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Chapter Seven Japan’s Cute-Cool as Global Wink
It is not so much Japan itself as a compelling culture, power, or place that gets signified (despite the fact that this is precisely what the Japanese government is trying to capitalize on in all the rhetoric and attention currently given to Japan’s new soft power in the globalization of J-pop). Rather, “Japan” operates more as signifier for a particular brand and blend of fantasy-ware: goods that inspire an imaginary space at once foreign and familiar and a subjectivity of continual flux and global mobility, forever moving into and out of new planes, powers, terrains, and relations. — Anne Allison (2008:107)
On August 10, 2010, Hello Kitty rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange (nyse), kicking off the celebration of Sanrio’s fiftieth anniversary.1 The event was widely reported in global news media, but the following coverage of the event as the cover story for the August issues of License! Global is particularly germane to this book. “In celebration of Sanrio’s 50th anniversary, Hello Kitty along with Sanrio executives recently rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Kunihiko Tsuji, Sanrio’s chief operating officer . . . joined Hello Kitty at the nyse last Wednesday to ring the closing bell. A yearlong 50th anniversary celebration kicks off today, based on the Sanrio philosophy ‘Small gift, big smile.’ ”2 That philosophy has reached an apex of global marketing in yet another media opportunity. The article continues with more surprising Kitty sightings, this time in London, at a trade awards show, with mock casino and lounge and appropriately attired servers:
