How does Hello Kitty fit into the Japanese pop culture landscape?
In some ways, Sanrio is the creator of a major strain in modern Japanese pop culture, though this was largely unintentional. The company, driven by its founder Shintaro Tsuji, was one of the first in Japan to turn cute as a commodity. Tsuji combined Japan s gift-giving culture with simple designs and packaged it affordably. Tsuji also recognized early on that cute could be sold to adults, too. As early as the 1970s, he was already creating lines of products for young women who wanted in some small way to hang on to their childhood. Japan was ripe for this, as we discuss in the book, but Sanrio developed it into a unique and profitable market. Why does so much of Japanese pop culture revolve around cuteness? Japanese cute, or kawaii culture, isn t just a passing fad. It is something close to an aesthetic value in Japan. You can see it in all forms of pop culture, and marketing and the sheer visual landscape of modern, urban Japan. In J-Pop, you have girl groups such as Morning Musume af
