitty nearly everywhere   •  141

like Keroppi and I would name my kids Keroppi because I was so into him. And I was even Keroppi for Halloween one year. And with My Melody it might have been because it made me reminisce from before ’cause I used to like My Melody. That’s the only thing I can think of. But Kitty, I don’t know, I just have this obsession with her. She makes me really happy, I don’t know. I just love Kitty. I just can’t explain it with Hello Kitty. C. Y.: Really? I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about Kitty. You said she makes you feel happy. Can you think of examples of when you sort of needed a Kitty fix or something like that? B. H.: I don’t like going to the dentist and I avoided having to take my wisdom teeth out for years. And just recently maybe, last year, I had to have them removed. . . . And so I was absolutely terrified and I took a small Kitty Angel plush with me to the dentist and it really helped me because I was just really really scared, and the nurse was really nice. I was sitting down in the chair, and she actually had it taped up, and she stuck the Kitty Angel between my legs so that it would stay up, and I could see it. And it made me feel more comfortable and more relaxed. And I got through it! Every time I see the plush now — it’s on my bed — and it kind of reminds me of it. Like, I actually accomplished getting my wisdom teeth out. So Kitty helped me. C. Y.: I’m just wondering how your friends react to Kitty and things like that? B. H.: I have a few coworkers [at Sanrio, Inc.] that are into it almost as much as I am. But besides that I don’t really have friends that actually collect it or use it because everyone’s more grown up now. I guess they grew out of it. But I never grew out of it. C. Y.: What do guys think about this? B. H.: When I would have a boyfriend, they were very supportive. They actually learned about it and people were laughing because . . . they would say, “You know, you’ve got them trained.” I could take them to a store and they could name all the different designs of Kitty — that’s how bad it was. And just recently, my 142  •  chapter three

last boyfriend — he really wanted to learn more about it because it was so important to me. So he would learn all the different characters and little stories behind them and he would actually use the product and he was very interested in it because it was so important to me. So I thought that was nice. C. Y.: Now, when you buy Hello Kitty things, to what extent do you buy it to use, or to what extent do you buy it to collect? B. H.: I think I buy more of it to collect than to use. There are a lot of things, ’cause, everything I use is Kitty, like, if you were to look at my purse, everything in it is Kitty. But I buy more that I collect, I think, like in terms of stickers, when we [Sanrio, Inc.] come out with stickers — sometimes we come out with twenty different stickers at a time — I’ll buy all of them. Because they go into an album. Or like pens. I have a whole fixture for my pen collection. Those just don’t get used. But then I have separate ones, extras, that I use. C. Y.: What’s the most expensive Hello Kitty item thing that you own? B. H.: I think it’s the crystal watch. C. Y.: About how much is it? B. H.: I think it was $250. C. Y.: Retail? B. H.: Yeah. I don’t remember anything else that’s superexpensive. Oh, I do have the snowboard. C. Y.: How much is that? B. H.: It retails for $550, but I got a discount on it, I didn’t pay full retail for it. C. Y.: So you have a snowboard? B. H.: I have two. C. Y.: Two snowboards! Do you use them both? B. H.: Different design. I’ve never gone snowboarding. I need to get boots and binding. global kitty nearly everywhere   •  143

C. Y.: Do you have any other sort of Kitty stories that mean a lot to you? B. H.: Not specifically, but I love to kind of spread the happiness that Kitty brings me by giving it to other people. There was one time where we went out to dinner somewhere and there was a table next to us with a little girl. She was celebrating her birthday, and I noticed that she had some little grab bags that were little Hello Kitty ones, and so I had an extra pen in my purse and I happened to be with a bunch of coworkers, so I went over to the table, and I go, “Oh, are you celebrating your birthday?” and they went like, “Yeah,” so I gave her this grape-­ flavored smelly Kitty pen. So small stuff like that. I love to see it bringing the same happiness that it brings to me to other people. It makes me feel good when I see that. C. Y.: Where do you see all this leading? B. H.: Everybody keeps asking me if I’ll ever grow out of it, but I don’t think so. Because they keep making things that are useful on an everyday basis, so I don’t think it will ever end. C. Y.: If there were somebody that came into the room, never saw Hello Kitty before, didn’t know anything about Hello Kitty, and you were trying to describe what Hello Kitty is, or Hello Kitty’s world, what would you say to them? B. H.: I would probably just stress to them that she spreads friendship and happiness to everyone ’cause that’s what she basically is about. And even when you know how I told you the dentist story? I had a friend who had to go get a root canal, and she was freaking out because she had to go by herself, and somebody gave her a little Hello Kitty stuffed animal key chain, and so she took it and she went off and had her little root canal done. I think I would just stress that Kitty’s there to kind of cheer up people and just spread friendship and happiness because no matter what it is that you give someone, even if it’s just the tiniest little piece of paper or just a little sticker, Kitty always puts a smile on someone’s face even though they don’t know what it is or if they’ve never even seen it. You know, when you see it, nobody would say it’s not cute. Everybody would smile just seeing Hello Kitty. 144  •  chapter three

C. Y.: As a collector, is there any item that you just covet or do you have any sort of goals? B. H.: To get a bigger house? [laughs]. That’s what everybody says I need. If I were to ever move, I could never go to a smaller place, because I just took over the entire house. It’s just like out of control. . . . But you know, it just depends on what I’m in the mood to collect. C. Y.: Is there such a thing as competition between collectors? B. H.: Yes. I’ve noticed that once, there was this girl. I heard she collects almost as much as I do, and so I happened to be shopping at the store one day and she was shopping at the same time, and there was some item — I guess it was a different type of cup or glass thing that comes with a plush — and I picked out the cutest one for myself, and I pulled it, put it into my basket, and she goes, “You’re not gonna get all of them?” And I was like, “No, I don’t have enough room for all of them,” because if you open my kitchen cupboard, all of the different cups are all Sanrio. So she would just be on me, everywhere I went, every section I went, she goes, “Are you gonna buy that?” or “I got this. Aren’t you gonna get that?” I think that’s the only time I ever noticed competition, ’cause other times that I speak to other collectors we share information or actually help each other out. Like if we’re trying to get a collection of a certain line, we’ll try to help each other, and if one doesn’t have it, we’ll help them buy it. If we see an extra. So most of the time it’s just wanting to help each other in the collecting. C. Y.: Are there ever any collectors who want to buy things from you? B. H.: Not really, but, that’s always another joke, too, because even if anybody were to offer me any money, I would never want to get rid of anything. C. Y.: So your collection is only gonna grow? B. H.: Yes. Because I’d never throw anything away and I would never give up anything. C. Y.: So in a year, what would you guesstimate your spending to be of Sanrio things? global kitty nearly everywhere   •  145

B. H.: Thousands [of dollars]. C. Y.: And this is with a discount. B. H.: Well, we [Sanrio employees] don’t always get a discount, because the rule is that we cannot get a discount until after thirty days that it’s been on the floor [for general sale], to give the customers a fair chance. Because you know we don’t want it where a new item comes out and it’s sold out before it goes on the floor. So a lot of times I have to pay full price for it, because I don’t want to miss it. C. Y.: Any other thoughts on how you feel about yourself and Hello Kitty? B. H.: I feel like I’m a walking advertisement. It’s funny because any time I’m carrying anything Hello Kitty — little girls, of course, it attracts their attention right away and I see them start staring at the actual item, and then they stare at me with this funny look and then they pull on their moms. It’s just funny because there’s such a big age difference. That gets me sometimes. And people laugh at me ’cause they think I’m too old for this stuff. But it doesn’t bother me. C. Y.: That’s great. And you have a career from it. B. H.: My childhood dream! But I think it’s because I’m comfortable and I’m really confident, so it doesn’t matter to me what other people think. I don’t care if people think I’m weird if I’m wearing a Sanrio shirt. I actually got into a slight argument with an older white male that was taking the train with me. I was carrying my Kitty French backpack. And I sat down and he goes, he starts laughing, and he said, “That’s a backpack for a five-­year-­old.” And I said, “No, it’s not.” And he’s like, “Yes, it is.” And I go, “No, it’s not.” And then in my mind I’m thinking, “You have no idea who you’re talking to.” And it just bothered me that he was so narrow minded. Sometimes I feel like it’s my job to educate people that don’t know. If I ask, “Have you ever heard of Hello Kitty? Do you know who Hello Kitty is?” and if they say no, then I have to show them and tell them about it. It’s just really neat.

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C. Y.: Well I want to thank you for taking the time. It’s been fun. And amazing!

Hello Kitty Hispanic: Gender Construction, Family Values The ardent evangelism of a fervent fan (and Sanrio employee) such as Becky Hui may not be so extreme when one considers the message that many true believers feel Hello Kitty represents — that is, happiness, friendship, and democratic access through “Small gift, big smile” practices. These values transmit cross-­culturally beyond white America or Asian America to other ethnic enclaves. When I first visited Sanrio, Inc., in 2002, one of the things that surprised me was the large place of Hispanics in Sanrio’s North American market. I had not previously equated Asian-­based cuteness with my stereotype of Latina femininity. However, there are other connections to be made. In her study of marketing to Hispanics in the United States, the anthropologist Arlene Davila points out that American marketers amalgamate ethnic minorities — including Asian Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans — into a single category of consumer, whose characteristics include a shared emphasis on family values (2001:216 – 17). Peter Gastaldi, the executive vice president at Sanrio, Inc., at the time of my 2002 interview, agreed: “Yes! Hispanics, number two [Sanrio market, after Asian Americans]. Family values, children center of the family, buying things for the children, things that will make children happy. It also gets into interesting cultural differences that impact product design. For example, Hispanics, they love red products” (personal communication, June 19, 2002). When I asked Gastaldi whether Hispanics knew or cared that Hello Kitty was from Japan, he responded: “No, they’re buying cute. In the case of Hispanics, I don’t think that the fact that it’s from Japan really has a whole lot to do with it. It’s cute, it’s colorful, it’s child-­oriented, it’s whimsical” (personal communication, June 19, 2002). Many consumers other than Hispanics would agree with Gastaldi’s assessment that it is cute — and not necessarily Japan — that they seek. Walking into the Sanrio store in New York Times Square in 2003, I was struck by the number of Hispanics there. Most of the sales personnel are Hispanic, as was the Honduras-­born manager, “Karen” (b. 1970). Karen explained the ethnic predominance of her staff: “They [Hispanics] are mostly the ones that walk through the door to apply” (personal global kitty nearly everywhere   •  147

communication, March 29, 2003). Moreover, many applicants who work in a Sanrio store are fans of the company’s products. The customers are a mix of tourists from Asia, Europe, and other parts of the United States, as well as locals, including many Hispanics. Although Gastaldi claims family values as the core reason that Hispanics form a large market for Sanrio, “Karen” could not quite put her finger on the appeal, except to simply say, “I’m Hispanic and I just like it. She’s cute and everything she has is cute” (personal communication, March 29, 2003). She characterized the majority of her regular customers as Hispanic women between twenty-­five and thirty-­two, buying items for themselves and for their children. “Karen” noted what her Hispanic customers tend to buy: “Hispanics mostly buy plush toys for their kids, I know that they do, they buy you know the cute stuff. Every other Hispanic person that comes in here wants to buy the little plush — it’s very selective items. They don’t want everything” (personal communication, March 29, 2003). The implication is that the Hispanic market for Hello Kitty tends to be more conservative, favoring straightforward cute products, and not some of the edgier extensions of the core brand. (In this, Hispanics share middle-­of-­the-­road preferences for Hello Kitty with many others identified as a mass market globally.)

Interview: Hispanic American Collector and eBay Seller — A deline Tafolla Adeline Tafolla (b. 1974) — or Ady, as she likes to be called — has been selling Hello Kitty through her online toy shop that she calls the Unbirthday Store for several years (going full-­time at the time of the interview in 2006). Born in Los Angeles, Ady came from a conservative, poor Hispanic family who could only rarely afford new and comparatively expensive items such as Hello Kitty. What Hello Kitty items she could attain became particularly cherished treasures. A Hello Kitty fan, she gave up Kitty temporarily during middle school (Bill Hensley calls this “the Change”), but then revisited her later in high school and as a young adult active in the rave scene (Hensley’s “Re-­discovery”). Hello Kitty — repurposed to subcultural effect — saw her through the rebellion of her teen years (parts of Ady’s interview could as well be placed within chapter 5) and reemerged as a friend and “business partner” in adulthood. Although self-­described as a “rebel,” she echoes the family values that Gastaldi mentions and links them to Hello Kitty. A mix of class and Hispanic elements shape Ady’s meaning making of Hello Kitty — from the dream-­filled childhood treat 148  •  chapter three

of a relatively expensive, “frou-­frou” (feminine, fancy) item to the bodily notation of Hello Kitty as “short” or “butchy” (squat). Ady began her online shop through eBay when she found that her own collection of Hello Kitty items had far surpassed the storage space where she lived. She sees selling Hello Kitty and other “toy” items as a necessary and creative form of “recycling.” In effect, Ady utilizes some of the same techniques of her Los Angeles childhood, scouring garage sales and secondhand stores for used items, reclaiming the least damaged, recognizing the particular niche market, and refurbishing them to sell at a profit. A collector such as Ady is happy to be eking out a living through Hello Kitty, with part of the excitement in the hunt itself, especially when hidden treasures may lie undiscovered in other people’s discards. I visited Ady in her cramped apartment in urban Honolulu on May 17, 2006, where she showed me how she photographs items for sale, posts them on her store website, and receives and processes orders. Although her space is extremely limited and operation small, she goes about her business with the enthusiasm and zeal of a treasure hunter. C. Y.: So you started off kind of as a collector, and then you began selling off some of your extra stuff, and then you kept going as a business and this is what you do? A. T.: And then I finally decided to make the jump to doing that full time because everything I sold, sold. So that’s a pretty good ratio — everything sells. And then the other thing was that I just had such a memory, and I had such a diverse upbringing, that I knew what many of the subcultures liked. So, there are certain clothes and toys and things that certain types of people like, that the raver community, the kids that party, they like certain toys, and then you got like the taggers and the skateboarders, and they like certain toys, and then you’ve got the gay community and they like certain toys. So if you can cater your toys to those communities, you’ve pretty much reached the whole darn market. Somebody, somewhere is gonna want some toy in some way. C. Y.: That’s great. A. T.: So because I could remember who liked what, that is the little niche that sets me apart from regular toy people. Because regular toy people just take whatever Sanrio gives them, and I global kitty nearly everywhere   •  149

actually go and hunt out ones. And a lot of times when I go to yard sales or I go to the Goodwill, there are toys that are left behind that nobody wants, and I realize, “That’s a really rare toy. That’s something someone’s gonna really want, ’cause it’s a rare one. Someone who’s a collector will know. And that’s where I do make the money. If I find those one or two toys, they’ll sell for $40, and I buy them for maybe a dollar or fifty cents. C. Y.: Fantastic! Now tell me something about your interests in Hello Kitty. A. T.: When I was a kid — I can’t even remember how old I was — I think I must have been about six or seven, and my godmother lived in Burbank [California] and there was a fancy frou-­frou store, privately owned frou-­frou toy store. C. Y.: What do you mean when you say “frou-­frou”? A. T.: Like fao Schwartz, but not corporate, it was just one family-­ owned the toy store. And at that time Hello Kitty wasn’t common, so I went in there and I saw the Hello Kitty, and I’d never seen that kind of toy before. So it’s bright red, ’cause the original’s red, and I was like, “Oh, it’s so cute!” It was a lunch pail, and I still have the lunch pail! C. Y.: You’re kidding, your original one. A. T.: Yeah, the very first one. And I thought it was so cute, it was the roll-­top kind of a lunch pail, and I dragged that lunch pail everywhere. I was so proud of that lunch pail, and that’s what started it. And then every time I went to visit my aunt I would say, “Oh let’s go to that toy store — I want to get some more of those Hello Kitty kind of toys.” C. Y.: Did you know it was from Japan? A. T.: Not at that time I didn’t. I just knew that it was some kind of rarer toy line, that the regular Toys R Us places didn’t carry. That’s why I knew it was kind of neat, ’cause it was different —  you could only get it at these certain special toy stores. You see, we were really poor and most of the time when I got anything, it was from the secondhand store, so it was just kind of what was available, and wasn’t too broken. So it [new Hello 150  •  chapter three

Kitty] was a real treat. My aunt had money, so she could take me to the frou-­frou store and buy me a brand new toy. C. Y.: What did other kids say, like at your school? A. T.: I didn’t take it to school with me, but I took it everywhere else with me. C. Y.: What about say, when you were in intermediate school? A. T.: Well, I think it kinda died out during junior high. I liked it, but I was just doing the whole teen thing. Fighting for my independence and fighting with my family, rebelling and all that stuff. So I just kinda put it over to the side. But when I got into high school that’s when the whole hip-­hop thing came in, with bright colors, they were wearing the very cross colors, with the bright colors. And one of the things to do was to start wearing baggy clothes, and it was actually when using a lunch pail as a purse came in. So I dug through my toys and I found that Hello Kitty lunch pail and I brought it back — I started taking it to school and everyone thought that was really cool, they were like, “Wow, where’d you get that thing, that’s an oldie.” So it kinda came back in. C. Y.: As part of hip-­hop? A. T.: Yeah. C. Y.: Would you characterize yourself as pretty rebellious when you were a teenager? A. T.: Oh yeah. I would characterize myself as independent; my family would say rebellious. C. Y.: But it’s interesting how Hello Kitty was actually part of it? A. T.: Yeah. Well what I like about her is that she’s cute, she’s short —  in my family we would use the word “butchy.” The word butchy means that it’s kind of stout or squat, but cute. That, and she was just very pleasant, her world and her life was just very pleasant, very cute and nice. Everyone got along and you got along with your neighbors, and it’s kind of how everyone would like the real world to be. You know, family and everything. So that’s what appealed to me. global kitty nearly everywhere   •  151

C. Y.: But that doesn’t sound very rebellious? A. T.: No. But that’s what I wanted and no one would let me do that. My way! I already had in my mind what I wanted and everyone else had in their mind what they wanted for me — I was just like “no”! After high school and I started going to college, and it [Hello Kitty] again went back on the shelf, and I started doing the, you turn twenty-­one you start going out drinking, go clubbing, and my family had never let me go do anything, at all. They were super overprotective, I mean lockdown. I didn’t go anywhere; I didn’t speak to nobody; I didn’t spend the night at nobody’s house; I didn’t do nothing. It was just school, strictly school. So I hit twenty-­one, I was like “I’m outta here.” I just went out and saw the world. I lived with drag queens while in Hollywood, went nightclubbing, I got a little job for a radio station doing some promotions. So then I was running around with a bunch of the radio station people, and that whole nightlife. And then I started going to raves and learned about that whole atmosphere. Just saw a lot , did a lot of traveling in the U.S., went to Alaska, went to Boston, New York, New Mexico, a lot of the Western areas, all up and down California, even down into Mexico. Just seeing the world and meeting people, and then one of the places that I wanted to come was Hawai’i. And as soon as I got here that was it — I was like, “I’m moving!” Went home, told everyone, “I’m moving to Hawai’i!” Packed up my stuff and came back. C. Y.: Now all through this period of going to raves and traveling all around, I’m assuming Hello Kitty was not very much a part of your life? A. T.: No. C. Y.: So then what resurrected her in your life? A. T.: Well the last stage of that whole finding myself stage, was the rave scene. Which, they have in the rave scene these things called “Candy Kids,” and they are all about bright rainbow —  basically you dress up looking like Rainbow Bright. And you go to the party in your fabulous, put-­together costume, so to speak. And you just are happy — that’s the whole point is 152  •  chapter three

to be friendly and meet people — and that’s the whole point. So what you would do is, kids would make these bracelets, and when you would meet somebody you would give them a bracelet, and they would give you one. Or if you didn’t have bracelets sometimes it would be just a sticker. That’s what I would do is hand out Hello Kitty stickers to everybody that I met. And you just meet people, but some kids liked Teletubbies, some kids liked Rainbow Bright, some kids liked Hello Kitty, others liked Super Mario Brothers. So everyone would come wearing their favorite character, so I was like “Wow, this is cool!” ’cause I liked toys and I found a whole genre of people who liked toys and bright happy things. C. Y.: And about how old were you then? A. T.: I was about twenty-­two, and went through until I was about twenty-­five. And that was pretty much the peak of it, ’cause after that is when the government started cracking down on them [raves] and making this whole “Oh, all these people are doing drugs and they’re od-­ing.” It basically killed it, killed the scene. C. Y.: Was it much of a drug scene? A. T.: Oh lots! Lots and lots of drugs. C. Y.: What kind of drugs? A. T.: Mostly E — Ecstasy was the main one. There was the harder stuff like coke and speed, but those are kinda frowned upon. That’s missing the mark of what this is about. To me, I was like, toys! Kids who like toys! Let’s dress up. I was having a great time ’cause I could run around and wear Hello Kitty and be silly and no one cared — it was the greatest thing! I could be a nerd and everyone thought I was cool. C. Y.: And you’re saying that within this Candy Kids group of people, there were a bunch that liked Hello Kitty, besides you? A. T.: Oh yeah. I mean there were some that would make, that would get pants like this and they would unseam them, and then sew in fabric that had Hello Kitty in the seam, and they would customize their clothes. global kitty nearly everywhere   •  153

C. Y.: OK, so did you do that? A. T.: No, no, I didn’t get that fancy. But I knew that scene, what types of toys appeal to them. Yeah, the raves. So they like backpacks. Or fanny packs, or things with pockets because they have to carry everything. So then I know to sell those, to gear those things towards those kids, ’cause they’ll be looking for them. C. Y.: So do you think Hello Kitty is still popular with that scene? A. T.: Oh yeah. All of it is. C. Y.: Do you have any personal stories about Hello Kitty in your life? A. T.: Well, my sister said, “You found a way to fund your addiction!” C. Y.: Would you call yourself a Hello Kitty addict? A. T.: Oh yeah. C. Y.: What do you think Hello Kitty gives you? How does Hello Kitty add to your life, besides the business? A. T.: Well, it seems that she’s given me a life, basically. Like I said I don’t function well in normal parameters of society. So if I had to go out and get a real job in the real world, I wouldn’t make it, I couldn’t do it, so because of her [Hello Kitty], and the other toys I sell. And I can work with my quirks and things I have in my personal life. That’s good, which is something I needed to find with my own limitations and things. C. Y.: So how do you get your things to sell? Do you just go and cruise around Salvation Army and Goodwill? A. T.: Yes, and a lot of times just people’s yard sales — they’re moving and they don’t want to take all these toys with them, or their kid is too cool now; they’re older and they don’t want the toys anymore. And so I just bring them home and wash them, and they’re fine. Perfectly fine. I feel good because one thing — I even put it on my website — all these toys would end up in the rubbish. And so, to me, I feel like I am almost recycling. C. Y.: In effect you are! A. T.: Yeah, and then, too, it makes me feel good knowing that someone’s been able to get something they couldn’t normally af154  •  chapter three

ford. They couldn’t afford a $60 or $80 comforter set for their kids. And now because on eBay I fished out this one that just had this sewing problem, they were able to get this nice new set for their kid, and make their kid really happy. So, it makes me feel good. And a lot of people say, “Well don’t you put a lot more work into it than you’re making,” but I remember hearing an old saying one time — it said, “If you find a job that you love, you’ll never work another day in your life,” ’cause it’s not work to me. To me it’s playing with toys, ’cause every day I go out, I never know what I’m going to find; it’s like a treasure hunt. I never know what’s the next cool thing I’m going to find, and I’ll go, “Wow, that’s great” and I get all excited. And I know someone else is going to think that same thing when they get it. So, that’s a nice rewarding feeling. C. Y.: Well thanks so much — it’s great that you have this business. And it all started with Kitty!

Hello Kitty for Men Ady’s self-­confessed “addiction” to the “bright and happy” world of Hello Kitty in which she trades, positions her both at the margins and mainstream of Sanrio consumers. At the very least, she has managed to pursue her passion for Hello Kitty developed within a specifically classed position in a Hispanic enclave of Los Angeles to a broad range of consumers through her Internet business. As a fan and seller, she could be anybody, anywhere, as could be her customers. In fact, the anonymity of an online store such as Ady’s (and others mentioned previously) may be more appealing to those one might least expect as customers. Although most people associate Hello Kitty with females, Sanrio’s cat does have male fans. And some of these male fans are not gay (see chapter 5 for more on gay male fandom). The notion of a heterosexual male Hello Kitty fan flies in the face of stereotypes, especially as reinforced through masculinist hazing. For example, in American sports, because he missed the traditional rookie hazing, the Mets 2008 baseball rookie pitcher Joe Smith was forced to wear a bright pink Hello Kitty backpack when he walked from the dugout to the bullpen before games, to which one of his teammates Billy Wagner crowed, “It’s not Hello Kitty, it’s Hello Smitty — mee-­oww!” (Hubbuch 2008).5 The sports bloggers went wild. In the meantime, recognizing such a global kitty nearly everywhere   •  155

strong bias toward female consumers and wanting to extend their market, Sanrio in 2008 launched a new product range for men that includes what company officials described as “a more rugged, cool look to appeal to men in their teens and early 20s” in items such as men’s watches, toiletry kits, and T-­shirts (Kageyama 2008). The modest success of this line, however, does not negate the overall stereotyping of Kitty clientele by the population at large. Although it is difficult to generalize about a heterosexual group of male consumers, the few with whom I spoke all agree that their own fondness for Hello Kitty — especially as a straight male — takes people by surprise. One older German American man in his sixties — originally from Detroit, Michigan, who moved to Hawai’i in 1974, and teaches math at a community college in Honolulu (at the time of our interview in 2006) — confesses great fondness for Hello Kitty. He says that he was introduced to Hello Kitty about five years before through a young Japanese woman in her twenties who was a former student. Although he does not yet purchase Hello Kitty items for himself, he enjoys browsing at the Sanrio store and finds the cat irresistible: “It’s [Hello Kitty] just something that’s totally without any negative connotation at all. No way can you not like it! Even sometimes in advertising if something is overdone, you get tired of it, you see the same commercial over and over again. And so, it could be that way with Hello Kitty, since it’s on so many different things, it could be overkill, but I never feel that way. Never get tired of seeing it ever” (personal communication, April 26, 2006). Furthermore, not only is Hello Kitty irresistible, but so too is her purported message of innocence and hope. “I think it’s the fact that the world nowadays, it seems to me, has more problems, more conflicts, more reasons to get discouraged, and Hello Kitty is the great and wonderful thing to bring a smile to anyone’s face at anytime. So other things will come and go but Hello Kitty will stay. Or at least I assume and hope it will stay” (personal communication, April 26, 2006). What he expressed parallels Sanrio’s company ethos of happiness, of “getting it” (chapter 2), which parallel’s Tsuji’s emphasis on the smile (chapter 1). The confluence of messages presents a seamlessly unproblematized relationship between producers’ encoding and consumers’ decoding.

Interview: Heterosexual Male Fan Profile — M. G. I met M. G. (b. 1982) at Sanrio’s San Francisco store, where he was working part-­time. I was struck, first of all, by the sight of M. G. — a very hip, cool, young guy in a hoodie and jeans — stocking the shelves at the store. 156  •  chapter three

He readily agreed to meet me during his break, where I learned that he is a college student (at the time, soon to be a San Francisco State University history major) who plays in a rock group. It was M. G.’s interest in Japanese popular culture — from videogames to music — that originally got him interested in Hello Kitty. He sees Hello Kitty as not mainstream America, and appreciates the fact that his liking Hello Kitty sets him apart from the majority culture. In M. G.’s mind, Hello Kitty is alternative culture. But M. G. has his limits in going public with his Hello Kitty fandom. Although his close friends know of his preferences and may even give him Hello Kitty gifts, he is wary of overtly displaying Hello Kitty items in the general public sphere. He obviously understands the stereotyping of Hello Kitty’s appeal (females or gay males) and critiques he might face, even as he likes to set himself apart from mainstream American culture. At the time of our interview, M. G. had been working at Sanrio for three months. Here is part of our conversation that took place on November 19, 2004. M. G.: I, myself, am a fan of Miss Kitty. C. Y.: Are you!? M. G.: Yes, of course! Let’s see, she, of course, is cute, and — I don’t know. A lot of my friends back home [Anaheim, California], they liked her as well, so that was just something to talk about. And one of the things I used to love to do was to go to swap meets and look for old toys and Hello Kitty memorabilia that you can’t find in stores. C. Y.: When you say you and your friends, which friends are these? M. G.: Some girlfriends, I don’t know [laughs]. C. Y.: Girls and boys? M. G.: Girls, primarily girls. Lots of people think, you know, they assume that, especially at work, that I’m a guy that works there and they think that maybe I’m homosexual because I work with that type of retail. With Hello Kitty they kind of put two and two together . . . C. Y.: But you’re not? M. G.: I’m not. Yeah, I’m straight. I just like Kitty! global kitty nearly everywhere   •  157

C. Y.: From what age did you like Kitty? M. G.: Let’s see — it’s probably been just within the last three or four years. Yeah, I was introduced to Japanese pop culture back with videogames, and Nintendo, and everything. So as my interests grew from videogames to comic books to, more, art and stuff like that I picked up on music from Japan and stuff like that. C. Y.: What was the first Hello Kitty object that you owned? M. G.: I don’t really remember what my first one was, maybe it was something that my friend had brought back from Japan —  because she was from Japan — and she would bring stuff back, and “Oh this is cute, you’d like this,” and stuff. But, my most prized possession is — you know I play in a band, and we go on tour around the country and the last time in June we were in New York and I guess the creator of Hello Kitty, I’m not familiar with her name, but she was doing an in-­store appearance and signing and I got her to sign a suitcase for me. It has my name on it and everything! C. Y.: Wow! M. G.: I show my friends that and they’re just like so envious of it and all. And now, since I work here, you know I buy the stationery and I’ll write them letters and say, “From San Francisco Hello Kitty,” you know, “Hey, how’re you doing? This is what I’m doing now.” And my last job, I was a teacher at the Boys and Girls Club of Anaheim and the kids would always ask — I’d have like a [Hello Kitty] wallet — and they would ask, “Why does your wallet have Hello Kitty?” They’re like, “You’re not a girl. Why do you do that?” And they were confused because they just associate Hello Kitty with being, that’s for girls, and I was just like, “Hey it’s really cool. I can like it, too, you know. You don’t have to be a girl to like Hello Kitty.” C. Y.: OK. So at the time that you started liking Hello Kitty, what were people’s reactions? Like your parents, your friends? M. G.: Oh, I don’t know about my parents’ reaction. I mean, my mom, she really knows that I like Japanese culture and stuff 158  •  chapter three

like that, so she was kind of like, “It’s just another one of those Japanese things that you like.” And with my friends, they’re just — everybody knows that I’m kind of weird in my own little way, so they were just like, “Oh, I guess it’s cool.” C. Y.: So do you like Precious Moments [American cute figures with Christian overtones]? M. G.: No, I hate a lot of like American things. I’m really biased. I guess it’s just like what’s considered to be mainstream and what’s considered to be. Since it’s coming from Japan and you might look at it more like it’s more original because not everybody in America will be exposed to it. C. Y.: And if Hello Kitty were overexposed, would you stop liking it? M. G.: Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t because with Hello Kitty, it’s just, you make a connection. There’s definitely a connection made because it’s not mainstream; you feel a more personal level, because not everybody else knows what you’re talking about, you know what I mean? M. G.: No, I’m not that big of a freak — I guess even though I do work at Sanrio I guess I’m kind of a closet Hello Kitty fan. C. Y.: You’re not really out? [laughs] M. G.: Yeah, well I am sort of. My friend gave me a Hello Kitty key chain, and I have that on a backpack. C. Y.: That’s as public as you go? M. G.: I guess, yeah. If the store wanted me to go outside [in Hello Kitty wear], I would do that. I would put on Hello Kitty, but as far as myself, like buying a backpack, I’d kind of have to think of what people are going to think before I do that, because I’d like to not be self-­conscious about myself. But you have to face it. People are going to criticize and that’s just society as a whole. It’s gonna do that.

global kitty nearly everywhere   •  159

Kitty as Global (Winking) Friend The fans I interviewed above — adults all — face a certain amount of social ostracism in their deep connection to a mouthless cat whom many in the larger society would characterize more readily as a child’s figure. They face a certain amount of risk in going public, and yet many of them take distinct pleasure and even pride in just this distance from what they consider to be mainstream society. Their talk about the object of their desire weaves confessional disclosure — even revelation and evangelism — with easy laughter. They themselves recognize the humor in an adult so enamored with what might be taken as the “charm of muteness” in a child’s toy. Their laughter, then, may be seen as part of the wink on pink. I return to the questions I posed at the beginning of this chapter: How does Hello Kitty become a friend, and what kind of friend is she? First of all, Hello Kitty has become a friend to these fans most typically through other social relationships. Whether it is a mother giving small Hello Kitty gifts to her daughter or a rich godmother who takes a child to a Sanrio store as a treat, those consumers who established their fandom at an early age tend to embed their relationship with the Sanrio object within other warm, emotionally rewarding social experiences. These social relationships are often intergenerational and female to female. In this sense, Hello Kitty’s nest is already feathered with those core elements of friendship, happiness, and intimacy. Second, in many fans’ accounts of their relationship with Hello Kitty, Sanrio’s cat appears mysteriously benign, even powerful. She possesses inexplicable powers of seduction that catch her fans unaware. She draws them to her irresistibly in what can become an obsessive relationship —  extreme fan to Kitty. They position themselves as powerless in the face of her charms; collectors surround themselves with more and more of her to live a Hello Kitty lifestyle. Although this kind of narrative may sound akin to stereotypical orientalist accounts of a mysterious, seductive Asian female presence, in fact such talk is not unlike that of other Euro-­American fan relationships with objects of affection, whether that object is a singer, movie star, or comic book. However, here the object is a mute presence with little narrative, in spite of a backstory and cartoon series. These narratives are far less important than her simply being there. They care less that she is supposed to be from London or that she has a twin sister or that she is perpetually in the third grade. They do care that she is there whenever they need her, whether in the deep 160  •  chapter three

recesses of a backpack or on the backpack itself. Fans draw upon her sheer materiality, Kitty’s visage (if even boiled down to a bow) reassuring them of her constancy. Third, fan interactions center around buying and thus ownership as an irresistible urge. The consumers of Hello Kitty are many and varied, ranging from the casual to the fanatic. They represent a spectrum of activity that may be episodic or may lead into progressive commitment. Baudrillard distinguishes between the accumulation of material goods and the collection: the first is gathered without necessarily greater intent or design; the second is gathered as part of an internal system of order and meaning (1996:111 – 13). Note, however, that one may lead to the other, as the accumulator of objects may eventually create order and meaning in the ongoing creation of a collection. The hallmarks of the collection are a combination of desire and order — the irrational and the rational — whose relationship Susan Stewart describes as follows: “In the collection such systematicity results in the quantification of desire. Desire is ordered, arranged, and manipulated” (1993:163). It is this emotive quality in the act of collecting that drives the practice. Baudrillard remarks: “Collecting is thus qualitative in its essence [i.e. desire, passion, fanaticism] and quantitative in its practice. . . . The whole attraction may be summed up as that of an intimate series . . . combined with serial intimacy” (1996:94). The intimate series of objects and serial intimacy of the encounter come to a head in extreme fans — the accumulator-­cum-­collectors, who typically cannot emerge from a Sanrio store empty handed. They buy regularly, obsessively, compulsively, their collection never complete. Sanrio, of course, taunts with hundreds of new items issued monthly, so that there can never be a truly complete collection. Collectors structure their practices around assumptions of constant desire: with mounting numbers of Hello Kitty objects at home (and work) and shrinking storage space, they strategize and dream of their next purchase. Even when financial resources are low, they embark on continual Hello Kitty treasure hunts, searching for bargains online, at garage sales, or in secondhand stores. The thrill lies in the hunt, whether at the mall or on eBay. Fourth, ardent fans frame Hello Kitty within a long-­standing relationship to which they express loyalty. After all, Sanrio’s cat has been loyal to them, seeing them through good times and bad times, helping them face crises, brokering the challenges of daily life with her constancy. Hello Kitty represents the transitional object — the physical object that assists in the transition from home/mother to the outside global kitty nearly everywhere   •  161

world — that will never leave them (Winnicott 1953). In holding onto the object, they retrieve both the neediness of dependency and its sufficiency. They express their loyalty through the very fan practices that make her such a success — ownership, display, even protection. They become her protector against detractors who might criticize her (see chapter 4), as well as police her image for unwanted associations. And in doing so, they establish a tightly codependent bond. Finally, they identify with her. They become Kitty (much like designer Yamaguchi Yūko) — or at least some part of them merges with what they feel is the Kitty essence of happiness, innocence, emotionality, and soft femininity. Some of them inscribe her onto their bodies (so that she will always be there). Others recognize the commonality between Kitty fans, buying not only Sanrio objects, but other accoutrements to the same “girly” aesthetic. Even the male fans of Hello Kitty share an identification with Sanrio’s cat as a common badge, although they may wear that badge more furtively. In all, Hello Kitty becomes a friend to these most enthusiastic global fans within the idiom of being “best friends” — that is, through intimacy. The affective labor of Sanrio’s cat draws fans in close as one with whom they may share freely and unconditionally. This is one friend who will never leave them or talk back. Hello Kitty’s muteness works well, as Ursula LeGuin (quoted at the beginning of this chapter), notes for human-­animal interactions: a “cat” creates the constant presence of the blank slate that reflects, supports, and affirms. She represents the knowing nod of empathy and understanding that spans oceans. This best-­friend relationship finds renewal with every purchase, every piece in the mounting pile of plush, every glance at a Hello Kitty wallet or key chain. These are the pleasures of the collector: Hello Kitty’s ubiquity only serves to strengthen her magnetism. Within this framework, there can be no such thing as Kitty overload, but only more and more extensions of her comforting presence that verifies fans’ relationship to her. Just as intimacy among such best friends knows no bounds, the presence of Hello Kitty knows no limits. Moving inward (intimacy) and moving outward (presence in the world) alike confirm that more is better — at least for the insatiable appetites of her most avid consumers. For these fervent fans, the “here, there, nearly everywhere” extensions of Hello Kitty and pink globalization represent nothing less than achievements of the obsessive heart. She is their (not so) guilty pleasure.

162  •  chapter three

Chapter Four Kitty Backlash

What’s Wrong with Cute?

Hello Kitty Must Die (novel by Angela Choi, 2010) Goodbye Kitty (parodic product line of David and Goliath) Boycott the Kitty! (online Brother Percy of Landover Baptist Church) Hello Kitty Hell (extensive blog with motto “One Man’s Life with Cute Overload”) Fuck Hello Kitty (anti – Hello Kitty group in France) In the grand scheme of things, [anti – Hello Kitty]’s more buzz and more interest for the brand. — Dave Marchi, marketing director, Sanrio, personal communication, March 25, 2010

Achievements of the heart — espoused by Sanrio’s founder Tsuji Shintarō as the core message of his company, believed in strongly by several key workers of Sanrio, Inc., and upheld as part of the irresistible charm of Hello Kitty by her fans — form the target upon which Hello Kitty’s detractors in Euro-­America (including Australia) aim their critique. Most typically the target is not heart so much as its commodification. Consider that friendship, happiness, and intimacy cir-

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cumscribe what sounds like an unassailable position against which few could take offense. And yet, for many observers in Euro-­America — such as those listed above and discussed further in this chapter — this pink heart does not quite ring true. Take the 1993 song “Hello Kitty Kat” by the American alternative rock band Smashing Pumpkins. Although Hello Kitty is only directly mentioned in the title and never in the lyrics itself, Sanrio’s cat clearly symbolizes manufactured sweetness, the exact target of the group’s inherently dark vision. In short, the power of Hello Kitty rests in the fact that she never needs mention within the song; the title alone says enough.1 Sanrio’s response to the histrionics of these critics (see Dave Marchi’s quotation above) rests in calm appreciation for the power of buzz. Groups that coalesce around such negative reactions to Hello Kitty may be considered what Sara Ahmed calls “affect aliens” — those estranged from the affective expectations of the larger society, as embodied here by Sanrio and its products. She describes: “We become alienated — out of line with an affective community — when we do not experience pleasure from proximity to objects that are already attributed as being good [happy]. . . . If we are disappointed by something that we expected would make us happy, then we generate explanations of why that thing is disappointing . . . which can lead to a rage. . . . We become strangers, or affect aliens, in such moments” (2010:37). Here, Hello Kitty is the benignly appealing cute cat against which various “affect aliens” rage, vociferous in their disenchantment with the “happy object” and Sanrio’s brand promise of sunny friendship. Detractors such as Smashing Pumpkins and many others enumerated in small part by the epitaph above decry what they perceive to be the faux s­ incerity of Sanrio’s heart — produced, marketed, packaged for sale. These critics point to the inherent manipulation of branding within a capitalist system, focused not on response to needs, but in the expert creation of desire. The key here lies in who controls desire —  individuals or corporations. The critical response to capitalist manipulation heightens when the object of marketing dwells in the realm of cute. In short, marketing cuteness — especially to adults — raises the hackles of a discerning public in Euro-­America.2 This chapter analyzes those hackles, as Hello Kitty too readily devolves into the cat people love to hate. I ask not only, What is wrong with Hello Kitty? but more precisely, What is wrong, for whom (“affect aliens”), and under what conditions? The brand message of happiness is not immune to critique in Ja164  •  chapter four

pan itself. Consumers in Japan as elsewhere are not monolithic, and do not necessarily agree on her attractions. Unquestionably, Japan has its share of “affect aliens”; I have spoken to those who find Hello Kitty insipid, crassly commercial, and more. And yet Sanrio’s cat does not typically incite such public vitriol to the extent that I discuss in this chapter. She is taken as a highly normalized part of consumer culture in Japan that the general public accepts as everyday fare. Hello Kitty is so ubiquitous that some people in Japan may stop noticing her presence, much less pause to critique. For many, she has become an assumption. The acceptability of Kitty’s presence is made particularly notable since the advent of two-­generation, mother-­daughter fans in the 1990s. Public Kitty critique in Japan comes in the form of media commentary, such as the English-­language Japan Times (mentioned previously in the introduction). The problem occurs when Sanrio’s cat oversteps her original target market as a child’s toy or even a young woman’s purchase. Thus, being named unicef’s “special friend of children” in 2004 to support girls’ education and combat gender discrimination globally raises alarm bells: “Someone needs to explain how a cat with no mouth can be a spokesperson for anything — especially girls’ education — and how an image that embodies female submissiveness is supposed to help banish gender-­based stereotypes” (Japan Times 2004). Note, however, the source of this critique: an English-­language newspaper, unaffiliated with any Japanese language media organization, often targeting resident native English speakers, rather than the general Japanese population.

