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-Caption: Wind-Up Hello Kitty, 2008
by Tom Sachs. Photographed by Mario
Sorrenti at Lever House in New York,
2008.

Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific

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hello kitty’s trek across the pacific
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duke university press  durham and london  2013

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© 2013 Duke University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
All rights reserved Publication Data
Yano, Christine Reiko.
Printed in the United States of
Pink globalization : Hello Kitty’s trek
America on acid-­free paper ∞
across the Pacific / Christine R. Yano.
Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan pages cm
Typeset in Chaparral Pro by Includes bibliographical references and
Copperline Book Services, Inc. index.
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­ isbn 978-0-8223-5351-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5363-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Publication Data appear on the last
1. Hello Kitty (Fictitious character). 
printed page of this book.
2. Japan—Commerce.  3. Exports—
Hello Kitty® is a trademark of Sanrio Japan.  4. Character merchandising. 
Company, Ltd. The references to and use 5. Globalization.  I. Title.
of third-­party images and material in this hf3826.5.y36 2013
book, including the images and materials of 306.3—dc23
Sanrio Company, Ltd., are made under the 2013005285
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.
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 273

Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibit and Catalogue

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 De-
partment 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 ba-
sic 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 em-
ployees (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 subse-
quent 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 of-
fice 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 com-
pany publications from 1998 through 2010.3 I recorded and had tran-
scribed thirty-­one formal interviews, but engaged in countless more in-
formal 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 rela-

x  •  preface
tively new wave of interest spawned by Japan’s “cool” moment identi-
fied 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 mean-
ing, from those working within Sanrio to far-­flung consumers and crit-
ics. 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 interview-
ees 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 produc-
tions 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 San-
rio. 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 grate-
ful to interviewees who have taken interest in following my work and
asking about its progress (a reasonable question, especially after sev-
eral 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, Earl-
ham 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 manu-
script. 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 Aki-
yama, 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 (Rout-
ledge, 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 Inter-
national 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 enthu-
siasm for a Sanrio anniversary exhibit in Los Angeles in 2010. Marika
took photos, listened to my public talks, forwarded me Internet sight-
ings, 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, multi-
valent 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 lat-

preface   •  xiii
est tidbits in an already Kitty-­infused world. While I am ultimately re-
sponsible 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 head-
lines. 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 School-
•••••••
•••••••
girl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, the jour- •••••••
•••••••
nalists 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 ex- •••••••
•••••••
ample 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
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
•••••••
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 profes-
sional 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 in-
teraction, 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 broad-
cast. More than forty-­four million viewers tuned into the parade of stars
that included Hello Kitty alongside other icons of American popular cul-
ture 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 Bar-
bie, 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 fash-
ion 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, bub-
bles 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 Japa-
nese 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 back-
bone 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 oth-
ers, it will encounter less resistance to its wishes. If its culture and ide-
ology 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 art-
ist 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 embar-
rass 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 im-
ages labeled kawaii (glossed in English as “cute,” but with different cul-
tural 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 commercializa-
tion 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 al-
lows 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 over-
seas” (quoted in Kageyama 2006:C9). Fukunaga’s comment makes ana-
lyzing the phenomenon a bit of a chicken-­and-­egg question: Are Japa-
nese 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 possi-
bilities of cute or even sexy — self-­presentation acceptable and desirable
for some segments of the female population in the industrial world. Wit-
ness 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 linge-
rie 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 so-
cial 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 note-
pads at a moment’s notice. . . . It’s a small but very public act of rebel-
lion” (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, hu-
mor, 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, deper-
sonalized 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 rea-
sons, including aesthetics and quality. These consumers do not neces-
sarily 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 pur-
chase 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 trac-
ing 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 politi-
cal economy of cute” in the 2000s, of which Hello Kitty is a part. This
macroperspective embraces the complex factors that frame the phe-
nomenon of both production and reception: nation-­cultures, political
interrelationships, and global economies. At the same time, Pink Global-
ization 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 me-
dia mavens and their newly black pink. These personal stories etch inti-
macy 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 commu-
nications. 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, fol-
lowed 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 Ja-
pan 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 mouth-
lessness; 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 con-
sumer 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 prod-
ucts primarily through licensing arrangements that expanded the mar-
keting of Hello Kitty multifold in the 2000s. However, whereas media
tie-­ins add to the imaging of the figure, especially by providing a nar-
rative 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 be-
yond 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 fa-

10  •  introduction
miliarity of the icon. Young mothers may take the birth of their daugh-
ters 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 ev-
erywhere, 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 “enchant-
ment 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. An-
other 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 sou-
venirs, 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 Ja-
pan’s multibillion-­dollar kyarakutā industry, taking its place as one of
the most highly recognized figures within and outside of Japan. “Think-
ing 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 em-
ployed) in different societies” (1996:2). This book grapples with the so-
cial 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 sig-
nifies far more than mere sales of goods and services. Rather, the goods
and services append an overwhelmingly seductive tide of powerful im-
ages: modernity, freedom, individuality — as well as cultural imperial-
ism 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 mod-
ern 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). Ap-
padurai’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 sub-
tends — always occurs within specific times, places, market infrastruc-
tures, 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 mar-
kets; 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 mar-
keted 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 bev-
erages and the interaction of local beverages in a Coke-­dominated mar-
ket. 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 pro-
tests 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 im-
perialism 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, econom-
ics, 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 “decen-
tered 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 life-
style 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 dis-
cuss in chapter 4, Hello Kitty has her critics, but these look more specifi-
cally 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 neces-
sarily 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 na-
tional 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 estab-
lished 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 refer-
enced 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 na-
tionality) 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 stan-
dard 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 electron-
ics, 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 neu-
tral. 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 com-
pany’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 par-
ity, on the one hand in the marketplace and on the other in people’s
imagination. The mixing of capitalist ambitions and global competitive-
ness 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 sis-
ter 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 cre-
ates a number of characters, each has a separate biography and imag-
ined world, narrated primarily on the company website. Thus the imag-
ined 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 so-
phistication, an apotheosis of ‘class,’ that is contrasted favorably to the
‘coarseness’ of the United States” (2001:6). England — home of canoni-
cal Western literature, “mother country” to the United States, imperi-
alist 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 Brit-
ish 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 interpre-
tation 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 struc-
tures of power. In Euro-­American culture these include the masculine
gaze or white, middle-­class values. Simply put, unmarked elements in-
dicate 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 vocabu-
lary 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 aesthet-
ics 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 favor-
ably 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 (national-
ity) 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 physi-
cal “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 mean-

18  •  introduction
ings (1991:123). This jostle changes continually in response to socio­
political conditions, even as it plays a part in constituting those condi-
tions. 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 ritual-
istic (1991:187). Likewise, the movement of a commercial object such as
Hello Kitty incorporates multiple uses and processes of meaning mak-
ings. 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 mean-
ings 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 ra-
cially 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 cir-
cumscribe 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 unteth-
ered 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 mean-
ing 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 selec-
tion, 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 signifi-
cant 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 ma-
terial 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 con-
stituting 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 mak-
ing 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 blank-
ness 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 in-
vested 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 ev-
ery 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 ob-

20  •  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 in-
cludes twelfth-­century depictions from The Tale of Genji:

The conventional figures of men and women are portrayed with no at-
tempt 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 them-
selves psychologically with the individuals portrayed in the paint-
ings. (1983:66 – 67)

One can see a historical lineage of the practice of hikime-­kagihana (ab-

stracting a face through shorthand stylistic symbols) in subsequent
seventeenth-­ century woodblock prints, through twentieth-­ century
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 fea-
tures of consumerism, identities, nationhood, and transnational flows,
but also in intrinsic physical aspects. These may be pared down to spe-
cific 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 re-
mained 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 Bud-
dhist henshin (transformation), Hello Kitty changes form: she becomes,
accruing and transmitting a certain amount of charismatic and mer-
cantile 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 pos-
sibilities 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 mar-
ketable. At the same time, Sanrio’s borrowings of different guises ex-
tends 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 charac-
ters, 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 fetish-
ism 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 specifi-
cally 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 is-
sues 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 infor-
mation, 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 Japa-
nese Cute-­Cool interpreted in marketplaces as diverse as Milwaukee,
London, Hong Kong, and Honolulu? And how are these meanings en-
gaged 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 con-
tent 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 Aus-
trian art critic Fritz Karpen deriding the vulgarity of “high art” imita-
tions 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 foun-
dations 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 be-
yond 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 ironi-
cally — 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 locat-
ing kitsch lies exactly in the borderline of taste crossing into the un-
restricted 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 ex-
emplifies the “moral economy” surrounding goods that Igor Kopytoff
discusses, assessing value as a project infused with sociocultural mean-
ing and judgment (1986:64). As Susan Stewart puts it: “The kitsch ob-
jects 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 con-
stituting 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 de-
sign, appearance, or content” or even with “pretentious trash.” Rather,
many of the qualities she embodies — sentimentality, cuteness, com-
mercialism, 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 connec-
tions 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 in-
fantile 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 fol-
low, I examine ways in which Sanrio, Hello Kitty, and a cult of cute may
be embedded within related practices of the global production of com-
modified innocence.

