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PINK GLOBALIZATION: Hello Kitty's Trek across the Pacific. By Christine R. Yano. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. xiv, 322 pp. (B&W photos.) US$24.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-5363-8.
What do you think of when you hear the word pink? A satirical pop star? Barbie? Breast cancer? Gays? When I saw the title of this book, I thought it referred to the last, as in the "Pink Dollar," having something to do with tourism.
I was wrong: the subtitle gives the subject clearly.
The book is a series of essays, I suspect, topics compiled over a decade or more by a cultural studies-leaning anthropologist, but rounded into a coherent text about what the author calls "Japanese cute-cool," with the linking theoretical theme of Joseph Nye's (1990/2004) concept of "SoftPower" that bookends the volume. "SoftPower" may be a relatively new concept in the social sciences, but it has been a feature of international relations for some decades, whereby a country seeks to enhance its power position in the world through promoting elements of its culture. Typically, this is done through councils (i.e., the British), institutes (i.e., the Confucius) and a variety of other means such as sponsoring particular events.
"Hello Kitty" is a different matter as it began as a commercial challenge (by sonrio.com) to Disney's mouse by a Japanese cat-like creature with a blank expression and, sometimes, a waving arm/paw. The core of the book's argument is on page 32:
No longer...