Hello Kitty Horror Tales Any company producing children’s goods dreads the seemingly inevitable — that is, their products making the headlines because of its implication in some kind of exploitation or violent crime. In particular for a brand that bills its core message as that of happiness, any news item that takes away from that positive image can be seen as damaging to the company’s reputation. One such story rests in the issue of the actual production of Sanrio goods. As is the case with many large-­scale manufacturers, the process of production takes place not in the home country, but overseas in cheaper, less regulated labor markets. News of Sanrio’s use of child labor in its overseas factories came with its own ironic twist: just as McDonald’s was holding its Hello Kitty promotion campaigns in outlets kitty backlash   •  165

throughout China in the 2000s, news services revealed Sanrio’s labor abuses theoretically involving some of the same children who might have wanted a Hello Kitty — McDonald’s toy (China Labor Watch 2007). Such labor abuses may be considered not uncommon in large-­scale, outsourced manufacturing. Even more alarming for Sanrio are horrific crime stories involving Hello Kitty. Here, headlines become a marketer’s nightmare. That nightmare took place in 1999 in Hong Kong (see later discussion of the event as inspiration for performance artist Yumi Umiumare). The horrific story concerns an actual event in which twenty-­ three-­year-­old nightclub hostess Fan Man-­yee (aka Ah Map) was captured, tortured over a period of one month, killed, and dismembered by a gang of three drug-­fueled men. The crime made particularly sensationalistic headlines when it was revealed that most of her body was cooked and discarded, and her skull stuffed into a Hello Kitty doll (Chandler 2000). Hello Kitty was implicated beyond simply acting as a receptacle for the victim’s head. The headlines in Hong Kong and elsewhere — in fact, this incident was dubbed the “Hello Kitty Murder” — centered upon not only the inherent brutality of the crime, but the ironic juxtaposition of such violence with the image of sweet, innocent Hello Kitty. The case was broken when a fourteen-­year-­old female accomplice (“Melody”) to the three men confessed to nightmares about the dead woman, and led police to the scene of the crime. When police arrived, as well as finding the woman’s skull in the Hello Kitty doll, as described, they found numerous other Hello Kitty items — such as curtains, bedsheets, and kitchenware — in short, an apartment filled with the physical accoutrements often appealing to young adult women in Hong Kong. Choosing a Hello Kitty doll in which to stuff the victim’s head came about as no mere accident. The lurid gaze upon the sensational murder extended beyond the crime itself, into segments of the Hong Kong public, which took particular interest in it. In one online discussion about the case, the writer meets and interviews twenty-­six-­year-­old “Yammie,” a journalist with such special interest. Yammie is a Hello Kitty fan: “Almost every item she wears or carries is stamped with or accessorised by Sanrio’s little icon. . . . Yammie . . . is obsessed with the cat” (Hilditch n.d.). Not only is Hello Kitty a part of the physical backdrop to the brutality; Sanrio’s cat also frames Yammie’s reportage. Hello Kitty’s very muteness suggests a morally mute position as onlooker to the horrific scene — at least as interpreted by Yammie. The article concludes with the following conversation between the writer and Yammie: 166  •  chapter four

“ ‘ You must be angry about what they did with Hello Kitty,’ I suggest. ‘No,’ she [Yammie] says. ‘Anything can happen to Hello Kitty, that’s the point. . . . Everything — even crazy stuff — makes sense to Hello Kitty.’ . . . ‘Does Hello Kitty hate the people who killed Ah Map [Fan Man-­yee]?’ I ask. ‘Oh no,’ she [Yammie] says. ‘Hello Kitty doesn’t hate anybody. She never tells you off.’ Hello Kitty: the perfect icon for an amoral age.” (Hilditch n.d.) According to this writer, Hello Kitty’s key role in this horror tale lies in a combination of the ubiquity of her goods, the materialism of her fans, and, most of all, her mutely amoral stance. This brand message suspends moral judgment.

Critiquing Asian Cuteness Moral judgment abounds in criticism of Hello Kitty outside Japan. In a July 2002 piece, the journalist Annalee Newitz gives voice to some of the foreign critique when she writes in the San Francisco Bay Guardian about “the apotheosis of cute.” “The national [American] craze for cuteness has turned the innocent optimism of Hello Kitty into a hollow, cynical commercialism. Many of the images and icons we call ‘cute’ came from idealistic, hopeful social movements of the 1960s and the exuberant subculture of early-­1990s clubbers and digital dreamers. But today cuteness is starting to feel like fake, mall-­bought conformity” (Newitz 2002). Newitz traces the birth of this cute boom to the “trippy cuteness of rave culture” of the 1990s (see chapter 3, interview with Ady), in combination with the influx of Asian pop culture, such as Pokémon and Hello Kitty. She continues: “By the end of the 1990s, nothing was cooler than Asian pop. And nothing was cuter. . . . These days cuteness has lost any subversive edge it might have had back in the days when raves and manga in the United States were still mostly the purview of underground culture enthusiasts. Cute is a consumer item, a mainstream aesthetic. . . . Asian-­philia [is] at the heart of America’s obsession with cuteness. . . . Cuteness — at least as it’s consumed in America — reduces all of Asian culture to its more precious, infantile, and fluffy form” (Newitz 2002). “Precious, infantile, and fluffy” stereotyping of Asia by way of kawaii is exactly the work of Hello Kitty. Newitz’s critique becomes not only anticute, but through Hello Kitty and other products, works as a polemic against commodity fetishism, “fake mall-­bought conformity,” and racial-­cultural stereotyping. kitty backlash   •  167

Interview: Yumi Umiumare Similar kinds of critique fuel the work of the Asian Australian female performance artist Yumi Umiumare (b. 1965), originally from Hyogo prefecture in Japan. Umiumare’s work combines the grotesque and burlesque in what she calls “Butoh Cabaret.” Drawing upon butoh, a postwar Japanese avant-­garde form of theater and dance developed in part for its shock value, Umiumare has created Hello Kitty – linked works as a critique of Asian female stereotypes and of the duality she sees in Sanrio’s icon: “Love and Obsession. Cute and Creepy.” In the excerpted e-­mail interview from July 30, 2010, that follows, she explains in greater detail her creative process and some of its humorous and macabre results. C. Y.: What is the name of the Hello Kitty piece and when did you create it? Y. U.: I’ve created and performed “Hello Kitty character” in my Butoh Cabaret — DasSHOKU Hora!! (Premiered in 2005 and the original creative development was started in 2003) as well as in The Burlesque Hour (premiered in 2004 and still touring adding different repertories).

Please see my website for the details of DasSHOKU Hora!! [. . .] . And the photos and clip [. . .]. And please see my website for The Burlesque Hour [. . . ].3

C. Y.: Why did you choose Hello Kitty? Y. U.: When I was looking for new materials for my new Butoh Cabaret show, I started searching around the myth and pop cultures in Japan and Hello Kitty was one of them. When I was little, I’ve never liked Hello Kitty because I’ve never thought it was cute but rather “creepy.” I’ve started analyzing, then realized Hello Kitty has no mouth, in fact she has only 3 “dots” in her face and doesn’t look like she is smiling! Also one of the strange inspirations came through when I was in Hong Kong, where many Hello Kitty shops were around. When I was there in 2003, I’ve heard some news about a murder in Hong Kong and the victim’s body parts were found inside of Hello Kitty cushion. I wasn’t sure it was true story or not, but because I was looking for some “horror” materials for my new Butoh Cabaret show, I was interested in exploring this bizarre jux168  •  chapter four

taposition in Hello Kitty. She has been very popular as a cute thing yet possibly she has a dark cruel side!!??   I was excited to using [sic] Hello Kitty as a metaphor in order to portraite [sic] and create these urban myth and horror in my new show though Butoh (dance of darkness) and Cabaret (social satire and cultural comment).   The Hello Kitty Girl in DasSHOKU Hora!! was also created through my interests towards the “cuteness” in Japanese cultures and also exploring these weird yet internally fragile quality of Kawaii (cute) Girls. At that time, I was interested in the complexity of young people who obsesses to their cuteness or cute objects yet possibly quite suicidal. In the show, the Kitty Girl is constantly talking to anybody in high pitch voice and giving her special Hello Kitty candies to the audience. She looks innocent and she believes Hello Kitty is her entire life. But eventually she confesses she can’t sense her real feeling and has been pretending to be happy. She sings a Karaoke song about her confusion and that leaps to the next scene of a schoolgirl who sells her undies to business men. A business man, who is looking for a Enjyo Kosai (rescue relationship) and also obsesses to “cute” things, appears and eventually eats whole Hello Kitty Cake in very aggressive/sexual manners while the cute girl vomiting pink ooze.  In The Burlesque Hour, I’ve created another short dance piece with other artists, using Hello Kitty bags, which has been performed in the several seasons. This piece was about 5 minutes, and again, I was exploring the macabre side of cute/ pop cultures, becoming a “mouth-­less Kitty”! A girl was playing with Hello kitty bags with others. When she was looking inside of kitty bag, her head was swallowed into the bag. The girl eventually becomes Kitty monster and shows her mouth and black teeth! We’ve created a trick that the bag becomes a mask of Kitty and my real mouth are shown combining with the Kitty’s face so it looks as if Kitty has gained a mouth! C. Y.: People would not necessarily think of Butoh and Hello Kitty together. How did this combination work for you? Y. U.: I was interested in dual existence of Butoh (Dance of Darkness) and Cabaret in which I believe we could explore cultural/ kitty backlash   •  169

political satires and comedy elements in very accessible ways. I’ve created three different DasSHOKU Cabaret series in the past and always one of my favorite kind of works! (In Japanese, Dasshoku means “bleach” and I’ve tried to bleach away the commonly held views of cultural stereo type — e.g. Japanese women as cute, polite and submissive)[.] C. Y.: What kind of audience reaction did you get? Y. U.: They laugh, scared and also confused. I usually get all sort of mixed reactions but mostly very positive. In some places, some of the audiences have never known about the actual Hello Kitty so they think it’s just a scary cat!! C. Y.: Did you have to get Sanrio’s permission to use Hello Kitty? Y. U.: It is very good point but I have never got permission from Sanrio. I thought we could get away from it because I’ve never performed Hello Kitty as its existed character, but a girl who was haunted by the obsession of Hello Kitty or using it as a metaphor of the twisted world we live in now. C. Y.: What do you feel Hello Kitty represents? Y. U.: Love and Obsession. Cute and Creepy.

Asian American Public Critique Love and obsession, cute and creepy, may be the basis of critique by one large group of critics in Euro-­America arising from the context of Hello Kitty’s original group of overseas consumers — Asian American females. For example, Denise Uyehara, a Los Angeles – based Japanese American bisexual performance artist, developed an anticute piece in 2002 entitled Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels, in which she works against Hello Kitty as a model for Asian American females. The ad for one of her performances shows a short-­cropped (buzz-­cut), unsmiling Uyehara putting a gun to Kitty’s oversized head (figure 4.1). Uyehara explained: “I wanted to use Hello Kitty because it represented sweetness and a cutesy mentality. . . . I was interested in playing with the notion of cuteness and not label it as weak, or totally good or bad. It’s one of many facets of who we are” (Inoue 2002). Uyehara thus acknowledges sweet170  •  chapter four

4.1. Denise Uyehara, Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels (1995). Photo by Chuck Stallard.

ness and cuteness as more than a mere representation, but as part of the identity of Asian American females (“who we are”). Rather than unmasking a truer identity, it is an attempt to emphasize the inter­woven strands of that identity. Uyehara suggests possibilities for enriching the concept of cuteness, instead of simply rejecting it. When I asked Uyehara why she chose Hello Kitty as the target of her performance art, she responded by saying that Hello Kitty, long a symbol of Asian American females, made the perfect representative of orientalist stereotyping (personal communication, March 1, 2003). The gun to Kitty’s head serves to explode some of these myths. Uyehara’s intervention thus works in manifold ways: unsmilingly pulling the trigger upon helpless Kitty, she enacts the “Mad Asian Bitch.” Another group of Asian American female activists working out of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts — Ann Poochareon, Geraldine Chung, and Vivian Wenli Lin — released a seven-­minute dvd entitled Hello Kitty Is Dead (abbreviated as hkid) in 2003. They explain their message as follows: “China doll, Geisha girl, Sex Kitty, Madame Butterfly. . . . Hello Kitty is Dead addresses commonly held stereotypes of the ‘exotic’ Asian women by extracting images from mainstream kitty backlash   •  171

American media. While these narratives attempt to represent us using cliched, one-­dimensional characters, we reverse the process and re-­ examine them and their effect on America’s inherently racist system of representation. . . . . hkid is dedicated to every woman, girl, and unborn daughter who has been or will be subjected to cat calls, yellow fever, and racialized sexual harassment” (Poochareon, Chung, and Lin 2003). Like Uyehara, these activists use Hello Kitty as a touchstone, symbolizing gendered, racialized, orientalist stereotypes of Asian (American) women, against which they fight. Those stereotypes include not only the sweet and demure, but also the seductive and powerful. Hello Kitty works particularly well within this frame because she is simultaneously sweet, demure, seductive, and powerful. Another Asian American feminist takes a web-­based tack of critique. On an Internet site called AsianWhite.Org, Exploring Race Relations between Asians and Whites, one link is entitled “Big Bad Chinese Mama — Ass-­kicking anti-­geishas, mail order brides from hell, and what Hello Kitty was thinking all these years under the mouthless/ speechless facade of ‘cuteness.’ ”4 With Hello Kitty as a prelude, the young Asian American female webmaster dubs her outraged and outrageous manifesto as follows: “Resistance as living: giving revolution a sense of humor” or “Why I tricked thousands of nasty porn-­seeking guys to come to my fake mail order bride site, only to get a fist in their face.” In contrast with mouthless Kitty, Big Bad Chinese Mama opens her mouth wide, displaying it filled with Cheetos. She says, dripping with sarcasm: “Hi there. I am the Big Bad Chinese Mama. As you can tell, I am a sweet and lovely lotus blossom. Why just look at me. Aren’t I the most delicate thing you have ever seen?” She is the anticute Asian American nightmare, holding up the prop of Hello Kitty as a mute foil to her over-­the-­top rant. These Asian American female critics of Hello Kitty know too well the close ties between Sanrio’s cat and themselves. Coming from within the population that initially and continually consumes her, they recognize her appeal. At the same time, they find those associations stereotypical and limiting. Thus, their critique is not so much with her popularity, but with the ways in which she has come to represent them. The problem with Hello Kitty is that she has become too much their symbol.

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Interview: Angela Choi Angela Choi — a first-­generation Chinese American writer who was born in Hong Kong and raised in San Francisco — places Hello Kitty center stage in her 2010 novel Hello Kitty Must Die. With a bright shocking-­pink cover and skull-­and-­crossbones symbol, Choi’s novel centers around an angry, foul-­mouthed, Chinese American female Yale Law School graduate, Fiona Yu. Caught in a culture clash between her immigrant parents and her San Francisco environment, Yu lashes out at that most convenient symbol of her predicament — Hello Kitty. A brief excerpt of Fiona’s rant: “I hate Hello Kitty. I hate her for not having a mouth or fangs like a proper kitty. She can’t eat, bite off a nipple or finger, give head, tell anyone to go and fuck his mother or lick herself. She has no eyebrows, so she can’t look angry. She can’t even scratch your eyes out. Just clawless, fangless, voiceless, with that placid, blank expression topped by a pink ribbon” (Choi 2010:16 – 17). In Choi’s novel, Hello Kitty represents demure, quiet, passive Asian (American) females — a stereotype that Choi contends must die. The book takes on the burden of Asian American females caught between cultures and generations, inevitably trapped in the sweet stereotypes that bind them. I met Choi in San Francisco, where she lives, writes, and works part time as a tour guide (having quit her lawyer job). She had just completed the screenplay of Hello Kitty Must Die and was anxious to start on her new book project. Fast-­talking, energetic, and scrappy, Choi describes herself as a foodie and life enthusiast. She had recently turned thirty-­ three, and — like Fiona — was a graduate of Yale University (although Choi was an English major), an attorney (although Choi’s degree was from University of California at Davis), and living at home with a baby parakeet (Choi’s is named Meatball). Choi obviously drew a lot from her own personal experiences in crafting the characters of her book. Here is an excerpt from our conversation of July 29, 2010, at a coffee shop near Union Square. A. C.: Hello Kitty is such a symbol for Asian women. We see her as this kind of mouthless kitty, like a lot of the stereotypes of Asian women. Well, that they’re submissive, they have to be demure and they have to be polite; they have to be x, y, and z . . . quiet or whatever . . . the stereotypes we’re talking about. It fits very much into that image of Kitty. She doesn’t have fangs like a proper kitty, she doesn’t have a mouth, she doesn’t have kitty backlash   •  173

claws, she’s not really a kitty, she doesn’t even have really eyebrows, and she can’t really express herself. She’s just kind of this placid, docile character, and I think she encapsulates a lot of the stereotypes of Asian women. And Fiona’s very anti that. C. Y.: So what is your own personal background with Hello Kitty? Did you have Hello Kitty as a child? A. C.: Sure, when I was a child, I loved Hello Kitty. Everybody loved Hello Kitty. As a kid, you all like the little pink stickers; you liked the little pink pencils. I would go to the Hello Kitty store and be like any other kid, and just like the Hello Kitty characters. It’s just cute, so you like it as a kid, but when you grow up, you see a different view of it. But I used to love Hello Kitty. I still have Hello Kitty things at home. C. Y.: You do? What do you have at home? A. C.: Anything from those little pencils, those mechanical pencils to pens to little stuffed toys, Hello Kitty jewelry. I even have a Hello Kitty shirt right now. It’s like a pajama top with pajama bottom, and my mom got it for like ten bucks in Chinatown. I mean, I don’t really hate Hello Kitty. C. Y.: Now tell me, at what age did your relationship with Hello Kitty change? When did it go sour? A. C.: It never really went sour. I mean I thought she was a great —  she was a great icon for this kind of book, very anti. But I don’t think it ever really soured. I could say, like in high school, I just didn’t buy Hello Kitty things anymore but that’s because I kind of grew up and I wanted — well, in high school, instead of pink, I liked black clothes more. I was very much into the romantic poets. They could be kind of dreary, so I was more dark and dreary, dark and dreary, that kind of thing in high school. And then in college, I was an English major, so I mean, I just grew out of the Hello Kitty thing naturally. They’re cute, but you grow up and you just kind of move onto different things. Instead of a Hello Kitty backpack, you want a Prada backpack or Chanel. That’s just kind of a natural progression.

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C. Y.: Now, how did you come back to it as a literary device as an author? A. C.: Honestly, I was up against the rock with this title, and I didn’t have a title. I had a really naughty title, and I was talking about this with my line editor, and we were talking about the second chapter, and I said, “I just can’t come up with a title.” And he’s like, “How about Hello Kitty Must Die?” Because Fiona goes on to this rant about, “I hate Hello Kitty!” She says, “I hate Hello Kitty!” And he’s like, “Well, if she hates Hello Kitty, then what about Hello Kitty Must Die?” And it was a catchy title. It’s kind of a play on Romeo Must Die on Shakespeare, and that Hello Kitty’s such an icon, and it’s catchy. This will sell! And I said . . . when they made this cover, I was like, “Wow, it’s kind of plain.” And they were like, “Well, it doesn’t matter because the title will sell it, and we just need a very small icon.” And so, it’s a very plain title, but . . . I mean, it’s a very plain cover, but it’s a very catchy cover; it pops. And my publisher says the title is gonna sell it. And I said, “Okay.” C. Y.: And has it? A. C.: Yeah. Some website named it “the best title and cover of the season.” C. Y.: Fantastic. Did you choose the color of the cover? A. C.: Yeah. And I feel like, in some ways, the pink is deceptive, because people say, “Oh, it’s a chick-­flick novel,” and they start reading and like, “This is weird. What is this?” And some people just don’t hit on it that it’s a satire, and I have a lot of critics and reviewers that are like, “This is not a mystery!” I never said it was a mystery. They say, “This is not chick flick!” I said, “This is not chick flick.” And so I have a lot of people who don’t like Kitty . . . so it’s either like you love this book or hate this book. I don’t have any in-­betweens. Either you hate it, and they’re like, “I don’t get it. Why would she do this? Why would she do that?” And seems like nobody gets it. It’s a really dark, vicious satire. But the people who love it totally get it, and it’s great. C. Y.: Now has Sanrio had any reaction to this? kitty backlash   •  175

A. C.: No. I don’t even know if Sanrio’s even heard of this. C. Y.: Do you have any hate mail from Hello Kitty fans, who say, “Why are you using Hello Kitty like this?” A. C.: No, no. I don’t get hate mail at all. I get a lot of mail that says, “Oh my god. I totally loved your book!” Hello Kitty doesn’t actually play a role, and I had someone who actually says, “But Hello Kitty doesn’t even play a role in this book.” And I said, “That’s the pink cover.” It’s the pink cover and the little skull. I like the little skull. Actually the Israeli girl soldiers put that on their uniforms. Yeah, they put that on their uniforms. It’s like a tough version of Hello Kitty, a deadly version. C. Y.: Was there anything besides Hello Kitty that she could’ve been, that Fiona could’ve been ranting about? I mean did you automatically think “OK, if Fiona’s gonna do a rant, it’s gonna be Hello Kitty.” A. C.: Oh yeah. It’s gotta be Hello Kitty. If she’s gonna rant about —  she rants about a lot of things. I mean in terms of being an anti-­Asian female, stereotypical book. I mean, there’s lots of them out there. I mean, not to disparage any of them. They’re all written really well. C. Y.: You mean The Joy Luck Club [the book by Amy Tan] thing? A. C.: The Joy Luck Club thing. There are a lot of Joy Luck Club books, and it seems like that’s the type that works in the big market, like, that’s what they expect Asian writers to write, that’s what they will accept, that’s what the big publishers will take. The funny thing I found about it was that there was a lot of Asian critics who won’t read this book. That’s right. Isn’t that funny? They will not read it, because they’re like, “Well, yeah. . . .” C. Y.: It doesn’t fit the trope. A. C.: It . . . it’s so funny. I feel like Asians [Americans] are the only ones who will play into a stereotype. Give it to any other race or culture, people get offended if you stereotype them. But Asians [i.e., Asian Americans] would actually play into that stereotype and if you don’t follow the stereotype or fall into 176  •  chapter four

it, they actually don’t like you, because one of the roughest critics I had was an Asian [American] woman. She runs one of the website reviews, and I sent her my novel and oh my god, she hated it. She just absolutely hated it. C. Y.: What was her main critique? A. C.: Her main critique was this was so stereotypical. And I was like, “Well, if this is so stereotypical, what the hell do you think of all the other things?” And it was just a very much “It’s not me, so I don’t like it.” So, I was like, “Well, it’s OK; that’s fine.” C. Y.: So, for her, it wasn’t an affirming stereotype. It wasn’t the stereotype that she wanted to read. A. C.: Yeah. I mean, I’m sure she would love the Joy Luck Club. That’s the kind of thing she would read. She saw this, and she was just like, “Oh, my gosh, you’re just perpetuating stereotypes about, oh how Asian men are not great.” And I was like, “Well, you know, I don’t say white men are great either. That [white] guy [in Choi’s novel] is a douchebag.” If you think about it . . . she just had to hate it. And I was like, “Okay, so this is a book you either hate or you love.” C. Y.: I was wondering if the pros and cons fall into any kind of generational divide. A. C.: They do. C. Y.: OK, tell me about that generational divide. A. C.: My agent, when he was circulating this book, and he was trying to get reads on it — there was definitely an age cap on it. People who love it are usually under thirty-­five or under forty or they are under thirty-­five or forty in their heart. You gotta be young and a little sociopathic. If you’re trying to look for the human element, if you’re trying to look for the mushy, you’re trying to look for a tearjerker, look elsewhere. It’s just not. It’s young and sociopathic and it’s angry. That’s the book. That’s it. That’s Fiona. I had this one editor who’s like, “Where is the human element?” And I said, “Well go read The Joy Luck Club if you want some human element.” This is not a human element. It’s fun; it’s vicious; there’s a lot of anger on it. And kitty backlash   •  177

there is a lot of energy. Very young. It’s like a very youthful, energy book. But there is a generation gap. Older people think that sympathetic characters sell better. They do. But I think niceness is overrated. C. Y.: Now if you were to have a daughter, would you buy her Hello Kitty? A. C.: Sure, she’d love it. C. Y.: So you have nothing innately against Hello Kitty? A. C.: I don’t have anything innately against Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty’s really cute, and kids love it. If I have a daughter, I would definitely buy her. I think she’ll have a ball with Hello Kitty. Everything’s pink and flowery, and everything’s smiling at her. And she’s gonna be very happy with Hello Kitty. Even today, I have no hatred of Hello Kitty. But I think she’s a great icon to really latch onto and to think about. C. Y.: When I went to Sanrio in South San Francisco, they said that Hello Kitty represents happiness. So do you see anything wrong with Hello Kitty as happiness? A. C.: There is nothing wrong with being happy, but that’s such a Western, almost, New World concept, if you think about it. You have to be happy. People don’t like it if you’re not happy. Happiness is required, which is annoying, if you think about it. Now, that Hello Kitty brings happiness to kids — I think that’s wonderful. And that she’s happily dancing — kids should be happy. I think everyone should have a happy childhood, but I really kind of more side with the lot of the more Old World European way. You don’t always have to be happy, because life isn’t always happy, and it’s OK to be grumpy sometimes. C. Y.: Tell me, growing up, would you consider yourself a tomboy or girly girl or just none of the above? A. C.: Oh neither. I had my girly side, so my mom dressed me up in little dresses a lot. And she used to be a dressmaker or tailor in Hong Kong, so I got these beautiful handmade dresses. They were frilly; they were lacy. So, my mom dressed me up. I would wear those white patent leather shoes. I played piano. I was 178  •  chapter four

very much not a girly girl, in the sense of my attitude and the way I look, but I dressed like a girly girl. I had a lot of Hello Kitty hair trinkets, like hair accessories. Had a lot of those little ponytail holders that had Hello Kitty on it. I was never into sports. Because when you say tomboy, I think of sports. So I’m not quite like that. I guess you could say I’m somewhere in the middle, kind of androgynous or something, but I was just a girl. I liked literary things. I had my nose in the book. I was kind of a bookworm. I wasn’t always very flirty, I was more cerebral. C. Y.: The title, Hello Kitty Must Die, what do you mean by that? A. C.: Because Fiona really wants to bash the image of Hello Kitty. She basically wants to strangle this little cat, because she says, “I’m not that little cat.” Not because she really hates the cat per se, but she doesn’t wanna be seen as just another Hello Kitty. C. Y.: And when you say that, what exactly do you mean? A. C.: Meaning she doesn’t wanna be seen as that Asian little cat that has no fangs and no claws, has just a top bow and just sits there. So it’s basically her frustration with the stereotype that this cartoon icon sometimes encapsulates. C. Y.: Now if Hello Kitty dies, then what’s next? What’s Fiona’s ideal? A. C.: That is Fiona’s ideal. If you kind of trace her progression, in the beginning, she kind of is half a Hello Kitty, because she’s at home, she’s doing what her parents are saying. She’s not really mouthing off to her dad, and even when she does, he doesn’t hear her. He just seems to blow her off. At the end of the book, she’s a very strong woman. I mean she’s not afraid to take someone down. So that’s the anti – Hello Kitty. I mean, she’s obviously not afraid to take anybody down. She’s not going to be a mouthless little thing. She mouths off to people. She gets kind of dirty, right at the very end. So she’s a very different person at the end. She’s not quite a Hello Kitty any more. C. Y.: How much of Fiona is you? kitty backlash   •  179

A. C.: Well, you know what, those dates, I’ve been on. I mean a lot. C. Y.: You mean, at your parents’ behest. A. C.: Oh yeah. When I was in my twenties, I mean a lot of her is me, and a lot of it obviously is fiction. I have dated those guys. I just changed their names, but those dating stories are real! And my dad used to say, “You don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” kind of thing. And they’re like, “You’re twenty-­five,” and you know the whole saying, women after twenty-­five, they don’t want them anymore. So he was trying to marry me off. C. Y.: To an Asian American guy? A. C.: Asian American. He was born here, but he’s very Asian. You see, you could be Asian American, but you could be more American than you are Asian. This guy’s squarely more Asian than American — he has his own house, but he doesn’t wanna live in it. He wants to live with his parents. He rents out his house — he lives at home with his parents — so I said, “Why? So his mother can cook for me?” I mean he’s a nice guy. I mean, we grew up together. He’s a sweetheart, but . . . I asked him, I said, “Why don’t guys like me?” And he said, “Well, I don’t know about other guys, but I’m just talking about Asian guys.” And this is gonna tie back to the Hello Kitty, because I’m not a Hello Kitty. And he says, “You’re loud. You’re obnoxious. You’re outspoken, and you’re just like rude.” And I was like, well, I know I’m not rude to him because we’re friends, but I was like, “Really?” And he says, “You have absolutely no redeeming quality.” And I said, “I thought all those are pretty good redeeming qualities.” And he goes, “No, because — look, if I had a girl that looked like you, and if she was at least quiet or something — if she was quiet and she was kind of demure, I could feel like I could take care of her.” C. Y.: That’s what they want? A. C.: That’s what they want. They want a Hello Kitty. That’s the gist of the book. I’ve been dealing with guys like that all my life. This is not just a relationship book, but I’ve been dealing with that crap all my life. Like, there are always those white guys who 180  •  chapter four

just think that they’re getting some exotic sex bunny who’s gonna rub their feet. Either that or I get some Asian guy who is, like, “You don’t fit the Asian mold.” But I say, “You’re right. I probably do not fit an Asian mold. I don’t care.” And they’re like, “No,” because they do want that Hello Kitty. They want them to be demure. They want them to be quiet. They want them to be submissive, and I even had a white boyfriend at one time, who was just really shocked by my behavior. And I don’t think I’ve ever screamed, “Go to hell, motherfucker!” that loudly in my life. And he was just shocked. He was like, “Asian women don’t talk like that.” I said, “Well, I’m sorry, they do.” He’s like, “You’re the first Asian.” He’s thirty-­six! I said, “What have you been doing, living in an Afghan cave?” I mean, I said . . . he’s never dated an Asian American woman, so he was also looking for that . . . I said, “What do you think?” He said, “They’re usually quiet and demure.” They’re voiceless, mouthless, fangless, clawless, kind of like Hello Kitty. C. Y.: Now do you know Asian or Asian American women who are Hello Kitties? A. C.: Oh my god! Tons, and guys love them. They’re usually very quiet. They definitely don’t talk like me. I had this one nice friend. She was married to this nice Asian guy. She just had this look of horror when I was reading my book at one of my signings. She’s like, “How can you say that? How can you talk about vagina?” I said, “It’s just a hole — get over it.” And she just can’t deal with it. “You can’t say that. You can’t talk about sex. You can’t be sexual.” I know a lot of Hello Kitties; they don’t talk about sex; they get very embarrassed about dating. They don’t talk about dating. They’re very quiet, very demure, very proper. They’re very prim, and so it’s very much, kind of like, polite little Hello Kitty with a little bow. They wear their little dress. They’re very proper, and they’re definitely not me.

Giving Kitty a Mouth Many critics such as Choi (as well as the editors of the Japan Times) find Kitty’s mouthlessness problematic, in spite of the fact that depicting a character without a mouth may be considered a mere stylistic convenkitty backlash   •  181

tion in Japan. Some Japanese I have spoken with express surprise at this reaction; one Japanese woman confessed: “I never even realized she did not have a mouth!”5 However, according to critics, having no mouth must be more than a graphic convention; it must be a meaning-­laden symbol. Given a Euro-­American political emphasis on speech as the assertion of individual rights, literally not having the means to voice one’s opinion or defend one’s position may be interpreted as powerlessness. The “problem” might be fixed if only Kitty could get a mouth. To this end, the performance artist Jaime Scholnick created a piece in 2002 entitled Hello Kitty Gets a Mouth at the post Gallery in Los Angeles. In this short fifteen-­minute video, Hello Kitty despairs at not having a mouth, seeks out plastic surgeons in Japan to no avail, and finally ends up in Los Angeles, where she finds a plastic surgeon who will give her a mouth. Once mouthed, she masturbates pleasurably with her Hello Kitty vibrator and is able to voice her ecstasy to the heavens. In this work, Scholnick links Hello Kitty’s mouthlessness to the symbolic muting of desire, pain, and pleasure: having a mouth, by contrast, enables self-­expression and personal agency. Kitty’s mouthlessness denies her these basic rights. Scholnick followed up with a 2005 piece entitled Shoot a Mouth on Hello Kitty? at the Bank Gallery in Los Angeles, in which viewers were invited to shoot paintballs at a Hello Kitty target, aiming for the spot where her mouth would be. Scholnick had an assistant dressed in pink army fatigues ride in on a Hello Kitty scooter and help viewers with the paintball gun (see figures 4.2 and 4.3). For that exhibit, the artist writes, “In true American fashion we change the world by force. God knows we tried to negotiate the need for a mouth and when it was denied, well, we took it by force. Of course there was collateral damage! Have you ever tried to hit a target?? It’s damn hard! So we take out her eye, blast a hole in her forehead possibly. That’s the cost of free speech!! (;-­))” (personal communication, July 5, 2011). In short, missing the exact target was part of the plan. The public reaction to the opportunity to shoot at Hello Kitty in order to give her a mouth? Scholnick reports, “I swear people wouldn’t even try sometimes to just blow her away. It was fascinating!” (personal communication, July 5, 2011). Scholnick is not alone in focusing critique on Hello Kitty’s mouthlessness. The website Hello Kitty Has No Mouth lists numerous humorous postings on the implications of such a state. Here is a sampling of the website’s mantra: 182  •  chapter four

4.2. Jaime Scholnick, Shoot a Mouth on Hello Kitty? (2005).

4.3. Shiho on Hello Kitty scooter for Jaime Scholnick’s Shoot a Mouth on Hello Kitty? (2005). Courtesy of Jaime Scholnick.

Hello Kitty has no mouth, but she must scream. That is why her head is so big. Hello Kitty has no mouth, yet she speaks the truth. Hello Kitty has no mouth, and yet she has a tongue. Hello Kitty has no mouth, and yet her lipstick is prostitute red. Hello Kitty has no mouth, and yet she often smokes in bed.6 The webmaster, who calls himself “Tim” (or, as in the quote below, refers to himself in triplicate — me, myself, and I, adding up to “Tims”) responds to reader queries, including those who both applaud and denigrate the postings. Here is a sample interchange: Q. Why are you dissing hello kitty? Please stop. A. First of all, thank you for your kind note. Secondly, in answer to you [sic] heartfelt plea, No. Not only will we not stop, we can’t 184  •  chapter four

stop. Tims and I recognized that Hello Kitty has no mouth. And

by god someone has to say something! the truth will out! [sic] We can no longer stand by and let the world ignore the hideous deformity that plagues H. K.’s puss [pun!] We shall break this code of silence because . . . She can’t [irony!]. You see, Hello Kitty has no mouth. . . . Or another: Q: I can’t believe you just dissed hello kitty like that. I know she doesn’t have a mouth but it’s not like she smokes and like that the only reason people go to your stupid web page is because they like hello kitty. A: Dissed?! You make it sound as if Hello Kitty has some sort of freakish deformity by having her face graced with the conspicuous absence of an oral aperture. In this, you seem to suggest that we take pleasure in ridiculing the physically disabled. What sort of pathetic chimps are we to be taken for? Are you next going to accuse us of tormenting the blind, or kicking puppies? If it is for this reason you decry us, I must say, you’ve hurt Tim’s feelings.7 Obviously, the webmaster “Tim” takes great pleasure in high-­minded high jinks. And mouthlessness — a state of being unthinkable, particularly in Euro-­American contexts — becomes the easy target for such humorous, anti-­Kitty barbs.

Flaming Hell Kitty “Tim” presents just the tip of the iceberg in the online anti – Hello Kitty tirade; in fact, anti – Hello Kitty websites outside Japan abound, many of them interconnected. Just as one may join online communities of Kitty fans, so, too, one may join online communities of those who claim to hate Hello Kitty; for example, the social networking site Facebook includes a page titled People who hate Hello Kitty, which claims 742 members (as of July 2010) with the quip, “Hello Kitty is a problem that is attacking the citizens of our country. . . we need to stop this foolishness . . . now,” and a drawing of Hello Kitty hanging by a noose. Part of the venom that greets Hello Kitty online may be a function of flaming, the tendency of web-­based interaction to easily fall into hyperbolic critique, expressed both verbally and visually through the use of kitty backlash   •  185

colored fonts, uppercase letters, and orthographic elements such as exclamation marks. For example, one website, Anti – Hello Kitty!!!! begins with a tirade: “I’ve been trying to tell you all for years . . . the cat is evil . . . pure evil i tell you. Just look into her beady little eyes and tell me you do not see pure evil.”8 The site juxtaposes a normal picture of Kitty holding a bouquet of flowers — “May be disguised as the following cute lovable . . . *yet very deceiving* little kitten” — with a pseudo-­kitty holding a sign reading “Kill” and “the kickers of ass.” It also shows the infamous Kitty vibrator, with the caption, “What appears to be a harmless childs [sic] toy . . . is in fact . . . a dildo!!!! Isn’t Hello Kitty a child’s [sic] cartoon?? ha . . . i told you. . . . she’s captured the children . . . now she’s after the older ones. . . . .evil little bitch.” The webmaster (self-­dubbed “Lindsy”) critiques Hello Kitty for the deceptiveness with which she has entranced the American public as a seemingly innocuous icon that seduces people — and especially children — to sexual pleasures, consumer activities, and more. The underlying argument here is that children, sex, and capitalism provide a volatile, unsavory cocktail. Another site, Hell Kitty, the original anti – Hello Kitty site, began in 2000 by self-­dubbed “Evil Princess Chikako.”9 She writes: “Welcome to my little Anti Hello Kitty shrine! Known as Hell Kitty! . . . This is the real Hell Kitty and I’m proud to be the webmaster here! Come on in, look around and find a fun way to kill the cat everyone loves to hate! . . . And just remember before you flame me that it’s a freakin cartoon cat! it isnt real!” The site’s motto is “Everyone needs something to hate, start with Hello Kitty.” This site, like many others, critiques Hello Kitty in vitriolic language, both semantically and visually, with extensive use of uppercase letters and vividly colored background shades of red to suggest a true hell. Although the tone is critical, this, like many other anti-­Kitty sites is done, at least in part, in jest. The critique broadly straddles play and irony in its hysteria. According to this, what is hellish about Hello Kitty? First, she is too good. Therefore, everyone loves to hate her. Second, Hello Kitty’s subterfuge is covert. She attacks people unawares, snatching them from their consciousness, and pulling them into her seemingly benign world. Hello Kitty messes with people’s heads; she is nothing short of a mind game. If she is evil, then so, too, is one of her harshest critics — the webmaster self-­dubbed “Evil Princess Chikako.” Critic and critiqued, then, meet on equal (mediated) turf, battling for people’s consciousness around the globe. The webmaster Evil Princess Chikako, 186  •  chapter four

however, competes with weapons bared. Hello Kitty, by contrast, battles with weapons concealed beneath a kawaii exterior. Hello Kitty’s greatest sin according to this view is the way in which her cuteness conceals her evil intentions. Kawaii is, in effect, not only the devil, but what’s worse, the devil disguised as an angel. Still another anti – Hello Kitty site calls itself Hello Kitty Perversions.10 The webmaster Mark Hughes, whose e-­mail address suggests that he is affiliated with the University of Idaho, offers such items as seppuku Kitty clothing, including T-­shirts for men and women and thong-­style women’s underwear. Other offerings include Hello Kitty Soft Beef Jerky (“Is it made from real Hello Kitties?”), and Goth Kitty. One defender of Kitty wrote to Hughes, “God damn you. Hello Kitty is not a sex object! She’s cute, she’s fluffy, she’s funny and most off [sic] all she’s bloody cool!” to which Hughes responded, “You poor delusional bastard. Seek help now.” One blog entitled Hello Kitty Hell (figure 4.4) has as its motto “One man’s life with cute overload.” That cute overload begins with his wife, a Hello Kitty fan, who has been a seller of Hello Kitty goods on eBay. Begun in August 2006 in reaction to his wife’s fandom and business, it currently receives about 250,000 page views a month according to its webmaster (known here as HKH; personal communication, July 4, 2010). When I asked him what it was about Hello Kitty that he hates the most, he replied, “That it is impossible to escape. If Sanrio hasn’t done it, some Hello Kitty fanatic has” (personal communication, July 4, 2010). The people who contribute to his website have contradictorily been not anti – Hello Kitty proponents, but fans: “Unfortunately, the majority of the people that follow the blog are people that like Hello Kitty and those that send me stuff are usually people that want to show off what they have or what they found to other hello Kitty fanatics” (personal communication, July 4, 2010). Here, as elsewhere, fans and critics intermingle in these anti – Hello Kitty sites, often engaging in high-­pitched debates. Whether gathered individually by HKH himself, or sent in by fans, the Hello Kitty Hell blog is one of the richest (and funniest) sources of Hello Kitty sightings available, with frequent updates and humorous commentary. It is exactly the overload, the excess of Hello Kitty products and images, that is the source of this webmaster’s critique. The webmaster HKH has created thirty-­six categories for postings, ranging from appliances, art, and food, to guns, money, sex, sports, tatkitty backlash   •  187

4.4. “A Walk Through Hell” by Tim Owens, from the Hello Kitty Hell website (2007).

toos, travel, and weddings. Here one finds Hello Kitty guns (handguns, ar-­15s, assault rifles, ak-­47s), Hello Kitty professional wrestling (the “Hello Kitty World Order Match” held April 5, 2008, in Reseda, California), Hello Kitty tattoos (e.g., Hello Kitty Jesus, Darth Vader, and vampire figures), and even a Hello Kitty tombstone (from Japan). One of the most valuable aspects of Hello Kitty Hell are the postings by readers, the vast majority of whom are Hello Kitty fans. For example: #152 Comment from Hayley :D Time: February 22, 2010, 7:42 pm Ohmigoshh! Hello Kitty is amazing and super freaking adorable! :D My friend and I are freaking obsessed! i love hello kitty! :D Lol. . :]11 There is, as well, the occasional posting from someone who agrees with HKH, and particularly from those who confess to similar plights with girlfriends or wives who are obsessed by Hello Kitty. #60 Comment from Aaron Time: May 8, 2008, 7:59 pm Dude, I totally sympathize you. The thought of even staying in a house 188  •  chapter four

full of all these overpriced-­inferior-­quality goods totally freaks me out. My wife is a fanatic, so I totally understand how u feel. Luckily for me, its all under control since Im the one earning the bucks.12 Clearly, although HKH may have humorously intended his site to revolve around anti-­Kitty sentiment, by including extreme extensions of her reach, the blog became a fan’s delight, a compendium of nothing less than Kitty excess. Spending even ten minutes on the Hello Kitty Hell website proves an overwhelming experience for the uninitiated. The webmaster HKH makes his point through the sheer bounty of sightings that he provides, well beyond even Sanrio’s imagination. Finally, mention should be made of the presence of anti – Hello Kitty sentiment on the Uncyclopedia website, a spoof of Wikipedia in its format and claim to be “content-­free encyclopedia.” Here Hello Kitty becomes “Hell o’Kitty,” described as: “a propaganda device created by the central intelligence division of the Japanese government, S.A.N.R.I.O. (Sacled Ancestol Nihonjin Rove Itarian Octopus) made entirely out of pureed cat corpses and Play-­Doh. The design for Hello Kitty was finalized in 1938 as the brainchild of the HellPussy Project, which was initiated to exploit the mind-­controlling properties of unbridled cuteness over the Japanese public.”13 The spoof continues with doctored images “Heil Kitty” claiming to have been used in Japanese government brainwashing to make women more submissive, make women temporarily uninterested in sex with men, and eliminate excess testosterone in the Japanese male. The false bibliography (“Further reading”) includes The Wrath of Hello Kitty by Masters and Johnson from 1969 and Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Dominato Hellokittica by Sir Isaac Newton from 1677. The Internet includes far more than I am able or willing to list, describe, or analyze. But the brief examples I have provided showcase anti-­ Kitty wrath available online. One easily becomes overwhelmed by the barrage of furor over Sanrio’s cat. In short, anti – Hello Kitty in these global contexts is overload: she works as excessive signifier, as well as signifier of excess.