Cute as Cool: The Winking Oxymoron

Cute and kitsch fit neatly together, the sentimentality fitting the maud-
lin 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 na-
ture” 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 sub-
cultural 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 ver-
sion of this kind of distancing (see chapter 5 for subversive uses of Hello
Kitty): “Cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals to ex-
press 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 noncha-
lance. . . . 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 an-
other 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 responsi-
bility 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 con-
trast 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 indi-
vidualism performed as an aloof, sangfroid stance. Daniel Harris calls

introduction   •  27
coolness “an aesthetic of the streets, a style of deportment. . . . Cool-
ness 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 infan-
tilized 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 to-
gether various strands of pinkness central to this book — girl culture,
play, sexuality, exotica, even kitsch. A wink frames Hello Kitty specifi-
cally as play (including irony, parody, and sexual innuendo) and, more im-
portantly, 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 member-
ship extended to those who understand and assume the frame of play
(see chapter 5). Producers and many adult consumers understand im-
plicitly 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 in-
nocence rests in the continued association of Hello Kitty with the world
of young consumers. In fact, Sanrio’s cat garners our attention as a Japa-
nese 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 twen-
tieth century and the twenty-­first, including what the sociologist Dan-
iel 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 chil-
dren as consumers in their own right. This change in perspective re-
sulted in “pediocular” goods, retail spaces, and advertising techniques,
including the use of popular characters decorating age-­graded, gen-
dered 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 consump-
tion (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 spe-
cifically, 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 in-
dustrial countries, she is not strictly a plaything. Even now, when one
purchases a Hello Kitty plush toy, she represents not so much some-
thing 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 im-
print 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 iden-
tity. Furthermore, as a transnational emblem of cuteness, Kitty’s life-
style branding helps female youth from Asia to North America and be-
yond share in a consumerist, global girlhood. Buying Hello Kitty marks
shared membership in a newly minted, underage shopping cohort, im-
bued 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 consum-

30  •  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, per-
sonal 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 accept-
ability 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 consump-
tion 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 Nickel-
odeon helps us understand the complex linkages — that is, consumer-
ism as the basis for constructing citizenship, which may include chil-
dren 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 under-
stand the practices and affiliations of brand loyalty. They learn these
lessons early and often, through practices of purchase and use (Bour-
dieu 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 ar-
ticulate 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 ma-
nipulation 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 flour-
ishes as part of global girl culture — whether bought by tweens, house-
wives, 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 touch-
stone 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 en-
coded 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 previ-
ous 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 vi-
brant 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 ne-
gotiations, 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 Ca-
dillac, and a canary dyed pink — symbolized the feminine connections
that drove the company and sales techniques built on housewife soci-
ality (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 (Mar-
ling 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 consid-
ered a generational and class divide over which pink to celebrate, lady-
like 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 de-
rives its meaning through iconic associations with the feminine, the ex-
otic, 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 flow-
ers, 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 ana-
grammatically (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 per-
sons may blush more easily than others, that links the act to vulner-
ability.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 popu-
larity 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 consumer-
ist 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 market-
place 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 sexu-
alized 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 pornog-
raphy that features not underage females but adult females whose per-
sonas 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 sexu-
ality 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 flag-
ging 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 in-
nocent 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 expres-
sion 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, liberat-
ing 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 embrac-
ing 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 co-
exist, 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 po-
sitions 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 in-
dividual 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 popu-
larity of Hello Kitty there. Asia is where Hello Kitty makes headlines
with lines of customers waiting for hours to obtain the latest McDon-
ald’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 Pal-
ace 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 mu-
sical 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 collab-
orative practices and modes of consumption, through a body of shared
knowledge about the East Asian pop culture scene” (Chua 2008:88). Un-
deniably, a separate edited volume cries out to be written on Hello Kitty
as a significant node for those Asian transnational communities of pri-
marily, 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 impor-
tant center of Sanrio’s licensing division. Pink globalization should also
include Europe and Australia as further significant markets, with flour-
ishing stores and customers.26
Unfortunately, although Kitty may travel easily and readily, an an-
thropologist’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 at-
tempt 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 sub-
versions of pink globalization by way of Hello Kitty, from Japan to dif-
ferent arenas of the industrial world.
Chapter 1, “Kitty at Home: Kawaii Culture and the Kyarakutā Busi-
ness,” locates Hello Kitty within kawaii culture in Japan, both histori-
cally 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 anniver-
sary 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 strat-
egies in the process of building a customer base in the United States.
The chapter takes the model of “friendship” created by Tsuji, the presi-
dent of Sanrio, and analyzes the strategies of extending pink globaliza-
tion 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 “happi-
ness,” 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 ex-
tended fan interviews drawn from fieldwork with my analysis. My goal
here is to show a range of adult female fans, from whites to Asian Amer-
icans to Latinas, as well as one heterosexual male. Gathering these dis-
parate 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 them-
selves 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 ref-
erence 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,” dis-
cusses 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 Ja-
pan’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 simultane-
ously corporate and individual, national and subcultural, mainstream
and subversive, global and “Japan.”

introduction   •  41
 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; Vancou-
ver; 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 part-
ner of Sanrio boutique stores.
3. Sanrio stores in Japan give away a free newsletter, Ichigo Shimbun (Straw-
berry 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 maga-
zine 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 introduc-
ing 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 [Japa-
nese] 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 mouthless-
ness 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 produc-
tion 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 Com-
pany, 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 Corpora-
tion, 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 news-
letter (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 “sub-
teen” 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 Japa-
nese 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 nade-
shiko” (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 Globaliza-
tion 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 maga-
zine entitled Hello Kitty Magazine in German.

notes to introduction   •  281