Wink on Pink: Interpreting Japanese Cute as It Grabs the Global Headlines

Abstract

Consider the following news items by which Asia is making the headlines:In a 2007 “mockumentary” book entitled Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, 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, stand two young women in various shades of pink from head to toe: shocking pink hair adorned with multiple pink barrettes, fuzzy pink kitten earmuffs, pink baby doll dresses, mismatched pink knee-high socks, and pink laced shoes. Around one woman's neck hangs that icon of cute: Sanrio Company's flagship character since 1974, Hello Kitty. Among the barrettes in the other woman's hair is, again, Kitty. Standing at the entrance to Harajuku—the commercial mecca of street youth culture in Japan—they pose, leaning into each other, hands clenched, kitten-paw-style, at their cheeks. In the insouciant style of these Tokyo women, the look is not passively sweet, but assertively in-your-face kawaii (cute). This is cute with a wink, gesturing to the cameras that await them. The women pose for multiple gazes, knowing that what they donned that morning might be seen thousands of miles away, captured by foreign and Japanese photographers and posted on Web sites or eventually published in magazines and glossy coffee table books. The interaction between viewer and viewed defines and reifies the spectacle of kawaii, or what I call “Japanese cute.” Nestled within the interaction, tucked among the frills of this Tokyo “cute overload” rests that mouthless icon of Japanese girl culture, Hello Kitty.Another gaze upon Japanese cute and, specifically, Hello Kitty comes from multiple news wire sources in August 2007. The headline declares, “To Punish Thai Police, a Hello Kitty Armband.” Reported widely from the Associated Press to CNN International to Al Jazeera, the story revolves around a new strategy devised by Bangkok police to discipline not the general public, but their own male patrol force. Any delinquent officer would be shamed into compliance by being forced to wear a bright pink Hello Kitty armband. Hello Kitty—that ultimate symbol of cute femininity in Asia and elsewhere—presumably provided a sufficient threat to the police officers' masculinity. As of the news item's reporting, none of the armbands had actually been used. The threat of being publicly Hello Kitty-ed, apparently, was enough. The global press had a field day.Yet more headlines. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, high fashion in the United States has been speaking the Hello Kitty language. In October 2008, Sanrio unveiled its newest vision of cute-as-chic: Sanrio Luxe in New York's Times Square. The first concept store of its kind, Sanrio Luxe abandoned the pencils, erasers, and lunch boxes that were the original staples of the Hello Kitty line and replaced them with designer fashions, diamond-encrusted watches, and finely crafted luggage—with prices to match—all bearing the characteristic Hello Kitty logo. Managers say that many items have been selling out quickly to Japanese, American, and European buyers, in spite of the global recession. Many of the latest iterations of Hello Kitty in the Luxe store and elsewhere depict a variant of the feline visage: Not only is she mouthless, but also she is winking.Meanwhile, the cosmetic line M.A.C. made a major Kitty plunge in 2009, featuring not only a new line of Hello Kitty cosmetics, but also decorating their stores with Hello Kitty in blackface. The Honolulu M.A.C. store featured a striking promotional figure: a bare-chested, bronze-skinned man in tight black leather pants, nails painted black (presumably using nail polish from the new M.A.C. Hello Kitty line), sporting an oversized Hello Kitty head in black, edged with pink. Looking at this image with its sadomasochistic undertones, one cannot help but be astonished by the distance that Japanese cut