YouTube Anti-­Kitty Fervor Whereas Internet blogs may be one easy form of anti-­Kitty rant, YouTube postings demand more investment of time and creativity. Many of these postings focus on getting rid of Hello Kitty. For example, “The kitty backlash   •  189

Top Ten Ways to Kill Hello Kitty 2009” features various cartoon characters killing Hello Kitty.14 Some of these are short and serialized: for example, Henster Productions has put up “No More Hello Kitty” and “No More Hello Kitty 2” featuring split heads, exploding cats, and gun battles.15 Another serialized set of short clips is entitled “Korosukat” (in Japanese korosu means “kill”), including the following: “Bye Bye Kitty,” “Korosu Kat’s Mission” spelled out as “1. Kill Kitty, 2. Kill all the other huggy, sweet kawaii, 3. Of course, peace in the world”; “Korosu Mission 2: Draw” to the soundtrack of the theme from “Mission Impossible”; and “Korosu Guerrilla.”16 Note here the concentrated activity of creating and posting these kill Kitty clips. Several combine violent images with equally violent music, such as “Bye Bye Hello Kitty” with images of Hello Kitty hanging, run over by a car, shot with brain exposed, and the words “The time has come to die,” to the accompaniment of Marilyn Manson’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”17 Each of these (and many other) YouTube postings may have been created under very different circumstances, but what they share is an impulse to go public and viral with a strong anti – Hello Kitty sentiment. If Internet blogs may be fueled by flaming, then these YouTube pieces of several seconds or minutes of celebrity by way of anti-­Kitty exposure seems as irresistible as cuteness itself. In short, the combination of railing against Japanese Cute and doing so in a relatively new, high-­profile forum creates playfully incendiary results. YouTube provides more than an outlet here; instead the media itself, with its easy-­access possibilities for instant fame, stimulates creativity and sharp critique. YouTube spirals through its own excesses.

The Business of Hating Kitty Even as anti – Hello Kitty critics, online and offline, rail against her excesses, some of them ironically capitalize on that omnipresence with humorous product lines of their own, built around their Sanrio critique. The most notable of these is the Florida-­based American company David and Goliath and its Stupid Factory stores, which specialize in humorous T-­shirts and other paraphernalia. Founded in 1999 by Todd Goldman, the company’s Goodbye Kitty line is a direct spoof of Hello Kitty. Although Goldman’s cat does not resemble Hello Kitty (less rounded, less stylized abstraction), the title of his product line —  Goodbye Kitty — provides a direct reference to Sanrio’s cat. Here is the 190  •  chapter four

humorously brutal demise of a cat: in a blender, in a microwave oven, in a toaster, in a waffle iron, as the subject of target practice, surrounded by sharks, being shot out of a cannon. Yet another website, Goodbyekitty.net, sells brutal images of Kitty on T-­shirts, with a far greater visual reference to Sanrio’s cat. Calling itself Parody Hello Kitty Clothing and Accessories, the website urges: “Show the world how much you hate Hello Kitty with our hilarious clothing and accessories.” When I perused the website in 2010, it offered eleven designs of Kitty brutality, ranging from hanging on a noose to being hit by a car to electrocution, whipping, crucifixion, or decapitation. Each of these designs included a brief, tantalizing narrative; for example, “Kitty dangles lifelessly as a raven waits to peck out her eyes” or “For those dog lovers out there. See Kitty’s entrails and organs torn from her body” or “See justice served as Hello Kitty gets fried in the electric chair.”18 The United States is not alone in merchandising anti – Hello Kitty goods. A French group calling themselves “Fuck Hello Kitty” sells T-­shirts (forty-­nine euros), tote bags (thirty-­nine euros), and other items. Their designs include the three words of their group in the middle of which is a beat-­up Hello Kitty head, one eye bandaged, and (surprisingly) with a mouth, tongue hanging out.19 In the tote-­bag version, Hello Kitty’s head has morphed into the outline of a fist with middle finger extending upward, effectively gesturing the group’s message. Photos show young girls (approximately three to five years old) in dark glasses posing in the group’s pink T-­shirts. The group also holds and posts events: “Commando Fuck Hello Kitty” records a live scene at an urban dance club with twentysomethings wearing pink-­lettered “Fuck Hello Kitty” T-­shirts to the hyped-­up sound of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” (October 8, 2007).20 Another video records a scene at the Hello Kitty installation by the American artist Tom Sachs in Paris (see chapter 6) in which a member of the group pastes small “Fuck Hello Kitty” stickers on Sachs’s sculpture, while ranting about that “chat de merde” (shitty cat).21 The group’s critical ire uses Hello Kitty as a foil for a larger societal critique, although the exact target of their venom is not always clear. I asked Sanrio’s Dave Marchi what the company position is on these various brutal parodies of Hello Kitty. Marchi’s response: I think ultimately the Sanrio position is . . . it’s probably not good for us. It’s somebody who is actually making money using our brand, so kitty backlash   •  191

economically, it’s not a good idea. Brand-­wise, I can go either way. Again, like an artist, there is gonna be parody out there, and that’s what happens when you are iconic, a pop icon. It’s gonna happen. We haven’t gone after Hello Kitty Hell because they’re not doing anything. But the Goodbye Kitty is a little bit more difficult and I think that we have tried to say, “Hey, this is . . . this is infringing on our brand.” But I believe they do have the right to do it, because it is parody. So ultimately it’s in bad taste, and someone is ultimately making money on portraying our brand in a less than positive light, so ultimately, no, it’s not good, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s more buzz and more interest for the brand. (Personal communication, March 25, 2010) Marchi acknowledges that Sanrio headquarters in Tokyo takes a far less benign point of view than he does, reflecting a position that prefers tighter control. However, for Marchi, even anti-­Kitty is Kitty. After all, marketing a brand is about keeping products in the public eye — that is, maintaining a “buzz.” The worse that could happen in marketing terms is for the public to ignore a product. So to a certain extent, the media-­ centered philosophy here is that buzz is buzz, no matter what the content. There are limits to the appropriateness of the content: according to Sanrio spokespersons I have spoken with, that limit has to do with weapons. Yet when I show them images (from Hello Kitty Hell) of Hello Kitty – emblazoned guns and rifles, they do little more than shrug in acknowledgment of their lack of control over ways in which consumers may customize objects with the Kitty image. In short, Sanrio creates the image and places it in the market. But once the image is public, the company has little jurisdiction over its use. Further, Sanrio itself plays with the ambiguity surrounding Hello Kitty, banking on the element of teasing playfulness to do the work of extension, often into places that the company never may have initially imagined. Marchi, then, accepts the challenge of the tease in a straightforward manner, straddling even the core message of Hello Kitty. He reflects philosophically that this is exactly what happens when someone or something becomes an icon; this is the territory of celebrity. Little do fervent anti – Hello Kitty proponents realize the degree to which they are helping market the cat by ensuring that she stays in the headlines.

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Religious Righteous Anti-­Kitty The excessiveness of Hello Kitty may be matched by the excessiveness of anti-­Kitty diatribes. Whereas Internet and YouTube expressions often dwell in playfulness, yet another site of fervent anti-­Kitty sentiment speaks in dead seriousness — the Christian right. One such website, Landover Baptist Church (Guaranteeing Salvation Since 1620: Where the Worthwhile Worship) calls Hello Kitty a “Satanic Jap Hate-­Cult.”22 With several pictures of Hello Kitty (many taken from the Hello Kitty Hell website) as a devil or cloaked like a witch, the website provides an open forum for debate on Sanrio’s cat, including a few who defend her. On February 18, 2009, “Brother Percy” of Landover Baptist Church posted the following: “In 1999, 23 year old female jap night club hostess Fan Man-­yee was kidnapped by three men. She was imprisoned in their apartment, and tortured for a month. After her torture, her body was dismembered, and the men stuffed her head into a Hello Kitty doll. . . . She was the victim of the sinister and depraved Japanese Satanist hate-­ cult ‘Hello Kitty’!”23 Although “Brother Percy” may not have had all of his facts correct, he does reference the actual the “Hello Kitty Murder” discussed previously. The story becomes twisted, however, in interpreting this event as a racialized satanic cult and calling the dead hostess a “jap.” “Brother Percy” continues: Parents, do not be fooled by the lies! Yes, Hello Kitty, or as I like to call it “hell-­o Kitty” is actually a dangerous hate-­Cult! If you need evidence, you just need to look at the fact it has the word “hell” in it’s name! At this very moment your kids are being brainwashing into it’s sinister and depraved way of life! If not caught in time, your child will start showing signs of a violent nature, disregard for authority, hate for their parents, and disrespect for school teachers and society soon follow. Your child may lash out at you, start shouting profanity in the street, and try to attack random passers-­by while out shopping. This is just the start of the trouble you face, if your child gets involved in the HELLo Kitty cult! With this turn to children, “Brother Percy” takes his cult critique as a brainwashing threat to which parents must be alerted. “Your child may also purchase a ‘Hello Kitty’ doll, which they will worship as a false Idol. They may even place this doll in some sort of ‘shrine’ in their bedroom, and will offer it blood, sacrificed pets, and human hair. If you see any kitty backlash   •  193

Hello Kitty materials in their bedroom, you must take them out back, and burn them immediately! Your child may start protesting, cursing you, and acting out of character. Pay no attention to their protests! This is a sign that the cult have a hold over her!”24 The scene that “Brother Percy” describes is one common to many fans: obtaining Hello Kitty, displaying her, caring for her. The “worship as a false idol” may be a point well taken, however the idolatry she inspires is one easily exaggerated in this website’s histrionic tone. The high-­handed moralizing continues. The website duly notes the use of Hello Kitty in the rave scene (see the chapter 3 interview with Ady), as well as mention of the Hello Kitty “massage wand” that has gained Internet notoriety as a vibrator, and the popularity of Hello Kitty with celebrities such as Mariah Carey. The webmaster links the news items together and calls for a boycott: “Hello Kitty, Mariah Carey and her slut friends are using Hello Kitty to promote the evils of masturbation to innocent young girls worldwide. Boycott the Kitty!”25 This kind of incendiary religious righteousness can be found fomenting around various popular culture fads. Like the critique of Pokémon, this website quickly devolves into thinly veiled racism, the sense of exotic danger combining Satan, cults, sexuality, and drugs only heightened by the frame of Japan (Yano 2004). The designation of “Jap” amplifies the sense of evil and references the sneakiness of capturing America’s children unawares; both of these elements play upon the heightened racialization of World War II. Further, the seductions of cuteness, as well as the celebrities who adore her, call for the Christian right’s heightened vigilance. Yet other Christian extremists see in Hello Kitty dangerous conspiracy. One website, for example, entitled Hello Kitty or Hell of Kitty by Juan Pablo and Kathia Leonardo (original posting from Guatemala city; reposted through kjos ministries) provides elaborate analysis of different aspects of Sanrio’s cat with dangerous practices of idolatry and paganism: “My so called theory is that there is a dumb spirit behind her [Hello Kitty], mentioned in Mark 9:16, and our children . . . are being drawn to destruction for no other reason that for the love of this world, satan Shrewdness brings this so called ‘Toy’ because he knows Christians would reject Mickey Mouse, Pokemon, but Hello kitty? Oh she’s so Cute.”26 According to this website, then, Hello Kitty invades children’s vulnerable hearts exactly through the weaponry of cuteness. Once that invasion takes place, Hello Kitty spreads seeds of disobedience and evil. 194  •  chapter four

Social Communication, without a mouth? How then does it communicate? According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. . . . because anything that doesn’t brings us an [sic] our children to the obedience of Christ, is not other thing but disobedience, And so maybe some contemptuous parents would snap . . . Are you saying I am exposing my children to witchcraft and sorcery!!!!!! Well maybe this parent should not wait until he sees his children in some sort of pagan practice, since the scripture says that rebellion [is as] the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness [is as] iniquity and idolatry.27 The only defense against such “iniquity and idolatry” generated by “the euphoria of Hello Kitty” lies in prayer, fasting, and, above all, resisting the urge to purchase (or buy into) Sanrio’s temptress.

Much Ado about Mouthless Cuteness From materialism and amorality, to kitsch and stultifying stereotypes, to Satanic cults and idolatry, anti-­Kitty fervor provokes venomous reactions. These reactions seem a far cry from the “achievements of the heart” of true-­believer fans and producers. What can we conclude about the nature of the boundaries being policed through the plethora of Hello Kitty controversies? Certainly, these critiques are a means for some people to distance themselves from the meanings surrounding this mouthless cat. But do the controversies constitute a forum of panic about morals or gender? What does race have to do with it? Are the rantings and ravings of Hello Kitty’s critics mere cyber-­flaming at an easy, vulnerable target? Or do the fingers point to more serious concerns? At least some of the critiques can be lined up alongside antiglobalization forces rapidly mounting worldwide. Sanrio may be complimented for standing alongside a host of other global corporations. The difference, of course, is that instead of American McDonald’s, Coca-­Cola, Starbucks, or Disney, this is Japanese Sanrio. Hello Kitty — as with other Japanese global exports — subverts the older mapping of globalization from Euro-­America to the rest of the world (Allison 2006; Iwabuchi 2002). As Mike Featherstone argues, a company such as McDonald’s entering a relatively new market is serving up more than hamburgers; it is proffering a way of life: “For those on the periphery it offers the possibility of the psychological benefits of identifying with the powerful” kitty backlash   •  195

(1995:8). But does Hello Kitty offer these same psychological benefits? Does she represent “identifying with the powerful”? Perhaps this holds true in other Asian countries, where Japan holds a powerful position as a regional and global leader. However in Euro-­American countries, although many consumers may choose to buy Japanese products, far fewer want to emulate a Japanese lifestyle or identify with Japanese culture as might potentially be associated with those products. In fact, many are ignorant of what that lifestyle or culture might be. Not surprisingly, some of the antiglobalization critique of Hello Kitty shades ever subtly into racialized anti-­Japanese or anti-­Asian sentiment, reinforcing a Euro-­American national-­cultural hierarchy. World Trade Organization protests notwithstanding, it is as if McDonald’s, Coke, Starbucks, and Disney share an expectation (if not a right) to their global empire in ways that Hello Kitty does not. Hello Kitty thus becomes not only the outsider to this Euro-­American global club, but also its consumer-­based yellow-­peril nemesis. That nemesis may be based in a relative lack of familiarity, but that cultural distance itself can be racialized as exotic, cultic, or even conspiratorial. Hello Kitty also provokes the ire of feminists and others by her chō-­ kawaii (ultra cute) cuteness, enabling, encouraging, and inciting performances of gendered passivity. This passivity is symbolized most clearly by her mouthlessness, which triggers moral/gender panic and indignation for Euro-­American critics who equate individual agency with its verbal expression. The panic arises in part because Hello Kitty represents cuteness in too many places, and thus cuteness that becomes out of place. Cuteness is typically regarded in Euro-­America as benign and unthreatening — if appropriately contained within spheres such as children and baby animals. The “sin” of Hello Kitty and the pink globalization she spawns is that she oversteps these bounds, covertly insinuating herself into adult worlds. The covertness takes on a national-­racial tinge, so that it is not simply cute that is the problem, but the “sneak attack” of Japanese Cute that creates even more of a sense of threat. Japanese Cute is creepy because it is both familiar and exotic, all the better able to snatch consumers unaware. The notion of moral/gender panic and indignation surrounding Hello Kitty that encapsulates so much of the criticism outside Japan has profound implications for understanding what was originally children’s culture and its relationship to its various adult worlds. What some of these critics express is ambivalence toward late capitalism itself. In fact, the 196  •  chapter four

global success of Hello Kitty is nothing more than capitalism humming along at its smoothest. Hello Kitty thus becomes the mute nightmare of consumerism running amok, beginning with our most vulnerable populations (children) and continuing to their enablers (women). She is the commodity fetish that seduces not so much through sexuality, but through innocence — or at least through the performed innocence of cuteness. Furthermore, Hello Kitty enacts the transgressiveness of kitsch in a global setting. It is the sheer sentimentality of the mouthless cat that incites at least some people to run the other way, to distance themselves from the infantilized emotion that she embodies. In analyzing transgressiveness, Peter Stallybrass and Allon White write of “a striking ambivalence to the representations of the lower strata . . . in which they are both reviled and desired” (1986:4). Whether as form of discourse or trope of signification, kawaii occupies that lower stratum as one site of ambivalence — reviled for its pandering emotionalism, while desired for its childlike sweetness. Calling Hello Kitty “kitsch” performs a kind of cultural snobbery that deems the cute unsuitable for adults, unless distanced with irony or tongue-­in-­cheek bravado. The heated exchanges around Hello Kitty illustrate some of the shifting boundaries of late capitalism, globalization, and femininity, shaded through the racial lens of Asia. These boundaries express themselves most forcefully in elitist, inflammatory language with cries of kitsch to virtual communities globally. The critiques floating around Kitty variously reinscribe slippery boundaries or distinctions between child and adult, lower and upper class, feminine and feminist, Japan/Asia and Euro-­America, global and local. As we enter into the pink globalization of Hello Kitty’s trek, these critics police her every footstep, actively containing the silence of her mouthlessness. Why, one must ask, the vociferousness of the critiques? Why the impulse to kill Kitty — or at least to seriously maim her? Flaming and celebrity aside, I would argue that pinkness itself raises particular alarm bells because it hits where critics feel societies may be at their most vulnerable, in the seeming innocuousness of the cute. It is the perils and pleasures of both the young and the female — as objects, subjects, and consumers — writ large upon the global scape of commodity fetishism. Hello Kitty mixes these categories up, infantilizing adult women, seducing children into hyperconsumption, silently working her excess. With hyped-­up anti-­Kitty reactions such as the ones gathered in this chapter, kitty backlash   •  197

one must frame Japan’s pink globalization within the controversies of a late-­capitalist multi-­billion-­dollar Asian industry armed with an innocuously cute weapon. Such deeply etched parameters paint Hello Kitty as the transnational transgressor — one mute spearhead of Asian popular culture in Euro-­America and elsewhere. Her silence echoes too neatly preexisting racialized stereotypes. Her excess flows easily, but avoids the dangerous waters of “fad-­dom.” She must tread warily for the pinkness she inhabits, provoking fans and critics to draw histrionic battle lines around her mouthless appeal. In the chapter that follows, I complicate those battle lines further, analyzing some of the subversive uses to which Hello Kitty has been put. Here Sanrio’s cat is appropriated by unlikely fans (not critics) in unlikely places, pushing the edges of interpretation, even as they inevitably test the waters for new marketing opportunities.

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Chapter Five Kitty Subversions

Pink as the New Black

I just loved the idea of being excessive with this sort of kitschy little furry kitty animal that sort of brought all of my different sides of styles and emotions together now in this overly accessible consumerism tool. I liked the idea of that. I like the idea of the mass production and the excessiveness of it, and I thought that it was almost very — rock and roll! — K. B., nineteen-­year-­old female “punk” Hello Kitty fan from New York, personal communication, January 4, 2008, Honolulu

The histrionic battle lines surrounding Hello Kitty draw upon the excessiveness that has become fundamental to her global presence in the 2000s. This chapter examines some of the unexpected uses outside of Japan to which that excessiveness has been put, particularly by fans such as K. B. (above), who see in her a prompt that calls out for “rock and roll” play. These are not anti-­Kitty critics (chapter 4), but pro-­Kitty rebels of sorts who take Sanrio’s cat as a means to express what I consider subversive purposes. Here is pink as the new black. Within practices of subversion, I acknowledge differing degrees, from merely overturning our expectations to more deliberate — if gentle —  politicized acts. These subversions turn cute on its head, taking Hello Kitty to places Sanrio had perhaps never dreamed. Or had they? This chapter focuses on fan meanings, but also points out ways in which Sanrio itself utilizes some of these subversions for its own marketing purposes (a theme that I explore more fully in chapter 6). I ask, How do subversive uses and meanings of Hello Kitty by fans (and marketers) shape pink globalization itself? How does cuteness (specifically here, Japanese Cute-­

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Cool, as described in chapter 1) enable a particular space for subversion? And finally, how do upended meanings contribute to our understanding of sociopolitical processes by which global products inhabit lives and spaces? This sounds like a tall order for subversion of small things, but looking at unintended rereadings and appropriations of Hello Kitty helps us understand some of the transgressive politics and pleasures of globalization, cuteness, and gendered display. What is key is the notion of play — as frame, as performance, as game, and as sly pleasure. As discussed in chapter 1, asobi (play) forms an important part of the cultural frame in Japan: far more than child’s play, asobi forms an integral part of adult creativity. With Hello Kitty, to play is to tease, using as tickler the double inscriptions of cuteness itself — child and adult, innocent and sexy, benign and far less so. Most importantly, with Hello Kitty, to play is to wink — both literally in Sanrio images since the 2000s,1 and figuratively, juxtaposing complex layers of seeing and not seeing. The wink suggests pink globalization as play, with multiple ways of knowing, juxtaposing complex layers of seeing and not seeing. In this way, the subversive appropriations of Hello Kitty by fans may be considered a game whose rules keep shifting under the winking umbrella of cute. Work in the field of irony helps us understand the operation of mechanisms of play and subversion. The literary scholar Linda Hutcheon analyzes irony not so much as antiphrasis — opposite meaning — as combinations of double or multiple meanings: “relating, differentiating, and combining said and unsaid meanings — and doing so with an evaluative edge” (1994:89). Irony rests in rapidly oscillating movement between inextricably connected semantic poles. The effective use of irony depends on shared knowledge of these semantic poles that circumscribes a “discursive community.” Thus one group’s irony may be entirely lost on another group who does not “get it” — that is, share those poles of meaning and access to paths of movement between them. Getting it, in fact, acts as part of the defining boundary of membership in a discursive community. In the examples of subversion that I describe in this chapter, each of the groups or individuals (“unlikely fans”) appropriates Hello Kitty by playfully redefining poles of meaning for their own purposes. Let me acknowledge that Sanrio as astute producer and marketer lurks in the corridors of fan subversions. The company constantly keeps its feelers out for new and different audiences and appropriations. Within limits, company interest lies in new markets, in “growing 200  •  chapter five

the brand,” in “buzz,” rather than in assessing whether or not the appropriations coincide with the core brand message. This is the work of headlines — placing Hello Kitty in the public eye, even when that eye includes subversive elements. Thus, for example, finding out that a punk group has begun sporting Hello Kitty paraphernalia does not necessarily cause excessive hand-­wringing at Sanrio; rather this may be cause for celebration, generating product lines that build and extend Sanrio’s brand. These forms of opportunism — both consumer appropriation and corporate exploitation — work swiftly as converging interests focused on knowing and seeking the pulse of the street (or sometimes its underside). Sanrio marketers and fans alike want to know constantly — what’s goin’ on? — and then act in order to own and occupy that edge of coolness. Subversion works as both calculus and shifting practice of Kitty coolness. Shu-­mei Shih’s concept of “signification in action” — meanings in and through movement — helps us think through the subversive appropriations of Hello Kitty discussed in this chapter. She argues that visuality and global capitalism generate alternative readings through the rapid movement of images and products: “Images and other visual products travel and scatter with ever greater intensity and speed, and travel to a large extent alongside and with capital. . . . Visuality situated in global capitalism also means that . . . crucial contexts often reside in unexpected places, because images and other visual products go places and signify different things in different places, and thus literally exercise what I would call ‘signification in action’ ” (2007:12 – 13). Hello Kitty’s upended signification resides in the unexpected places in which she has found fandom and the active appropriation of these global consumers. We begin, then, by tracing some of these “unlikely fans in unlikely places,” examining the subversive meanings and uses to which Hello Kitty has been put, from punk and alternative youth cultures, to gay and lesbian activism, and finally to the sex industry. In these “unlikely places” I ask, Why Hello Kitty? Also, what are the meanings and actions that Hello Kitty enables? I analyze ways in which Hello Kitty as multiply inscribed global signifier — the cat people love to hate (chapter 4) and love to love (chapter 3), sometimes in subverted ways (this chapter) — teases with a range of meanings and practices that critically define, inhabit, and expand the space of Japanese Cute-­Cool. That space, dialectically produced in far-­flung global settings, laps back upon Japan (and Asia) as part of its own image production. kitty subversions   •  201

“Punk” Pink Kitty Hello Kitty subversive fans can be found in the underground feminist punk scene known as the Riot Grrrl movement from the 1990s and 2000s. That movement, founded in 1991 on the West Coast of the United States and extended nationally and internationally through music, individually produced zines (eventually archived electronically and coalesced by publishers such as Riot Grrrl Press, begun in Washington, D.C., in 1992), indie documentaries, and underground networks, has been an important site of radical “girl culture.” Often associated with third-­wave feminism, which celebrates freedom of female expression, the Riot Grrrl movement has been described as “formed by a handful of girls who felt empowered, who were angry, hilarious and extreme through and for each other. . . . Riot grrrl reinvented punk” (Monem 2007:8). In reinventing punk, the radical “girl” movement took control of the means of self-­expression, from public media to personal style. Thus, that style may include cute, “feminine” goods, such as Hello Kitty, reframed as part of radical “girl” culture with the confidence to embrace past stereotypical expressions. In this way, Riot Grrrls takes “girly” culture — including cuteness — as their own, whether straight up, ironized, or parodied. Hello Kitty is part of the Riot Grrrl arsenal of sartorial bricolage that “messed up child and adult, girlie girl and man, practicality and glamour, mainstream and alternative style, worked to reinvent and recirculate all kinds of meanings (Attwood 2007:241). In short, Sanrio’s icon of femininity in the hands of upending Grrrls takes part in the gender and power play of drag (cf. Butler 1990). Nani, a twenty-­two-­ year-­old Hawaiian Chinese punk artist in the Honolulu scene explains, “I think that liking and sporting cute accessories like Sanrio Hello Kitty goods was a way that Riot Grrrls who were out to start a revolution could rebel against the idea that these were all tough punk women who would have nothing to do with cute things” (quoted by Fumiko Takazawa, personal communication, May 2003). Hello Kitty thus becomes the antitough tough stance, pink acting as the new, in-­your-­face black, performing its own youth-­based, empowered femininity. Sporting Kitty, then, becomes a way for these punk women to thumb their nose at stereotypes, saying, in effect “We can appropriate cute for our own purposes, on our own terms.” This cute-­as-­defiant attitude can be seen in the designation of Hello Kitty as icon of the week on the “Feminism and Riot Grrrl” website 202  •  chapter five

Mookychick, with the explanation “Icon of the week: We all recognise that lovable face, the white mouthless girl-­cat who has rather puzzingly owned our hearts since we first saw that amazing back-­pack in Chinatown at the age of twelve. It’s time to greet our latest icon of the week . . . Hello Kitty!”2 This is not to say that Hello Kitty as icon of the punk feminist Riot Grrrls is without internal debate. An online feminist blog questions the extent of “Hello Kitty Hegemony,” asking “Is Hello Kitty as a logo for third-­wave riot grrrl feminism merely mainstream gender hegemony in disguise?” (Feminist eZine n.d.). The problem that the blogger sees is the potential misinterpretation by the mainstream viewer, failing to understand the intended irony or parody by Riot Grrrl’s use of Hello Kitty. Calling Hello Kitty “a logo re-­contextualised by parody,” the blog’s author suggests tweaking the use of Sanrio’s cat so that the feminist position is made clear: “In response to criticism that the ironic ‘girlie’ [Riot Grrrls] use of Hello Kitty may be misinterpreted, I suggest juxtaposition of signifiers in order to upset hegemonic readings. . . . For example, Hello Kitty with its connotations of girliness, and simultaneously incorporate signs of punk imagery” (Feminist eZine n.d.) Riot Grrrls’ display of Hello Kitty, by the way, predates Sanrio’s appropriation of punk, beginning with its 2003 product line and continuing sporadically thereafter. Sanrio’s punk line designs run in black, with red or pink, often with Hello Kitty variously winking, playing a guitar, wearing accoutrements such as a safety pin, in short, red tartan plaid skirt, wearing a headband, with a pink Mohawk haircut, with extreme black eye makeup. Sometimes Hello Kitty’s characteristic bow has been traded for a black ribbon, a red tartan plaid ribbon, or a skull-­and-­ crossbones decoration, each of which shows Sanrio playing with punk as a design motif (see figure 5.1).3 Moreover, it is not only design elements, but items themselves that go into the punk line. Thus, Sanrio’s punk line includes accessories to a punk lifestyle (or at least, mode of dress) — socks, hair accessories, buttons, pins, bikini underwear, and body-­skimming tank tops — as well as the standard Hello Kitty fare of school supplies, T-­shirts, and plush dolls. Although punk women such as Riot Grrrls may or may not choose to purchase these Sanrio products for which they served as inspiration, the line accommodates those who see punk in terms of sheer style. The borrowings and quotations go in both directions, from company to street and back again.4

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5.1. Hello Kitty punk, Sanrio Co., Ltd. (2009).

Interview: “Punk” Fan Profile — K. B. I interviewed K. B., a nineteen-­year-­old (at the time of interview) Long Island native and student, in January 2008. Although I have labeled her “punk,” she would not necessarily. Instead, she places herself and her friends in a loose bag of edgy, artsy, alternative New York youth, appreciative of a punk sensibility, heavily tattooed, and typically dressed entirely in black. What some of her friends take as a complete surprise lies in the fact that she is a big Hello Kitty fan. She talks about her complex relationship with Hello Kitty, including both the straightforward and ironic pleasures that she finds in contemplating and purchasing the Japanese icon, the ways in which Hello Kitty allows her to inhabit her own “girly” side, the place Hello Kitty claims (with her) living on the edge. Part of that edge is the myriad products that Sanrio puts forth, creating a versatile world of endless possibilities. The fact that that world is a consumer-­based one does not bother her in the least. In fact, 204  •  chapter five

it is Hello Kitty as excessive consumerist icon that attracts her, and even allows her to see Hello Kitty as “rock and roll.” In talking with K. B., one can see how Hello Kitty becomes her contact with what might be considered more mainstream society, defined in highly gendered terms. She appropriates Hello Kitty in a very personal way as a lifeline access to the possibilities of a middle-­class, even “girly,” identity. Yet, as a self-­proclaimed denizen of the edge, K. B. well understands and appreciates the in-­between nature of the cat: girly and edgy, at home equally in a pink crib as in the dark recesses of a Fender guitar case (note: in fact, Hello Kitty has adorned a Stratocaster model of Fender guitars).5 Her interview allows us to examine one individual’s “subversive” appropriation of Hello Kitty, giving Sanrio’s cat highly personalized, alternative readings. K. B.: Hello Kitty for me was something that allowed me to have fun with and play around with the femininity that I seemed to lack, as a young child and growing girl when I was younger and I felt like, you know, it gave me the ability to express and be in touch with it and almost, be able to associate myself with what would typically be seen as, you know, girly, or acceptable. And that was like my one side that I was able to like, connect with, and it was also something that would almost validate me as someone alternative. Do you know what I mean? ’Cause I feel like Hello Kitty brings out both sides of that, because she’s always changing, she’s always, you know, sort of ahead of the curve, and that was something that I liked to relate with, in the sense of, still being edgy, but still having that layer of cute approachableness that I feel that Hello Kitty possesses. C. Y.: OK, but here’s what I don’t understand. How is Hello Kitty on the edge of the curve? K. B.: Well just the fact that it picks up so, so quickly. Even like the way they [Sanrio] actually can produce a new theme and actually bring it to the market. I feel that they are always making a new image for her. C. Y.: Mm-­hmm, that’s true. K. B.: And it’s like you go into the store every couple of months, there’s like some new thing, like, do you know what I’m saykitty subversions   •  205

ing? Even if it’s a sort of very simple concept, like surfer kitty, or like punk rock kitty, there’s always like a new item that I feel like will go with the theme. And I sort of I like that. That’s something that I think that all girls and all people should associate it with, more than just like cuteness. Hello Kitty’s something that understands trends, and translates it into its own voice, that still maintains that, colorful, kind of cute-­y, kitschy feel. And that’s why I feel that people like Lisa Loeb — she’s a singer-­songwriter — like, “I play guitar; I make music; I’m female.” I can almost see why that appeals to her. Because you can make Hello Kitty into whatever you want it to be, essentially. C. Y.: Uh-­huh. K. B.: And that’s what I feel is so appealing about it. It keeps you coming back. C. Y.: What do you make Hello Kitty into? K. B.: I would sort of make it into my, not soft side, but like the validating feminine side. The side that says, like you know, I may be like all black and kind of edgy and into like an alternative lifestyle but there’s this one part of me that will always be accessible to the mainstream that Hello Kitty is. C. Y.: Mm-­hmm. I can see that for you now, and I understand that, but take me back to like when you first got, say, your first Hello Kitty. What was your reaction? How old were you? K. B.: I was a tomboy, I was probably eleven or twelve, so I was always really boyish. I grew up listening to Grateful Dead and my parents were hippies, so I sort of I dunno — it [Hello Kitty] had this like, innocence to it, that even at a young age I felt like I could identify and feel comfortable with. And I was sort of even edgy, like you know, at twelve I was listening to like punk music, [laughs], so it was like my family brought me up around that, and I sort of played music at a young age, and I just felt like it was a really good companion to everything that I wasn’t. As a person. And I almost feel that it sort of stayed the same, you know, even when I was young. But it also was the only, sort of, naive thing I ever associated with. I never 206  •  chapter five

had a Barbie doll, I never did any of that. My parents would get me Tonka trucks; like my mom thought I was going to be a lesbian, she was convinced [laughs]. So that was the surprising element of me being such a collector of Hello Kitty, but at the same time, I just liked the feeling almost, of like liking something that was typically girly. It was the one thing for me. It just clicked. I would hold it close to me, like how it just made me — it’s almost like, kind of like a safety net. It was the one cute thing that made me happy and that I could relate to [laughs]. It sort of brought out the side of me that wasn’t so like, you know, rough on the edges. C. Y.: Yeah. How old were you when you got your first one? K. B.: Eleven or twelve. C. Y.: So you weren’t that that young? K. B.: No. I actually sort of looked at that as was when I first started associating myself with being like alternative. And then it was like my way of counteracting myself in sort of a, confused notion of growing up and like finding out who you are, like, wow, am I attracted to this sort of image, is this something that I can be interested in? And then I liked how it sort of brought together, both sides of me, like a side that wants to be like, girly and fashionable and attractive, but the other side that’s sort of like, dark and might not wanting to be seen as like a weak female. So I feel like Hello Kitty really brings those two together, like she can be tough, she can be arty, she can be adventurous, she can be girly. And those are all things that I felt like were inspiring to me as a person. C. Y.: Great! So how did you get your first Hello Kitty? K. B.: I was visiting my grandmother, and she at the time was in a condo in West Palm Beach — it was a big mall complex there. And they had this Sanrio store and I walked in and I’d always been interested in Japanese culture, like I used to take Japanese classes when I was like ten, eleven. So I was like learning Japanese, interested in the culture, and then I’d heard of Hello Kitty, but never really dabbled, and I went into the store in the mall, and there was something so — like the visual display and kitty subversions   •  207

the marketability — that really just drew me in, like wow! Rock and roll! C. Y.: What do you mean by that? K. B.: Like rock and roll is excessive. It’s what I grew up on, like, excessive and flashy, and in your face, and that’s what Hello Kitty was! It’s hard to verbalize, but I liked the way you walked into this store, and it was like a different world. You get a certain feel when you walk in there — you can be whoever you want to be, through this character. Or you can access whatever theme, or whatever, like an imaginative friend of hers, or anything, and I feel like you so easily get enveloped in that world. C. Y.: [Laughs] K. B.: And to this day when they made the guitar-­playing Hello Kitty . . . I was like, Hello Kitty’s a rock star! That’s how it should be! This is perfect. That was my most perfect role for her, and not just because I play guitar and love music. I just sort of saw that [image], and that was what clicked with me the most. The fact that the people designing this, that they were coming up where they could like tap into that. And, you know, sort of hit the nail on the head as to what I think the whole brand, the whole image is. It’s very rock star! C. Y.: So why don’t you tell me some of the things that you have? K. B.: I mean, I have the guitar. I have the Hello Kitty bedsheets, and I’ll never forget my first boyfriend was kinda like, you know it’s not like the sexiest thing, but to me, it sort of was. Like being, you know, black hair, tattoos, sort of dress edgy, and then have this sort of girly, quirkiness, I just, I found that sexy. C. Y.: Mm-­hmm. K. B.: And I loved my toothbrush — I had the original 1976 image of her; you know it’s slightly different. I like the way it’s rendered. I had that. I would collect like older vintage things, but also, I would like to say, my lunch boxes were my most prized ones. And I have an affinity for lunch boxes. I have some cute ones. All different shapes, ranging in different kinds of cute208  •  chapter five

ness. I had like so many extreme Hello Kitty things, I think I had a blow-­dryer — I had like all sorts of like, hair accessories. I really liked the pens. C. Y.: So what was your mother’s reaction to all this? K. B.: She was surprised. I mean I was crazy! Shower curtains, toothpaste, toothbrush — I mean I’m trying to think of what the most excessive thing was. I have the Hello Kitty boom box. I’d put on heavy metal stickers, like Iron Maiden, Slayer, and you’d just see this baby pink boom box, like Hello Kitty duct-­ taped to my desk, like that’s the kind of like Hello Kitty fan I am. That kind of sums it up, like, blasting heavy metal in my Hello Kitty boom box. C. Y.: And what about your friends? What did they think about all this? K. B.: They completely would make fun of me. Really, my friends were not into that. Even my girlier friends — like I have friends who are typical girly girls — and they would sort of be like — some people think it’s tacky. C. T.: So you said, it lasted for about three years? K. B.: Three years intensively, and now I’m more moderate. But it still kind of continues. If I see it, I can’t not buy it. But now I’m at a point where I will go like every month for a while, and that’ll happen a couple times a year. Definitely still. And that’s how I’ve always done things, sort of with a very almost Eddie Van Halen aesthetic like excess and sort of nonapproachable, whether it be like high fashion or avant-­garde style, or just excessive, anything excessive I just like. And I just liked that they created a brand like, in my opinion beyond excess. C. Y.: Is there any way you think that Sanrio could overdo it? K. B.: That’s a really good question. I think, well you know that’s the thing — when you say how’d your friends react to it. I feel like a lot of people are turned off by it because it’s kind of tacky. I feel like the answer to that question is — absolutely not, because that is what it is based on. You can make Hello Kitty lamps; you can make Hello Kitty wallpaper, Hello Kitty kitty subversions   •  209

rugs — it’s all been done. When you throw up an empire that’s so extreme and so, like hypermode of collectability. Like, is there any place where you could really stop now? In a sense of like the Sanrio planet, I would say it could only keep building from there. C. Y.: And what about the high-­end jewelry? K. B.: I love all that Tarina Tarantino [designer] stuff, the design that really taps into the aesthetic the same way that I appreciate it. Like let’s mix it with high fashion. Her jewelry is not, you know, Chanel priced, but it’s considered an upper contemporary collection. And she does stuff, very kind of edgy, fun, rock and roll, plastic, and materials like that. I really like that out of nowhere she sort of exhibits a Hello Kitty line. I had one. It had a big — like Victorian, it looked like one of those profile necklaces, and it was just Hello Kitty, with plastic beads. I almost bought just because I wanted to spend that much on Hello Kitty because it’s ironic, just for like the irony of it. Mixing it with high fashion, like that was exactly what I liked about the brand — the fact that a designer could look at it and think of it in that respect, when you know you would just think of it as typical five-­dollar plastic parts, I liked that it could be made into all those things. Tarina’s stuff is the best, I love it. So tacky. So good. C. Y.: I was just wondering if there’s any way in which you see yourself ever doing a spin-­off or do your own take on Hello Kitty? K. B.: I think with fashion — I make clothes. And so clothes, I would. I remember like spring break I would make Hello Kitty things, my own designs of it, like sort of black-­and-­white French Kitty — yeah, I would do that. I could like draw at it, through its sort of rendition of Hello Kitty with a beret. Let me think what else . . . I was into like wearing Hello Kitty, I would sort of customize it in my own way. Like I would sew like sort of patches of things, and wear buttons all the time on it, all sorts of things like that. Like that, I guess I personalize it in your own style — it definitely exists. For a while, no matter what I was wearing I always had some sort of element, whether it be like my hair pulled back in a Hello Kitty hair tie, or like, a 210  •  chapter five

button, or like a necklace, some material, something like that. The one thing I always wanted but never found — I know it probably exists — Hello Kitty bikini. I wanted one. If you think about it, you’ve never really seen one. I would have like loved that. I never found one, I always knew the underwear, but never had an actual bathing suit. That would be something that I would totally buy. C. Y.: Did you ever think about working in a Sanrio store? K. B.: Yeah. What I always liked about it, every time I’m in a Sanrio store you get like four-­year-­old girls, but then you get weird people like me or like older people — just so accessible. Because most things in my life that I like are sort of not mainstream accessibility. C. Y.: Do you know of any gay fans of Hello Kitty? K. B.: Yes, and I think a lot of lesbians like Hello Kitty. That is something I would definitely say. Only because like, obviously the people I hang out with a lot are bi or lesbians or gay. And I’ve noticed that. For the same reasons I like it, in the sense that a girl who is not particularly even approaching a lesbian, or someone that is in need of defining their femininity. I feel like it’s a fun kitschy way to sort of point that out. That hey, like I may be this, this and this and if you’re a lesbian, or maybe edgy, or maybe this, but like I can associate myself with this and it makes you more validated in a sense of your femininity. And it’s the overall irony of a lesbian tough girl, liking that [Hello Kitty]. C. Y.: Can you say a little more on Hello Kitty validating your femininity? I mean what does that mean to you? K. B.: In the midst of how I live my life, and how I conduct myself, and my general demeanor, Hello Kitty almost represents a tangible image that can represent the feminine side that I do have. It’s tangible proof that there is some sort of way for me to express that. Hello Kitty sparked my femininity and validated for me that I am not a complete, hard, cold boyish figure.

