Hello! Exploring the World of Japanese Americans through Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty, a memorable icon of kawaii(a Japanese word roughly translated as cute) culture born in Japan in 1974, is by no means confined by national boundaries. Hello Kitty products not only are consumed in Japan but have gained tremendous popularity all over the world. This fictional character with a red bow is now embraced as a part of ordinary life by American publics. Celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga wear Hello Kitty dresses and put on Hello Kitty jewelry on television. One can easily find stationery supplies, chocolates and cookies, and charms that employ the image of Hello Kitty in one way or another in random gift shops. Christine Yano, an American anthropologist specializing in Japanese and Japanese American culture and history, calls this process of global consumption of Hello Kitty “pink globalization” in her book by the same title. According to Yano, Hello Kitty is a major driving force for pink globalization, or “the transnational spread of goods and images labeled kawaii… from Japan to other parts of the industrial world, with a focus on the United States.” ¹Unlike the conventional understanding of globalization in which consumer culture flows from the United States to other parts of the world with an America-centric hue, cute, feminine, and thus “pink” Hello Kitty flows from Japan to the United States and beyond.

The exhibit Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kittyat the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles from October 11, 2014, to May 31, 2015, was an exemplary product of pink globalization. ²This mouthless, anthropomorphic catlike character traveled across the Pacific and became so popular that her museum exhibit was held in one of the biggest cities in the United States. ³This “first large-scale Hello Kitty museum retrospective in the United States” was held in collaboration with Sanrio at the museum founded by Japanese Americans in the Little Tokyo historic district of downtown Los Angeles. ⁴

According to the JANM website, Hello!is “organized as part of the global icon’s 40th-anniversary celebrations.” ⁵It is curated by Yano and Jamie Rivadeneira, founder and owner of the Los Angeles pop culture boutique JapanLA, to examine “the colorful history of Hello Kitty and her influence on popular culture.” ⁶For the duration of the exhibit, the streets of Little Tokyo were dotted with banners of Hello Kitty advertising the Hello!exhibit. In these banners, she is depicted as a kind of traditional Japanese doll with the okappa(black-bobbed) hairstyle. Still putting on her iconic red bow, she wears a kimono to emphasize her Japaneseness. This Japanese-doll Hello Kitty invites people to the museum retrospective that “includes an extensive product survey, with rare and unique items from the Sanrio archives, alongside a selection of innovative contemporary artworks inspired by Hello Kitty and her world.” ⁷

Visitors led by the Japanese-doll Hello Kitty are “baptized” at the entrance of the JANM. Upon paying the admission fee based on one’s age, ⁸each visitor receives a headband resembling the Hello Kitty bow that she or he is expected to wear while walking through the Hello!exhibit. While she or he may be still fiddling with the headband in the Weingart Foyer, the reception area that leads to the main part of the exhibit, the visitor encounters the first artwork, the installation Hello Kitty All Stacked Upcreated by Nicole Maloney, the LA-based photographer known for making interactive cubes. This piece shows Hello Kitty in piled-up cubes in different colors and sizes. Passing through these cubes to reach the exhibit’s entrance, visitors symbolically go through a rite of passage. Transformed by the headband into an alter ego of Hello Kitty, the visitor is drawn into her “supercute world.”

Although Yano is one of the curators, her argument in Pink Globalizationis not fully incorporated into the exhibit...