Introduction Kitty — J apan — G lobal
Commodities are not just objects of economic exchange; they are goods to think with, goods to speak with. —John Fiske (1989:31)
Pink makes you happy. —Yamaguchi Yūko, Hello Kitty designer (quoted in Belson and Bremner 2004:69)
This book begins and ends with headlines. And there is good reason for this: headlines create buzz that feeds into celebrity that helps sell products that surround people’s lives that give those objects meanings. Many of the “goods to think with, goods to speak with,” which Fiske notes above, come into our possession through the buzz and celebrity generated by headlines. Further, headlines travel instantaneously across oceans and national borders and by way of interpersonal networks. Let me thus begin with a few headlines of note. In a 2007 “mockumentary” book entitled Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook, the journalists Patrick Macias and Izumi Evers chronicle girl-culture street fashion in urban Japan from the late 1960s to 2007, ending with what they call “Cute Overload.” There, as an example of this overload (see figure I-1), stand two young women in various shades of pink (with some splashes of red) from head to toe: shocking pink hair adorned with multiple pink barrettes, fuzzy pink kitten earmuffs, pink empire baby-doll dress, mismatched pink knee- high socks, and pink-laced shoes (2007:140). Around one woman’s neck hangs that icon
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