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C. Y.: Well that’s interesting because that’s a little different from what you said originally, where it sounded as if Hello Kitty was sort of proof to the outside world. K. B.: No, yeah that’s what I’m saying. It’s both. It brings people to relate to you, and that sense from the outside, exactly. And then it also for me was like, oh wow, gave me this feeling that I could like be a little girly and actually enjoy it, not forcing myself. C. Y.: Did it surprise you? K. B.: Yes, and that is why I think I hold Hello Kitty close. Because that was really the first time I enjoyed something typical or cute. Like I’m not someone that goes in a store and goes, oh that’s so cute. You know what I’m saying? That’s what I liked about it, and that is why I’m here and why the Hello Kitty saga will continue. With it, you can choose to make it what you want, or you don’t. So at times people criticizing it or not understanding, I think it’s because they don’t relate and they don’t understand it. C. Y.: So who are the other collectors you’ve found? K. B.: Well, Asians for one. And lesbians. Yeah, punky girls, people that would, sort of be in the Hot Topic [store] culture — I’ve noticed that whole bubble. Like I was just in Hot Topic and there was a whole Hello Kitty section. With all punk, Goth themes of Hello Kitty. So you could say those are the people that collect it the most, but what’s so interesting is that it is accessible to everybody. And people make it what they want. And that’s why people like me can enjoy it. C. Y.: You used the word kitsch before. What does kitsch mean to you? K. B.: Precious Moments is a serious cute. There’s not cartoon funniness or sort of adverse meaning to them. It’s just what society deems it. I think they’re kind of creepy, but cute little baby or children statues. They are sort of nonoffensive. They don’t have any other connotations. Like how many little kids really want Precious Moments? It’s sort of for a more ma212  •  chapter five

ture palate, like a cute for grandmas. Hello Kitty is more for everyone — it’s sort of funny. It’s definitely a culture thing. We [Americans] don’t have the quirkiness and the edginess and the overall like, cute, aesthetic, like they [Japanese] do. And that is what I think does it. C. Y.: I’m interested in the concept of kitsch, and the way you’ve used it. For you, is kitsch a positive or negative? K .B.: Total positive. C. Y.: How so? K. B.: It’s something that is almost a fun, cynical play on things that are serious. Hello Kitty is actually a lot of it, at least in my opinion, but it has a sort of cynical feel to it. Sort of ironic, cynical, like, they know people will find it funny to see Hello Kitty in this position, in this place, or in this outfit. It’s sort of fun. It has no rivalries — it’s just quirky; it is just sort of a feeling of randomness. C. Y.: So what do you mean by random? K. B.: Well, how it’s unpredictable. It’s just like a group of people [at Sanrio] sitting around a table, like, “What could we do with this?” And that’s what it’s based on, a sort of fun, unexpected idea. C. Y.: And that’s something that appeals to you? K. B.: Yeah, and you wouldn’t expect that from something, cute, per se. And that’s the randomness. It’s just the whole relationship — quirky, kind of funny. There’s no backstory — you kind of laugh; it’s kind of cute, sort of irrelevant. C. Y.: Yes, I agree. K. B.: So I like to mix things, like high luxury and playful, weird, doll tattoos. And that’s where essentially Hello Kitty comes from. I like to mix severe things with cute things. That sort of muddles it up with a plunger and creates this thing that’s sort of quirky, in the middle. That’s Hello Kitty!

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Gay/Lesbian Fandom K. B. identifies Hello Kitty as occupying a quirky, “rock and roll” ground of in-­between subversiveness. Other fans may not be quite as explicit or articulate as this. For some gay fans I interviewed, for example, an appreciation of Hello Kitty is far more inchoate — reflecting the range of manifestations of fandom for any object. Although some do not necessarily see a direct connection between liking Hello Kitty and being gay, one twenty-­year-­old Asian American male that I interviewed in Honolulu admits that were he to observe a guy purchasing Hello Kitty items for himself, he might easily assume that the guy were gay. Yet, exactly how does Hello Kitty play into a gay male identity? Is that identity more readily stereotyped from the outside, and less easily articulated on the inside? Managers and salespersons at Sanrio stores speak of regular male customers they assume to be gay (interpreted from their dress, mannerisms, or male companions), but gay consumers themselves more typically see Hello Kitty as within the range of their preferences and purchases, rather than central to their identities as gay men. More readily articulated than internal connections between Hello Kitty and same-­sex communities are external appropriations of Hello Kitty to represent those groups (gay and lesbian), especially within racialized idioms. Hello Kitty thus consistently represents Asia and Asians, but can represent both lesbians and gay males. For lesbians, Hello Kitty in politicized contexts symbolizes their sisterhood with one another; for gay males, Hello Kitty represents performative femininity. Thus, Sanrio’s cat may be linked in gay male culture with other performative female icons — Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Cher, Liza Minnelli, to name a few — but with a cute Asian twist. Members of one Asian lesbian group founded in Australia in September 2000 call themselves “Yellow Kitties” and uses Hello Kitty as their symbol. The group has approximately forty members, mostly thirty-­five and younger, including Australian-­born Chinese and lesbians from Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Korea, Sri Lanka, China, the Philippines, and Japan. The group leader and founder, Natasha Cho, explained: “Hello Kitty for me is about having a space for Asian lesbians to network and support each other. We are a social/support group for Asian lesbians and their partners and friends. To this end, our main aim relates to networking and we also are there to promote visibility for Asian lesbians” (personal communication, April 2003). The fact that she 214  •  chapter five

chooses Hello Kitty (and its nominal spin, “Yellow Kitties”) to symbolize Asian females for Asian females plays with both race, feminism, and sexuality, by way of the Japanese icon. Lesbians are not the only ones who have seized upon Hello Kitty as a symbolic icon. In June 2009, the Houston Pride Parade included the Houston chapter of the international organization (established in 1984), Asians and Friends, with men dressed in white T-­shirts and pink electrified tutus, carrying giant Hello Kitty cut-­out heads (a photo of which was posted for viewing, even over a year later, in August 2010). According to the group’s website: “Asians & Friends — Houston, Inc. (a&fh) is a non-­profit social group for gay and lesbian Asians and any one interested in furthering their understanding of the gay and lesbian cultures of Asia.”6 The Houston chapter formed in 1992, and currently has 80 – 100 members, of which about 85 are actively involved. To the question of why Hello Kitty, Scott McKie, one of the group organizers, quickly responded, “It [Hello Kitty] is sooo popular in Asia and they are so cute. We have members that collect the material [Hello Kitty] . . . mostly Asian members” (personal communication, August 2, 2010). Noel Boado, a board member, elaborated: We have been doing a number of themes over the last few years that depicts [sic] the interests of Asians as a whole. We have, in the past, featured two different versions of the Chinese Dragon dance, which were very popular and have given us recognition as being innovative. We have also done a theme that was lifted off of a scene from the play Flower Drum Song, where we were dressed up as oversized Chinese Take Out Boxes. We did these, because they were fun to do and they were easily identifiable as Asian themes. On the year that we did the Hello Kitty, we were considering two themes, one being Godzilla and the other being Kitty. We decided on Hello Kitty because of “brand” recognition. Everyone knows Hello Kitty because of the immense marketing it received from Sanrio and everyone knows that this is pop culture that came from Asia (and Japan in particular). So that’s how we came with this idea. (Personal communication, August 4, 2010) For this group of gay male activists (many, but not all, of Asian ethnicity), Hello Kitty works as one of the most highly recognizable symbols of Asia. In designing the costume, the group chose another symbol of performative femininity in the pink tutu — often co-­opted by gay kitty subversions   •  215

groups on stage as an easily recognized, extremely gendered, sartorial display — and amplified its effect with lights. Boado explained, “One of our members, John Davis, designed what became our costumes. He experimented on what would have worked for the parade, comfort and practicality, as this parade is in the middle of June and it is extremely hot and humid in Texas. What he came up with, was not only distinctive; it was also practical and comfortable” (personal communication, August 4, 2010). And the reaction? Boado explained: “We got rave reviews. The buzz was all over the parade. Even though we did not win any awards for this entry (for whatever reason), we were told that our group’s entry was one of the few they clearly remembered from the parade, because, I am sure that it’s because of our theme. And this is what we were aiming for” (personal communication, August 4, 2010). Indeed, the group in costume garnered ample media attention, which was subsequently posted numerous times on YouTube. McKie pointed out, “The public loved it. . . . They ran to get them [Hello Kitty signs] at the end of the parade when we gave them away. . . . Houston pride parade committee used our photo on their web site this year” (personal communication, August 2, 2010). In fact, it is exactly this trajectory of response — immediate, enthusiastic recognition, people running to grab a remnant of Kitty as memento of the event, public “buzz” of the sight as memorable, and, finally, the cat’s visual iconicity given further resonance by its selection as a photographic representation of the entire event — that both draws upon and builds Hello Kitty’s efficacy as a symbol. For this group of gay activists who claim a connection to Asia, Hello Kitty may signify Asia, but, as McKie indicated, Sanrio’s cat is “fun and fancy free. . . . It was Asian . . . but not really Asian” (personal communication, August 2, 2010). That is, Hello Kitty represents “Asia lite” or, more specifically, Asian kitsch — fun, playful, and entirely commercial. When framed alongside the group’s previous costumes, such as the Chinese take-­out container, as well as paired with the lit-­up pink tutus, one can understand the kitschy spirit with which Hello Kitty came to represent the group in 2009. Here is Asia upended as play, displayed on the bodies of men within the context of highly performative, racially inflected, celebratory, gay identities. The subversion of Hello Kitty in the hands of these organizers lies in the ways cuteness and femininity serve as mere by-­products to the overall access to broader fields of Asian kitsch and sexualized selves.

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Interview: Gay Fan Connoisseur — T. F. T. F. is not a gay activist, but he readily acknowledges his same-­sex preference, as well as his love of Hello Kitty. Notably, he does not connect the two. Rather, T. F. views Hello Kitty as one of many aesthetic objects he collects and displays in his tastefully decorated condominium overlooking downtown Honolulu. Whereas the Houston group performatively wore Hello Kitty on their sleeve (or at least carried signs to that effect), a private gay individual such as T. F. prefers a quiet appreciation of Sanrio’s cat. When this twenty-­nine-­year-­old mixed-­race (Hawaiian, Chinese, and white) Honolulu resident is not working as a set builder in the theater department at a private school or designing window displays at a Honolulu diesel store, T. F. shops for Hello Kitty and others items he is passionate about, both online and in person. Each item in his condominium reflects his particular tastes, prompts a particular story, and occupies a particular place in a constantly changing display (enabled by renting storage space for overflow possessions). So, too, do each of his sixteen tattoos warrant a careful choice and aesthetic tending. Where does Hello Kitty fit into all of this domestic tastefulness? In a carefully restored vintage medical cabinet that he uses as a display case containing high-­end Hello Kitty “art pieces” (see chapter 6) and other quirky selected trinkets, set in a corner of his bedroom. He is quick to point out his own fetishization of Hello Kitty’s red bow as true to the bow color of the original figure; no other color will do. With this admission, he laughs apologetically, but stands firm by his discerning fastidiousness. Fussing over a bow color is all about taste, knowledge, and high-­level consumption. It is also about individuated practice and identity. Undoubtedly, T. F. is a connoisseur whose appropriation of Hello Kitty — shopped for on a regular monthly basis at four different specialty stores on the island of O’ahu — must be embedded within a middle-­class lifestyle of connoisseurship. As a connoisseur, T. F. far prefers aestheticized restraint when it comes to arranging Hello Kitty, rather than the overflowing display of objects that he has seen with other fans. Though T. F. may not represent any other gay male fan of Hello Kitty but, in doing so, he provides insight upon a personal, subversive appropriation of Sanrio’s cat for idiosyncratic purposes. My interview with T. F. took place in August 2010 amid a fascinating guided tour through his collection at his condominium.

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T. F.: My earliest memory [of Hello Kitty] was at the Sanrio Surprise [store]. I liked the Sanrio gum. The Japanese gum that smells so good. It’s white. I don’t even know what flavor it is. I would always get the Hello Kitty one, because she looked . . . I just liked it. She looked cute. C. Y.: How old were you at that time? T. F.: I think it was in elementary school, and I liked that gum. And then I didn’t really start collecting until late high school. I liked that it was themed, and that she has all the [matching] stuff, and it wasn’t just . . . it wasn’t boring. I would get, like, the chopsticks. C. Y.: This is in high school? T. F.: Yeah. I carried chopsticks.7 I didn’t like the cafeteria stuff. I always had my own chopsticks, and I always carried around, like, before I knew the Japanese did it a lot, the rag [small towel]. Because it was so hot walking up and down those hills [at his school]. I was like, “I’ll wear a rag!” C. Y.: Now tell me, what were your friends’ reaction, in high school, to this? And what high school did you go to? T. F.: I went to Kamehameha [private school for those of Hawaiian descent]. C. Y.: You’re at Kamehameha, and this is not your typical Kamehameha stuff! T. F.: No. C. Y.: So what’s your friends’ reaction to Hello Kitty? T. F.: Well, I was in the arts, because I did theater up there and speech and debate, so those kids were given to being crazy, I guess you could say. So that it wasn’t really a big deal. Yeah, I guess it was well received. I never got any heat about it. C. Y.: Were you the only one? T. F.: No. C. Y.: Oh, there were others? 218  •  chapter five

T. F.: They’re friends, friends of mine. C. Y.: Who were going through Sanrio stuff? T. F.: Yeah, they liked Sanrio. Mostly the girls liked it. All my Asian girlfriends, they liked it, but I think I was one of the only ones that was, like, hardcore about it. I don’t even know why. I was hooked on it. I just liked the amount of stuff. So when you walk into the store, they’re so . . . I’m a super-­visual person. I like seeing all these things, and it’s a lot of eye candy. I love that. C. Y.: What were your parents’ reactions? T. F.: They got it. They were just, like, “Oh that’s fine. He likes collecting Hello Kitty stuff.” And then they know not to get me stuff with pink bows. I’m, like, “Just the red bow, Mom.” C. Y.: Tell me a little bit about this red bow, pink bow thing. T. F.: I just like her with her red bow. I think because Hello Kitty, I think, traditionally had a red bow. Maybe that’s why I like it, because it’s, like, the retro one. That’s how she was made [originally]; that’s how she should stay. In fact, in the newer stuff coming out, she has a red bow with white dots, and I don’t know how I feel about that just yet. And it’s too bad, because they had a little Musubi [rice ball] [Hello Kitty] thing that I wanted, but I’m, like, “I can’t get over the little dots [on her bow].” And that little [Hello Kitty] fan I just got has these rhinestones on it, and they’re bugging me. I just want the plain red bow. It’s, like . . . it’s iconic, that little bow. C. Y.: I know. T. F.: And I like it, because . . . it’s just a simple bow and you know it’s her bow. It’s, like, her bow, and I just like it red. I don’t know. I’m, like, “No fooling around with the other bows,” which is too bad because I do have some stuff in which her bows are different colors. In fact, I got this pill container. No red bows anywhere to be found. It’s purple, yellow, and magenta. But I’ve dealt with it, because it’s just her face, to me, it was just so cute. So I got it.

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C. Y.: OK, so as far as Hello Kitty goes, what’s the attraction for you? Why Hello Kitty? T. F.: I don’t know . . . it makes me happy to see her face. Her face . . . it’s just . . . it’s like a feeling I get when I . . . I’m addicted to . . . I like how she looks. I like the idea that she’s a fashion icon, she’s a pop icon. Everyone knows her. I just like the white face, red bow, yellow nose, and I just . . . I like the feeling I get when I find stuff about her. Like when I find the new . . . my favorite thing that they do with her is the collaborations she has. I think I just like the icon image. I just like the bow and her face, and I think she’s just a cool chick. C. Y.: As somebody who’s involved in visual culture, is there anything that you can think of that works for you from just the visual standpoint, a design standpoint? T. F.: It’s the way she was made — it conveys her face . . . it’s so simple, but it conveys, like . . . she’ll do anything with her face. It’s just like an oval with two black dots and whiskers, but she looks so friendly. She’s not conventionally cute. Nothing about how simple she is says “cute.” But it’s a comfortable look. I think it’s also just the contrast of white with . . . it’s so simple, but it says so much. I think it’s really pretty good design for a character. C. Y.: In your mind, what would be more conventionally cute? T. F.: Fluffiness. Like if she’d look softer. C. Y.: That doesn’t work for you. T. F.: No, I just like Hello Kitty, and I think why I like her too is because she’s so accepted and people wanna work with her. Like Medicom and Undercover [two designer companies in collaboration with Sanrio] did with all the bows all over the face [a collector’s avant-­garde Hello Kitty figure that T. F. owns]. I like that people wanna work with her. C. Y.: Now, I notice you have a lot of tattoos. Would you ever get a Hello Kitty tattoo? T. F.: Yes, it’s in the works. 220  •  chapter five

C. Y.: What kind of Hello Kitty tattoo will you get? T. F.: I was thinking of, maybe, getting the one with bows all over her face, or just the bow. C. Y.: Yeah. Where would you put it? T. F.: I don’t know. Probably, like, on my arm here or, like, maybe on the chest or something. On the left side. She wears a bow on the left. I haven’t gotten a tattoo in about eight years, but I want a Hello Kitty tattoo. I’ve seen a lot of pretty bad Hello Kitty tattoos. I don’t want them to shade her face, so I want it to just be an outline. So that’s what I’m thinking about, maybe just a bow. But then I want people to know it’s a Hello Kitty tattoo. They’re just like, “Oh you got a bow?” But I’m, like, “If you’re in the know, you’ll know this is a Hello Kitty bow.” So it’s in the works. C. Y.: You have a [display] case with Hello Kitty. Do you ever see it going beyond that case, or do you like the fact that it’s confined? T. F.: I like the fact that it’s [his collection] edited, because it’s very easy to get overloaded on Hello Kitty, and that never appealed to me. I don’t want everything Hello Kitty. I’m really specific of what I like. C. Y.: So at what point does Hello Kitty become too much for you? Is there such a thing as oversaturation of Hello Kitty for you? T. F.: Yes. I think there is, but I think it’s a fine line. I can show you the camera I just got, and they did a print of just her face, and it’s all over the place. That’s a graphic print, but it’s thought out; it’s designed. It’s just not [Hello Kitty] stuff everywhere. I would get overwhelmed, like, when people’s cars are decked out in Hello Kitty. I can’t stand that. And there is a photo I ran across online with this little girl sitting with all this Hello Kitty stuff everywhere, and I was, like, “Oh gosh. There is a problem.” And all I saw was pink, and I’m, like, “Ugh.” I think you get overwhelmed by the cuteness. That’s why, I think, I don’t want it to get out of control, and I’m a big fan of just editing, editing it [the collection] down. kitty subversions   •  221

C. Y.: In a year, how much might you spend on Hello Kitty stuff? T. F.: I do it in bursts. Well, in fact, I just spent on a whim, because I just walked in . . . I got that camera, the fish-­eyed camera, so that was like $60 and then I bought the fan. That was another $10. That’s $70 in one day. I try to limit myself to, like, $150 a month. C. Y.: But you do buy regularly, like, every month there’s something you’re buying. T. F.: I do! I’m guilty of going into Sanrio, and I buy stuff that I just give to my nieces after, just because “Oh my god! This is so cute.” I’m, like, “What am I doing? . . .” I open my bag and I’m, like, “There’s so much Hello Kitty stuff in here.” “Hi girls! Second-­hand Hello Kitty!” But I think it’s so fun to go in there and see what they got new, and they get new stuff all the time. I do the circuit. C. Y.: You do the circuit? So you go to Pearlridge [Mall]? T. F.: I go to Pearlridge. I go to the Kahala [store]. I like the Sanrio Surprise[s] [Kahala store] more, because they have a lot more stuff, and they have stuff that an edited version, like, the Sanrio Store in Ala Moana wouldn’t carry. I usually hit the Ala Moana one [Sanrio store], because I work in the mall — I usually go at least three times a week. Just to, like, check in and say hi. I hit Ala Moana, then I go to Kahala Mall, and I maybe hit the Pearlridge and Windward Mall [stores] about once a month. C. Y.: Tell me about the relationship between you and Hello Kitty. T. F.: She makes me happy. When I look at her, it’s almost calming to me. I like that she’s been around so long, and she’s just kind of like a touchstone. I like that she doesn’t change, she always looks cute, and I just like that she’s kind of a big deal. C. Y.: Is there anything else that works in a similar way for you besides Hello Kitty? T. F.: I like animals, so like Butters [his live rabbit]. All the cute animals. I like stuff like that . . . because I work so much, and then I get really stressed out, and then I like surrounding myself 222  •  chapter five

with comfortable things and things that appeal to me somehow, and just calm me down, like they’re my touchstones, and then I can have them around me. C. Y.: Do you have any kind of, any personal stories of using Hello Kitty to calm you down? T. F.: There’ve been occasions where all I wanna do is . . . I just need to . . . I need a fix. My Hello Kitty fix. I go down there [to the Sanrio store], and it’s just for fun. I just need, like, the . . . it’s total eye candy when you go to the store. I don’t always buy stuff, but, I shop it out, and I just get stuff. There are always new things in there, so I just wanna see what they’re gonna do next. And I always see stuff online, so I’m always hoping they would carry it there. So I’ve gone down there, and it’s just fun to just look. C. Y.: Do you think there is a connection between being gay and liking Hello Kitty? T. F.: No, not for me. Because I’m gay and I just think I like . . . like I said, I’m really visual and I like seeing the stuff that they [Sanrio] put out by her. But I don’t think there is a real gay connection, although that Lady Gaga and Hello Kitty thing was overwhelming [the photo shoot described in chapter 2]. I was, like, “What?” because I like her music and then I was, like, “She’s doing Hello Kitty?” And then they did the whole photo shoot. I was, like, “That’s crazy!” C. Y.: Were you ever into girly things? T. F.: No, not really. I didn’t really play with Barbies or anything, but I liked more the science dissection kits and I liked telescopes when I was a kid. So I liked all those sciency stuff, and then I liked Hello Kitty, but I was kind of overboard, now that I think about it, as a kid. I really liked her. I really liked Hello Kitty. I would, maybe, say I was a fanatic, but not . . . not crazy about her. I would like to meet her one day. C. Y.: What would you say to her if you ever met Hello Kitty? T. F.: “Hi.” I would probably get really nervous. “Hi. Can I take a picture with you?” Yeah, I’ve never seen her as being girly. That’s kitty subversions   •  223

why I think I never had a problem. I think for me, there is no connection [between being gay and liking Hello Kitty]. I think it’s just, like, the visual of her and I like that she is a big deal. She’s a force to be reckoned with. C. Y.: What happens for you, if Hello Kitty really goes out of fashion? T. F.: I’d have a moment of silence, but I think I’d be fine, because she made such a big footprint, and I have the stuff that I liked from it. I collected it, so in that respect, it’s there for me to look at, and sure, there might not be more new stuff coming, but I think I’ll have to come to terms with it. It’s great! It’s like my little vice, I just like it.

Hard-­Core Kitty The sexualized selves of gay and lesbian Hello Kitty fans find further expression in other subverted appropriations of Hello Kitty. Both Denise Uyehara and Big Bad Chinese Mama, discussed in chapter 4, play on the racialized, sexualized stereotypes invoked by Hello Kitty. These stereotypes join soft porn sites on the Web, especially focused on Asian women and the by-­now infamous Hello Kitty vibrator. The issue of the vibrator — or “massage wand,” as Sanrio officially designates it — is one of the most compelling cases of Internet-­fueled appropriation. According to company headquarters in Tokyo, the object was supposed to be a massage wand, not a vibrator. However, fans on the Internet picked up its potential use and word of it spread like wildfire.8 As of 2010, the original pink vibrator — for sale in the United States on Amazon. com and elsewhere — now comes in updated colors of black, red, and lavender.9 Sanrio headquarters in Japan thus washes its hands of promoting untoward sexual activity with plausible logic. But are they so innocent? Although I have not been able to confirm it with Sanrio headquarters, one observer told me that in the late 1990s, a Sanrio store in Yokohama displayed a poster of a young women, topless, covering her breasts with one hand while holding a Hello Kitty camera and taking a photo with her other hand. According to this story, Sanrio in Japan plays with the juxtaposition of the cute and the sexy. Is it kawaii as sexy or sexy as kawaii? I argue that it is both — and that Sanrio plays and profits by this juxtaposition. 224  •  chapter five

With the Hello Kitty vibrator as an obvious selling point, online porn stars such as Kiko Wu, a New Yorker originally from Hong Kong, and Bianca Lee, from Singapore, post photos of themselves not only surrounded by Hello Kitty, but also putting the vibrator to use. Here Hello Kitty references Asia, gender, sexuality, and exoticism, especially in both porn websites’ emphasis on lesbian sex. However, keep in mind that the lesbian sex seems designed more for the voyeuristic pleasure of men, rather than women. Both Kiko Wu and Bianca Lee never suggest that they themselves are lesbians. Rather, they are willing to pose with other Asian females and the Hello Kitty vibrator for what I contend to be a primarily male audience. This general field combining Asia, gender, and exotic sex can be found as well in photos of Hello Kitty – themed love hotels, especially in those suggesting sadomasochistic practices of bondage. Sanrio is not far behind. Although to my knowledge, I have yet to see a bondage-­themed Kitty, one recent incarnation of the cat depicts her as what I call “Hello Kitty Slutty,”10 laden with jewelry, heavy eye makeup, and short skirt. Again, we see ways in which Sanrio is willing to engage in borderline engagements with cute, pushing the Hello Kitty image into unexpected and some would say questionable places. Other porn stars have publicly professed their affiliation with Hello Kitty. Among these is Tera Patrick (see chapter 2). In a YouTube clip, she takes viewers on a tour of her home, including what she calls “my favorite room in the whole house, my Hello Kitty room.” There she shows off her Hello Kitty lava lamp, trash can, rug, desk accessories, and many other pink Kitty objects, explaining “I love Hello Kitty. She’s pink and she’s cute and she’s so simple. And she’s Japanese!”11 Later in the video, she greets her husband in a fluffy pink Hello Kitty robe. Patrick calls her Myspace page “Hello Tera” and some publicity shots show her sporting Hello Kitty wear (e.g., diamond necklace, underwear). For a porn star such as Tera Patrick, Hello Kitty may be a personal preference, but it also serves as a brand message of “pink, cute, simple, and Japanese.” Sanrio’s reaction to such fandom is mixed — denying Patrick’s use of Hello Kitty in an official promotional calendar (chapter 2) but looking the other way (“don’t ask don’t tell” style) as Patrick sports Hello Kitty wear in online, unsanctioned appropriations. Mariko Passion — a sex worker, feminist activist, biracial (half-­ Japanese), and bisexual woman — calls herself “Educated Whore and Urban Geisha,” a “performance artist | activist | educator | whore revolutionary” (figure 5.2). Her website posts the following: kitty subversions   •  225

“Hello Kitty Has No Mouth and Pimpin’ Ain’t Eazy”: Hello Kitty was born and created in Japan in 1976, and is “made in China” these days, making her half Chinese and half Japanese and 31, just like me!! . . . I have been working on giving Hello Kitty a mouth my entire sex work activist career of 9+ years. In this sense, HK stands for the voices of Asian women’s sexuality, Asian feminism, Queer Asian women even. On a more personal note, I do identify with Hello Kitty because of her childlike sexuality, it’s true. But that has always been a part of my specifically very hyper sexual, hyper ethnic style of art making and performance art; ever since I was known as the asian**** . . . If Hello Kitty is the voice of Asian women, Asian sex workers, Asian culture then, in every way, with the work that I do, I try to give HK a mouth to speak for herself.12 Passion transforms Hello Kitty into a poster child for sex workers specifically and Asian women in general. For these activists and others, Hello Kitty’s mouthlessness works only too well within stereotypes of Asian (and Asian American) women, symbolically combining muteness with passivity and Asian female desirability.

Kitty Winks: Subversive Endings as Play Examining these expressions and uses of Hello Kitty by “unlikely persons in unlikely places with unlikely meanings” critically stretches our view of pink globalization. Let me return to the questions with which I began this chapter: How do subversive uses and meanings of Hello Kitty by fans (and marketers) shape pink globalization itself; how does Japanese Cute-­Cool enable a particular space of subversion; and finally, how do upended meanings contribute to our understanding of sociopolitical processes by which global products inhabit lives and spaces? These subversions in the hands of Riot Grrrls and alternative “punk” females, gay and lesbian fans, and female sex-­industry workers shape the very fabric of pink globalization by providing an undercurrent of gendered, teasing, and sometimes controversial meanings and associations. Upendings such as these add depth and texture not only to Sanrio’s cat; beyond that they contribute more generally to the transnational flow of goods and images itself, so that one cannot consider pink globalization as merely one simple phenomenon (e.g., the buying and selling of an item in multiple locations around the globe), but as 226  •  chapter five

5.2. “Happy Endings, American Dreams,” photomedia series by Mariko Passion (2007).

multiple strands woven together through an image such as Hello Kitty. Such upended rereadings substantiate the wink by providing rich, alternative semantic fields. The surprise element of the upendings causes pause, sometimes generating media attention (e.g., Houston Gay Pride Parade), and this, too, works toward complicating and enriching pink globalization. Although not everyone viewing Hello Kitty in these “unexpected places” may fully “get” the upended meanings by which she is appropriated, these meanings enhance the complex multivalence of the cat, and thereby pink globalization. The result is greater ambiguity and richer semantic resources tied to pink globalization, producing a broad ground of associations coalescing around the playfulness of a wink. Japanese Cute-­Cool enables this wink, in part by the many layers of meaning from which it is drawn in Japan (chapter 1), in part by the multiple populations that respond to its appeal globally. The wink of pink globalization draws upon concepts of kawaii and shōjo in contemporary Japan, calling forth both child and adult, as the innocent kitty subversions   •  227

and the sexualized meshed into one. In the 2000s, many global fans respond to the special (Japanese) qualities of Sanrio’s cat. As this chapter shows, Japanese Cute-­Cool invites a particular space of subversion in Euro-­American settings in part through its subtle but critical difference from mainstream Western visual culture. What many of these — and other — fans recognize and consider critical to the process of upending is that this is not cuteness along the lines of American Disney or Precious Moments. Instead, Hello Kitty represents the not-­America cuteness of complex, multilayered appeal that constitutes its cool (as expressed by Dan Peters in chapter 2). This is the work of Sanrio and its designers. Subversion in this light is not happenstance, but integrally embedded as an invitation and imperative, often drawn from within the complex ambiguity of kawaii-­branded, corporate-­produced cool-­cuteness. These subversions are not only by invitation. I contend that they also arise out of a certain amount of Euro-­American willingness, even eagerness, to play with Asia — as a racialized stereotype, as an orientalized figure, as a site of exotic vulnerability. Knowing this, Asian Americans can take part in this practice as well, from a more complex position of subjectivity (including self-­orientalization) for their own purposes. The willingness to play with Asia (and Asian objects such as Hello Kitty) in particular ways comes from a position of relative global prestige. If the shoe were on the other foot in Sanrio’s home context — that is, if Asians/ Japanese became enamored with, for example, Mickey Mouse (as many are) — I believe there would be fewer Asian/Japanese fans willing to upend Disney’s rodent in subversive ways, or at least in these kinds of subverted expressions. Because Mickey Mouse represents America, and because America still represents a certain amount of global achievement to many, the relationship between fans and object differs. Fewer Asian/ Japanese fans would see Disney’s mouse as a countermeasure to their own mainstream culture, primarily because mainstream cultures of Asia/Japan often include aspects of Euro-­American culture as symbols of modernity and prestige (Raz 1999). In short, one would not subvert one’s aspirations or goals. The contrast here rests multiply in objects of global prestige, relationship to commodities, and practices of playful subversion. (Note as well the relative lack of anti – Hello Kitty sentiment and expression in Japan, discussed in chapter 4.) The relationships tangle in complex ways: many Euro-­American fans enjoy Hello Kitty’s un-­American version of cuteness, within whose ambiguity they may create spaces of subversion; Asian/Japanese fans of 228  •  chapter five

an object such as Mickey Mouse accept Disney’s icon as representative of America, including its global power and domination. Whereas Hello Kitty may help the Euro-­American carve out a space of subversion for her appreciation of a non-­Western object, at least some Asian (here, Japanese) consumers embed themselves within a prestige system that expresses lingering akogare (longing admiration) for the West and its consumable objects (see also Kelsky 2001:148). As a result, Mickey Mouse in the hands of such an Asian consumer begets far less of a subversive consumer wink. (Ironically, the wink may occur more at the hands of Asian producers, as Sanrio so handily demonstrates, than in consumers.) It is not that Japanese consumers never wink with commodities, but that the wink may occur through other creative expressions, such as playful juxtapositions and innovative combinations of goods. Transnational objects such as these entangle themselves in a bundle of associative meanings, including the global prestige of the country of origin, signposts of modernity, and countercultural means of subversion. Exploring subversive uses to which Hello Kitty is put by Euro-­ American fans helps us analyze just what upending might mean in a complex global web of significations. That the web takes place in the context of movement — “signification in action” — makes this study of pink globalization critically important for generalized processes of meaning making in a shifting world. That the web spotlights a commodity that moves across borders, thereby fetishizing the wink, makes subversion a critical tool for fans, corporations, and researchers alike to consider objects, emotions, identifications, and meanings. In the next chapter, I explore other “subversive” uses of Hello Kitty —  in this case, focusing on creative expressions by serious artists. Analyzing their aesthetic appropriations allows us to consider further processes of global meaning making and the uncanny agility of Sanrio’s mouthless cat.

kitty subversions   •  229

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Chapter Six Playing with Kitty

Serious Art in Surprising Places

While the avant-­garde is conventionally imagined as sharp and pointy, as hard-­or cutting-­edge, cute objects have no edge to speak of, usually being soft, round, and deeply associated with the infantile and the feminine. — Sianne Ngai (2005:814)

[Sentimental] imagery unthinkable in serious, high-­brow, cutting-­ edge visual art for most of the twentieth-­century has emerged as an important concern of the early twenty-­first century. — Nick Carpasso (2005:5)

One aspect of Hello Kitty – led pink globalization that many observers might find surprising is the degree to which Sanrio’s icon has pervaded the edgy fringes of art worlds outside of Japan, as well as to a limited degree in Japan. Some of these forays have been promoted, if not prompted, by Sanrio as it engages in its own public imaging through associations with selected artists. Others have been instigated by artists themselves, and can be seen within the purview of what Nick Carpasso, the curator of the Pretty Sweet: The Sentimental Image in Contemporary Art exhibit, identifies as an emerging trend in serious art worlds, as quoted above (see also figure 6.1). In both cases, Hello Kitty acts as an object of aesthetic regard, both to pull the work of art in particular directions and to be pulled into the context of art exhibition spaces globally. Sanrio’s cat, in other words, is never a neutral figure, but always an active, affecting presence (Armstrong 1971). As the company

6.1. Cover of the Pretty Sweet: The Sentimental Image in Contemporary Art catalogue, by the artist Amy Podmore (2005). Exhibition organized by deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass.

would like to make clear through its emphasis on design and designers (see the discussion of Yamaguchi Yūko in chapter 2), Hello Kitty may be regarded as worthy of rubbing shoulders with artists occupying the edges of sometimes subversive, sometimes transgressive, often playful, youth-­oriented art worlds. Mixing Hello Kitty into edgy art worlds returns us to the subject of kitsch, discussed in the introduction. I examine ways in which artists who choose Hello Kitty play with kitsch itself. To Tomas Kulka’s axiom, “Kitsch never ventures into avant-­garde,” Hello Kitty – infused art suggests the opposite: “Avant-­garde may sometimes venture into kitsch” (Kulka 1988:23). The playfulness of these art worlds brings to playing with kitty   •  231

mind the Pop Art movement, beginning in the 1950s and reaching culmination in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, one can easily imagine a fictive Andy Warhol – esque screen print series of Hello Kitty in different color combinations, incorporating this pop icon much as he did others, such as Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-­Cola bottles, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley. The language of kitsch of the Pop Art movement played with irony and parody. As well as employing some similar strategies of irony and parody, the language of Hello Kitty in the art worlds I discuss here includes more straightforward appropriations of sentimentality for its own sake. In this way, its relationship with kitsch becomes more fraught than that seen previously. Pink globalization, after all, embraces pinkness itself with its many ambiguities (see the introduction). This chapter focuses on the complexity of that rosy tint in its aesthetic play. What does it mean for cuteness to become art? In this, I paraphrase a question raised in an entirely different context — “ What does it mean for pornography to become art?” — addressed during the obscenity trials of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover in the 1950s (Sherif 2009:64). The defense of Lawrence’s novel as explicit sexuality (“pornography”) in art lies in critic Edmund Wilson’s statement: “To have subdued all this material to the uses of a supremely finished and disciplined work of art is a feat which has hardly been equalled in the literature of our time” (quoted in Sherif 2009:64). According to Wilson, art may be defined by technique and artistry, involving discipline, virtuosity, and mastery of materials — rather than by semantic content. By this, a work of art must be judged not so much on what it expresses (e.g., sex, cuteness) as on how it expresses it. If we then turn from Lady Chatterley’s pornography question to that of Hello Kitty “cuteness in art,” one might similarly ask not so much about the appropriateness of the material as about its expert handling by artists. Yet cuteness remains suspect as a subject of high aesthetic accomplishment. I argue that the difference between pornography and cuteness lies in what Euro-­Americans consider the appropriateness of childish matters in the hands of adults. Whereas sex and sexuality may be bona fide subjects of art, particularly as a concern of adults, cuteness ties too closely to infantilization, children (especially girls), and sentimentality. Cuteness suggests superficiality, entertainment, and a lack of seriousness of purpose. In short, we return to the swirling question of kitsch and its implicit critique in Euro-­American societies, despite historic interventions such as the Pop Art movement. 232  •  chapter six

In this chapter I examine Hello Kitty in serious art worlds primarily outside Japan.1 I analyze Sanrio as an unofficial “patron of the arts” through exhibits and publications of art for the thirtieth (2004 – 5) and thirty-­fifth (2009 – 10) anniversaries of Hello Kitty.2 I ask, Why art and specifically what kinds of art? Why has Sanrio taken it upon itself to include Hello Kitty art as part of its corporate purview? And finally, I discuss more specific appropriations by particular artists, who have used Hello Kitty in their art without Sanrio’s prodding. I focus on three artists, in part for their contrasting uses of Hello Kitty, as well as their accessibility through published interviews or personal contacts: the American male sculptor Tom Sachs, the Japanese American female artist Leika Akiyama, and the American female painter Leslie Holt. To an extent, these artists could have been grouped together with others I discuss throughout the book — Angela Choi, Yumi Umiumare, Jaime Scholnick, and Denise Uyehara (all in chapter 4) — however, I have chosen to group these artists separately as they pay tribute to Hello Kitty through their art. Rather than a formal analysis of their artwork per se (for which I am ill equipped), I raise the question, Why Hello Kitty? That is, what do these artists apparently find in Hello Kitty that generates her inclusion in their creative expression? How does Sanrio’s cat fit into the corpus of their work? And what kinds of extended global meanings do their works of art lend to Sanrio’s cat? Like the expressions of critique discussed in chapter 4, and acts of subversion discussed in chapter 5, these works of art may go well beyond Sanrio’s original intentions, but in doing so the surprise of their work reconfigures the symbolic space of the cat as a denizen of the edge.

