MSc International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies student, Eriko Aoyagi, reflects on Kawaii culture as a form of Japanese women’s non-violent resistance.

In the autumn term, I attended the Introduction to Gender, Peace and Security course in the Department of Gender Studies. One of the most impressive readings in the course was an essay by Annick T. R. Wibben on the practice of education guided by Feminist Peace Research (FPR), entitled Toward a Pedagogy of Utopian Thinking Grounded in the Everyday

According to Wibben, FPR has a key feature in that it is grounded in everyday life and insistent that what happens at the micro level is intimately connected to macro-level events. When she introduced it into education, students who had thought that imagining a peaceful, weapons-free future was ‘absolutely impossible’ came to see that the seeds of change were all around them and that small changes in the local community had the potential to spread far and wide.

Wibben argues that seeds of change can be found in everyday life, such as efforts where we manage conflict nonviolently with our parents, partners and community members, in the wisdom of the elderly, and in the stories told by previous generations.

Reading this essay, I was reminded of the Japanese women’s non-violent resistance, Kawaii culture (Kawaii). For all those interested in Kawaii, I would like to introduce the story of its beginnings, referring to my book, ‘Rupo Kawaii! Takehisa Yumeji kara Kitty-chan made (The Reportage of Kawaii: From Yumeji Takehisa to Hello Kitty)’ published in 2014.

An empty symbol to promote women’s consumption? 

Kawaii is generally understood as the Japanese culture of cuteness, and it implies something childlike. When people talk about Kawaii, it refers to all genres that appeal to women and girls, including fashion, illustrations, characters, stationery, sweets, photography, etc., which incorporate the essence of childlike (such as delicacy, innocence and colourful colours).

As a ‘catalyst for the Japanese economy’, Kawaii has now become an essential part of the government’s ‘Cool Japan Strategy’, inbound tourism promotion, and corporate marketing. However, many women have come to have mixed feelings about the term as they have realised that it is an empty symbol that takes away their agency and turns them into stupid consumers who buy Kawaii products indiscriminately.

However, Kawaii, in its original form, is not at all a symbol used to promote the interests of the state or capitalism. If we look back through history, it was actually a non-violent resistance that expressed its intention to resist through cultural phenomena against all forms of structural violence that oppressed women and girls, such as patriarchy, militarism, masculinism and neoliberalism. By converting their love for objects that are delicate or innocent to the word ‘kawaii!’, women and girls used this as a rallying cry to connect with each other and transform society so that they could live more easily, both directly and indirectly.

The emergence of Kawaii in girls’ magazines 

For example, during the Taisho and early Showa periods (1912-1945), when Japan experienced two world wars, the main arena for non-violent resistance by girls was girls’ magazines. In the magazines, artists such as Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934) and Junichi Nakahara (1913-1983), who admired Takehisa, were active. As stated by Uchida Shizue, curator at the Yayoi Museum, Takehisa’s lyrical paintings are considered to be the origin of the concept of Kawaii. This is because he introduced Western style round eyes, rather than the long, straight eyes seen in ukiyo-e, which had previously been considered ‘beautiful’, and depicted the curved bodies of women with sloping shoulders, giving viewers a fresh impression of immaturity and ‘kawaii’.

Rikako Nakahara, the representative of Himawariya, which plans exhibitions of Junichi Nakahara’s works, indicates that it was Nakahara who made readers aware of the feeling of ‘girlhood’. Nakahara, who was also a fashion designer, became very popular in 1937 when he started a fashion column in the magazine Shojo no tomo (Girls’ Friend) in which he suggested ways for girls to wear Western style clothes. Since Western style clothes were not yet common at the time, and mothers had their daughters wear their clothes, the demand for the magazine became high, and the sales of it doubled.

Kazuko Koizumi, the director of the Showa no Kurashi Museum (the Showa Living Museum), says that for girls, who were expected to become ‘good wives and wise mothers’ after learning housework in girls’ high school, the time they spent reading girls’ magazines with their classmates was an irreplaceable time when they were allowed to ‘dream in a restricted world’.

Saying ‘No!’ to militarism 

However, as the war intensified, the Japanese military stepped up its censorship of magazines. Under the slogan ‘Beget and Multiply’, girls were expected to get married and become ‘mothers who support militarism’ as mentioned by Koizumi. The covers of girls’ magazines lost their colour, and artists were forced to draw pictures of girls mobilising for war service, wearing khaki work clothes or wearing work trousers.

According to Nakahara’s memoirs, he was also repeatedly pressured by the military not to draw pictures of Western style, romantic girls. After much anguish, he resigned from Shojo no tomo, but the following month, he published his first book, a style book of colourful Western style clothes entitled Kimono no ehon. Surprisingly, on the back cover, Nakahara drew a picture of a girl wearing a blue striped dress, staring straight at us with big eyes. There were sunflowers – whose flower language is ‘noble and beautiful’ – on her background; this was an incredibly provocative and courageous act, given the trends of the time. Girls must have supported Nakahara’s message behind his picture that girls should ‘take pride in being a girl, no matter how difficult the times are, saying ‘It’s kawaii!’. This is because the book, which was published in the summer of 1941, became a big hit that sold well all year round. After the war, Nakahara launched his own women’s and girls’ magazines, and his works continue to influence illustrators and fashion designers who are active today.

Kawaii, which had been neglected as a girl-children culture, has become powerful enough to be transmitted to the world, partly due to the evolution of information technology, but above all, as Koizumi asserts, it is because of the ‘humanism’ that has been upheld by artists and girls, and that is why it is so attractive to people.

As Wibben claims, the seeds of change for achieving a peaceful world are all around us. As someone who works in the media, I would like to find them and spread this happy news far and wide.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the International Development LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Featured image credit: Eriko Hirabayashi