“Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty,” opens Oct. It gives the whole thing a certain poignancy and power.” It’s about reconnecting her to this community. This is why the exhibition is being held at the Japanese American National Museum. “In talking to Japanese Americans who grew up in the 1970s, they say, ‘That figure means so much to us because she was ours.’ It’s something they saw as an identity marker. in the mid-1970s, it was a commodity mainly in Asian enclaves: Chinatowns, Japantowns, etc.,” explains Yano. But Hello Kitty has had special resonance with Asians who grew up in the United States. Hello Kitty has special significance to Asian Americans. So the biography was created exactly for the tastes of that time.” It represented the quintessential idealized childhood, almost like a white picket fence. But it’s interesting because Hello Kitty emerged in the 1970s, when the Japanese and Japanese women were into Britain. A lot of people don’t know the story and a lot don’t care. And she is the daughter of George and Mary White.
#Chinese kitty full#
Kitty is actually named Kitty White and she has a full back story. I grew up with Hello Kitty everything and all I have to say is, MIND BLOWN. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it’s called Charmmy Kitty.” She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. “That’s one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. “I was corrected - very firmly,” she says. When Yano was preparing her written texts for the exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, she says she described Hello Kitty as a cat. And, Yano, who is currently wading through hundreds of objects for the exhibition at the the Japanese American National Museum (including the famous Gaga dress), gives us the lowdown: That blankness gives her an appeal to so many types of people.”īut there’s a lot we don’t know about Hello Kitty. You can give her a guitar, you can put her on stage, you can portray her as is. “People see the possibility of a range of expressions. “Hello Kitty works and is successful partly because of the blankness of her design,” Yano says.
![chinese kitty chinese kitty](https://excitedcats.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Extremely-rare-Chinese-Desert-Cat_ylq_shutterstock.jpg)
She says that Kitty’s unreadable features (she usually doesn’t have a mouth), along with clever merchandising, has helped cultivate the character’s following. She is also the author of the book “Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific,” published by Duke University Press last year. Yano is an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii (and currently a visiting professor at Harvard) who has spent years studying the phenomenon that is Hello Kitty. Two weeks later, the first ever Hello Kitty Con, will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art.Ĭhristine R.
![chinese kitty chinese kitty](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/77/58/0c/77580ce470e0486f77761aa46b2d2b25.jpg)
by storm, with a full-blown retrospective of Kitty art, merch and fashion at the Japanese American National Museum, which opens in mid-October.
![chinese kitty chinese kitty](https://excitedcats.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Extremely-rare-Chinese-Desert-Cat_ylq_shutterstock2.jpg)
And she’s been a part of global popular culture ever since. Produced by Sanrio, she arrived in the United States two years later. I am talking about Hello Kitty, the adorable cultural force that began life as a character on a coin purse in Japan 1974. She’s inspired a controversial song by Avril Lavigne, works of sculpture by Tom Sachs and a pretty spectacular dress worn by Lady Gaga. Her expressionless mug has been featured on countless toys, not to mention bowling balls, motor oil, a Fender Strat, a pricey Judith Leiber clutch, sanitary napkins and men’s underwear.