Artists as Corporate Celebrants: Sanrio and Its Anniversary Strategies Since the thirtieth anniversary of Hello Kitty in 2004 – 5, and continuing to the thirty-­fifth anniversary in 2009 – 10, Sanrio has taken to celebrating corporate milestones with art. In particular, the group of artists contacted to create Kitty art and the resultant traveling exhibit and book, Kitty Ex. Perfect Guide Book (2004), stand as startling testimony to creative corporate strategy, resulting in new extensions of pink globalization and its meanings. Sanrio describes the collaboration as follows: “Our main concept for the show is to exhibit collaborated artworks created by very talented artists who play an active part in difplaying with kitty   •  233

ferent fields such as painting, graphic design, photography, music and more, to recreate fresh and new works that best expresses their creativity. We also asked many famous fashion brands including Nike htm, Loree Rodkin, and so forth, to participate and collaborate with us to create exclusive ‘hello kitty’ products in order to spread this celebration all over Japan.”3 Thus, Sanrio juxtaposed two interrelated types of collaborations — artists and brands — in a carefully constructed marketing opportunity that situates Hello Kitty within fields of cutting-­edge, capitalist creativity. The question remains, however, Who to invite to the party? Tohmatsu Kazuo, manager of public relations for Sanrio, explains the process in an e-­mail interview: We [Sanrio] were approached by Hollywood Digital Entertainment Corporation (dhe, a Japanese firm) who presented us with a collaboration proposal for a Hello Kitty 30th Anniversary event. In the end they became a license of this project. Together with dhe, we drew up a list of leading artists and brands who were fans of Kitty, and also sought the advice of art coordinators with a deep knowledge of the art world. Some artists were contacted by us directly and some were provided through art coordinators. The exact information [of how many artists were contacted or declined] hasn’t been kept, but we remember that there were only two or so [who declined]. We paid the production costs of the artwork. They were instructed to express Hello Kitty freely, according to their own impression of her, however they were told that any sexual or violent portrayal would not be acceptable. [Sanrio retained the rights to censor the artwork.] We made our reasons for rejecting the artwork clear, and the corrections were carried out pretty much as we requested. (Personal communication, October 1, 2010) What we see, then, are the results of selected artists who accepted Sanrio’s invitation, as well as produced their works under the possibilities of corporate censorship. So who made the final cut? Notably, participants with a strong youth orientation: street (graffiti) artists (e.g., Shepard Fairey), fashion designers (e.g., As Four, Jean-­Charles De Castelbajac, Jeremy Scott, Jess Holzworth), media artists (e.g., Hachiya Kazuhiko and PetWORKS), digital artists (e.g., Ukawa Naohiro), manga artists (e.g., Tanaka Katsuki), deejay-­musicians (e.g., tyg-­M Tycoon Graphics Miyoshi Yuichi), and film directors (e.g., Takagi Masakatsu).4 Rather than more conser234  •  chapter six

vative, established mainstream artists (who may have declined anyway), Sanrio opted for designers who tend to occupy the fringes of the art world, often known for the edginess of their work. Some might even be considered subversive artists (see chapter 5), especially in their roots in antimainstream movements such as street art. Although a few may have already engaged Hello Kitty in their art (e.g., Tom Sachs), most did not prior to this collaboration. There are celebrity artists (i.e., people whose names are known perhaps more than their art), such as Sean Lennon, a son of John Lennon, and Malcolm McLaren, the former manager of the Sex Pistols. Of the sixty-­four artists (including collectives), thirty-­one are from Japan, twenty-­six from the United States, three from France, two from England, and one each from Canada and South Korea.5 With such an eclectic mix, the resultant works display a wide range, at least within the edgy tone set by Sanrio’s selection. The American fashion designer Jeremy Scott sculpted an armless nude with Hello Kitty head entitled Hello De Milo. The Japanese artist Hibino Katsuhiko painted small flat river rocks white with Hello Kitty faces, strewn against a background of red. They became multishaped Kitty heads in a work entitled Kitty Stone. The American artists Rajan Mehta and Daniel Jackson, known as Surface to Air, designed a Hello Kitty crop circle executed by the British specialists Circlemakers in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England entitled “Landed.”6 The Japanese art and film director Nagi Noda created a series of oversized, multicolored panda bears surrounding Hello Kitty, who has herself become half panda, in a work entitled Hanpanda (Half-­panda). The French-­born American street artist and painter W. K. Interact created an installation entitled Kitty Kit Spy depicting Hello Kitty on a worktable, in the process of being taken apart and rigged up as a spy. The Japanese nail artist Eriko Kurosaki designed a series of Hello Kitty nails in red-­and-­white-­checkerboard, daisies, and, of course, the cat’s head, entitled kitty ex. x erikonail*. From the largest (crop circle) to the smallest (nails) works, the artists took Hello Kitty as an invitation to play. In fact, it is the creative playfulness that often startles the viewer. Sometimes that playfulness results from the unexpected juxtaposition of forms: for example, placing Hello Kitty’s head atop the classical Greek figure of Venus De Milo (Hello De Milo, by Jeremy Scott). The jump in time periods (from Venus De Milo, ca. 130 – 100 bc, to Hello Kitty, 1974 – present) and forms (classical Greek to commercial Japan) acts as the creative language of the work. These formal aspects engage within the context of the artist’s overall body of playing with kitty   •  235

work: the fashion designer Jeremy Scott is known for his playful intersections with pop culture, as the creator of tongue-­in-­cheek attire for the pop singers Britney Spears and Lady Gaga, and even for Miss Piggy (the character from The Muppet Show), as well as for his incorporation of pop icons, such as Mickey Mouse. Within the context of Scott’s other works, his appropriation of Hello Kitty comes as an extension of his aesthetic. For other artists, however, this foray into a Hello Kitty world seems surprisingly out of character. For example, W. K. Interact, known for his dark, edgy, urban, sometimes tortuous visions that have spanned entire city walls, seems far removed from Kitty. But his work Kitty Kit Spy turns Sanrio’s cat literally into an intricate piece of undercover surveillance as part of spyware. Sometimes the artist plays with natural materials, in effect “Kitty-­ing” them: for example, taking river rocks and turning them into Kitty heads (Kitty Stone, by Katsuhiko Hibino). Sometimes the playfulness erupts in the form of size, scale, and medium: for example, Hello Kitty’s face alone may not cause much of a stir, but when enacted through fields of wheat creating a crop circle Kitty image two hundred feet in diameter, the resultant work becomes newsworthy (Landed, by Surface to Air). Five years later, Sanrio engaged in another collaboration with artists, although this second foray took place under different contexts and with different results. Whereas the thirtieth anniversary exhibit stemmed from Tokyo headquarters and gained broad coverage as a traveling exhibit within Japan, this thirty-­fifth anniversary event was initiated by a fan and vendor of Hello Kitty, Jamie Rivadeneira, who worked together with Sanrio’s staff in South San Francisco. Together they staged a single-­sited exhibition entitled Three Apples: An Exhibition Celebrating 35 Years of Hello Kitty at Royal/T in Culver City (near Los Angeles) from October to November 2009, which featured the work of seventy-­nine artists,7 none of whom had exhibited in the earlier Kitty Ex. show. The resulting event included a Kitty art show, a retrospective of Kitty products, Kitty goods for sale, and a Kitty café. Art here did not act as a standalone; it acted in conjunction with a plethora of goods. Whereas Kitty Ex. drew upon the fringes of the youth-­oriented global art world, Three Apples drew upon a more commercial, less edgy, spectrum of artists, hand-­picked by the curator Rivadeneira from her Los Angeles – based coterie of friends and associates whom she knew to be Hello Kitty fans. (I provide further details on the process of organizing the exhibit below.) 236  •  chapter six

From Sanrio’s point of view, these exhibits — and particularly Kitty Ex. — work in a number of ways. First of all, a traveling exhibit and catalogue of cutting-­edge art inspired by Hello Kitty raise the public profile of Sanrio, doing so in a way that sets the company and its cat apart from more run-­of-­the-­mill toys or figures. Second, the work of these artists lays testament to the fact that Hello Kitty has become a celebrity in her own right, confirmed as an icon of pop culture worthy of play. (This is also the message of the celebrity of the Sanrio designer Yamaguchi Yūko, discussed in chapter 2.) Hello Kitty is such an icon that she can generate her own subgenre of art.8 Third, the selection of artists — particularly for the Kitty Ex. show — asserts and confirms Hello Kitty’s status as “cool,” hip, edgy, and global — by contagion. Hello Kitty becomes a member of the youth-­oriented “in crowd” of graffiti artists, deejays, and street fashionistas, not so much by her own doing, but by association and even incorporation into their creative work. Kitty Ex. gives Hello Kitty her “street credentials.” Three Apples amplifies Hello Kitty’s commercial credentials. At the same time, Sanrio ensures that Hello Kitty has it both (or multiple) ways — as an edgy artistic figure and a much-­beloved object of children’s commercial culture, and the many points in between. The company adopts these forays into the art world as an additive strategy, not as a replacement for what already exists. Therefore, pencil cases, lunch boxes, and erasers coexist with crop circles and painted rocks, as well as the in-­between spaces of cell phone straps, designer wallets, and Swarovski crystal necklaces in a shared space defined by Hello Kitty. These inhabitants of the shared space do not necessarily cross paths, or even know about one another, except for their tethering through the mouthless cat. The strategic brilliance of Kitty Ex. and Three Apples rests in their affirmation of the voracious adaptability of Hello Kitty. The particular configuration of mouthlessness and design versatility combine with Sanrio’s own restlessness in seeking new venues, images, and markets. Anniversary celebrations such as these presents themselves as tremendous marketing opportunities, placing Hello Kitty in the limelight in new ways, seen through new eyes, and potentially generating new fandom — including the artists, their followers, and other onlookers. Kitty Ex. and Three Apples act as playful, creative brand extensions. Does the edge recede as a purely commercial product begs to be let in? Where does subversion lie within the context of artists incorporating (or being asked to incorporate) a figure that acts as trademark or playing with kitty   •  237

logo into their work? These matters are of little concern to Sanrio, of course, but of relevance to the subject of pink globalization. Although this kind of blurring of boundaries between art and commercial realms may not be new, it is an increasingly significant part of twenty-­first century global aesthetic realms (discussed further in chapter 7).

Interview: Sanrio’s Dave Marchi’s Gamble with Three Apples In the interview I conducted on March 25, 2010, Marchi details some of the gamble of putting together the Three Apples exhibit (see chapter 2). Explaining that the artists were not paid, Marchi insists that the purpose of the show rested in celebration of Hello Kitty’s longevity and the pleasure of fans. Internalizing the watchful eye of Sanrio headquarters in Tokyo, Marchi understood well the fragility of his and other organizers’ position exactly as brand extenders. In this he relied most on the very fandom of the people (including artists) involved in this project, trusting in the safety net of their judgment and restraint. The tipping point lay in occupying the edge (“going crazy”), while remaining within the confines of the brand. In fact, this is exactly the balancing act of Sanrio’s aesthetic endeavors, pushing the envelope of the brand, here through art. The fact that Marchi and his coworkers (and Rivadeneira) worked long, unpaid hours — combined with Sanrio profiting handsomely from the event — only fueled the belief in the specialness of the occasion. In this, both tireless work and consumer frenzy arise from passion — for the cat, her message, and the playful, but carefully tended possibilities of art mixed with commerce. D. M.: Jamie Rivadeneira basically became the curator, who was responsible for contacting all the artists who were gonna participate. We just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t like a paid thing. We wanted to get artists who liked Hello Kitty for whatever reason. At first, we said, “OK, since it’s the thirty-­fifth anniversary, we’ll get thirty-­five artists.” And after that, she [Rivadeneira] sent word out with all her cool artist friends, and it just grew and grew and grew and grew. I can’t remember what the final number was, because some were added and some dropped out, but it was over a hundred works of art that she — god bless her — all curated. C. Y.: Now, how did it work with the artists? I mean did you commission them? 238  •  chapter six

D. M.: No, we did not wanna do it that way, because we didn’t want to say, “We’re paying you to make a Hello Kitty work of art.” We wanted it to come from them because they like Hello Kitty, and they wanted to participate in this in some way. So Jamie was able to do that. It was also nice because she was one step removed from Sanrio, the corporate entity. We didn’t wanna be like a Disney saying, “Create this work of art, but you can’t do this and you can’t do this,” but of course, we also didn’t want them to do anything overtly sexual and violent, and so it was kind of a fine line between being the curators who are gonna say, “Don’t do anything wrong with our brand or we’re not gonna include you, but also we want you to express your enjoyment or love for Hello Kitty in your own unique way.” So we allowed her [Rivadeneira] to do all that. And she basically said, “Hi artist, do you wanna participate in this fun, crazy show? Do you like Hello Kitty? If you do, let me know.” And they came back with either sketches or ideas of what they wanted to do, and she went with it. C. Y.: So Sanrio had nothing to say to the artists themselves? D. M.: No, ultimately we didn’t, and ultimately we decided if something was so unacceptable for whatever reason, we just wouldn’t include it in the show, but we didn’t wanna say, “Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” C. Y.: But you did have the right to refuse. D. M.: We had the right to refuse, yes, and —  C. Y.: And did you exert that? D. M.: We didn’t, actually. C. Y.: So you never had to? D. M.: And part of the reason was we made sure that people participating were fans of Hello Kitty, and we assumed and kind of gambled, if you were a fan of Hello Kitty, you’re not going to do anything too terrible, like — we don’t wanna show her with her head cut off, or anything superviolent, and we kind of . . . put that on Jamie the curator to say, “OK, when you’re contacting the artists, just make sure you know that they’re playing with kitty   •  239

fans, and ultimately, if it’s unacceptable in some way, they’re not gonna show it, but feel free to go crazy; especially because we had not commissioned them, it didn’t . . . put them under pressure to do anything that would be acceptable to us, but in the back of their minds, I’m assuming they were saying “OK, if I’m creating something and it’s gonna be part of this show, and if I show her being impaled or stabbed or something unacceptable, it most likely won’t be in, so if I had the idea to do that, I probably shouldn’t if I wanna be part of this. . . .” C. Y.: So there is a kind of self-­censorship that’s going on amongst the artists. D. M.: Yeah, but also, I think, the majority of them probably wouldn’t wanna do something because they do genuinely enjoy Hello Kitty and wanted to celebrate her in that way. But it’s not for every Hello Kitty fan. I mean I would’ve brought my niece there and walked her through it, but there were certain things that were a little racy, and to be honest, the powers that be were a bit nervous when we went ahead with this, and bless them, they said, “OK, you can do this. But there is a potential that it could blow up and it could not be right, and if that happens, we’re not gonna be very happy and you’ll never get the opportunity to do this again,” and we kind of took a gamble and wondered, “Gosh. Is there gonna be anything that compromises the brand or is it gonna paint us in a bad light or is it gonna offend anyone?” C. Y.: And those powers that be, are they Tokyo or are they L.A. [overseas headquarters]? D. M.: Tokyo. Ultimately Tokyo, but we went through it with the president of Sanrio Global Consumer Product in L.A., and she accepted the challenge and said, “We’ll go forward with this.” And I talked to our coo [chief operating officer], Ray [Hatoyama], who also gave his guidance and input, but ultimately he said, “OK, do it and go with your instincts, but if anything blows up or if anything’s bad, it’s not gonna be a good thing,” So we did gamble a little bit on that. C. Y.: Just a question: For the artists who did works for the Three Apples, if they sell that work, does Sanrio get some of that? Or how does that work? 240  •  chapter six

D. M.: The actual pieces of art — when they were sold, the revenue was split between the artists and the curator, and we took a small royalty because we had to. We were asked from our parent company that if this is happening and something’s being sold, we do need to receive a small royalty, so we did receive a very, very small royalty, but we donated the majority of that to charity. We didn’t want to make this a consumer event that was gonna bring in lots of money. We . . . the people who did it — we wanted to do it just because we thought it was cool, and we wanted to do it for the fans. The core is just making it fun for the fans.

Artist Profile: Tom Sachs The sculptor Tom Sachs (b. 1966) is probably the most prominent artist actively and personally engaged in works that incorporate Hello Kitty (see cover). Notably, he was one of the Kitty Ex. artists, with his Mudai [no title] installation, a series of how-­to-­draw-­Hello-­Kitty panels in primarily red, white, and black.9 Sachs’s art is bold and very public, particularly in the way in which he and his works have a knack for gaining media attention. He revels in a reputation as a bad boy, a transgressive artist who uses Hello Kitty and other pop icons to incite, enrage, shock, and ultimately engage. One of his earliest works involving Hello Kitty came about in 1994 – 95, when he designed a window for the Christmas display of the legendary trendsetting Barneys New York department store in Manhattan. Sachs entitled the result Hello Kitty Nativity. In it Sanrio’s cat replaced the Baby Jesus; a likeness of the pop celebrity Madonna replaced the Virgin Mary, had six breasts, and wore a Chanel outfit and Air Jordan shoes; the American irreverent cartoon character Bart Simpson replaced the three wise men; and a McDonald’s logo hung atop the stable. Sachs comments on the exhibit and the extreme controversy it generated: I think the most interesting and terrifying situation was the reaction to my Hello Kitty nativity scene, which was part of a holiday window display at Barneys in 1994. It was meant to be auctioned off to benefit the Little Red Schoolhouse [children’s early education charity organization]. I was pretty much unknown at that point. . . . The Catholic League said it defamed Christianity. They organized a protest, hate mail, and a whole radio campaign until Barneys agreed to remove the piece. I received a series of death threats and a hundred-­fifty hate playing with kitty   •  241

mail letters. It was pretty scary. I was making a commentary on the commercialism of Christmas, and all of a sudden I was like this enemy of the state. . . . I’m interested in these transgressive themes, not for their shock value, but as a way to look at societal boundaries. It’s those kinds of explorations that result in situations like the Barneys window. (Halley 2001) That “situation like the Barneys window” placed Sachs and Hello Kitty directly in the headlines, generating controversy and media spotlight. As Sachs has continued to use pop icons to critique consumerism and commodity fetishism, Hello Kitty resurfaces in prominent ways in his work. In 2009, Sachs created his now infamous Bronze Collection, featuring two 10-­foot-­high white bronze casts of foam-­core sculpted figures of Hello Kitty and Miffy (the white rabbit drawn by Dick Bruna, a Dutch artist, for a series of children’s picture books) and a twenty-­one-­foot-­tall bronze Hello Kitty rising behind the fountains.10 These sculptures were shown at Lever House on Park Avenue in New York City (the installation of which is shown as the cover of this book), the Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, Colorado, and the Palais de Chaillot in the Trocadéro area of Paris across the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower. The two huge cartoon figures functioned as fountains, with tears flowing from their eyes —  Crying Hello Kitty. Meanwhile, Sachs comments on the even larger Hello Kitty statue: “This windup Hello Kitty is an expression of how automated my life can feel sometimes. Maybe that’s why she’s the biggest one in the show and looks like she’s about to fall over” (Sheets 2008). In fact, Sachs’s looming white fountain of weeping Hello Kitty with the Eiffel Tower in the background could easily be considered iconic of pink globalization itself: Sanrio’s cat grown to huge proportions, filling an urban landscape, reconfigured by a notorious American bad-­boy artist, set against the backdrop of one of the most famous sites of the world, Paris’s Eiffel Tower. It is exactly the meeting of icons — Hello Kitty, Eiffel Tower, even Tom Sachs himself — that serves as the fitting site of anti-­ Kitty public rant, as discussed in chapter 4. Sachs discusses sculpting Hello Kitty in bronze: For me to do a model of “Hello Kitty,” which is this merchandising icon that exists only as a merchandising and licensed character. To then redo that in a “fine” material like bronze, I think is really to the point. It’s recontextualizing, shifting it back to a high level and making it really, really clear. . . . It is sculpture, because it’s talked about, 242  •  chapter six

sold, and shown as such. But to me it’s really bricolage, which is the French term for do-­it-­yourself repair. Bricolage comes from a culture that repairs rather than replaces — American culture just replaces.11 Here, as elsewhere, Sachs is intent upon politicizing his works and the society from which it springs. Sachs’s website describes his art as “sampling capitalist culture, remixing, dubbing and spitting it back out again, so that the results are transformed and transforming.”12 This is exactly the process that Hello Kitty undergoes in Sachs’s creative hands. She is the Hello Kitty remix, “transformed and transforming,” whether ensconced at the Trocadéro overlooking the Eiffel Tower, or tucked into the nativity scene of a display window at Barneys. Sachs acts as the art-­world trickster, the pop culture provocateur who uses Hello Kitty (and Miffy and Madonna and McDonald’s) as but one of many in his bag of resources for transgressive expression. As he explains in the September 2009 issue of Wired magazine, “Hello Kitty is an icon that doesn’t stand for anything at all. Hello Kitty never has been, and never will be, anything. She’s pure license; you can even get a Hello Kitty car! The branding thing is completely out of control, but it started as nothing and maintains its nothingness” (Wired 2001). In Sachs’s hands, Hello Kitty — the “icon that doesn’t stand for anything at all” — becomes big and bad.

Artist Profile: Leika Akiyama That sense of bad-­boy transgressiveness that shapes Sachs’s Hello Kitty – infused work transforms into playfulness, even a visual sense of magical realism, in the hands of a longtime Hello Kitty fan and Japanese-­born American small-­scale sculptor, Leika Akiyama (b. 1965). Although Akiyama was never invited to be a part of either Kitty Ex. or Three Apples, Hello Kitty shapes her work in compelling ways. In fact, Akiyama’s work may be seen within the context of a minor new, emerging Hello Kitty – linked locus for pink globalization and Japanese Cute-­ Cool in the field of serious art in the United States. A 2005 exhibit at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts, of which Akiyama was a part, was entitled Pretty Sweet: The Sentimental Image in Contemporary Art (see figure 6.1). The curator, Nick Carpasso, whose quote begins this chapter, writes: “Painters, sculptors, and even art-­and-­technology/new media artists now employ the rich visual language of sentimental imagery for a wide variety of aesthetic, intelplaying with kitty   •  243

lectual, and political purposes. . . . The components of this emotional spectrum . . . include love, happiness, delight, comfort, innocence, vulnerability, serenity, security, sympathy, nostalgia, bittersweet melancholy, and pleasure” (2005:5). In fact, Carpasso paints the emotional terrain of kawaii. The exhibit featured thirty-­three artists from the Boston area, each of whom regard sentimentality as serious, aesthetic business, but in different ways. The website for the exhibit explains: Contemporary artists approach the sentimental for three primary reasons: to celebrate the positive emotional spectrum, to evoke memory and nostalgia, and to ironically attack sentimentality as an inauthentic and damaging simplification of the human condition. Running throughout these categories is a deep ambivalence about the sentimental image, which parallels American society’s love-­hate relationship with this material. On the one hand, the sentimental has been ruthlessly cast out of serious intellectual discourse since the early nineteenth century (most vehemently by Modernism), but on the other, the most successful artist working today is Thomas Kinkade,13 a painter of treacly landscapes whose art empire is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The embrace of sentimental imagery may well be the most radical and avant-­garde stance possible for a contemporary artist to take.14 That “radical and avant-­garde stance” thus draws a fine but critical line between embracing the sentimental as raw materials for creative expression and “treacly” Kinkade-­style sentimentality. Akiyama does not necessarily share America’s “love-­hate relationship” with the sentimental or with kawaii. Rather, she enthusiastically embraces things kawaii, including Hello Kitty, in her own whimsical but profound manner (figure 6.2). In fact, Akiyama attributes this combination of whimsy and profundity to Hello Kitty herself. The catalogue to the deCordova exhibit provides this introduction to Akiyama: The artist has said that, “ever since I was a child growing up in Tokyo, I have wanted to live in a Hello Kitty universe.” Out of this fantasy sprang her own personal universe — a world of riotous installations overpopulated by silly and strange bunnies and plastic doll heads, neon feather boas, psychedelic fabrics, shiny plastic toys, glitter, jewels, and other cheap and tacky objects that relate to Japanese youth culture, kitsch, and kawaii (the culture of “cute”). . . . 244  •  chapter six

6.2. Hello Kitty Shinto Shrine by Leika Akiyama (2006).

Although Akiyama recognizes the attractive/repulsive effect of her work, she considers her found objects beautiful, and adores their color, texture, and character which she believes can create happiness. Her electric celebrations of cheap excess are elevated to the status of shrines honoring the artist’s personal devotion to her totem of tacky symbols. (Novina 2005:20) Hello Kitty — whether literally or referentially — acts as one of the “tacky symbols” re-­creating the emotional and aesthetic universe of Akiyama’s childhood. Akiyama herself proclaims, “Hello Kitty is my sacred icon” (personal communication, February 28, 2005). Although only some of her work actually utilizes Hello Kitty, a strong sense of kawaii animates all of her images. She explains, “Hello Kitty informs my work in such a fundamental way. It is her world that I want to re-­create and inhabit. It is shiny, full of rainbows, and it is so atmospherically dense” (personal communication, February 28, 2005). What separates Akiyama’s approach to Hello Kitty – laden sentiment from a more “treacly” treatment is exactly what playing with kitty   •  245

she calls “atmospheric density.” As an example of Kitty-­centered atmospheric density, Akiyama’s large, mixed-­media installation measuring six square feet entitled Hello Kitty Shinto Shrine (2006) shows a bright pink (Sanrio color) floral-­and-­bauble background inlaid with various heads, including that of Hello Kitty, each surrounded by a circle of pink feathers. She writes: In this work I am continuing on my series titled “Bubbles Bubblicious: A Collection of Dreamy Zen Mandala.” For this show I have created a large size Hello Kitty Mandala surrounded by smaller Bunny/Doll Head Mandalas to pay tribute to my Icon Hello Kitty or Kitty-­chan as she is referred to in Japan. . . . I worship mass-produced objects and toy characters such as . . . Hello Kitty . . . and I try to put them into Mandalas, a symbol of my personal mythology and universe. By creating a context within which to surround these mass-­produced often discarded or trivialized objects I am creating an entrée into my own mystical world in which they can realize their uniqueness and their “isness of things.” (Akiyama 2006) Akiyama thus uses Hello Kitty as an intimate personal expression, bringing her childhood into adulthood play, creating an intricately embroidered world of shiny objects, fluffy frills, and pastel colors that creates its own density through detailed whimsy. Even when large in size, this is a world of feminine miniatures that places Hello Kitty at the center of its “isness.” In Akiyama’s hands, Hello Kitty becomes a whimsical-­yet-­profound object of artistic worship.

Artist Profile: Leslie Holt The bold transgressiveness of Tom Sachs’s art contrasts with the intimate spaces of Akiyama’s Hello Kitty – infused work, which contrasts with the tongue-­in-­cheek Hello Kitty art of the American painter Leslie Holt (b. 1969). In May 2008, Holt opened a show entitled Hello Masterpiece in St. Louis, Missouri. The exhibit’s title references the almost two hundred pieces she painted that copy some of Western art’s most well-­known masterpieces, to which Holt adds a Hello Kitty figure — all in miniature form, postcard sized. For example, Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus includes Hello Kitty on the clamshell; Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory includes Hello Kitty, whose own clock is not melting like all the others (figure 6.3); Pablo Picasso’s Guernica includes Hello Kitty tumbling amidst the jumble of figures. Holt explains: “She’s [Kitty] a 246  •  chapter six

6.3. Hello Dali by Leslie Holt (2007).

girly-­girl but also adventurous and capable and strong. . . . I joke about her being a feminist icon as well as a commercial whore because she’s everywhere. . . . She’s . . . part of this reclamation of girliness that’s going on now — that you can be girly and not be weak” (Keaggy 2008). In this, Holt echoes the appropriations of punk feminists (chapter 5). Since then, she has continued to add to the Hello Masterpiece collection, incorporating works based on masterpieces by a wide range of artists and styles, including Byzantine mosaics, Venus of Willendorf (Paleolithic female figure), Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Leonardo Da Vinci, Johannes Vermeer, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Piet Mondrian, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Rene Magritte, Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keefe, Mary Cassatt, Andy Warhol, and even Shepard Fairey. In short, there is a hardly an artist well known to students of an introductory survey course of Western art that Holt does not take on as part of her purview. Part of what startles viewers of her exhibit is the audacity of the artist matched by the audacity of Hello Kitty’s placement — both quelled by the miniature size of the works. Holt’s artist statement in 2009 explains further her incorporation of Hello Kitty into well-­established works of art:

playing with kitty   •  247

In my most recent “Hello Masterpiece (art appreciation)” series, I juxtapose the character, Hello Kitty, with famous images from art history. The paintings are postcard size, similar to those found in a museum gift shop. The famous paintings become pop culture icons akin to Hello Kitty, and the paintings’ appeal as take home sized objects reinforces their context as commodities in a market. In these paintings Hello Kitty is often taking a tour through art history and dressing up to “match” elements of the famous painting. Hello Kitty becomes a toy version of Cindy Sherman [photographer known for depicting herself in different costumes], capable of changing identities by transforming her outer appearance. However, her “toyness” and her obvious overlay on the image disrupt any illusion that she actually fits in the scene of the artwork. In other images from this series, Hello Kitty is pointing toward social or political issues, such as war, genocide, or gender identity. I rely on her to charm the viewer into looking, but her innocent, playful appeal contrasts with the serious adult subject matter. With this contrast of adult and childlike content and these “high” and “low” cultural icons, I hope to elicit laughter and irony.15 Holt’s use of Hello Kitty works on several levels. First of all, Hello Kitty as icon quasi-­matches the iconicity of these famous painting. Both are popular commodities, although from different realms. Holt’s juxtaposition serves to connect those realms. Second, Hello Kitty acts as a chameleon, changing costumes to suit the particular frame. In this, Holt mimics the work of Sanrio, which constantly creates new iterations and contexts of their cat. Hello Masterpiece parallels Sanrio’s gotōchi series in which Hello Kitty embodies the famous souvenirs of many regions (chapter 1). Third, Hello Kitty, in spite of her flexibility, retains her highly recognizable identity as Sanrio creation. Holt’s juxtaposition does not truly move Hello Kitty “up”; rather, Kitty’s presence in the sanctified halls of museums and color-­plate pages of art history books provides a jolt of laughter and irony. In Holt’s hands, being “Hello Kittied” means being “punked.”

Kitty Extensions: Emergent Gallery Meanings Undoubtedly, Hello Kitty — as product, as logo, as design — is artistic expression. Hello Kitty is not born, but made, repeatedly in myriad products and contexts, each instance the result of an aesthetically in248  •  chapter six

formed design practice. Sanrio reinforces the processes of her creation by spotlighting her designer, Yamaguchi Yūko, to the point at which Yamaguchi herself has become a celebrity: as discussed in chapter 2, she is “Kitty Mama.” But that celebrity rests in the underlying belief that far from industrial production on a mass scale, Hello Kitty is an artisanal product from which Yamaguchi’s hand rests never far. The imprint of artistic expression, therefore, pervades the figure of Hello Kitty, even before other artists lay their hands upon her. However, when they do — or when they are prompted to do so by Sanrio’s celebratory events — the results push the envelope of Hello Kitty in ways one can only assume that Sanrio accepts and perhaps even encourages. In the hands of particular artists, she can be big and bad, whimsy and profundity; she can punk. The trick for Sanrio is to engage in this kind of play with and at the edge — taunting blurred boundaries, coaxing and teasing transgression — while maintaining the brand loyalty of its primary constituents. Although the company itself engages in some of this boundary play through its very products (see chapter 5), the gamble rests more on those artists they engage to play. The artists participating in Kitty Ex. and Three Apples coalesce into a youthful (or youth-­oriented) age range, generally white or Asian, occupying fringe art worlds. By selecting these bedfellows for Hello Kitty, Sanrio asserts a particular edgy domain as the targeted brand extension. This extension works in important and clever ways, first by imparting the status, legitimacy, and ultimate cool of youthful, edgy art world. Second, however, and no less importantly, Sanrio’s extension into artistic fields incorporates critique within its fold. Thus the divide between Hello Kitty critics (chapter 4) and Hello Kitty artists (this chapter) is not so clearly drawn. By inviting its potential critics in, Sanrio performs the neat trick of extending their welcome: not necessarily quelling their voices, Sanrio includes them within its corporate expression. Thus to the question of Why art?, and, more specifically, Why this art?, I suggest that art extends the cultural capital of Sanrio, as well as the expressive regime from which Hello Kitty might occupy a more unassailable position. This is a corporate version of having one’s cake and eating it, too. By inviting these artists in, Sanrio asserts that Hello Kitty may be as cool, or even cooler than, her critics. What do artists themselves get from these forays into the kitschy sentimental sphere of the cat? It may be difficult to generalize, since the range of artists incorporating Hello Kitty is wide within the fringe posiplaying with kitty   •  249

tion. For those artists invited by Sanrio, they gain broader exposure and support: artists have always needed patrons, and Sanrio acts as a willing one. Sanrio-­corralled artists get to participate with fellow creators in a “cool” party. On a more substantive level, however, artists may engage with Hello Kitty as a serious invitation to play. The play that Hello Kitty engenders may be characterized by its multiple facets, speaking different languages — sentimentality, irony, parody — at the same time. This lays the groundwork for what Akiyama calls “atmospheric density.” The complex play accepts the “commercial whoredom” of Sanrio’s cat, expressed by Holt, as well as the “nothingness” of her blank slate, expressed by Sachs. These artists see both rich possibilities in her flexibility, as well as strongly coded messages of “being Kittied.” Artists, critics, and subversive appropriators alike tend to agree on what Hello Kitty means: cuteness, sweetness, innocence. The fence lies in how art frames those meanings and the manipulations of play that surround it. What does it suggest for cuteness — especially in its capitalist form —  to become art? Can Hello Kitty become the (commercial) whore with the heart of gold? Juxtaposing cuteness, art, and capitalism invites obvious critique, playing exactly into the hands of early twentieth-­century Frankfurt School critics, such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Yet I suggest that this combination may exist most fruitfully through aestheticized play, fusing art with some of the most radical creative endeavors to embrace the forbidden subject of cuteness. As Carpasso argues, the time may be right for this emergent field of the sentimental in art that can encompass cynicism and sweetness, sophistication and innocence, adult and child, without losing sight of either. If the subject of sweetness has made modernists uncomfortable in the past, then the “heart of gold” of Kitty’s whoredom lies in legitimizing the sentimental as the purview of mature, creative expression, and even the avant-­garde. For Sanrio, these extended meanings may translate into extended markets, but they also suggest extended lives, emotions, and interactions. Although Hello Kitty may be “pure license,” as Sachs suggests, she gives artists, consumers, and even critics, license to play with some enduring aspects of what makes us human — that is, sentimentality, sweetness, and the softer side of things. Beyond the simplistic fodder of kitsch, this view embraces the kitschy realm of Japanese Cute and invites us to take a second and third, and even fourth, look over the edge into the many possibilities of such radical vulnerability. One artist who has taken many looks at Hello Kitty and the surfeit of 250  •  chapter six

kitschiness that surrounds her is Japanese megastar Murakami Takashi, a key instigator of that complex of the 2000s known as the Superflat movement and the related Cool Japan governmental program. I turn to these topics in the last chapter, which concludes our discussion of pink globalization, reframing Hello Kitty within these projects and discussing the possibilities and limitations of doing so.

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Chapter Seven Japan’s Cute-­Cool as Global Wink

It is not so much Japan itself as a compelling culture, power, or place that gets signified (despite the fact that this is precisely what the Japanese government is trying to capitalize on in all the rhetoric and attention currently given to Japan’s new soft power in the globalization of J-­pop). Rather, “Japan” operates more as signifier for a particular brand and blend of fantasy-­ware: goods that inspire an imaginary space at once foreign and familiar and a subjectivity of continual flux and global mobility, forever moving into and out of new planes, powers, terrains, and relations. — Anne Allison (2008:107)

On August 10, 2010, Hello Kitty rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange (nyse), kicking off the celebration of Sanrio’s fiftieth anniversary.1 The event was widely reported in global news media, but the following coverage of the event as the cover story for the August issues of License! Global is particularly germane to this book. “In celebration of Sanrio’s 50th anniversary, Hello Kitty along with Sanrio executives recently rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Kunihiko Tsuji, Sanrio’s chief operating officer . . . joined Hello Kitty at the nyse last Wednesday to ring the closing bell. A yearlong 50th anniversary celebration kicks off today, based on the Sanrio philosophy ‘Small gift, big smile.’ ”2 That philosophy has reached an apex of global marketing in yet another media opportunity. The article continues with more surprising Kitty sightings, this time in London, at a trade awards show, with mock casino and lounge and appropriately attired servers:

In other related news, a specially branded Sanrio installation will be on show at The Licensing Industry Awards in London on Sept. 9. . . . The deal includes sponsorship of the casino, which will offer Hello Kitty prizes for the first, second and third winners and a branded lounge area where guests can relax over drinks after the awards ceremony. Table service will be provided by waitresses dressed in Hello Kitty clothing. . . . New character images and Sanrio’s 50th anniversary celebration artwork will be projected within the area with free product samples.3 Key elements of the story encapsulate many of the practices and implications of pink globalization that we have been discussing. First and foremost is its positioning at the center stage of global marketing and multinational capital — in this case, at the nyse and at a London trade show. Second is its headline-­making status. Hello Kitty and Sanrio in the twenty-­ first century are newsworthy, capturing the spotlight through media-­ savvy strategies such as this. Third, Hello Kitty’s (Sanrio’s) ubiquity —  growing the brand in both products and meanings — has been enhanced through notable tie-­ups with other global companies present at such a licensing industry awards show. The playground teems with co-­branded partnerships that share and enhance products, images, practices, customers, and ultimately meanings. Growth, in fact, is a way of life for the “small gift, big smile” company, which constantly adds more products, more characters, more venues, even more artwork (chapter 6). Fourth and last, Hello Kitty is obviously no longer child’s play. Japanese Cute-­Cool well surpasses its initial juvenile purview, extending to the far reaches of plausibility. Talk of a casino, branded lounge area, and waitresses in Kitty costume sounds more like Playboy material than a kindergarten playground. These four elements — global marketing, media spotlight, ubiquity, and adult play — constitute the force of pink globalization and the point of this book. However, there is another component that is equally important, not mentioned in the article: customers. Consumers and fans run alongside production and marketing to flesh out the phenomenon as “fantasy-­ ware,” as Anne Allison puts it in the epigraph. It is not only the imaginary space of the “foreign and familiar” that Allison asserts, but working beyond into the terrain of the foreign as familiar (and yet importantly retaining its foreignness as part of its “cool”) that is the point here. Pink globalization suggests the possibilities of the foreign becoming as familjapan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  253

iar as any — especially given the intimacy of cute — even while maintaining the distance of cool. The cool draws global consumers into a circle of familiarity. Any discussion of pink globalization must pay equal attention to diverse fan practices and meanings that define and play with this imaginary space, juxtaposing macroprocesses and microprocesses, boardroom decisions and consumer choices, global headlines, intimate conversations, and public or private Internet discussions. Our ethnography of pink globalization, by way of Hello Kitty, careens through these sites and practices while seeking a guided, if open-­ended, path. In this final chapter, I examine macroprocesses — “Superflat” seductions, “Cool Japan” hype, soft-power buzz, and globalization — and weave these back into the micropractices of fans’ lives, particularly through the very winking presence of Hello Kitty.

