In case you didn’t notice, Hello Kitty invaded Los Angeles last month.  If you were anywhere near Little Tokyo, you could scarcely escape the impression that not only that neighborhood, but half the population of this side of Los Angeles had been initiated into the cult of the bow, cat-ears and whiskers.  Hello Kitty has been a merchandising phenomenon for some decades now (four, to be precise:  the Hello Kitty Convention that took over MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary—incredibly, all without the promotion or support of Jeffrey Deitch—was planned to coincide both with this anniversary and the Japanese American National Museum’s curated exhibition, Hello!, next door). 

It has also become a fashion and style phenomenon, abundantly evidenced by the scene swirling in and around the Geffen.  Every conceivable kind of licensed apparel or accessory was there in every conceivable combination:  T-shirts, sweatshirts, skirts, blouses, sweaters, jackets, tights and leggings, shoes, sunglasses, jewellery, and, uh, bows.  For the more sophisticated or thoroughy initiated among the crowd, there were variations on the traditional (or non-traditional) Japanese schoolgirl and schoolboy looks, kawaii ‘little Lolita’ and little boy looks, and wilder Shibuya-style improvisations.  Participants took advantage of the coinciding dates of the convention with Halloween to morph their ‘Hello Kitty’ looks into a menagerie of caricature and costume far beyond the core characters created by Hello Kitty’s parent company, the Sanrio Co., Ltd.  For those reluctant to dive into (and shell out for) this merchandising frenzy, there were free badges and party tiaras with the trademark bows and cat-ears. 

Androgyny ruled this domain.  It was amusing to see how readily every kind of merchandised apparel was picked up and worn by both sexes.  As you walked around Little Tokyo and beyond into the Arts District, you saw the cardboard tiaras and their bright red bows everywhere, worn not just by children and their parents, but men and women alike.  The ethnic diversity of the crowd was also remarkable.  It wasn’t surprising to see masses of Japanese and Korean faces here; but it also looked as if half of the east-of-the-river neighborhoods showed up, too.  I can’t say I wasn’t amused to see so many ‘boys of the hood’ (or the Heights?) blithely strolling around in their cardboard tiaras and maybe one or two other bits of Hello Kitty regalia.        

In the meantime, across town at LACMA, a different kind of headgear was on display, along with other gorgeous elements from costuming, equipment and accessories associated with another Japanese cultural phenomenon—the samurai.  The contrast could not be more striking.  Donald Rumsfeld might be surprised to know that he did not invent ‘shock and awe’ as a military tactic, much less as an accessory.  I’m not sure a samurai would have even understood what ‘cute’ or ‘kawaii’ implied (though there is some literary evidence that the Japanese aristocracy had some sense of the kind of charm or fleeting amusement that might translate in mass-cultural terms to 20^th century ‘cute’).  What the samurai understood was war, territorial prerogative, command or family loyalty, and honor. 

The helmets, armor and apparel frequently borrow elements from nature (antlers, feathers) or Buddhist or Shinto motives, implicitly invoking those powers.  Helmets and masks (some full-face) are intended to impress and intimidate. 

By the post-war 20^th century, although vestiges of the ‘honor’ tradition of the shogunate remained (ironically, in the upper echelons of the trading houses that had evolved into Japan’s major corporate conglomerates and banking entities; still more ironically in the outlaw gangster realm of the yakuza), the samurai had given way to the salaryman. 

The salarymen and technocrats would wear different masks and armor, reflecting the less consistent, frangible loyalties of the corporate family and community—an inversion of the more traditional code, reflecting an imposed consensus, less organic and more passive. Yet the salarymen, engineers, technocrats and late industrial workforce would succeed where the war lords had failed. 

There were hiccups in the Japanese march on Detroit and more or less global conquest; but these just signaled shifts in what was always a stealth campaign, even in Japan itself.  In chameleon fashion, the Japanese export strategy would morph from selling us the products we already wanted, to selling us the products it wanted us to have.       

The masquerade of social anxiety has been at the core of consumer culture and merchandising strategy practically since the dawn of trade and commerce.  But the Sanrio designers and executives took this strategy several steps further—subverting the element of anxiety by graphically emphasizing its notional absence.  The Hello Kitty ‘character’ has no mouth.  It is that contradictory phenomenon—a blurred icon; more specifically, the mask that fits every consumer. 

Sanrio didn’t stop there; they created a back story/mythology for the mask/icon, which they exported to England.  Little Kitty White went to school just outside London, where her favorite subject was English.  Why merely mask an identity (or an anxiety) when you can entirely offshore it?  A back story or mythology also means that there are additional characters/icons available to distract/displace and sell.  If Hello Kitty is actually a little girl, it’s perfectly plausible she might have a cat, Charmmy Kitty.  And wouldn’t you know that Charmmy Kitty has a pet hamster, named Sugar?  And there are more.  

During the mid-1980s, when Japanese economic and commercial power reached its zenith, there were frequent references to the corporate kagemusha or ‘shadow warrior’ (usually Japanese, but occasionally other nationalities), deployed in pursuit of global corporate, commercial or real estate acquisitions.  This was itself a reference to the 1980 Kurosawa film, Kagemusha, which was based on historical events leading up to the Battle of Nagashino.  The story turns on a pardoned thief’s resemblance to and imposture of a provincial war lord (daimyo).  It is a story of anxiety, transgression and masquerade at every level—social, sexual, psychological and political.      

In its 40-year reign over the kingdom of cute, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty has proven the ultimate kagemusha.  She silently excuses our embarrassment at this absurd and unequal exchange.  She dismisses inconvenient questions (‘oh reason not the need’).  Desire and satisfaction are beside the point here; all that is required is acceptance and acknowledgment of her perfect embodiment of cute.  She does not bother or bewitch us; her domain, our response, is sheer bemusement.  There now, kitty kitty.