Introduction: Girls’ Aesthetics

Abstract

Japanese girls’ culture can evoke various images. One might think of the so-called kawaii (“cute”) culture exemplified by Hello Kitty. Or Gothic-Lolita girls hanging out in the streets in Harajuku, Tokyo. Or perhaps cute fighting girls in girls’ anime (animation) and manga (graphic novels) such as Sailor Moon. These “representatives” of Japanese girls’ culture tell us many things about Japanese society and women. Hello Kitty, a cute “girl” with no mouth, might symbolize Japanese women’s voiceless status. As a matter of fact, Sanrio, the company which designed Hello Kitty, oddly but somewhat sug gestively claims that she is not a kitten but a girl in the form of a kitten (Sanrio 2014). Her “official profile” — a “white” girl named Kitty White from London whose favorite dish is apple pie made by her mom (Sanrio 2014) — might symbolize Japanese women’s desire for the West, in a similar way to Gothic-Lolita girls’ performance of their imagined West. Lolita girls’ cuteness also resonates with that of Hello Kitty, but Gothic girls’ dark image might remind us of the association of women with witches who possess mythic power. Fighting girls in anime and manga might reflect Japanese women’s challenge to the dominant gender construction. However, although these “representatives” of Japanese girls’ culture vary in many ways, they are now all part of the global economic circulation, reproduced in various formats such as novelties, toys, films, anime, and so on by big business corporations. In other words, these girls are “authorized.”