Bad Boy Cool: Murakami Takashi and the Seductions of Superflat One of the more prominent macroviewpoints from which we must engage Hello Kitty in the 2000s is that of the Japanese provocateur-­ impresario-­artist, Murakami Takashi (b. 1966). Whereas the artists discussed in chapter 6 interact with Hello Kitty as a prompt to play in various ways, Murakami appropriates Hello Kitty as a prompt to generate controversy.4 By incorporating Sanrio’s cat and other Japanese pop culture icons, alongside works of related art by a coterie of friends, and curated in prominent exhibits in the United States, Murakami lobs what he considers to be atomic-­bomb-­sized barbs in the laps of global viewers. The insouciance with which Murakami does so finds its origins in the art for which he is best known, first Japanese Neo Pop in the early 1990s, and its further development from 2000 onward as his self-­styled “Superflat” movement.5 Japanese Neo Pop adopts the language of Japan’s hyperconsumerist popular culture and frames it through a politicized lens of critique. As Midori Matsui writes, “Japanese Neo Pop distances kawaii culture through the rational analysis of its popular icons. These artists deliberately adopt ‘childish’ gestures in order to make a subversive attack on the ideological structure that keeps the Japanese infantile. In that sense, the Neo Pop artists themselves are empowered critically, gaining a degree of mastery over the chaotic conditions of Japanese postmodernity” (2005b:216). Superflat builds on this “subversive 254  •  chapter seven

attack,” adopting the visual language of flat, two-­dimensional surfaces of digital technologies and Japanese animation. The flatness of the aesthetic surfaces parallels the flattening of (Western-­derived) social realms that divide high art from pop culture. Murakami’s “Super Flat Manifesto” from 2000 culls some of the movement’s critical elements: The world of the future might be like Japan is today — super flat. Society, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-­dimensional. . . . One way to imagine super flatness is to think of the moment when, in creating a desktop graphic for your computer, you merge a number of distinct layers into one. . . . The feeling I get is a sense of reality that is very nearly a physical sensation. The reason I have lined up both the high and the low of Japanese art in this book is to convey this feeling. (2000:5) Five years later Murakami continues the Superflat discourse: “So what is ‘super flat’? The words denote a flattened surface, the working environment of computer graphics, flat-­panel monitors, or the forceful integration of data into an image. The flat reality left when Pop fizzled; a flattened, self-­mocking culture. . . . I needed to look at what was flat, and why it had to be super” (2005b:153). The inchoate admixture of elements in Murakami’s grab bag of Superflat is deliberate and eclectic: popular culture, consumerism, art, technology, future, visuality, immediacy, physicality, Japan. The links between high art, consumer culture, and cuteness came to a noteworthy apex in 2003, when Murakami collaborated with the Louis Vuitton label and created a spring line that featured smiling daisies and eyes in bright, saturated colors on a white or black background, intermixed with the company’s familiar logo. In April 2005 Takashi Murakami curated a major exhibit of Cute-­Cool entitled Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture at the Japan Society in New York. The exhibit included works by Murakami’s coterie of artists and designers, as well as items of Japanese popular culture such as Hello Kitty (including a two-­page spread in the exhibit catalogue, showing the “History of Hello Kitty” production designs from 1974 to 2004; Murakami 2005b:44 – 45, plate 17a), Godzilla, the robot Gundam, the action-­hero Ultraman, and the robot cat Doraemon. Little Boy refers to the code name for the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Murakami’s choice of “Little Boy” as the title of the exhibit references what he believes Japan has become in relation to the United japan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  255

States — that is, a forever emasculated “little boy” by virtue of Article 9, Chapter 2, from the Postwar Constitution promulgated under the American Occupation, with its denial to Japan of the right to a military force.6 Calling Japan a “castrated nation-­state” (2005a:141), Murakami believes that Japan has anesthetized itself through two contradictory but intertwined aspects of popular culture: (1) hyperviolence, such as monsters, explosions, Armageddon-­like scenes of ultimate destruction; and (2) hypercuteness, in kawaii products and figures, such as Hello Kitty. Murakami finds the conjoining of these twinned tendencies in the figure of the otaku, a much-­maligned, nihilistic misfit-­geek who fetishizes schoolgirls. The otaku is the “deformed monster,” Japan: “We are deformed monsters. We were discriminated against as ‘less than human’ in the eyes of the ‘humans’ of the West” (Murakami 2005b:161). Japan’s global Cute-­Cool, then, is the revenge of the otaku nation of Japan. Japan’s global Cute-­Cool, according to Murakami, is nothing less than Japan crawling out from under the hegemony of the West and reasserting its own power. Marilyn Ivy comments: “Murakami advances the aesthetic implications of digital technologies and hypercommodification (whether East or West) but then maps it onto an older, well-­worn politics of the nation-­state and postwar history. That is, aesthetic possibilities mutate but the historico-­political narrative stays the same” (2006:502). Thomas LaMarre agrees, pointing to Murakami’s oppositional structure between Western geometric modernism and Japanese “superflat” postmodernism: “What drops out is the possibility of Japanese modernity. . . . Evidently, superflat theory wishes above all to avoid dealing with questions about Japanese modernity and its relation to Western modernity. As such, superflat theory risks becoming yet another discourse on Japanese uniqueness (Nihonjinron), which celebrates Japan as always already postmodern” (2009:114). Murakami’s Cute-­Cool pushes the envelope of kawaii and Hello Kitty into alarming political undercurrents. As the Japanese art critic Sawaragi Noi writes of Neo Pop (and Superflat) in the Little Boy catalogue: The true achievement of Japanese Neo Pop . . . is that it gives form to the distortion of history that haunts Japan — by reassembling fragments of [pop cultural] history accumulated in otaku’s private rooms and liberating them from their confinement in an imaginary reality through a critical reconstitution of subculture. In doing so, 256  •  chapter seven

these [Neo Pop] artists have refused to take the delusional path of resorting to warfare like Aum [Shinrikyo, cult group who masterminded the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995]; instead, they have found a way out through the universal means of art, transferring their findings to the battlefield that is art history. In essence, Japanese Neo Pop [and Superflat], as exemplified by the work of Takashi Murakami among others, visualizes the historical distortion of Japan for the eyes of the whole world. (2005b:205) That “historical distortion,” according to Sawaragi, Murakami, and aligned others, is the ongoing national emasculation, the not-­so-­hidden struggle of Japan coming to terms with what is construed as its own impotence vis-­à-­vis the United States. In Murakami’s hands, kawaii —  whether approached straight on or ironically — takes on the mantle of Cold War divides.7 Hello Kitty and the pink globalization she enables straddle those divides.

Cool Japan and Soft-Power Kitty Murakami is not the only one looking to Sanrio’s diminutive cat to accomplish big things. Michal Daliot-­Bul notes the following sequence of events in 2002 that resulted in a governmental project known as “Cool Japan,” which emphasized youth-­oriented, media-­saturated popular culture, including Hello Kitty (2009:250 – 51). In February 2002, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro, seeking new directions to deal with the decade-­long recession and possibilities for leadership in the East Asia region, gave a policy speech emphasizing national development of intellectual property focusing on innovative and creative products. Capitalizing on what Douglas McGray labeled as Japan’s “gross national cool” in May 2002 that incorporated the Joseph Nye’s “soft-power” buzzword (see the introduction), the Japanese government officially and opportunistically jumped on the bandwagon, giving birth to what is called (after McGray) “Cool Japan.” In 2003, the Japanese Cultural Agency proclaimed: “In the twenty-­first century, ‘soft power,’ which is the capacity to attract foreign nations by the appeal of lifestyle and culture of the nation, is more important than military power. Japan as the nation rich in attractive cultures is expected to make an international contribution through international cultural exchange and actively display the 21st century model of soft power” (quoted in Iwabuchi 2010b:142). Here is japan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  257

an answer to Murakami Takashi’s concerns of Japan’s emasculated, defanged state: relying on soft-­power seductions, Japan does not actually need a military force. Cool Japan, aka Cute Japan, provides its own power — that is, influence, leadership, control. In this way, the Japanese government’s position coincides with that expressed by Murakami, both linking what I have been calling pink globalization to critical national and international realms. Part of that power is economic, attempting to attract foreign tourists. Therefore, some of the governmental iterations of this Cool Japan as soft-­power policy coincide with the “Yokoso! Japan” [officially, “Visit Japan”] campaign launched in 2003 by Prime Minister Koizumi.8 Such efforts call upon kawaii icons, including Hello Kitty, to represent Japan, as listed chronologically below: January 2006 — Japanese pop girl duo Puffy AmiYumi (Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura) appointed as goodwill ambassadors for the Visit Japan Campaign in the United States. With the slogan “Come see our Cool Japan,” posters depict the two singers with long bleached hair, wearing multiprint bright red-­and-­pink kimonos, multiple black accessories, and cowboy boots, against a composite backdrop of famous Hokusai (1760 – 1849) woodblock prints featuring Mount Fuji and waves. March 2008 — Ministry of Foreign Affairs created a new position of anime ambassador, naming the blue robot cat Doraemon to the position. In a media-­saturated ceremony in Tokyo, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura addressed the robot cat, “Doraemon, I hope you will travel around the world as an anime ambassador to deepen people’s understanding of Japan so they will become friends with Japan,” to which Doraemon (actor in costume) responded, “Through my cartoons, I hope to convey to people abroad what ordinary Japanese people think, our lifestyles and what kind of future we want to build.”9 May 2008 — Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism named Hello Kitty as Japan’s official ambassador of tourism to China and Hong Kong. March 2009 — Ministry of Foreign Affairs unveiled the new position of kawaii taishi, (ambassadors of cute), and named the models Misako Aoki, Yu Kimura, and Shizuka Fujioka as the first of these ambassadors. Appearing in official capacity at Japanese 258  •  chapter seven

global events, they represent, respectively, “Lolita,” Harajuku, and schoolgirls-­in-­uniform fashions (see chapter 1). In these efforts by the Japanese government, Hello Kitty shares company at the highest level with other kawaii icons to promote the nation. Tourism, nation branding, soft power, “gross national cool,” and kawaii coalesce as linked buzzwords of pink globalization. How do we interpret such actions on a national scale? What kind of nation branding is this? To what extent do we take the winking iconicity of Sanrio’s cat as Japan writ small? The literature on nation branding — replete with the language of marketing — makes clear the centrality of “brand ambassadors.” Francis Buttle, a marketing researcher, discusses the importance of “strategy for countries . . . to appoint a network of brand ambassadors whose role is to advance the nation-­brand at every opportunity. . . . A key issue when appointing brand ambassadors is to . . . truly reflect the personality of the country and the positive attributes that the nation wishes to project” (2008:72). The “positive attributes” of Cool Japan may be interpreted as “Marketable, Youth-­oriented, Feminine, Playful, Pop Japan” — in short, a government-­fueled, top-­down version of pink globalization in which Hello Kitty plays a key role. Nation branding relies on what Iwabuchi calls “brand nationalism” — that is, “uncritical, practical uses of media culture as resources for the enhancement of political and economic national interests, through the branding of national cultures” (Iwabuchi 2010a:90). Indeed, foregoing older masculinized images of Japan at work, the Japanese government is branding the nation through younger feminized images of Japan at play. What is key here is noting who is doing the work of imaging: in this case, the Japanese government attempts to take a key role in creating its own millennial Japonisme specifically for soft-­power purposes. More importantly, here is not only Japan at play, but Japan as play. In other words, branding Japan as playful Cute-­Cool glosses over economic downturns, international controversies, and other hard-­core realities. Although a nation’s self-­image may be internally important for pride, patriotism, and identity, what nation branding typically focuses on is the image that others hold. This derives from the fact that the concept of branding comes directly from the field of marketing, whose chief interest lies in wooing buyers. In other words, the product to be sold in nation branding is the nation itself, whose global marketability boils japan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  259

down to what will sell, to whom, and under what conditions. The conditions of the 2000s suggest the central place of Hello Kitty as playful, brand ambassador of Japan. This is not to deny the bottom-­up popularity and appropriation of pink globalization icons, as I have been discussing in this book (chapters 3, 4, and 5); these constitute the very conditions of nation branding. But it is to suggest the limited life span of government-­sponsored brand ambassadors as sites of coolness. The fundamental assertion of this particular version of Japan as Cool — that is, ahistorical, depoliticized, sanitized — in fact, has many of its critics on edge (e.g., Iwabuchi 2010b; Lam 2007; Leheny 2006). Further, the stamp of approval — even the official spotlight — by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs may spell the cooling “cool” of the ambassador.10 As Sugiura Tsutomu of the Marubeni Research Institute notes, “We . . . must be sensitive to the possibility that there might be a saturation point where excessive cultural popularity and monopolization bring about repulsion” (2008:149). This is part of the gamble surrounding government sponsorship of the project: it must constantly gauge market forces in order to ride the crest of popular culture. It is more than market considerations at work in the uncoolness of Cool Japan. As Michal Daliot-­Bul puts it, “When used by government agencies, Cool Japan becomes an oxymoron. It is stripped entirely of its particular potential to question and challenge culture” (2009:262). She may be overstating the case, since “cool” in a Euro-­American sense may imply far greater impetus of resistant, countercultural expression than that accorded by a Japanese borrowing — with the help of Douglas McGray — of the word (see the introduction). Nevertheless, as Cool Japan wears the governmental uniform, it looks and sounds increasingly like newly mainstreamed culture. Indeed, young, “cool” people in Japan join others in sneering at Cool Japan by government dictate. To complicate matters further, the spotlight of “cool” includes its own passing, shaped by both cultural and market forces. Cool Japan, in other words, harbors inherent problems in remaining cool. The government is not the only one at fault. Alarm bells from other corners have sounded the impending decline of Cool Japan. The journalist Roland Kelts criticizes Japanese companies for having websites that are not friendly for non-­Japanese consumers (describing them as “amateurish, hard to navigate, . . . dull” and exclusively in Japanese), resulting in “Japan’s pop culture branding gap” (2010). An editorial in the Japan Times from August 15, 2010, and entitled 260  •  chapter seven

“Promoting ‘Cool Japan’ ,” notes the government’s stepped-­up efforts through the establishment of a Creative Industries Promotion Office in June 2010 within the Manufacturing Industries Bureau of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. Kondo Seiichi, head of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, suggests that such governmental promotion works domestically and internationally: “While a bureaucratic-­led push for creativity has its problems, any soft-power contribution Japan can make to the world will surely be welcome, especially if it can also stimulate renewed self-­confidence and vitality within Japan itself.”11 It is this rebounded soft-­power function that makes the government’s Cool Japan program — whether in ascension or decline — important for our analysis. The popularity of Japanese Cute-­Cool goods abroad works to engender international influence, on the one hand, and national pride, on the other (Daliot-­Bul 2009:259 – 60). This makes for an interesting twist upon Nye’s original concept. In stating “If a state can make its power seem legitimate in the eyes of others, it will encounter less resistance to its wishes” (1990:167), Nye did not take into account the case of Japan, which often looks to foreign others as a source of legitimation and thus pride in its own culture (see Monji’s remarks below). This says as much about Japan’s self-­image as it does about any object — including Hello Kitty — seen as a source of national pride. Do all Japanese want to be known as members of a Hello Kitty nation? Probably not, but this kind of spotlight upon Hello Kitty (and other brand ambassadors) is less about numbers and more about a generalized positioning within and outside of the country of origin in the name of soft power. Pink globalization thus doubles as a strategic mirror upon Japan both to consumers abroad and to Japan itself. Hello Kitty as brand ambassador occupies a busy position, wooing both foreign others and Japanese themselves to the cultural sphere known as Nihon Burando (Brand Japan).

Globalization and Its Strange Bedfellows The governmental agency directly responsible for “Brand Japan” in the 2000s is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with its director general of the Public Diplomacy Department, Monji Kenjirō, taking particular credit for nominating and promoting the kawaii taishi (cute ambassadors). Monji spoke publicly in response to a talk I presented at the International House of Japan on June 1, 2009, on Hello Kitty and pink globalization (Yano 2010b).12 A few days later, Monji reiterated his position on japan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  261

the government’s incorporation of popular culture in their soft-­power diplomacy during an interview with me, saying much the same thing. When I spoke with him, Monji’s future plans were to extend the kawaii taishi program, identifying and adding new icons to the roster. In his mind, Cool Japan was going strong. Monji’s four main points in his public and private remarks were (1) contextualizing the Cool Japan program financially; (2) affirming Cool Japan as only one part of the government’s soft-­power program of national promotion;13 (3) recognizing the role of overseas consumers, rather than the Japanese government, in fueling the popularity of Japanese pop culture; and (4) the governmental role in policing international copyright infringements and other legal issues. Monji concluded his public remarks about Japanese pop culture by saying, “It’s getting very popular overseas, and importantly, not many Japanese know about this phenomenon. We [Japanese] are quite surprised when they show the news that Japanese pop culture is so popular [overseas]. Many of us [Japanese] do not believe it. . . . It’s just like ukiyo-­e [Japanese woodblock print]. We [Japanese] didn’t recognize the value of ukiyo-­e until the Impressionists [Western artists] discovered it” (personal communication, June 1, 2009).14 And regarding who — Japanese government or foreign consumers — is in the driver’s seat, Monji asserts, “So it’s not that we [Japanese government] are exporting “Cool Japan.” It’s done by foreign countries [consumers]” (personal communication, June 1, 2009). In a sense, Monji is right: Sanrio and Hello Kitty do not really need the Japanese government to gain global success. In fact, some people within Sanrio’s overseas branches do not see Cool Japan — or Superflat —  as part of their purview. When I visited the South San Francisco offices in 2010, I asked a number of employees about Cool Japan. They had never heard about it. Although Murakami Takashi’s Superflat and the Japanese government’s Cool Japan tie Hello Kitty to the larger wave of popularity of anime, manga, and other elements of youth Japanese pop culture, those closest to production and consumption do not always share this assumption. A 2004 Anime News interview with Bill Hensley, the marketing director at the time of Sanrio, Inc., separates Hello Kitty from Cool Japan: A. N.: The Japanese character industry has been increasing in it’s [sic] popularity in the American market in recent years. . . . [But] I’ve always seen Hello Kitty and Sanrio as existing out262  •  chapter seven

side of this sphere of influence that is commonly associated to anime’s boom here which began growing in the 1990’s. Has Sanrio watched this phenomena and how has it affected your company’s approach to marketing Hello Kitty given it’s [sic] Japanese roots? B. H.: Sanrio is a character brand developer and designer. We’re happy that many fans of anime are also fans of Hello Kitty or other Sanrio characters, but the Anime phenomenon has not affected the way we develop and market the Hello Kitty brand.15 According to Hensley and other observers in Euro-­America, Hello Kitty may share some consumership with anime (and manga and other elements of Superflat and Cool Japan), but not necessarily the same spheres of influence and control. That is why this book does not focus on Cool Japan or Murakami Takashi’s Superflat, rather taking as its subject matter the larger phenomenon of pink globalization, the spread of kawaii goods and images from Japan to other parts of the industrial world. Hello Kitty is an important nodal case study of that larger topic. Even when Japanese Cute-­Cool loses its official cool, we can still discuss Japanese Cute and Hello Kitty within it as something that holds significant meaning in overseas consumer culture and fans’ lives. In short, I believe there is far more to say about Hello Kitty than the fickle status that Cool Japan might entertain. Marketers, of course, always want to gauge the coolness factor, and with Hello Kitty and Sanrio the indicators are not always rosy. According to a 2009 ranking of Japan’s most popular characters by the Tokyo-­based research firm Character Databank, Hello Kitty ranks a distant third to number-­one Anpanman (character from television show) and number-­ two Pokémon (Tabuchi 2010). In fact, according to the Character Databank, Hello Kitty lost her number-­one spot in 2002 and never regained that top status. This decline coincides with Sanrio’s overall shrinking sales since 1999. In fact, the bright corporate light for Sanrio may rests in its overseas markets — that is, specifically in pink globalization —  accorded with approximately 30 percent of the company’s overall sales. As one analyst reports in May 2010: The company’s overall sales in Japan fell 3.3 percent in the 12 months ending in March, Sanrio announced Friday, as both licensing and sales of goods slumped. Hello Kitty fatigue is hitting Japan first, and japan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  263

hard, the company indicated. But a one-­time 28 percent jump in overseas sales — which Sanrio attributed to an accounting change, as well as several big contracts overseas tied to Hello Kitty’s 35th birthday celebrations — helped the company swing back to a net profit of 4.37 billion yen, in contrast to a loss of 1.50 billion yen the previous year. Sanrio now relies on overseas sales for 30 percent of its revenue, the company’s executive director, Susumu Emori, said Friday. (Tabuchi 2010) News such as this sounds more alarming than the situation necessarily warrants for our study of pink globalization. A number-­three position in character ranking in Japan still means that Hello Kitty can be found in abundance throughout the Japanese archipelago, even if two other characters may beat her out. An overall decline in sales does not necessarily mean that Sanrio runs the risk of going out of business, or that Hello Kitty will take that fatal plunge into obscurity. Our subject matter thus has a greater historical arc than last year’s sales, or even that of 2002; it takes a longer trajectory in commenting on a global trend without getting too caught up in the exact trendiness of it.

Winking Pink Globalization and Its Consumers With the ongoing popularity as well as threat of precarious decline fresh in mind, let us consider some of the implications of pink globalization as a phenomenon that goes “the other way” — that is, from a country such as Japan to its overseas neighbors such as the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and elsewhere. Throughout the book, I argue that Hello Kitty’s semantic flexibility rests not only in her often-­commented, mouthless blankness, but also in the implications of her wink. Let me now embed that wink within decentered globalization as discussed in the introduction. I suggest that when the direction of globalization is reversed, certain kinds of power assumptions also shift. Therefore, Japan does not align itself exactly with the hegemons of the United States or Europe, or in quite the same way. In spite of the presence of Hello Kitty in shopping malls, toy shops, and boutiques outside of Japan, she does not raise the threat of cultural gray-­out nor does she become a source of World Trade Organization protest (in spite of critics discussed in chapter 4). Although part of this reaction (or lack thereof) may rest in cuteness itself, a significant part also rests in an embed264  •  chapter seven

ded “exoticization”: even when she is familiar, she is different. Hello Kitty does not enflame “wanna-­be Asian” desirings in the same way, or at least to the same extent, that an American icon such as Mickey Mouse or Barbie might instigate “wanna-­be whites,” primarily because of the parallel, supported images, ideologies, and global cultural capital attendant upon Mickey’s or Barbie’s presence that Hello Kitty does not share. The historical connection between modernity and the West (or in terms of popular culture, America) bypasses Sanrio’s cat, detaching it from larger bodies or images of power. Granted, there may be some wannabe Japan-­lovers who latch onto Sanrio’s cat, as they do to other elements of Japanese popular culture, but these kinds of consumers do not define Sanrio’s fan base. Instead, Hello Kitty’s appeal is more typically contained within the boundaries of her constituency. Here are the limits of this version of Japan’s soft power. Rather than a force field of influence, Hello Kitty is more readily taken as a wink — upon powerful culture industries, kitsch aesthetics, and fetishized consumption — even while participating in some of these same overlapping processes. Part of this wink rests in pinkness itself as girl culture incarnate by which “pink may become the new black” — that is, the position of power, here with an edginess seeking to overturn or at least challenge structures. The power of pink is the power of the “global girl,” whose sometime subversive intentions may be laid upon the Japanese paws of Hello Kitty as an alternative expression. Those paws rest in a rich consumer culture of meanings, appropriations, and aesthetic endeavors. Part of this wink rests in a Japanese corporation expert in straddling both sides of multiple fences, embracing contradiction, taking subversion as its own, maintaining stocked shelves in toy departments, teen fashion, and luxury boutiques. The wink suggests the power of pink globalization, especially framed as play. A play frame raises out-­of-­the-­ordinary possibilities: one may take license beyond expectation, beyond norms, beyond values, even while retreating into the shelter of jest. Here is where possibilities for edginess in pink globalization erupt. More important, “wink as play” holds the power to silence or incorporate one’s critics. One may do or say something reprehensible — but add the wink and one’s transgression retreats into the ludic realm of forgiveness. Alternatively, invite critics and fans alike into the fold to create subversions of the very kitschiness of the cat (chapters 4, 5, and 6). These kinds of actions shade cool as corporate expression. The tongue-­in-­cheek wink makes coconspirators japan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  265

of the viewer and the viewed, the critic and the fan, the child and the subversive adult. One can see the politics of the play frame when asserted on a national scale. Branding Japan as kawaii — or even winking toward this position — raises serious questions of international relations and global responsibilities. Kawaii as the cute, the infantile, the feminine, and the sexual trivializes historical enmity and controversial realities of the nation Japan. “Cute-­Cool Japan” thus serves up a frilly affront to responsible engagement with people’s lives. Granted, this brand of Japan may be but one of many simultaneously being promoted by the government; nevertheless, it is one that grabs the headlines globally. Performing Japan as a corporate, feminized wink highlights the contradictions of positioning pink globalization as both powerless (that is, linked to youth and females) and powerful (that is, having economic impact and some cultural influence). This gives “pink as black” an unwanted twisted presence more specifically as “pink co-­opted by black.” What becomes a commodity fetish most? Simply put, excess. I suggest, however, that this is excess that can productively lead us to examine semantic borders and their very movement, just as we might scrutinize national edges. In this way, the twists and textures of kawaii as Japanese Cute-­Cool (including its anticute cuteness) challenge the saccharine flatness of American Cute. The “atmospheric density” (see Leika Akiyama’s statement in chapter 6) arises from cultural categories that embrace both children and female adults, rather than separating them into noncontiguous spheres. Some see this as enabling in creating such a malleable object as Hello Kitty. Others may see the sharing of boutiques by children and female adults as transgressive in its categorical ambiguity. Yet the wink defines the very fetishism of Hello Kitty. Rather than selecting from a slate of options, the wink allows us to embrace the slate as always and already contradictory, the tongue never straying far from the cheek. If adult consumers and marketers may be said to be performing a Hello Kitty wink, I ask, whose wink is it? I contend that it is a wink of the contact zone, shared by various players — from adult consumers to designers, marketers, salespersons, bloggers, activists, artists, and the objects themselves — situated in particular times and places. Here is Henry Jenkins’s participatory culture, in which the boundary lines between producers and consumers are purposely blurred (2006). “Kitty Mama” (Yamaguchi Yūko) calls upon Japanese fans to help her shape the next newest trends for Hello Kitty. Sanrio calls upon cutting-­ 266  •  chapter seven

edge artists globally to expand their vision of Hello Kitty as denizen of the edge. Further corporate tie-­ups with heavy metal (also known as visual-­kei, that is, a group known for its highly visual, radically stylish self-­presentation) Band X Japan produces “Visual Brand Kitty” in 2009, complete with half-­shaved, half-­dyed-­blond, over-­the-­top hair and a trademark Kitty bow. The blurring lends ownership of the product to consumers and artists and other artist-­as-­products, even as notions of exploitation and manipulation recede. Although global fans may not participate in this exchange as fully as their Japanese counterparts, their ownership rests in appropriations of their own making, from “ethnicized” identities to gendered ones to expressions of alternative sexualities (see chapters 3 and 5). This is a moving wink, shifting between margins and center, between girls and their audiences, between subversion and commodification, between Japan, Asia, and Euro-­America. Pink globalization challenges us with its very mobility. No one player holds complete ownership of the wink or its meanings. Rather, each partial owner contributes emergent and multiple meanings. As one set of meanings and uses may be asserted, others get poached, occluded, and subverted. The tumble of meanings is matched by the proliferation of new goods constantly emerging, official and unofficial. This plethora of meanings and goods destabilizes what one might assume about the object. Indeed, Hello Kitty as an all-­encompassing symbol remains as elusive in her meanings and implications as her mouth, whose absence inspires these musings. Just when we think we have a handle on her, she slips into yet another corporate guise, or becomes appropriated in a novel way. Yet she is always Kitty, even as her guises and appropriations slip and slide the semantic terrain. Indeed, the hypermeanings of Hello Kitty — that is, Hello Kitty as the uber-­cute, the uber-­feminine, and, for some, the uber-­Japan — are part of her fetishization. She exists in her very excess, playing it multiply, exoterically. Throughout this tumble, she still manages to shock through the strength of her iconicity. The only way in which consumers might be continually shocked by a Hello Kitty vibrator or gun or tattoo is when these items overturn the image of the mouthless cat: the items undermine our expectations set in a mode of overdetermined market meanings. Each shock reconditions us to a new equilibrium of expectations, a newly calibrated zone of meaning. This gives new meaning to the name of several Sanrio stores in the United States, “Sanrio Surprise.”16 Such constant newness and shock japan’s cute-­c ool as global wink   •  267

cause one female punk admirer to declare, “Hello Kitty is rock ’n’ roll!” By that, she points to the edginess that rock occupied in its infancy, but her statement may have been more prescient than she realized. Indeed, as Hello Kitty wears hats both corporate and individual with equal panache, Sanrio’s cat shares the stage with many pop culture expressions who have moved from the margins to the center. Hello Kitty and the pink globalization she leads may be rock and roll to some, but she is inevitably, unabashedly, irreverently, celebratory Japanese Pop. Pure product, her logo appears seemingly everywhere. Look through the Hello Kitty lens — literally and figuratively — and every point of light transforms into Kitty. This is the wow factor, achieved simply as a low-­ tech wink that is both artful and artless. Moreover, as pop, she provides the ultimate shifting commercial wink upon ourselves. That wink of Japan’s mouthless cat provides important lessons on the politics, pleasures, and aesthetics of foreign-­as-­familiar commodity play in this age of global desirings.

Postscript: Headlining the Work of Happiness with a Conscience In response to Japan’s catastrophic earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disaster of March 3, 2011, Sanrio joined other groups internationally to assist in the relief effort. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary practices — or are they so extraordinary? On June 29, 2011, the company announced, in cooperation with the exclusive Austrian jeweler Swarovski Crystal, that it would auction nine specially designed, limited-­edition Hello Kitty figurines, each standing twenty-­ centimeters (7.9 inches) high, studded with 19,636 crystals, priced at 1.2 million yen ($14,800), with proceeds going to the Japanese Red Cross. The Swarovski ceo Robert Buchbauer explained, “She’s just a nice, cute, adorable character, . . . a symbol of happiness. . . . I think it’s very important these days to transmit some positive messages to the people, and I think Hello Kitty is perfect” (Oh 2011). Hello Kitty — icon of friendship and “happiness” — temporarily abandons her wink as she joins the ranks of global celebrities with a conscience. She does so by placing herself exactly in the infantilized position of cuteness — doing the adult work of disaster relief as a “symbol of happiness.” And in the process of doing such work, Hello Kitty grabs yet another headline.

268  •  chapter seven

Appendix 1 Sanrio and Hello Kitty Timeline

1960

Tsuji Shintarō establishes Yamanashi Silk Center Company.

1973

Yamanashi Silk Center Company renamed Sanrio Company Co., Ltd.



Sanrio adopts “Small gift, big smile” motto.

1974 – 1986

Birth to growth.

1974

Hello Kitty debuts (unnamed, sitting cat), designed by Shimizu Yūko.



Other characters debuting in the same year: Patty and Jimmy, Little Twin Stars, My Melody.

1975

The cat kyarakutā is officially named “Hello Kitty.”



Ichigo Shimbun (Strawberry news) begins publication.

1976

Yonekubo Setsuko becomes Hello Kitty’s second designer.



First depictions of Hello Kitty standing.



Hello Kitty’s backstory created with the introduction of Papa, Mama, and twin sister, Mimmy.



Sanrio arrives in United States, opens first Gift Gate Boutique in San Jose, Calif. Sanrio, Inc., in San Jose, Calif., established.



Sanrio begins licensing its characters to other companies.

1978

Sanrio begins distributing products in Europe.

1980

Yamaguchi Yūko becomes Hello Kitty’s third and long-­lasting designer.



European branch office (currently, Sanrio GmbH) opened in Hamburg, West Germany, to coordinate development of the European market.

1981

First Hello Kitty movie, Kitty and Mimmy’s New Umbrella.

1982

Hello Kitty appears for the first time without a black outline.

1983

Hello Kitty named Child Ambassador of unicef in the United States.

1985

Hello Kitty targeted for first time toward the high school girl market.

1986

Hello Kitty face-­only designs introduced.

1987 – 1997

Kitty Boom — appeal to female adults in Japan, dubbed “kitty-­ra” (big fans).

1980s

Monotone series, including black designs, created to appeal to adults.

1988

License contract with Nakajima USA begins for Sanrio, Inc. (United States)



Animated cartoon series Hello Kitty’s Furry Tail Theater produced and released in the United States by cbs.

1990

Puroland theme park opened.



Asia targeted for distribution of Sanrio products.

1991

Harmonyland theme park opened.

1993 The tv program Daisuki! Hello Kitty (We love Hello Kitty) produced and broadcast by tv Tokyo.

Hello Kitty’s bow is changed to a flower.

1994

Hello Kitty appointed official Child Ambassador for unicef in Japan.

1995

Sanrio.com website established.

1996

Hello Kitty first appears winking in an issue of Ichigo Shimbun (Strawberry news).

1997

First issue of magazine Kitty Goods Collection.



Pop female idol Kahara Tomomi reveals her fandom of Hello Kitty on a popular television program, causing a surge in Hello Kitty’s popularity.

270  •  appendix 1

1998 – 2000s Global Kitty — toward becoming a “world idol.”

Hello Kitty becomes notably kuuru de kyuutu (cute/cool).



Winking figure of Hello Kitty becomes more established.



Hello Kitty changes from red-­themed to pink-­themed.



Rapid expansion of possibilities for Kitty’s imaging.

1999

Dear Daniel, Hello Kitty’s boyfriend, makes his debut on a new line of products.

2002

Hello Kitty’s popularity in Japan falls to no. 2 spot in earnings on Character Databank popularity chart.

2004

Hello Kitty named unicef’s Global Special Friend of Children.



Sanrio expands its license to Nakajima USA including all categories of products for Sanrio’s stores in the United States.



Charmmy Kitty, Hello Kitty’s pet kitten, introduced.



Master Card (USA) offers Hello Kitty debit card.

2008

Hello Kitty appointed Japan Tourism Ambassador to Taiwan and Korea.

2010

Bank of America offers Hello Kitty checkbooks and debit card.



Makittii Hawaii — a Hello Kitty – themed buffet restaurant — opens in Waikiki (Hawai’i).



Sanrio celebrates fiftieth anniversary of its founding with numerous events, exhibits, and reissues of older product lines.

2011

Hello Kitty theme park in China planned to open in 2014.

Source: Periodization as given in Kitty Ex. (Sanrio 2004).

appendix 1   •  271

Appendix 2 Artists in Sanrio’s Hello Kitty Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibit and Catalogue

artist (order as listed in the catalogue)

occupation

country title

As Four

fashion designers

U.S.

Baechler, Donald

film director

U.S. Abstract Painting with Hello Kitty

Burton, Jeff

photographer

U.S.

Untitled (Hello Kitty)

Cappelo, Kenneth

photographer

U.S.

we are hello kitty . . .

De Castelbajac, Jean-­Charles

fashion designer

U.S.

Hotel Kittyfornia

Clancy, Jeremiah and artists Alexia Stamatiou

U.S.

happy! happy! happy!, 2004

Colen, Dan

U.S.

Nothing

artist

The Hello as Fouritty Bag

Ackermann, Rita artist

U.S. mise chase (b. Hungary)

Tominaga Ai and Mote Sinabel

model/art director and photographer

Japan

Miss Kitty

Degraw, Brian

artist

U.S.

southfareast (1 – 4)

Tsuwaki, Ed

illustrator

Japan

A Girl’s Life with kt #1 – 4

Ellis, David

artist

U.S.

speaker kitty

Fujii Fumiya and Vision

artist and designer

Japan

Okaeri nyan!

Fujiwara Hiroshi

artist

Japan

kitty/30

artist (order as listed in the catalogue)

occupation

country title

Fukumimi

musician

Japan “Sora no kakera o sagashi ni ikou Again” for Hello Kitty (Let’s go and seek a piece of the sky) Remix by matally

Goldwyn, Liz

artist

U.S. Hello Kitty Housewife

groovisions

designer Japan grv2166

Hachiya Kazuhiko media artist Japan hello kitty and PetWORKS meets PostPet V3 (installation) Scott, Jeremy

fashion designer

U.S.

Hello De Milo

Ukawa Naohiro digital creator Japan 1368 stairs (installation) Hattori Kazunari

art director

Japan

Kitty White and Kitty Black

Herrema, Jennifer musician/artist U.S. Hello Kitty (rtx) Grommit (installation) Hibino, Katsuhiko

artist

Japan

Kitty Stone

Holzworth, Jess (Painted Wing)

fashion designer

U.S.

Hang Loose Kitty

Honma Takashi

photographer

Japan Kitti-­chan tai hoisu (Kitty vs. Hois) (color Xerox)

Ito, Keiji

graphic artist

Japan Kitty in Tahiti (collage)

jk5

artist

Japan  subconkittythesaurusnex,

obuke, Kentaro

artist

Japan Ribbon (canvas, acrylic, neon)

Komurek, David

designer

U.S.

happy birthday, love, jki5

hku

Kurosaki, Eriko nailist (nail artist) Japan

kitty ex. x erikonail*

Lennon, Sean

musician/artist

U.S.

(untitled)

Lisa Marie

actress

U.S.

everyone wants a little kitty in them



274  •  appendix 2

(acrylic nails)

artist (order as listed in the catalogue)

occupation

country title

Martinez, Alfredo artist U.S. Hello Kitty on Mars (installation) McGinley, Ryan photographer U.S.

Untitled (collage and nudes)

artist U.S. Mudai (no title) Sachs, Tom (installation) Maxx, Maya

artist

Japan

McLaren, Malcolm

artist (mgr. of England Sex Pistols)

(no title) Hello Kitty Totem Pole

tyg-­m (Tycoon

art director, graphic Japan Kitty Rotten Graphics Miyashi designer, and dj (paper and metallic Yuichi) stamp) Mochizuki Tadashi, stylist, photog- Masafumi Sanai, and rapher, and Kyoko Koizumi actress/singer

Japan

Irezumi Kitty (tattoo)

m/m (paris)

graphic designer Mathias Augustyniak and art director and Michael Amzalag

France

Three apples (after Kitty)

Nakamura Tetsuya

Japan

kitty ufo

obey (Shepard Fairey) graphic artist

U.S.

Hellobey Kitty

ora ito

designer

France

Butterfly

Partington, Bob

artist

Canada

Kitty Custom Ride

Gordon, Kim

musician

U.S.

Noise Hello Kitty

Noda, Nagi

art director/ film director

Japan

hanpanda

artist

(Ito Morabito)



Pham, Thuy fashion designer (United Bamboo)

U.S. Catwalk (b. Vietnam)

Ramdane, Touhami

France

artist

The roots of the hello kitty

appendix 2   •  275

artist (order as listed in the catalogue)

occupation

country title

rostarr

artist [South] Korea

Polymorphic Kitty-­Clysm

Seki, Yurio

designer

Japan

Kiti no Okurimono (Kitty’s Gift)

Shimizu, Hiroko

artist

Japan

Portrait

subvert

artist

U.S.

Hello Kitty Transformation

Sugiyama, Hiro

artist

Japan

Is this kitty ? This is kitty .

sunday-­vision

graphic designer

Japan

world

tyg_s and tygun

art director and graphic designer

Japan

Hello Kitty! Ciao TyGun!



surface to air artist

U.S. (Rajan Mehta and Faniel Jackson)

Landed (crop circle)

Tachibana, Hajime

artist

Japan

Kitty Love

Tada, Taku

creative director

Japan

Kitty Tattoo Service

Takagi, Masakatsu

film/music artist

Japan

Kitty in Light Park

Tanaka, Katsuki

manga artist

Japan

Night Kitty

Tanaka, Noriyuki

artist/art director/ film director

Japan

Emotional Kitty

tomato

designer

England kitty’s eye view (Scene through the eyes of kitty)

wk interact

artist

U.S.

art design

art director/ Japan film director

Source: Kitty Ex. Perfect Guide Book (Sanrio 2004).

276  •  appendix 2

Kitty Kit Spy

grind out art design hello kitty

Notes

Preface and Acknowledgments 1. Within the United States, my travels have been extensive, although not all of the travels have been focused on Hello Kitty. The list of places outside the United States includes Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlán; Vancouver; Buenos Aires; São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro; London; Paris; Rome, Florence, Siena, and Venice; Berlin and Heidelberg; Beijing; Seoul; Delhi; Kathmandu; and Bangkok. 2. Although the South San Francisco office is still important, since around 2010, U.S. operations have shifted increasingly to Sanrio offices in Los Angeles. Also, Nakajima USA has increasingly taken over control of many of the Sanrio stores and operations in the United States, beginning in 1988 but with greater definition since 2004, when it became the principal licensee and primary partner of Sanrio boutique stores. 3. Sanrio stores in Japan give away a free newsletter, Ichigo Shimbun (Strawberry news), which provides information on new items for sale. Sanrio in Japan also publishes a quarterly glossy magazine Kitty Goods Collection, with new products, events, fan comments, and articles at a cost of 600 – 700 yen each ($7.25 – $8.50). 4. Since 2010, Sanrio has been selling their own doc-­certified (Vino a Denominazione di Origine Controllata) Hello Kitty wine with the tagline “Our favorite girl has grown up.” According to Drew Hibbert, ceo for Innovation Spirits, which distributes the wines in the United States, “Hello Kitty Wines were originally conceived by Camomilla S.p.A. which is a very successful fashion company in Italy that does a huge amount of business manufacturing and selling Hello Kitty licensed merchandise in Italy and beyond. Camomilla S.p.A. partnered up with Torti ‘Tenimenti Castelrotto’ boutique Italian winery located in the highly regarded Lombardy wine region” (Alimrung 2010). Here are the tasting notes for the four varieties of Hello Kitty wines:

“Hello Kitty Sparkling Brut Rosé — A deep reddish pink sparkling rosé made from 100% Pinot Noir that has a frothy mousse as well as a pretty nose of rose petal and red currant scents.” “Hello Kitty Sparkling “Sweet Pink” (Half Size) — This semi-­sweet sparkler sports a pale pink hue and has very delicate bubbles.” “2008 Hello Kitty Angel White — This is a fresh, very ‘blanc’ white wine made entirely from Pinot Noir free run juice.” “2006 Hello Kitty Devil Red — Garnet red with brickish highlights, this is a classically rendered Pinot Noir that presents a seductive bouquet of wild flowers and forest aromas.” As the article reports, as of 2010, prices per bottle ranged from $19.99 to $29.99 and were available in specialty wine and liquor stores and relevant online outlets.

Introduction 1. Established in 1997 by the photographer Aoki Shōichi, the monthly magazine FRUiTS chronicles youth street fashion as individual expression around the Harajuku area of Tokyo. Each photograph includes the name and age of the subject, a description of the outfit and its origins, and a brief statement by the subject about her or his fashion inspiration. Photographs from the magazine have been compiled in books — FRUiTS (2001) and Fresh FRUiTS (2005) — which further cement the global gaze upon Japanese urban youth culture and reify its denizens as global trendsetters in street fashion. In 2002 and 2003, as part of the Sydney Festival (Australia), the Powerhouse Museum showed Aoki’s photographs and an assortment of outfits in “FRUiTS: Tokyo Street Style —  Photographs by Shoichi Aoki,” as well as developed a traveling exhibition from the original show. 2. As quoted on the Amazon.com website: www.amazon.com/Barbie -­Collector-­Hello-­Fashion-­Culture/dp/B000PD7UOQ (accessed June 8, 2011). The Barbie doll accessorized in Hello Kitty sells for $49.95. 3. Designed by Bill Greening; release date September 7, 2007; Product code L4687; Pink Label by Mattel. The Hello Kitty Barbie is part of the Pop Culture Collection that includes another Hello Kitty Barbie, designed by Greening, released June 1, 2008, with Barbie in blue capri pants, Hello Kitty tank top, and red cropped jacket. The collection also includes another Sanrio character outfit, My Melody [bunny] Barbie, designed by Greening, released March 1, 2008. 4. Although there are cartoon installations and videorecordings of Hello Kitty and other Sanrio characters, this media component is not considered central to sales outside Japan. 5. Fujita’s quote was meant to argue for the inherent attractions of introducing McDonald’s to Japan as an overtly American eatery, rather than a localized

278  •  notes to introduction

hybrid. A closely related variant of the quote by Fujita is as follows: “If we [Japanese] eat McDonald’s hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years, we will become taller, our skin will become whiter, and our hair blond” (Love 1986:423). 6. On Sanrio-­Europe’s corporate website, here is how Tsuji explains the origin of the name “Sanrio”: “The name ‘Sanrio’ was derived from Spanish ‘San’ and ‘Rio’. One can find the prefix ‘San’ in many place names, such as San Francisco and San Diego. Translated as ‘saintly’ in English and ‘kiyoraka’ in Japanese, it means ‘pure’. The latter part, ‘Rio’ means river (“kawa” in Japanese), and can also be found in many place names, such as Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande. “In essence, then, Sanrio means ‘Saintly River’ or ‘Pure River’. It is a name that reflects the spirit of our company, and the goal that we set for ourselves forty years ago: to help build a sincere, virtous [sic] society, like the first cultures that inhabited the fertile banks of great rivers long, long ago — to nurture a community where people live in harmony, caring for and cooperating with one other. For forty years, we have continued striving towards realization of this goal” (www.sanriolicensing.com/philosophy.php [no longer available]). 7. My thanks to Mara Miller for this insight and loan of materials. 8. Masubuchi Souichi, theorist of kawaii, contrasts Hello Kitty’s mouthlessness with Mickey Mouse’s large mouth (1994:127). 9. Sanrio’s use of such simple design has come under suspicion of copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed by the Dutch author and illustrator Dick Bruna, whose austerely abstracted cute rabbit Miffy (created in 1955; popular in Japan shortly thereafter) bears a striking resemblance to Sanrio’s rabbit character Cathy (marketed since 1976 as a friend of Hello Kitty). In November 2010, a court in Amsterdam ruled in favor of Bruna, ordering Sanrio to halt production and sales of Cathy in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, or face a hefty penalty fee. 10. The list of licensees grows. In 2010, Sanrio lists the following licensees, by country on its website: “(Japan) Shiseido Co., Ltd., Toshiba Corporation, Brother Industries, Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., Citizen Watch Co., Ltd., Takara Co. Ltd., Bandai Co., Ltd., Tomy Co., Ltd., Lotte Co., Ltd. (United States) Jakks Pacific Inc., Bandai America Inc., Sanyo Fisher Company, Scholastic Inc., chf Industries Inc., Takara U.S.A. Corp., Nakajima U.S.A. Inc., Calego Intl Inc., ntd Apparel Inc. (Hong Kong) mtr Corporation, Nestle (Hong Kong) Ltd., Nokia Pete Ltd., McDonald’s Restaurants (HK) Ltd., Hawley & Hazel Chemical Co. (HK) Ltd., Kimberly-­Clark (HK) Ltd. (Korea) Kumbo Toys Ind., Co., Gone Mania Co., Ltd., Neo M Teldeccario Co., Ltd., Mukunghwa Corporation, byc Co. Ltd., Arumoaunsaengwhal Co., Ltd., Yookyung A&G. notes to introduction   •  279

(Taiwan) Yamaha Motor Taiwan Co., Ltd., Uni-­President Enterprises Corp., Macoto Bank, Taiwan Morinaga Co., Ltd., Nice Croup Headquarters, Kimberly-­ Clark Taiwan, King Car Food Industrial Co., Ltd., Lian Hwa Foods Corporation, Taiwan Cellular Corporation, kg Telecommunications Co., Ltd., Inventec Online Corporation” (www.sanriolicensing.com/licensing_world.php [no longer available]). 11. Other similar kinds of definitions come from the art world and popular journalism. In their book The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, the journalists Jane and Michael Stern quote the Hollywood art director Nicolai Remisoff: “Good taste is what is appropriate” (1990:9). 12. A Japanese word semantically overlapping with cool is the premodern iki, meaning having a dapper sense of style. Iki is used more often to describe men in urban settings than to describe women. In contemporary Japan the word kakkoo ii (“cool”; used more often — but not exclusively — as a descriptor for males) is used, as well as the English loan word kuuru. 13. See chapters 5 and 7 for more about the wink. Tohmatsu Kazuo says that the first winking Hello Kitty image was created in 1996 by Yamaguchi Yūko for an edition of Ichigo Shimbun (Strawberry news), Sanrio’s in-­store monthly newsletter (personal communication, October 1, 2010). The first winking Hello Kitty image depicted in the Sanrio retrospective of goods dates from 2003 (Sanrio 2009c). 14. Other earlier designations for this same age category are “subteen” and “pretween.” According to Cook, the subteen — “half girl and half woman” — emerged as a graded age-­and-­size style range primarily for white, middle-­class girls in the United States from the mid-­1950s to 1960 (2004:137 – 38, 141). The term tween appeared in a 1987 article in Marketing and Media Decisions to circumscribe consumers of both sexes, aged nine to fifteen (Cook and Kaiser 2004:217). 15. According to the social critic Kay Hymowitz, in the United States the debut of Barbie in 1959 marked the “media’s teening of childhood” and thus the birth of the preteen (and, later, the tween) (quoted in Cook and Kaiser 2004:212). 16. Another common usage of “pink” — or in this case, “pinko” — during the 1950s was its reference to Communist Party sympathizers. Coined during the 1920s, “pinko” or “parlor pink” referred to those espousing leftist-­leaning politics, with the implication that these were politics of the salon, rather than committed to action. Therefore “pinko” derogatorily implied the effeteness of a leftist sympathizer. 17. Other notable contemporary uses of pink in the United States include the curving ribbon insignia for breast cancer awareness and activism, and the Victoria Secret’s youth-­oriented pink line of clothing (by which fans may join a pink nation) (pink.victoriassecret.com; accessed September 7, 2010).

280  •  notes to introduction

18. Karl Schawelka notes that blushing occurs less among elderly than among youth (2006:46). 19. Note that pinku is the borrowed loan word from the English and carries a range of connotations that include the cute and the sexy. However, other Japanese words denote the color pink. The indigenous nadeshiko-­iro (pink, derived from the flower Caryophyllaceae, in particular the Large Pink, Dianthus superbus subsp. longicalycinus) has become the basis for the expression “Yamato nadeshiko” (ancient Japan pink), which refers to an ideal of Japanese female beauty and character noted for its link to tradition, unadorned purity, and kindness. The term nadeshiko-­iro has been supplanted by momo-­iro (pink/peach color), with its reference to the fruit and subsequently to innocent girlishness. The Japanese peach in question has white flesh and a slightly downy skin with color that ranges from a pale, greenish-­tinged white to a pink blush. Traditionally, Girl’s Day (third day of the third month) is referred to as Momo no Sekku (Peach Festival). (Thanks to Hirofumi Katsuno for pointing out some of these elements of pink in Japan.) 20. In 1991, policing of censorship laws was eased to exclude works deemed of artistic value. 21. Quoted at www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2009 – 01 – 21-­hello-­kitty -­hospital_N.htm (accessed December 14, 2010; no longer available). 22. My thanks to Ricardo Trimillos for this Kitty sighting. 23. My thanks to Nancy Cooper for this Kitty sighting. 24. Other similar volumes include Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia, edited by James Watson (2006) and East Asian Pop Culture; Analyzing the Korean Wave, edited by Chua Beng Huat and Koichi Iwabuchi (2008). 25. In fact, other scholars have begun the task. These works include (in chronological order) Ko Yu-­fen, “Hello Kitty and Identity Politics in Taiwan” (2000); Jeremy E. Taylor, “From ‘Hello Kitty’ to Hot-­Springs: Nostalgia and the Japanese Past in Taiwan” (2001); Angela Kit-­Ching Wan, “Hello Kitty: The Meaning of Consumption in Hong Kong and Its Implication for the Globalization of Popular Culture” (2002); Benjamin Wai-­ming Ng, “ “ The Hello Kitty Craze in Singapore: A Cultural and Comparative Analysis” (n.d.); and Larissa Hjorth, “Odours of Mobility: Mobile Phones and Japanese Cute Culture in the Asia-­Pacific” (2005). 26. Sanrio’s European website lists the following countries, where there are company stores: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom (www.sanrio europe.com). Since 2006, Sanrio Europe also publishes its own monthly magazine entitled Hello Kitty Magazine in German.

notes to introduction   •  281

Chapter One. Kitty at Home 1. This is what Brian McVeigh too easily calls a “consumutopia” — that is, an idealized capitalist state “in which individuals cheerfully consume and a happy fit between steadfast supply and desirous demand occurs” (2000a:228). 2. This includes the aspirations of those who yearn to attain middle-­class or upper-­middle class status. According to a Japanese woman who grew up on the outskirts of Tokyo in the mid-­1970s, Hello Kitty during that period was considered expensive, relative to other character goods, and thus carried brand-­name status. In her elementary school, only the wealthier children had Hello Kitty goods. 3. Although the term “girl-­child” may seem internally redundant in combining young female (“girl”) with youth (“child”), I use the term here to specify the innocent, naive image of the shōjo. That image stands in contrast to other uses of “girl,” or in Japlish gyaru (“gal”) that I explain later in discussion of the kogyaru figure. 4. The Japanese female aesthetic that emphasizes eyes to create a doll-­like look culminated in the 2000s in special contact lenses known as “circle lenses” in sometimes unusual shades such as violet or pink. Because they cover not only the iris, but also part of the white of the eye, they give the startling impression of a much larger eye. Further, this shōjo aesthetic and the contact lenses that enable it have crossed the Pacific and become a growing trend in the United States, as reported in the New York Times: “The lenses give wearers a childlike doe-­eyed appearance. . . . Now that circle lenses have gone mainstream in Japan, Singapore and South Korea, they are turning up in American high schools and college campuses” (Saint Louis 2010:11). 5. Allison discusses the sexualized male gaze upon female bodies of different ages from young children to adults. 6. In Japan it is not uncommon for women to be in charge of birth control, including purchasing condoms. 7. The wearing of school uniforms even on nonschool days reflects in part the strong identification of persons with institutions. Thus, the uniform becomes a badge of not only school identity, but personal identity as well. Schools may be known for their uniforms: an elite school may have an expensive, designer-­produced uniform. Those who attend such schools — and therefore own the uniform — may wear their uniforms as a matter of pride. Furthermore, students (especially girls) may select a school based on the stylishness or “brand name” of the uniform (McVeigh 2000b:93). 8. The magazine is currently available online at www.tkj.jp/cutie (accessed September 29, 2012). 9. The editor-­in-­chief of the magazine from 1989 to 1994, Sekikawa Makoto, insists that Cutie speaks to rebellion against the status quo in Japan. To the

282  •  notes to chapter 1

question of the childishness of the Japanese fashion depicted, he writes: “I would get endless questions from the [American] press asking whether young Japanese women really liked these childish things. I used to answer, ‘The message is in the fact that they dare to wear these childish things.’ To be kawaii was to be daring and challenge the norm, a desire that runs rampant among Japanese youth” (2007:74). One can only assume that the rape-­as-­chic photo spread is interpreted from this viewpoint as another opportunity to assert the magazine’s position in representing Japanese young women as “daring and challeng[ing] the norm.” Victims of sexual abuse may not agree. 10. According to a 1999 survey of otoshidama, the average amount received yearly by each child was 40,000 yen (approximately $400). 11. Other forms of girl-­culture expression can be found in shōjo manga (girl comics). Although manga of all genres tended to be produced by men, in the late 1960s and 1970s a group of female manga artists emerged, dubbing themselves “The Magnificent 24” after their shared year of birth (Shouwa 24 by the Japanese calendrical system; 1949 by Euro-­American reckoning). These women transformed the genre of shōjo manga to reflect what they felt to be female sensibilities and aesthetics. Since their rise, shōjo manga may be considered largely by and for females and has spawned further subcultural shōjo expression, such as dōjinshi (fan-­produced magazines) and specifically ya-­o-­i (fan-­produced comics featuring same-­sex boy love). 12. Much of the Japanese and foreign media at the time interpreted enjo kōsai as teenage prostitution. On the one hand, this implication sensationalized the phenomenon beyond the physical reality for a great number of cases (Miller 2004a). On the other hand, as Allison discusses regarding hostess clubs in Japan, socializing and playful banter between men and women-­for-­hire can be part of compensated, sexualized interaction in particular settings in contemporary Japan (1994). 13. Many Japanese and non-­Japanese scholars have attempted to define kawaii, from listing its physical characteristics to enumerating its emotional qualities (e.g., Kinsella 1995:220; Masubuchi 1994; McVeigh 2000b:137 – 41). McVeigh lists the following types of cuteness: (1) baby cuteness, (2) very young cuteness, (3) young cuteness, (4) maternal cuteness, (5) teen cuteness, (6) adult cuteness, (7) sexy cuteness, (8) pornography cuteness, (9) child pornography cuteness, (10) authority cuteness, and (11) corporate cuteness (2000b:135). The women I interviewed, quoted at the beginning of the chapter, have their own checklist for the concept. Perhaps what is most telling is the response given by a thirty-­five-­year-­old Japanese woman: “In many occasions, young people [in Japan] can’t think of any other suitable word other than ‘kawaii,’ and that’s why kawaii meaning keeps expanding even more” (I. O., personal communication, February 7, 2002). 14. Merish notes that the word cute emerged in late nineteenth-­century notes to chapter 1   •  283

America as colloquial slang linked to the sentimentalism of the period (1996:187). 15. Dolls provide a central image of female aidoru, many of whom are worshipped by fans exactly as living, breathing, dancing, singing, posing dolls. 16. Marilyn Ivy brings up the point of the viewer who might consider Nara’s works kawaii: although the artist depicts children and childhood, his vision is an adult’s, with at least some children rejecting it (2010:13). 17. This body position is notably unfeline. Instead, it more closely resembles the sitting of human toddlers, legs stretched out in front of them. If Hello Kitty was first marketed to children of elementary-­school age, the design already referenced a younger, infantilized state than theirs. 18. Because of the similarity of services offered, banks compete on the basis of kyarakutā mascots. Customers often select their bank by the appeal of the bank’s kyarakutā, especially because these decorate bank books and other paraphernalia. The exact kyarakutā and their bank affiliations change over time, each change considered newsworthy and accompanied by public announcements. This practice now extends to the United States and elsewhere, although in more delimited form. Bank of America offers a Hello Kitty – decorated visa debit and credit cards. However, whereas in Japan the bank becomes identified with the kyarakutā, in the United States, this is only one consumer option. This contrast demonstrates the more widespread, generalized acceptance of kyarakutā in Japan for all ages. In Hong Kong, the Dah Sing Bank offers a special “Hello Kitty Consolidated Account” that integrates various banking services. Upon opening the Hello Kitty Consolidated Account, the customer receives a Hello Kitty statement, atm card, and checkbook. In 2007, jcb began partnering with China Merchants Bank (cmb), to offer Hello Kitty – decorated credit cards in China. 19. As an example of the ways in which kyarakutā are used, Kiccoro and Morizo preceded the opening of the high-­tech Aichi Expo by several months, generating excitement for the event through their media placement and sales. Thus, the public came to anticipate and even purchase material goods of the event through these kyarakutā mascots. The physicalization and characterization of the mascots closely reinforced the environmental theme of the Expo, which was “Nature’s Wisdom” in conjunction with technology. The critical point of the mascots — as with kyarakutā — is that they have personalities, and are thus more than two-­dimensional drawings. They are, undoubtedly, “characters.” From the Expo website: “Kiccoro (Forest Child) The Forest Child has only just been born. Jumping around everywhere, he’s (she’s) full of energy! The Forest Child wants to see and do everything! He’s (she’s) looking forward to making lots of friends at the Expo. Morizo (Forest Grand Father) The Forest Grand Father has been living in the forest since long ago. He’s an easy-­going and kind old man, he has seen many things and knows everything, but he hasn’t lost

284  •  notes to chapter 1

his curiosity. Hearing about the Expo, he’s enthusiastic about lending a hand” (www.expo2005.or.jp/en/whatexpo/mascot.html; accessed September 29, 2012). The two inseparable figures — child (ungendered) and grandfather — represent intergenerational ties that hold not only the link to past wisdom but also a connection to future technologically enhanced stewardship of the earth. 20. Jan Bardsley and her coeditor, Laura Miller, underscore the point with a wonderfully appropriate Hello Kitty illustration gracing the cover of their book Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan (2011). 21. My focus here and elsewhere on cell phone straps is not accidental. In Japan, these straps are the most common form of cell phone accessory. The straps personalize an object that, for many, is a constant and indispensable companion (cf. Ito, Okabe, and Matsuda 2005). Because of their size and cost, they functioned as the prototypical small, casual Hello Kitty purchase in the 2000s. 22. These hologram glasses are the products of Holospex, and are sold separately, with prices ranging from 280 to 500 yen (around $3.25 to $6.00), as well as included in packets of fireworks during the summer. The Hello Kitty lens sells for 350 yen ($4.16). Hello Kitty is not the only pictorial offering for these glasses; as of 2010, Doraemon (Cat Robot), smiley face, hearts, flowers, stars, lettered inscriptions (e.g., Happy Birthday, daisuki! [I love you/it!], and several others were also available (www.hanabi.ne.jp/3d.html; accessed December 2, 2010). For a photographed example of the result, see www.space-­graphics.co.jp /holospex/common-­img/KittyPhoto-­P.gif. 23. An inversion of the Hello Kitty glasses are Hello Kitty contact lenses, which turns the wearer’s pupils into small images of Hello Kitty’s head. Whereas the glasses turn the outside world into a plethora of Kitty images, the contact lenses embed Kitty images onto each of the wearer’s eyes. 24. See chapter 2 for brief mention of the human-­object exchange between the Sanrio founder Tsuji Shintarō and the Sanrio kyarakutā Strawberry King. 25. Note that not all politicians in Japan have been “kyarakutā-­ed.” Rather, only those already popular add to their public visibility (and ultimately, the profitability of their image) through kyarakutā. 26. This relationship of animal to animal costume is one followed through in Sanrio’s Hello Kitty animal line. In this, Hello Kitty “becomes” various animals by donning their full body-­suited costumes. 27. One might consider the theoretical possibility that if Shishiro were to take on a life of its own in popularity, then in due time the roles of honnin and dainin might be reversed, raising the provocative question, Who is whose surrogate? This question, however, is somewhat spurious because of numbers: there should be only one honnin to potentially many dainin. Since there is only one Koizumi and any number of Shishiro, Koizumi is exempt from becoming Shishiro’s stand-­in. 28. Schattschneider points to Claude Lévi-­Strauss’s argument from his 1966 notes to chapter 1   •  285

publication The Savage Mind, in which he suggests that miniaturized artworks hold considerable aesthetic power by virtue of their radical suppression of size, scale, or weight, thereby allowing the viewer to grasp the whole in its shrunken entirety (2003:204). 29. These characterizations of “wet” and “dry” are common contrastive pairs in Japanese discourse, stereotypically pitting emotionality against rationality, warmth against coldness, softness against hardness. The ideal is “wet” inter­ action between people who interdepend (cf. amae). 30. This is not to assume that intimacy is necessarily devoid of contempt. As in many intimate relationships, contempt may form part of the ambivalence that makes for complex layers of interaction. However, I would contend that this is exactly the beauty of a relationship with a mute object or figure. Kyarakutā do not talk back (see the Ursula LeGuin quote at the beginning of chapter 3). 31. The calculation of gift amount depends on strength of relationship, gratitude, and hierarchy (Rupp 2003:34). The precision of the ledger is exemplified by the favored gift for most formal occasions: money. With money as the gift, then one may repay with the kind of exactitude that leaves no ambiguity. Furthermore, because prices for particular branded objects are fairly standardized in Japan, many people can estimate the cost of an object, and therefore the financial allocation of the gift. In Rupp’s fieldwork, she found people who said they could tell the relationship between two people from the gift exchanged (35). 32. Note, however, that iyashi includes objects and activities that rather than social are solitary. These include spa-­linked products, such as candles for aromatherapy, essential oils for well-­being, and herbal teas for relaxation. The kind of sociality that is acceptable as iyashi must be undemanding, relaxed, informal, and, thereby, low stress. For these reasons, some may see inanimate objects, and especially cute ones, as primary sites of developing an iyashi relationship. There is a genre of kyarakutā, usefully labeled iyashi-­kyara (healing characters) whose cuteness is meant specifically to impart a sense of mental ease and relief from daily stresses. One example is the Rilakkuma (Relax Bear) character launched in 2003 by San-­X. Much of the market for iyashi products focuses on females, as described above, and indeed females seem to be the primary target in iyashi discourse. Of course, the public recognizes that men, too, need stress relief; however, male options — such as bars, karaoke, and golf — are already well established as homosocial activities (see Allison 1994). 33. This does not exclude men from social activities, both homosocial and heterosexual. But it does suggest that females in Japan handle the materiality of exchange through well-­worn practices of consumption, in part as a gendered practice. Whereas men may stereotypically exchange alcoholic drinks with each other, females exchange gifts. This gendered division of exchange characterizes norms and expectations of social life in contemporary Japan. 34. Some of these — such as $100 melons — have made headlines overseas

286  •  notes to chapter 1

(e.g., Tanikawa 2005). What is important for an overseas reader to comprehend is that these gifts are created to fulfill a social obligation. The care given its wrapping is as important as the contents (Hendry 1993; Masubuchi 1994:108 – 9). In the case of fruit, special categories of gift fruits shape the way and place they are planted, tended, harvested, and packaged, resulting in, for example, the infamous melons. 35. The slogan is expressed in English in both Japanese and English websites and other corporate literature of Sanrio. 36. I was told by a Japanese woman in her mid-­thirties (b. 1974) that her friends would sometimes comment, “Kawaii nedan da ne” (Such a “cute” price!) in reference to a pleasing item that also had a “pleasingly” low price. 37. Including a small toy or prize as part of the purchase is not unique to Sanrio. In Japan, certain candies, such as Tomoe Ame and Botan Rice Candy, come with an “amusing toy” or, more recently, stickers. Marc Steinberg traces the use of omake as part of merchandising in Japan to the commercial culture of Osaka as developed in the 1920s, particularly in the candy industry, and furthered through a “convergent relationship between omake, product, and character image” (2012:50 – 51, 54). In the United States, Cracker Jack (candied popcorn) boxes include a small toy or trading card, a practice dubbed “A Prize in Every Box” that began in 1912. The Cracker Jack website includes the following: “Prize Inside. Whad’ya get? There are new surprises waiting for you — so open a bag and enjoy” (www.crackerjack.com/home.htm; no longer available). The difference between these and Sanrio, however, is that Sanrio’s prize comes attached to the outer wrapping of the gift, and therefore is generated as part of the purchase transaction, rather than boxed industrially elsewhere. I contend that there is, at least minimally, a greater sense of being gifted on the spot as part of a personalized transaction in Sanrio’s approach. Even if all of Sanrio’s prizes are the same, the sales clerk must attach each “small gift” personally as part of the wrapping process. The labor is immediate and visible. 38. Sanrio Surprises stores can be found throughout the United States and Latin America. 39. Whereas the English word souvenir may refer to both an item brought back for oneself as a reminder of the trip, as well as that purchased as a gift for someone else, the miyage refers only to that bought for someone else as a gift (Rupp 2003:70). 40. The first catalogue, published in 2005, lists 850 items; the second catalogue, published in 2008, lists 788 items. In 2008 Sanrio extended the gotōchi line beyond Japan to foreign destinations. This garnered media notice: news, for example, Vogue Nippon dubbed Sanrio’s new line as “Gotōchi in Paris” (2008:178). 41. See www.strapya-­world.com/products (accessed December 4, 2010; no longer available). notes to chapter 1   •  287

42. Travel thus becomes a common association with Hello Kitty. 43. Japan’s other goodwill tourism ambassadors include the Korean singer Younha, the Japanese actress Yoshino Kimura, and the Japanese pop/rock duo Puffy AmiYumi. In particular, the singers Puffy AmiYumi have acted as poster girls for the country’s “Cool Japan” tourism campaign. 44. Although true “neoteny” would suggest a proportionately large head, the effect of the oversized bow is to infantilize the face to ever smaller dimensions. 45. This lack of tethering of kyarakutā to narrative runs parallel to Hiroki Azuma’s thesis spelled out in his English-­translated work Otaku; Japan’s Database Animals, in which he argues that, in postmodern Japan, consumers look far less to grand narratives and far more to characters in an affective mode of regard he dubs “chara-­moe” (kyara-­moe; neoerotic rapture, obsessively focused on characters) (2009:37). 46. Sanrio has made it company policy that each kyarakutā has a backstory that includes a birth date, personality, family, and friends, posted on the company website. Customers may or may not know this backstory, but by providing one, the company aligns their kyarakutā more closely with fairy-­tale characters, rather than mere commercial items or logos. What is important is that the “fairy” (i.e., kyarakutā) have a “tale” in order to give it the legitimacy of a true (i.e., embedded within children’s literature) fairy-­tale character. Nishizawa Masafumi considers this emphasis on endowing kyarakutā with a backstory to be unique to Sanrio (1990:184). 47. Note that anthropometry was used in the early twentieth century by anthropologists in the United States and Europe, contributing to carefully calibrated physical definitions of race (e.g., in Germany, distinguishing Jews from Aryans), as well as its refutation (e.g., in the United States, led by Franz Boas and his students). 48. In fact, many of her hobbies and her personality reflect that of Hello Kitty’s designer, Yamaguchi Yūko (2009). Yamaguchi is the third and current designer of the cat. 49. As Martin Davidson points out, in this day of intense marketing, a successful brand itself “has a personality that we relate to as though in dialogue with it” (1992:28).

Chapter Two. Marketing Global Kitty 1. I refer to Japanese references to spiritual practices as dō (way, path) — as in bushidō (way of the warrior). 2. For details of Tsuji’s life in English, including the development of Sanrio and the social communications business, see Ken Belson and Brian Bremner’s Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon (2004).

288  •  notes to chapter 2

3. Strawberries in particular are considered “cute fruits” in contemporary Japan. 4. Yamaguchi studied design at Joshibi University of Art and Design. 5. Hello Kitty, like many cartoon characters, is subject to drawing lessons for the general public. For example, the following website provides step-­by-­step instructions, Dragoart, “How to Draw a Cute Hip Hello Kitty,” www.dragoart .com (accessed September 3, 2010). 6. YouTube, “An Interview with Hello Kitty Designer Yuko Yamaguchi,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP9_b2gcwuk (accessed September 2, 2010). 7. Particular fictional characters that come to mind, both of whom are popular in Japan, include Anne of Green Gables (Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1908) and Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, 1945). 8. Yamaguchi is also responsible for fleshing out Hello Kitty fictive life in terms of other characters for sale. She introduced Kitty’s boyfriend, “Dear Daniel,” in 1999 and Kitty’s pet cat, “Charmmy Kitty,” in 2004. 9. See YouTube: “Lisa and Hello Kitty” (“Underdog” video), accessed June 17, 2009. 10. The postmodern take, of course, on Klein’s critique are the enterprises that pride themselves on “no branding.” In Japan (and in the 2000s, with outlets in Europe and beginning in the United States), one such highly successful chain of stores is Mujirushi Ryōuhin (nicknamed “Muji”) the purposely no-­ name brand of high-­quality goods of their own design and manufacture (www .muji.com; accessed December 8, 2010). No brand has become a brand technique. 11. Hensley’s use of “The Change” sounds almost biological, running parallel with medical discourse interpreting female hormonal shifts during the life cycle.

Chapter Three. Global Kitty Nearly Everywhere 1. The contractual arrangement between Sanrio and Nakajima USA is complex and changing. The license contract between the two companies began in 1988, but did not expand significantly until 2004, when Nakajima USA took over the running of Sanrio boutiques. As of 2010, Nakajima USA operates forty-­nine independently run Sanrio stores and forty-­seven Nakajima USA – owned Sanrio stores, and serves as Sanrio’s principle licensee. 2. The website includes a Sanrio Model Casting Call for professionals and amateurs, decorated with Hello Kitty holding a camera. The casting call held in Los Angeles asks for girls, aged four to fourteen, “all ethnicities and all looks,” to be featured in print and digital advertising. The winners of the casting call receive a professional photo shoot and a $200 gift certificate at a Southern California Sanrio store. 3. See www.giantrobot.com/about.html (accessed June 15, 2010). 4. Frank Shepard Fairey (b. 1970) is a skateboarder, dj, street artist, and notes to chapter 3   •  289

graphic designer, whose character André the Giant appeared in a series of posters, stickers, spray-­painted images, and T-­shirts known as the obey series. He has more recently gained media attention with the lawsuit over his Barack Obama “Hope” poster, for which he adopted a copyrighted photo from Associated Press. 5. My thanks to Theodore Jun Yoo for this Kitty sighting (and several others).

Chapter Four. Kitty Backlash 1. A similar kind of powerful referentiality exists in the 2011 Japan Society exhibit Bye Bye Kitty!!! which I discuss further in chapter 6. 2. I have not yet found anti – Hello Kitty consumer groups in Asia (including Japan), as discussed briefly in chapter 1 (see also Yano 2004:132 – 33). This is not to say that everyone in Asia likes Hello Kitty, but rather that push-­back sentiment may not have culturally sanctioned means for expression. Indeed, I have spoken with individuals in Japan who do not necessarily like Hello Kitty, but at least during the period of fieldwork, they did not think to express their feelings publicly. Instead, they voted with their pocketbooks, choosing not to buy Sanrio’s cat. The situation may be changing as Hello Kitty becomes more and more of a global figure that represents Japan (see chapter 7). 3. The following sites were listed in Yumi Umiumare’s original e-­mail message: http://yumi.com.au/performanceCredits/C_DasShokuHora.html; http: //yumi.com.au/performanceCredits/C_DasShokuHoraPhotos.html; http://yumi .com.au/performanceCredits/C_DasShokuHoraClip.html; http://yumi.com.au /performanceCredits/C_BurlesqueHour.html. 4. The site www.asianwhite.org is no longer available, but see Big Bad Chinese Mama, www.bigbadchinesemama.com (accessed September 30, 2012), which has similar content. 5. This is a good example of different cultures emphasizing different facial parts for expressivity. Japanese look to eyes, whereas Euro-­Americans look to mouths. However, see the chapter 1 discussion of doll-­like eyes and the growing popularity of circle lenses from Asia in America. 6. See www.queeg.com/hellokitty (accessed November 18, 2002). 7. See www.queeg.com/hellokitty/faq2.html (accessed November 18, 2002). 8. This page was found at www.geocities.com/lindsy0287/evilkitty.html on May 1, 2003, but is no longer available. 9. This page was found at www.geocities.com/kill_kitty_here/main.html on May 1, 2003, but is no longer available. 10. This page was found at www.kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/sanrio on May 3, 2003, but is no longer available. 11. See Hello Kitty Hell, www.kittyhell.com/about (accessed July 4, 2010).

290  •  notes to chapter 4

12. Ibid. 13. See www.uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Hello_Kitty (accessed July 14, 2010). 14. “The Top Ten Ways to Kill Hello Kitty,” forty-­two seconds, May 5, 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY39qmUg07Q&feature=related (no longer available). 15. “No More Hello Kitty,” nineteen seconds, August 24, 2007, www.youtube .com/watch?v=53bab12GBU4&NR=1, and “No More Hello Kitty 2,” twenty-­six seconds, June 12, 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGcf0r2-­yA&NR=1; both videos are no longer available. 16. “Bye Bye Kitty,” fifty-­one seconds, June 20, 2009; “Korosu Kat Mission,” twenty-­nine seconds, June 22, 2009; “Korosu Mission 2: Draw,” thirty seconds; June 23, 2009; “Korosu Guerrilla,” thirty seconds, June 23, 2009. All of these videos were originally posted on YouTube but are no longer available. 17. “Bye Bye Hello Kitty,” four minutes and twenty-­six seconds, October 2009, posted by Francyrobot on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxzwts -­6NPA (accessed October 2, 2012). 18. See Goodbye Kitty, www.goodbyekitty.net (accessed July 4, 2010). 19. “Fuck Hello Kitty” Facebook group, www.facebook.com/group.php?gid =4820708196 (accessed July 5, 2010; no longer available). 20. “commandofuckhellokitty,” www.youtube.com/watch (accessed July 7, 2010). 21. For a video of this event, see www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=44781 &op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=4820708196&id=100001124701625 &fbid=105230019524488#!/video/video.php?v=31273869511&oid=4820708196 (accessed July 16, 2010). 22. The Landover Baptist site can be reached at www.landoverbaptist.net /showthread.php?t=19851 (accessed July 5, 2010). 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Juan Pablo Leonardo and Kathia Leonardo, “Hello Kitty or Hell of Kitty,” www.crossroad.to/articles2/2003/hello_kitty.htm (accessed October 2, 2012). 27. Ibid.

Chapter Five. Kitty Subversions 1. In a book of design history entitled Hello Kitty Memories, the first image of Hello Kitty winking can be found in 2003 (Sanrio 2009b:192). 2. Quotation from www.mookychick.co.uk/riotgrrl/ (accessed August 8, 2010; no longer available). Other icons of the week include Annie Oakley, American cowgirl sharpshooter; Bettie Paige, pinup model; Clara Bow, silent notes to chapter 5   •  291

film star; Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist; the Fabulous Moolah, female wrestler; Queen Christina of Sweden; Missy Elliott, female rapper; Princess Leia, of Star Wars; Josephine Baker, 1920s African American Parisian entertainer; Björk, New Age Icelandic pop star; and Queen Cleopatra. 3. Hello Kitty is not the only “toy” icon that appropriates punk. The Alexander Doll Company, Inc., founded in 1923 by Beatrice Alexander Behrman in New York with its line of Madame Alexander collectible dolls, teamed up with Sanrio in 2008 to offer two matching Hello Kitty – Madame Alexander punk rock figures (an eight-­inch doll with approximately two-­inch plush). Part of the Americana collection, Furry Friends Collection Doll, and Hello Kitty Collection — and named Madame Alexander Punk Princess Hello Kitty Wendy (#48560) — the set is described as follows by the Alexander Doll Company: “Hello Kitty is a popular icon in American culture. This year’s styles are very contemporary, with a black dress with pink trim, black net stockings, and black boots. ‘Punk Princess Hello Kitty Wendy’ is a Caucasian Wendy doll with blonde hair in pigtails. It includes plush Hello Kitty in a matching outfit, and a star shaped purse” (www.amazon .com/Madame-­Alexander-­Princess-­Americana-­Collection/dp/B00171QAVY; accessed August 23, 2010). The company’s second set of punk figures from 2008 is Punk Princess Hello Kitty Lilly (#44918), with the Lilly doll having what is called an “Asian face sculpt” (although to my eye, the doll still has white features) and black hair; she is dressed in matching green plaid with a smaller Hello Kitty plush. As of 2010, the Wendy set was available on eBay for $75.00, while the Lilly set was selling new for $74.95. Other sets within the Madame Alexander Hello Kitty Collection include (in order of model number, and therefore as issued chronologically): My New Friend Hello Kitty (#42680; from 2006), with Hello Kitty and blond doll in matching pink kimono; My New Friend Hello Kitty — Asian (#42681; from 2006), with Hello Kitty and Asian-­featured, brunette doll in pigtails, each in a blue kimono; Ice Cream Delight Kitty (#46170; from 2007), with Hello Kitty as an ice-­cream cone and red-­headed doll in pigtails; Madame Alexander Wendy Loves Hello Kitty (#47475; from 2007), with blond doll and Hello Kitty wearing matching spring outfits in pastel yellow, blue, and pink; Out and About with Hello Kitty (#50375; from 2009), with a blue-­eyed, freckled, brown-­haired doll carrying Hello Kitty in matching pink coats. What is notable is that the Alexander Doll Company classifies Hello Kitty as a popular icon in American culture and yet subtly, though intermittently, connects Sanrio’s cat to Asia through pairings with “Asian face-­sculpt” dolls, black hair, pigtails (to a certain extent, stereotypically referencing young girls in China), and costuming. It is the double inscription of Sanrio’s cat — both American and Japanese/Asian — that gives flexibility to the figure. 4. Admittedly, Sanrio’s punk line generated some controversy, especially

292  •  notes to chapter 5

with nonpunk Hello Kitty fans. But one nonpunk fan defends Sanrio’s punk design as opening fandom to a broader audience: “I’m not upset that Hello Kitty went punk or anything. As a matter of fact, I think it’s good to see a different side of her because now Hello Kitty is reachable to all audiences and not just for little girls or someone who likes extremely happy and cute stuff. If you think Hello Kitty isn’t for you because you think she is just too cute or babyish, well, now you can see that she is not all about being cute and appealing to kids under age 12. Hello Kitty proved to us that she can be anything we wanted her to be, and that includes being wild, adventurous and . . . punk. In my opinion though, no matter what, she is still a cute, adorable, nice feline that we have always loved, and that’s one thing that will never change. Hello Kitty is an international icon that was made to bring a smile to all of us fans” (www.hello -­kitty-­gifts.com/punk-­hello-­kitty.htm; accessed August 23, 2010 but no longer available). 5. To see this example, search on YouTube for “Seek & Destroy Solo with Fender Squier Hello Kitty” (accessed October 7, 2012). 6. See www.asiansandfriendshouston.com/site (accessed August 18, 2010). 7. It is not unusual for a person growing up in Hawai’i to eat with chopsticks, regardless of one’s ethnicity. 8. Here is how the former corporate spokesperson Doug Parkes explained it in a 2002 interview: “We actually changed the design when it came to light . . . that [our massage wand was being publicized on the Internet as a vibrator]. . . . [The old design] was a Hello Kitty figure and you could take the figure [sheath] off, which would just leave the [vibrating wand] instrument itself. [We changed it so that] you can’t take it off. So now actually Kitty’s on it the whole time, which would prevent any alternate use. But obviously it [news of a Hello Kitty vibrator] hit the Internet and there are still people talking about it even now” (personal communication, May 2002). Although the vibrator has been officially off the market for a few years now, its American-­based Internet sales continues. Sanrio also sells condoms in Japan, although these initially did not bear a Hello Kitty design (instead they showed Monkichi, the rascally monkey, or Badtz-­Maru, the penguin with “attitude”). More recently, Sanrio offers Hello Kitty condoms, sold to look like lollipops (see www.kittyhell.com/2007/11/12 /hello-­kitty-­condoms). Here, too, the company defends its product by explaining that in Japan, women are the ones responsible for birth control, and condoms are still the leading form of it. Therefore, if Sanrio caters to all aspects of women’s lives, then it stands to reason that the company would include birth control among its products. Furthermore, according to Parkes, with the threat of hiv-­aids and other sexually transmitted diseases, producing a cute condom is nothing less than Sanrio shouldering the mantle of social responsibility. The production and marketing of cute condoms by Sanrio become part of corporate policy of responsible citizenship. notes to chapter 5   •  293

9. In August 2010, the price range for the pink “massage wand” from different sellers handled by Amazon.com varied, from $37.75 to $54.00, plus shipping. Amazon.com also lists the black “massage wand” but notes that it is only variably available (www.amazon.com/Hello-­Kitty-­Black-­Vibrator/dp /B000XJJOTG). 10. My use of “slutty” can be taken as tongue-­in-­cheek parody, not unlike the deliberate performance of “sluttiness” by Riot Grrrls (Attwood 2007). Feona Attwood provides a neat chronology of uses and definitions of the term slut from a fourteenth-­century pejorative meaning “dirty and untidy” to the late twentieth-­century practice of Riot Grrrls writing slut on their bodies at public events (2007). 11. To see this video, search on YouTube for “aee: Tera Patrick — G4tv.com” (accessed August 26, 2010). 12. Mariko Passion, “Hello Kitty Has No Mouth and Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy,” Marikopassion.wordpress.com (accessed May 1, 2009).

Chapter Six. Playing with Kitty 1. A notable exhibit of Japanese art that takes kawaii visual culture as an oblique reference point in sophisticated ways was organized by the Japan Society (New York) and displayed there from March through June 2011. Clearly referencing Hello Kitty in its title, the exhibit Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art (and resultant catalogue) includes Japanese artists born between the mid-­1960s to the early 1980s, whose approach may be considered a response to the pervasive culture of kawaii in contemporary Japan. The curator David Elliott takes Hello Kitty as a backdrop of “bland [childish] inscrutability” against which the young Japanese artists in the exhibit demonstrate “a more complicated, adult view of life, melding traditional viewpoints with perceptions of present and future in radical and sometimes unsettling combinations. . . . There is no room for Kitty’s blankness here” (2011:7). The only work of art in the exhibit/catalogue that actually includes an image of Hello Kitty is a photograph by the artist Nara Yoshitomo of a beautifully maintained Hello Kitty tombstone in gray granite. 2. The incorporation of art into Sanrio’s purview seems to be an increasingly regular part of the company’s strategy. An art exhibit based on Sanrio characters (of which Hello Kitty plays a major role) is also part of the fiftieth anniversary of Sanrio, celebrated in 2010 – 11. That exhibit opened in Los Angeles in November 2010 and Miami in December 2010. As of this writing, plans are being made for a coffee-­table art book compiling these works (Marchi, personal communication, November 15, 2010). Because of the timing, I do not include analyses of these exhibits in this book. 3. Quotation from Kitty Ex (n.d.).

294  •  notes to chapter 6

4. The table in appendix 2 lists the artists in the order given in the Kitty Ex. Perfect Guide Book, indicating their occupation, country, and title of Hello Kitty piece. 5. This national designation is not definitive; although I read through the biographies of the artists, I have no way of knowing their citizenship. For example, several artists were born elsewhere, but now live and work in New York. In these cases, I listed them as American. 6. See www.circlemakers.org/hellokitty.html (accessed September 6, 2010). 7. The artists exhibiting work at Three Apples (in the same order that they are listed in the catalogue): 64 Colors, aiko, Akiko Masuda, Amanda Visell, Andrew Brandou, Angry Woebots, bigfoot, Bobby Chiu, Branded, Brandt Peters, Brian McCarty, Buff Monster, Caia Koopman, Camilla d’Errico, Carrie Jardine, chase, Colin Christian, Crowded Teeth, Dan Goodsell, deph, Devilrobots, dgph, Dr. Romanelli, Edwin Ushiro, Elizabeth Ito, Frank Kozik, FriendsWithYou, Gary Baseman, Huck Gee, hush, Jason Han, Jason Kronenwald, Jason Mecier, Jeremyville, Jermaine Rogers, Jim Mahfood, Johnny Yanok, Jupey Krusho, Kathie Olivas, Kei Acedera, Ken Tanaka, Luke Chueh, Mad Barbarians, Madoka Kinoshita, Mari Inukai, Mark Dean Veca, Martin Hsu, Marty M. Ito, mear one Melissa, Haslam, Melissa Contreras, Melly Trochez, Michael Banks, Michelle Valigura, Misha, Mori Chack, Natalia Fabia, Nate Frizzell, Norma Christmas, Peekaboo Monster, persue, Peter Chan, Plasticgod, Plex Lowery, Punchgut, Ron English, Mr. Shane Jessup, Simone Legno, slick, Tado, Tara McPherson, Tessar Lo, Thomas Han, Tim diet, Travis Louie, Yoko d’Holbachie, Yoskay Yamamoto, Yosuke Ueno, and Yumiko Kayukawa. Unfortunately, the catalogue does not give any indication of their country of origin or biographical profile, although it does list website information for each of the artists. 8. Other notable pop icons that have generated art works have been Mickey Mouse and Barbie, although I am not sure of the respective producing corporations and the artworks. See The Art of Mickey Mouse (1993) and The Art of Barbie: Artists Celebrate the World’s Favorite Doll (1994), both edited by Craig Yoe. Barbie art has been the subject of exhibits; for example, see Plastic Princess: Barbie as Art curated by Leonie Bradbury at Montserrat College of Art Gallery in Beverly, Massachusetts in 2006 (www.web.mit.edu/comm-­forum/mit5/papers/bradbury _barbie.pdf, accessed September 8, 2010). Leika Akiyama, discussed later in this chapter, exhibited at this Barbie show, as well as engages in Hello Kitty art. 9. Sachs’s panel-­by-­panel instructions reads: “Let’s start with a circle. Then, add wings to make a bow. Clean it up with lack. Make an ear. Now, make the head. Draw eyes and a nose. Don’t forget wiskers [sic], too. Move the whole deal over and add a mushroom. Add yellow, limbs, and a tail” (Sanrio 2004:72 – 73). 10. Many observers see strong visual similarities between Sanrio’s Hello Kitty and Dick Bruna’s simple flat illustrations in primary colors, such as Miffy as noted previously. notes to chapter 6   •  295

11. See www.tomsachs.org/exhibition/bronze-­collection (accessed September 8, 2010). 12. See www.tomsachs.com/biography.html?__v:file=22 (accessed September 8, 2010). 13. Thomas Kinkade (b. 1958) is a commercial artist whose trademark phrase is “Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light.” Known as much for his mass marketing, as well as his accessible style (high realism, glowing highlights) and overtly sentimental subjects (stone cottages, bucolic rural landscapes, flower-­filled gardens, Christian themes), he bills himself as “America’s Most Collected Living Artist” (www.thomaskinkade.com/magi/servlet/com.asucon.ebiz.biography .web.tk.BiographyServlet; accessed September 8, 2010). 14. From www.decordova.org/decordova/exhibit/2005/prettysweet05.htm (accessed September 8, 2010; no longer available). 15. See www.leslieholt.net/artist-­statement (accessed June 18, 2009).

Chapter Seven. Japan’s Cute-­Cool as Global Wink 1. Coverage of the event can be seen, for example, on the following: “Hello Kitty Rings the Closing Bell at the nyse,” www.youtube.com (accessed August 31, 2010). 2. See www.licensemag.com/licensemag/Character/Sanrios-­Hello-­Kitty -­Rings-­Closing-­Bell-­at-­NYSE/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/682384?context CategoryId=9990 (accessed August 3, 2010). Also present at this ceremony was Maxine Clark — founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Build-­A-­ Bear Workshop — a company Sanrio had just partnered with to develop new products. 3. Ibid. 4. Murakami’s ability to incite controversy pervades his world. In 2010 a group of French traditionalists, Coordination Défense de Versailles, protested a Murakami installation at Versailles claiming that his pop art and overt commercialism do not warrant the honor of an exhibition at the famed chateau (Ng 2010). At the time of the article’s writing, the group had approximately five thousand signatures. 5. Matsui Midori traces four stages in the artistic transformation of cute culture in Japan: (1) 1991 – 93: appropriation of cute images from popular culture by artists such as Murakami and Nishiyama Minako as a “critique of Japanese postmodern subculture”; (2) 1995 on: Nara Yoshitomo capturing the scowling naif, in parallel with young women during this same period using cameras to capture aspects of their everyday lives, which results in “the reclamation of adolescent innocence and amateurism”; (3) 1999: Murakami’s “aestheticization” of “Japanese Neo Pop” and “Superflat,” which results in “the formation of a uniquely Japanese artistic expression out of Tokyo’s postcolonial hybrid cul-

296  •  notes to chapter 7

ture”; and (4) 2000s: Takano Aya and Aoshima Chiho appropriating the erotic language of anime to create their own feminist utopic visions, which results in “the feminine reinvention of otaku genres through a gradual negotiation of male desire (Matsui 2005:211). 6. “Little Boy” also recalls General Douglas MacArthur’s infamous pronouncement presented to Congress in 1951 as supreme commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, assessing Japan’s stage of development as that of a boy of twelve, when compared with United States (and Germany) as mature adults of forty-­five years. 7. Those divides have become increasingly blurred amid “Cool Japan” hype. Three years after Hello Kitty’s debut in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York (see the introduction), Murakami’s eerie, cute characters KaiKai (a childlike character dressed as a rabbit) and Kiki (an impish, three-­eyed, fanged creature) made their own parade appearance in New York in 2010. Murakami’s characters’ inclusion in the iconic parade, however, differed from Hello Kitty’s in banking little on general public recognizability and more on the cultural cache of playful “high” art. In fact, the organizers of the Macy’s parade had sought Murakami’s participation since 2005 with a series of inflatables not linked to merchandise or cartoons, but to internationally recognized artists. Robin Hall, the executive producer of the New York parade, explained that the event “ ‘is a snapshot of American culture.’ While much of its roster is dedicated to readily identifiable figures like SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer [currently popular American cartoon figures], he said, ‘I do believe there’s room in this parade . . . for high art’ ” (Itzkoff 2010). In line with this belief, Murakami’s contributions were preceded in previous years by inflatables designed by Tom Otterness (Humpty Dumpty in 2005), Jeff Koons (silver rabbit in 2007), and Keith Haring (iconic figure holding up a heart in 2007). In an interview for the New York Times, Murakami described his parade balloon figures as “cute yet fearsome, . . . modern and yet connected to the past. They embody eccentric beauty” (ibid.). 8. This was preceded in 2002 by a policy speech in which Koizumi emphasized national development of intellectual property focusing on innovative and creative products, resulting in the establishment of the Strategic Council on Intellectual Property. Michal Daliot-­Bul notes the sequence of events of 2002, including Douglas McGray’s influential article on Japan’s “gross national cool” (Daliot-­Bul 2009:250 – 51). The concept of “Cool Japan” may be said to be the outcome of these events. 9. This dialogue was taken from www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23716592/ (accessed September 15, 2010). 10. In fact, some of those within the culture industries labeled “Cool Japan” criticize such governmental support. For example, the manga author Otsuka Eiji comments: “For those of us connected to comics and animation, the national notes to chapter 7   •  297

promotion of booming ‘Japanimation’ as a kind of successful mutant strain in the poor Japanese economy has really not been all that meaningful. . . . As far as we are concerned, as a subculture we take pride not in dubious recognition at the national level by the government but in creating comics that delight and are supported by readers. Furthermore, we question the motives of a national polity trying to cozy up to a sub-­or even counterculture” (Otsuka and Ohsawa 2005; quoted in Sugiura 2008:151). 11. Japan Times, search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-­bin/ed20100815a1.html. 12. The entire event was taped. The transcription of Monji’s remarks was derived from that taping. 13. See Daliot-­Bul for further discussion of the relationship between Cool Japan’s youth-­oriented imaging and older aestheticized imagings, at least according to the Japanese policy makers (2009:252 – 54). 14. Monji refers to ukiyo-­e, Japanese woodblock prints, primarily of the premodern period. Long considered mere everyday visual culture in Japan, they were not generally regarded as valuable works of art until Western collectors took notice and began purchasing them. Thus, some of the best-­known collections of ukiyo-­e exist outside Japan. This pattern, in which the Japanese place a high value upon aspects of their own culture primarily after Euro-­American experts have done so, has been common since the Meiji era (1868 – 1912). 15. See www.animenewsservice.com/archives/sanrio.htm (accessed September 8, 2010). 16. Some stores are also called “Sanrio Surprises.” Locations include Honolulu and Aiea, in Hawai’i; Alhambra, Culver City, Gardena, Temple City, and Milpitas, in California; Austin and San Antonio; Chattanooga; and Fort Lauderdale.

298  •  notes to chapter 7

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Index

addiction to Hello Kitty, 154, 155, 220 advertising. See marketing affect aliens, 164, 165 affective labor, 61, 70, 82 – 83, 162 African Americans, marketing to, 124 Ah Map. See Fan Man-­yee Ahmed, Sara, 20, 164 Akiyama, Leika, 233, 243 – 46, 250 Allison, Anne, 11, 37, 62, 252, 253 All Things Kawaii (website), 124 Alsworth, Sarah, 113 – 14 amae. See dependency ambiguity, 36 – 37, 48, 50, 57, 192, 227 – 29, 266 Americanization, 13 Angry Little Girls, 123 anime, 7, 258, 262 – 63 Anime News (magazine), 262 – 63 anniversary celebrations: fiftieth, 252 – 53; narratives, 80 – 82; Sanrio strategies, 233 – 38; thirtieth, 233 – 34; thirty-­fifth, 47, 76 – 80, 82, 85, 100, 233, 236 – 37, 238, 252 Anpanman, 263 anthropometry, 288n47 Aoki Misako, 258 Appadurai, Arjun, 12 Arden, Elizabeth, 33 Armstrong, Robert Plant, 19 – 20

art and aesthetics: edginess in, 109, 230 – 31, 235 – 37, 249; Hello Kitty as artisanal product, 40, 87 – 92, 248 – 49; kitsch and, 231 – 32, 249 – 50; patronage by Sanrio, 233 – 38, 249, 266 – 67; play and, 231 – 32, 235 – 37, 249 – 50; self-­censorship in, 240; sentimentality in, 230 – 32, 243 – 44, 249 – 50 Artemis Records, 96 Asian American counterculture, 125 – 26 Asian American women: consumerism of, 138 – 39; critiques by, 170 – 72; identity of, 9, 170 – 71; marketing to, 122 – 24; sex workers, 225 – 27, 227; stereotyping of, 171 – 74, 176 – 77, 181, 226, 228 Asians and Friends, 215 AsianWhite.Org (website), 172 Asian women: consumerism of, 138 – 39; stereotyping of, 168, 171 – 74, 226 asobi. See play Austin Powers in Goldmember (film), 100 authenticity, 21, 64, 73, 93 – 94, 110 avant-­garde, 168, 209, 230, 231, 244, 250 bad boys, 241 – 43, 254 – 57 Badtz-­Maru, 108, 139, 141 Band X Japan, 267

Banet-­Weiser, Sarah, 31, 81 Bank Gallery, 182 Barbie dolls, 3 – 4, 23, 35, 79, 107, 112, 265 Baudrillard, Jean, 20, 23, 129, 140, 161 Baunsu Kogyaru (film), 54 Belson, Ken, 87 Berlant, Lauren, 31 Big Bad Chinese Mama, 172, 224 biography of Hello Kitty, 77 – 80 blushing, 34 – 35 bondage. See sadomasochistic bondage Bourdieu, Pierre, 24 bow, meanings of, 76 – 77, 219 Boycott the Kitty! (online church), 163 branding: extensions, 100; of Japan, 28 – 29, 259 – 61, 264, 266 Bremner, Brian, 87 Britain, 17, 19, 83, 91 – 92, 235 Bronze Collection (Sachs artwork), 242 – 43 Bruna, Dick, 43 “Bubbles Bubblicious” (Akiyama art series), 246 Burlesque Hour, The, 168 “Butoh Cabaret,” 168 – 69 buzz. See marketing Campbell’s soup cans, 232 Candy Kids, 152 – 53 Carey, Mariah, 80, 95, 194 Carpasso, Nick, 230, 243 – 44, 250 celebrity outreach, 95 – 101 cell phone straps, Hello Kitty, 62, 70, 72, 74, 285n21 censorship, 36 – 37, 234, 240 Character Databank, 263 child labor, 165 – 66 children: nostalgia for childhood, 10 – 11, 57, 66, 104; as target audiences, 10 – 11, 29 – 32 Chin, Elizabeth, 121 Chinese American consumerism, 138 – 39 Choi, Angela, 163, 173 – 81, 233 Christianity, 193 – 95, 241 – 42

314  •  index

Chua Beng-­Huat, 38 Chung, Geraldine, 171 Coach, 136 Coca-­Cola, 13  –  14; Coca-­colonization, 12; as pop icon, 232 collectors, 128; desire of, 161; interviews, 148 – 55, 204 – 13, 217 – 24; lifestyle of, 160; of McDonald’s premiums, 126; mirroring by, 20; on product details, 93 – 94. See also fandom commodity fetishism, 10, 23, 120 – 21, 167, 197 – 98, 242, 266, 267 consumerism: Asian American, 138 – 39; children’s, 10, 11, 29 – 32; citizenship and, 31; excess in, 45, 121; geographies of, 121 – 26; global, 13 – 14; life cycle of Hello Kitty, 103 – 12; modes of, 8; normalized, 45; practices since 1980s, 30; shōjo, 48, 52; symbolism of, 44 – 45; in urban Japan, 45 Cook, Daniel, 29 – 30, 48 Cool Japan, 105, 257 – 63 coolness, 5, 26 – 29, 30, 62, 237. See also Japanese Cute-­Cool Coontz, Stephanie, 35 copyright infringement, 262, 279n9 Cracker Jack prizes, 287n37 crea (magazine), 55 crime. See “Hello Kitty Murder” cuteness: aspects of, 47; as cool, 26 – 29, 62; critique of, 167 – 70; emotion and, 8; as global cultural capital, 6; innocence and, 109, 197; intimacy of, 253 – 54; as kitsch, 24 – 26, 250 – 51; marketing of, 7; mitate and, 66; mouthless, 195 – 98; overload, 1; pink as, 76; pornography and, 232; sexuality and, 36; transformation and, 56; transformation of culture of, 296n5; world political economy of, 9. See also Japanese Cute-­Cool; kawaii Cutie for Independent Girls (magazine), 50

Daliot-­Bul, Michal, 257, 260 DasSHOKU Horal!, 168 – 70 David and Goliath, 163, 190 Davila, Arlene, 147 Dean, James, 27 Dear Daniel, 17 deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, Mass.), 243 – 45 dependency, 28, 35, 43 – 44, 56, 162 dhe. See Hollywood Digital Entertainment Corporation Diaz, Cameron, 80 Disney, Walt, 15 – 16, 195 – 96 Doane, Mary Ann, 56 – 57 Doi, Takeo, 56 dolls, 66 – 67, 79, 284n15 Doraemon, 258 Dora the Explorer, 297n7 Dreamkitty, 124 eBay, 126, 149, 155 economics, Japanese: in 1990s and 2000s, 69; in 1970s and 1980s, 46; in 1960s and 1970s, 16 Ecstasy, 153 edginess: of art world, 109, 230 – 31, 235 – 37, 249; in Asian Americans, 126; femininity and, 204 – 6, 208 Eisenhower, Mamie, 33 emergent authenticity, 21, 64 England. See Britain enjo kōsai, 6, 36, 53 – 54 eva Airways, 38, 75 Evers, Izumi, 1 – 3 Evil Princess Chikako, 186 – 87 excess: appreciation for, 199, 204 – 5, 208 – 9, 245 – 46; commodity fetishism and, 23, 266, 267; in consumerism, 45, 121; critique of, 187, 189, 190, 193, 197; cuteness and, 5 – 6; kitsch and, 24 – 26; kyarakutā and, 65, 67; repulsion of, 260

Facebook, 185 Fairey, Shepard, 125 family culture, 116, 147 – 48 fancy goods. See fanshii guzzu fandom: Asian American, 138 – 39; caring and, 56 – 57; consumer life cycle of, 103 – 12; customer loyalty, 102 – 3, 161; desire of, 161; endorsements and, 86; femininity and, 162, 211; gay, 149, 210, 214 – 16; hard-­ core, 224 – 26; Hispanic, 147 – 48; inter­generational, 160; interviews, 129 – 37, 139 – 47, 156 – 59, 204 – 13, 217 – 24; in Latin America, 39; lesbian, 201, 211, 214 – 16, 224; male, 155 – 56; multigenerational, 44; punk, 201 – 4, 292n3; seduction of, 119 – 20, 160 – 61, 194; sociality and, 160. See also collectors; consumerism Fan Man-­yee, 166 – 67, 193 fanshii guzzu: defined, 46; girl culture and, 48 – 55; kawaii and, 70 – 71; Sanrio on, 15, 17 fao Schwarz, 120, 150 Featherstone, Mike, 195 femininity: cuteness and, 8; edginess and, 204 – 6, 208; of fans, 162, 211; in girl culture, 52; gotōchi and, 73; iconography of, 202; Latina, 147; lesbians and, 211; obedience and, 43; performative, 214, 215 – 16; pink, 33, 35; pink power and, 37; subversion of Hello Kitty and, 216 feminism: critique of Hello Kitty, 171 – 74, 247; critique of mouthlessness, 172, 196 – 97; on Hello Kitty iconography, 202 – 3 Feminism and Riot Grrrl (website), 202 – 3 Fender guitar, Hello Kitty, 62, 205 Filipino consumerism, 139 Fiske, John, 1 Franek, Valerie, 124 Frank, Paul, 22 – 23

index   •  315

friendship: bow color and, 76; celebrity outreach and, 95 – 101; as Sanrio value, 84 – 87, 114, 120, 139, 164 FRUiTS, 3 Fuck Hello Kitty (Facebook group), 163, 205 Fujioka Shizuka, 258 Fujita Den, 13 Fukunaga Shuri, 7 Fuyushiba Tetsuzo, 75 Gastaldi, Peter, 93, 147 gay fandom, 149, 210, 214 – 16; interview, 217 – 24 Giant Robot, 125 gifting: culture of, 47; family size and, 52; as female practice, 69 – 70; generative, 68 – 71, 83; intergenerational fandom and, 160; of miyage, 72 – 75; as Sanrio trademark, 75, 76, 77; by shōjo, 70 – 71; “small gift, big smile” philosophy, 45, 70 – 71, 81, 83, 86, 108, 118, 147, 252, 258; surprise, 71; transnational, 138 – 39 girl culture: consumerism in, 10, 52; creation of, 48 – 55; femininity in, 52; global, 4, 32 – 38; kawaii in, 55 – 60; radical, 202 – 4; wide age range of, 4. See also shōjo global girl culture. See under girl culture globalization, 12 – 13, 12 – 15, 29 – 32, 126, 261 – 64 Goldman, Todd, 190 Good, Cynthia, 37 Goodbye Kitty (product line), 163, 190 – 91, 192 Goodbyekitty.net (website), 191 gotōchi product line, 73 – 74, 248 Greenberg, Clement, 24 Handler, Ruth, 35 Hannerz, Ulf, 12 Hanpanda (Nagi artwork), 235

316  •  index

happiness, 20; Hello Kitty message of, 114 – 15, 119, 139, 162, 178; as Sanrio value, 84 – 85, 112 – 18, 120, 139, 164 – 65 Harada Masato, 54 Harajuku Lovers, 123 Harris, Daniel, 27 – 28 Hatoyama, Ray, 240 headlines, 1, 38, 192; crime, 165 – 66; global, 254, 266; Hello Kitty photo shoot, 98; Hello Kitty sightings, 9; on subversive activities, 201, 242 Hell Kitty (website), 186 – 87 Hello Dali (Holt artwork), 247 Hello De Milo (Scott sculpture), 235 Hell of Kitty (website), 194 Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary Book, 76, 77 Hello Kitty Gets a Mouth (Scholnick performance), 182 Hello Kitty Hell (blog), 163, 186 – 89, 188, 192 Hello Kitty Is Dead (mini-­dvd), 171 – 72 “Hello Kitty Kat” (rock song), 164 Hello Kitty Memories, 76, 81 “Hello Kitty Murder,” 166 – 67, 192 Hello Kitty Must Die (Choi), 163, 173, 175 Hello Kitty Perversions (website), 187 Hello Kitty’s Dream Light Fantasy (musical), 39 Hello Kitty Shinto Shrine (Akiyama artwork), 245, 246 Hello Masterpiece (Holt artwork), 246 – 48 Hello (Sex) Kitty (Uyehara performance), 170 – 71, 171 Hensley, Bill, 84, 93 – 95, 101 – 2, 103, 104, 148, 262 – 63 Henster Productions, 190 Hibino Katsuhiko, 235, 236 hikime-­kagihana in emaki, 21 Hilton, Nicky, 80 Hilton, Paris, 80, 111 – 12 Hispanics: fandom, 147 – 48; marketing to, 124

hkh (blog). See Hello Kitty Hell (blog) hkid. See Hello Kitty Is Dead (mini-­dvd) Hollywood Digital Entertainment Corporation (dhe), 234 hologram glasses, Hello Kitty, 62 Holt, Leslie, 233, 246 – 48 homogenization, 13, 14, 46 Hot Topic, 120, 137, 212 Howes, David, 11 – 12 Hughes, Mark, 187 Hui, Becky, 119, 139 – 47 Hutcheon, Linda, 200 Ichigo Shimbun (newsletter), 87 iconography of Hello Kitty: art subgenre of, 237, 245 – 46; aspects of, 16 – 17; femininity in, 202; Japanese Cute-­Cool and, 8, 23, 25, 47; multigenerational fan base of, 44; play and, 239; shock and, 267 – 68 identity: Asian American female, 9, 170 – 71; gay male, 214; gendered, 30, 248; kyarakutā-­based, 62; multiple categories, 54 – 55; national, 14, 259; objects and construction of, 20, 31; regional, 73 – 74; Sanrio employees and, 114 – 15. See also branding of Japan innocence: commodified, 26, 29, 197; Hello Kitty message of, 109, 114 – 15, 156, 162, 197, 206, 250; kawaii and, 59; kitsch and, 36; of pink, 34, 117; sexualized, 227 – 28; shōjo, 49, 50, 55 Interact, W. K., 235, 236 intimacy: of cuteness, 253 – 54; familiarity and, 67, 254; kawaii gaze and, 57; pink globalization and, 9, 119; pocket, 62, 65; retro-­, 83; serial, 139, 161 irony, 106, 113, 210, 248; kitsch and, 197, 232; kogyaru and, 53; lesbians and, 211; play and, 28, 186, 200, 250; in punk culture, 203

Ivy, Marilyn, 256 Iwabuchi, Koichi, 14, 16, 259 Jackson, Daniel, 235 Japanese Americans, 9 – 10, 138, 170 Japanese Cultural Agency, 257 Japanese Cute-­Cool: aspects of, 6 – 7; Cool Japan and, 105, 263; defined, 3; exhibit of, 255; expanding culture of, 201, 253; Hello Kitty iconography and, 8, 23, 25, 47; Hello Kitty wink and, 26 – 29, 227 – 28; irresistibility of, 32 – 38; kawaii as, 266; marketing in 2000s, 15, 18, 123; as national branding, 28 – 29, 259, 261, 264; Peters on, 105 – 7; pink globalization and, 5 – 6, 9, 47 – 48, 117, 243; political under­ currents of, 256 – 57; as revenge of otaku nation, 256; as spectacle, 3; subversion of, 226 – 28 Japanese Neo Pop, 254, 256 – 57 Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno (mockumentary), 1 – 3, 2 Japan Society, 255 Japan Times, 6, 88, 165, 181, 260 – 61 J-­Box/J-­List (online shopping sites), 124 – 25 Jenkins, Henry, 266 Joy Luck Club, The (Tan), 176 – 77 J-­pop, 252 Juicy Couture, 131, 136 Kahara Tomomi, 87 Kaiser, Henry J., 34 Kaiser, Susan, 30 Karpen, Fritz, 24 kawaii: contrasting aspects of, 25; critique of, 187; defined, 43; etymology of term, 56; fanshii guzzu and, 70 – 71; gaze, 57; in girl culture, 55 – 60; global commodities of, 6 – 9; as Japanese Cute-­Cool, 266; kyarakutā and, 60 – 62, 70 – 71; marketing of, 7;

index   •  317

kawaii (c0ntinued): muteness and, 119 – 20; pink globalization and, 227 – 28; sdk, 58; sexy, 224; shōjo on, 55 – 56, 59 – 60, 65 – 66; taishi, 258 – 59 Kelsky, Karen, 17 Kelts, Roland, 260 Keroppi, 130, 139, 141 – 42 Kido, Kandice, 138 kimono, 75, 78, 79, 258 Kimura Yu, 258 Kinkade, Thomas, 244 Kinsella, Sharon, 55 kitsch: art and, 231 – 32, 249 – 50; Asian, 216; cute as, 24 – 26, 250 – 51; described, 212 – 13; innocence and, 26; Japanese, 6, 18; pinkness and, 28, 34; transgressive, 197 Kitty Ex. Perfect Guide Book (exhibit/ book), 233 – 34, 236 – 37, 249 kitty ex. x erikonail*, 235 Kitty Goods Collection (magazine), 59 – 60, 60 KittyHell.com (blog). See Hello Kitty Hell (blog) Kitty Kit Spy (Interact collaboration), 235, 236 Kitty Mama. See Yamaguchi Yūko Kitty Stone (Hibino artwork), 235 Klein, Naomi, 100 – 101 kogyaru, 52 – 54 Koizumi Jun’ichiro, 63 – 65, 257, 258 Komura Masahiko, 258 Kondo Seiichi, 261 Kopytoff, Igor, 25, 77 – 78 Kulka, Tomas, 231 Kurosaki Eriko, 235 kyarakutā: as comforting, 67; defined, 11, 47; flexibility of, 62; frame of play and, 60; Hello Kitty as, 30, 44; kawaii and, 60 – 62; mitate and, 66; in 1980s, 61; in 1970s, 61; oversaturation of, 63, 65 – 66, 67, 221; shōjo and, 60 – 61; transformation of real into, 63

318  •  index

labor. See child labor Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Lawrence), 232 Lady Gaga, 80, 98 – 100, 99, 223, 236 LaMarre, Thomas, 119, 256 “Landed” (crop circle), 235, 236 Landover Baptist Church (website), 163, 193 – 94 Lawrence, D. H., 232 Lebra, Takie, 64 Lee, Bianca, 225 Lee, Leela, 123 LeGuin, Ursula K., 119 – 20, 162 Lennon, Sean, 235 Leonardo, Kathia, 194 lesbian fandom, 201, 211, 214 – 16, 224 Lévi-­Strauss, Claude, 19 Liberal Democratic Party, 63 License! Global (magazine), 252 Licensing Industry Awards, 253 licensing of Hello Kitty: brand protection and, 114, 243; marketing in 2000s and, 10, 22; offices, 39, 85; product fatigue and, 263 – 64; Sanrio’s process, 62 Lilly Pulitzer, 136 Lin, Vivian Wenli, 171 Lipinski, Tara, 96 Little Boy (exhibit), 255 – 57 Little Twin Stars, 141 Loeb, Lisa, 96 – 97, 97, 206 logo: anniversary theme, 77; Hello Kitty as, 58, 59, 248, 268; of Riot Grrrls, 203; transferable, 54, 59, 62 – 63 Lolita complex. See rorikon Louis Vuitton, 54, 136, 255 MacAdams, Lewis, 26 MacArthur, Douglas, 297n6 MacCannell, Dean, 72, 73 Macias, Patrick, 1 – 3 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, 3 Madame Alexander dolls, 292n3

maneki neko, 126, 127 manga, 7, 49, 167, 262, 283n11 Mansfield, Jayne, 33 – 34 Marchi, Dave, 97 – 98, 100, 112, 115 – 17, 163 – 64, 191 – 92, 238 – 41 marketing: of cuteness, 7; friendly strategies, 92 – 94; geographies of, 121 – 26; global, 253; guerrilla tactics, 97 – 98; if Japanese Cute-­Cool, 18, 123; mediascape of Hello Kitty, 9; in 1970s and 1980s, 10 – 11; of nostalgia, 80 – 83; race in, 123 – 24; research, 101 – 3; strategies, 92 – 94; in 2000s, 10 – 11, 18, 22, 123; in the United States, 120 Marling, Karal Ann, 33 – 34 masculinity, 27 – 28, 65, 132, 155 – 56, 259 Matsui, Midori, 254, 296n5 Mattel Corporation, 35, 79 Mauss, Marcel, 68 McDonald’s, 13 – 14, 38, 54, 126, 165 – 66, 195 – 96, 241 McGray, Douglas, 5, 257, 260 McLaren, Malcolm, 235 McRobbie, Angela, 36 McVeigh, Brian, 70 meaning: 1970s global markets and, 16; play and, 59 – 60; shifting, 18 – 24; signifiers and, 8, 19 Medicom, 220 Mehta, Rajan, 235 memory work, 82 – 83, 244 Merish, Lori, 56 – 57 Mickey Mouse, 194, 228 – 29, 236, 265 Miller, Laura, 61 mirroring, 20 – 21, 67, 129, 261 Miss Piggy, 236 mitate, 66 miyage, 72 – 75 modernity: Asian-­inflected, 14 – 15, 256; Coca-Cola as, 13; consumerism and, 44 – 45; coolness and, 30; as Euro-­

American, 12, 14, 16, 228, 265; healing from, 69; symbolism of, 229 Monji Kenjirō, 261 – 62 Monroe, Marilyn, 232 Mookychick (website), 202 – 3 mouthlessness: as blank slate, 58 – 59, 67, 91, 264; codification and, 66; critique of, 172, 181 – 85, 196 – 97; cuteness and, 195 – 98; global recognition of, 10; historical precedents, 21; shock and, 267 – 68; as stereotype of Asian women, 173 – 74, 181, 226. See also muteness mukokuseki, 16 – 18 Murakami Takashi, 6, 125, 251, 254 – 58, 262 Murase Miyeko, 21 muteness: amorality of, 166 – 67; as blank slate, 20 – 21, 162; charm of, 119 – 20, 160; consumerism and, 197; passivity and, 226. See also mouthlessness Myers, Mike, 101 My Melody, 141, 142 nail art, 235 Naito Chizuko, 50, 64 Nakajima USA, 93, 122 – 23 Nakamura, Eric, 125 Nara Yoshitomo, 58, 125 national branding. See branding Neiman Marcus, 134 – 35 Nemitz, Barbara, 34 Newitz, Annalee, 167 New York Stock Exchange (nyse), 252 Ngai, Sianne, 58 Nickelodeon, 81 Nintendo, 158 No Logo (Klein), 100 Noda Nagi, 235 nostalgia, 17; evoking, 244; for idealized childhood, 10 – 11, 57, 66, 104; marketing of, 80 – 83

index   •  319

Nye, Joseph, 5, 257, 261 nyse. See New York Stock Exchange objects: dependency and, 162; happy, 20; identity construction and, 20, 31; meaning and, 1, 18 – 24; transformation and, 56; transnational, 67, 229 omiyage. See miyage omoide no o-­shigoto. See memory work Orenstein, Peggy, 35 – 36 Otsuka Eiji, 64 Owens, Tim, 188 Pablo, Juan, 194 parody, 28, 192, 203, 231, 250 Passion, Mariko, 225 – 26 Patrick, Tera, 100, 225 Paul Frank, 31 Peiss, Kathy, 33 People (magazine), 95 Peters, Dan, 105 – 7, 117 Phelan, Peggy, 17 Pink (magazine), 7 pink globalization, 32 – 38; edginess and, 230; elements of, 253; intimacy and, 9, 119; Japanese Cute-­Cool and, 5 – 6, 9, 47 – 48, 117, 243; kawaii and, 6 – 9, 227 – 28; as mirror, 261; national identity and, 14; overview, 38 – 40; as play, 200, 253; shōjo and, 227 – 28; wink of, 227 – 28, 264 – 68 pinkness: associative derivations of, 33 – 35; critique of, 197; as cuteness, 76; as deceptive, 175; film genre, 36 – 37; global girl culture and, 32 – 38; as happiness, 113; as innocence, 34, 117; kitsch and, 28, 34; pink-­as-­black power, 28 – 29, 37, 202, 265 – 66; postfeminism on, 7; sexiness and, 36 – 37 play, frame of: art and, 231 – 32, 235 – 37, 249 – 50; boundaries and, 249; branding of Japan and, 259, 266; controversy and, 254; in criticism,

320  •  index

186; iconography and, 237; irony and, 200; juxtaposition in, 235 – 36, 254; meaning and, 59 – 60; rock and roll, 199; subversion and, 199 – 200, 216, 226 – 29; wink and, 28, 200, 227, 265 Pokémon, 10, 45, 102, 167 Poochareon, Ann, 171 Pop Art movement, 230 – 31 Popcorn, Faith, 7 – 8, 26, 104 pornography, 36, 50, 125, 225, 232 postfeminism on girl culture, 37 – 38 Pountain, Dick, 27 Precious Moments, 27, 159, 212 – 13 Presley, Elvis, 33 – 34, 232 Pretty Sweet (exhibition catalogue), 230, 231, 243 Puffy AmiYumi, 258 punk fandom, 201 – 4, 292n3; interview, 204 – 13. See also Riot Grrrl movement Purorando, 63, 75, 86 Rainbow Bright, 152 – 53 rave culture, 152 – 53, 167, 194 Riot Grrrl movement, 202 – 3, 226 Rivadeneira, Jamie, 236, 238 Robertson, Jennifer, 63 Rogers, David, 27 rorikon, 6, 36, 50 Royal Hawaiian Hotel, 34 Rutherford, Paul, 13 Sachs, Tom, 191, 233, 241 – 43, 246, 250 sadomasochistic bondage, 50 – 51, 51, 54, 225 San Francisco Bay Guardian (news­ paper), 167 Sanrio: American operations, 92 – 94; as art patron, 233 – 38, 249, 266 – 67; celebrity outreach, 95 – 101; company philosophy, 84 – 87, 112 – 18, 163 – 64; on consumer life cycle, 103 – 12; on fan subversions, 200 – 201, 225;

founding of, 15; friendly marketing strategies, 92 – 94; gotōchi line, 73 – 74, 248; guerrilla marketing tactics, 97 – 98; on Hello Kitty biography, 77 – 80; marketing research, 101 – 3; marketing strategies in 21st century, 253; nostalgia marketing by, 80 – 83; phases of, 38; “small gift, big smile” philosophy, 45, 70 – 71, 81, 83, 86, 108, 118, 147, 252, 258; sociality ethos of, 68 – 69, 113; stores, 122; theme park, 63, 75, 86. See also licensing of Hello Kitty Savigliano, Marta, 8 – 9 Sawaragi Noi, 256 – 57 Schattschneider, Ellen, 66 – 67 Schiaparelli, Elsa, 33 Scholnick, Jaime, 182, 183 – 84, 233 schoolgirl uniforms, 6, 50, 53, 54, 258 – 59 Schor, Juliet, 32 Scott, Jeremy, 235, 236 sdk (superdeformed kawaii), 58 sentimentality: in art, 230 – 32, 243 – 44, 249 – 50; cuteness and, 8, 25, 26, 56; of kitsch, 24, 197 sexuality: lesbian porn, 225; pinkness and, 36 – 37; shōjo, 55; stereotyped, 224 Shimizu Yuko, 87 – 88 Shishiro, 63 – 65, 67 shōjo: eternal youth and, 81 – 82; gift giving by, 70 – 71; as girl-­child/ sex-­child, 49 – 55; on kawaii, 55 – 56, 59 – 60, 65 – 66; kyarakutā and, 60 – 61, 65 – 66; manga, 283n11; in 1960s – 1970s, 48 – 50; pink globalization and, 227 – 28; schoolgirl uniforms, 6, 50, 53, 54, 258 – 59; stereotyping of, 53 – 54; as target market, 68, 69, 77. See also kogyaru Shoot a Mouth on Hello Kitty (Scholnick performance), 182 – 84, 183 – 84

signifiers, 8, 19, 189, 201, 203 “small gift, big smile.” See under gifting Smashing Pumpkins (rock band), 164 Smith, Joe, 155 sociality, 47, 61, 68 – 71, 83, 113, 114 – 15, 139. See also gifting soft power, 5 – 6, 28 – 29, 31, 252, 257 – 61, 262, 265 Spears, Britney, 80, 236 SpongeBob SquarePants, 297n7 Stallybrass, Peter, 197 Starbucks, 14, 195 – 96 Stearns, Peter, 27 Stefani, Gwen, 123 Steinberg, Marc, 63 stereotyping: of Asian American women, 171 – 74, 176 – 77, 181, 226, 228; of Asian culture, 167, 198; of Asian women, 168, 171 – 74, 226; of female domesticity, 30; of gay males, 214; gender-­based, 165; Hello Kitty clientele and, 155 – 57; of Latinas, 147; orientalist, 160, 171 – 72; Riot Grrrls and, 202; sexualized, 224; of shōjo, 53 – 54; souvenirs and, 86 Stewart, Susan, 25, 73, 161 Strawberry King, 87 Stupid Factory, 190 Sturken, Marita, 25 – 26, 82 Sugiura Tsutomu, 260 Superflat movement, 254 – 57, 262 – 63 Super Mario Brothers, 153 Surface to Air, 235, 236 Susumu Emori, 264 Tafolla, Adeline (Ady), 148 – 55 Takashi Murakami. See Murakami Takashi Takayuki Tatsumi, 16 Tamagotchi, 102 Tan, Amy, 176 Taoyuan International Airport, 75 Tarantino, Tarina, 210

index   •  321

Target, 111, 120 target audiences: children, 10 – 11, 29 – 32; mothers, 10 – 11; shōjo, 68, 69, 77 tattoos, 134, 188, 217, 220 – 21 Teletubbies, 153 thingness, 19 – 23 Thomas, Nicholas, 18 – 19 Thompson, Robert Farris, 27 Three Apples (exhibition), 76, 236, 237, 238 – 41, 249 Tiffany and Company, 136 Time (magazine), 91 Tisch School of the Arts (New York University), 171 – 72 Tohmatsu Kazuo, 234 tourism, 258 – 59 Toys R Us, 150 true believers, 115 – 16, 118, 147 Tsuji Kunihiko, 86, 252 Tsuji Shintarō, 15, 16 – 17, 75, 84 – 87, 111, 163 Tsung-­ji Tsai, 38 Tsutomu Sugiura, 260 Umiumare, Yumi, 168 – 70, 233 Uncyclopedia (website), 189 Undercover, 220 unicef, 165 unmarked culture, 18 urban Japan: consumer culture of, 45; kogyaru and, 77; kyarakutā in, 63, 65; mockumentary on, 1 – 3; social life in, 69; youth culture, 3, 278n1 US Weekly (magazine), 95 Uyehara, Denise, 170 – 71, 171, 233 vibrators, Hello Kitty, 10, 55, 137, 182, 186, 194, 224 – 25 Victoria’s Secret Pink line, 7, 131

322  •  index

Wagner, Billy, 155 “Walk Through Hell, A” (Owens image), 188 Walmart, 111, 120, 138 Walsworth, Sarah, 84, 113 – 17 Watson, James L., 13 – 14 websites, anti-­Hello Kitty, 185 – 89 wet/dry Japan, 70, 286n29 White, Allon, 197 Wilson, Edmund, 232 Wilson, Marika, 3 wink: as cute/cool, 62; as friendship, 160 – 62; and Japanese Cute-­Cool, 28, 227 – 28; as oxymoron, 26 – 29; pink globalization and, 264 – 68; as play, 28, 200, 227, 265; subversion and, 226 – 29; wink on pink, use of term, 7 – 8, 26 Wise, Brownie, 33 Wong, Martin, 125 World Trade Organization protests (1999), 13, 264 Wu, Kiko, 225 Yamaguchi Masao, 66 Yamaguchi Yūko, 1, 85 – 86, 87, 89 – 92, 117, 118, 162, 266 Yamanashi Silk Center Co., Ltd., 15, 46 Yasukuni Shrine bride dolls, 66 yellow expression, 18, 19 Yellow Kitties, 214 – 15 “Yokoso! Japan” campaign, 258 – 59 Yonekubo Setsuko, 87 – 88 youth culture, Japanese, 3, 5, 123, 244, 278n1 YouTube, 189 – 90, 225 Yuki (singer), 50 – 51, 51 Zhejiang Yinrun Leisure Development, 38