Swastika Jajoo

This article examines gender performativity of Kawaii entrenched in the Japanese culture. Through her piece she explores various facets of this sexist culture leading to infantilisation and objectification of young school girls and women in Japan.

I. INTRODUCTION

Didier Andre Guillot writes in an opinion article published in The Japan Times in July 2016, “The objectification of women is, of course, a global problem, many societies having allowed corporations to use female bodies to appeal to the reptilian brains of their male customers. But the situation is particularly alarming in Japan, because many young women seem to accept and emulate this objectified image of themselves.” Japan’s kawaii culture has been making headlines across the globe, but in 2011, kawaii reached an all-time high, securing for itself a place in the Oxford English Dictionary as “(in the context of Japanese popular culture) cute”. However, kawaii embodies a wide spectrum of meanings that are not limited to the connotations of the English word ‘cute’. The culture of kawaii is not limited to material things, but is a reflection on the idealized portrayal of people to other people in their immediate environments and to themselves: innocent, naive and arguably cute, but also deliberately infantilized, rendered powerless and often sexualized. Kawaii necessitates a specific kind of gender performance, making it an unsaid measure of femininity, one that girls and consequently women, must internalize as part of their identity.

How is kawaii performed? Does it create possible grounds for sexism? The decidedly feminine connotations of kawaii enable the establishment of a link between the usage of the word and high-school girl students. The attempt of this article is to first briefly provide a background of the linguistic and cultural usage of kawaii, discuss the dynamics of kawaii in the context of schoolgirls and posit that the ideals of Kawaii lay the breeding ground for a seemingly innocent and barely acknowledged sexism. Kawaii is often performed unconsciously, rendering it the very absolute of feminine behavior, the pinnacle of girlhood and the orgasmic fantasy of a male-dominated society.

1. What constitutes Kawaii?

Some high schools attract student enrolments by their uniforms being kawaii. School bags and stationery are also designed to be kawaii. Japanese mothers have recipe books explaining how to prepare kawaii lunches for their daughter to take to school. Also, the stylistic modification of written characters using maru moji ‘round letters’ is popular among school girls wishing to be kawaii in their writing (Cavanagh, 1)

                Kawaii or ‘cute’ essentially means childlike; it celebrates sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak, and inexperienced social behavior and physical appearances. (Kinsella, 1) Although Kinsella’s study is focused on Japanese popular culture in the 1980s, the adjectives associated with Kawaii largely remain the same even today. The word was originally used in Lady Murasaki’s Tale of Genji to portray pitiable qualities, written between 1000 and 1012. The modern usage of the word emerged in early 1970s, when cute handwriting became a nationwide trend, its implications so severe that some schools decided to take disciplinary action by refusing to correct test papers of students who used this new style of handwriting. McVeigh states that kawaii “merges meekness, admiration, and attachment with benevolence, tenderness, and sympathy” and also notes that to be kawaii “triggers a sympathetic response in another, leading to an emotional involvement and perhaps an attachment”.

             Kawaii seems to be able to contextualize itself even without a context; its broad spectrum of meanings assert its ability to be able to adapt to a range of social situations without any hesitation. However, despite its versatility, there must be a particular central trait, characteristic or quality that makes Kawaii truly Kawaii. Its ubiquitous usage must have an unchanging underlying essence that is easily understood by Japanese speakers. (Cavanagh, 2) According to the results of the survey, 85% respondents believe that the adjective ‘lovable’ describes Kawaii more appropriately than the adjective ‘cute’, which is the most common translation of Kawaii into English. ‘Lovable’, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means ‘having qualities that attract affection’. This offers an immediate insight into how Kawaii must be understood: for something or somebody to be perceived as and consequently called Kawaii, the object or person in question must attract affection. Kawaii, as also reaffirmed by the respondents of the survey, is an ideal that can only be attained if one makes certain efforts. Even though the respondents said that Kawaii can be thought of as a natural trait, they agreed that one cannot be Kawaii enough if one does not make an effort. Beauty is natural, but Kawaii can be manufactured. And it is attainable – any girl can be cute. (Ashcraft, 104) The very notion of attainability posits that Kawaii is not only a simple choice, but a standard to strive towards.

2. Schoolgirls and Kawaii

She is the queen of cool. She’s a cold-hearted killer. She’s a popstar, an angel, a saviour. She makes men week at the knees, and makes women nostalgic. She gives children hope. She’s a heroine for gamers, a muse for artists, and an inspiration to her peers. The power of her purse makes businesses drool, while marketers scramble for her opinion. She’s a trendsetting trail-blazer, and a glimpse of her country’s future. She’s a symbol of feminine mystique. She is the Japanese schoolgirl. (Ashcraft, 6)

As an artist, I’m drawn to the image of the schoolgirl for many reasons. It’s an image that symbolizes uniformity – that everyone is the same. It’s a nostalgic image that represents a fleeting, ephemeral existence. The girls are totally aware of this ephemerality, and give their all to enjoying and making it through those years of being a schoolgirl. That’s not only appealing, it’s also powerful.

Yuki Aoyama, best known for his series Schoolgirl Complex which features photographs of schoolgirls taken from the perspective of a teenage boy (Ashcraft, 148)

The Japanese schoolgirl is a raging figure in both her real representations and in the realms of fantasy, embodying not only the paradox of a nation but the ageless paradox of human life itself. Suggestive of a nostalgic return to the carefree period of childhood, they have come to represent a dreamy timelessness. Schoolgirls invoke a Kawaii that cannot be fastened to either the past or the future, and gains a present omnipresence. However, the underlying ephemerality of being a schoolgirl cannot be ignored. No phase in time can last forever but the meaning it holds for individuals and for society as a collective can be everlasting.

Japanese high-schools are a hub of Kawaii, and schoolgirls, through the choices they make, often define Kawaii for the rest of the nation.  Trends fueled by schoolgirls include Hello Kitty, Texting, Virtual Pets^[1], Hair coloring, Color contacts, Camera phone, Gyaru-go (gal speak), Loose socks and Sticker pics or Purikura^[2]. (Ashcraft, 111) “All girls want to be cute and sticker picture machines show the cutest side of a girl.”, says Furyu photo booth company representative Reiko Kadosawa. (Ashcraft, 171) In a similar vein, Miwa Ueda, author of the award winning Shojo manga Peach Girl, comments on the popularity of the genre, “Girls like these stories because the characters transform – they become cute. Anyone can transform, anyone can change the way they look – it’s like with cosmetics.” (Ashcraft, 190)

High-school settings are often used in advertisements, the most famous example of which is  make-up giant Shiseido’s ‘High School Girl?’. But schoolgirls are also used seemingly arbitrarily for marketing purposes. For instance, a Hiroshima-based company launched ‘High School Girl Kimchi’ in 2009 on the premise that the red pepper’s capsaicin and collagen will offer “vibrant skin like a high school girl” (Anime News Network, 2009). Market researcher Shinji Takenaga, the president of Shibuya-based market research firm ING says, “Keep in mind, no one actually buys products because schoolgirls appear in ads. Schoolgirls aren’t endorsing a product, but rather, they’re happy, cheerful, cute characters.”(Ashcraft, 110) It is the wide-ranging appeal of Kawaii that helps things sell. But when it comes to what schoolgirls themselves are likely to consume, it isn’t as easy. Takenaga says “Schoolgirls are the hardest market because they’re the hardest to predict. Nobody knows what they’re going to do next. (Ashcraft,  95)

The Japanese Foreign Ministry’s decision to select a high-school student Shizuka Fujioka as one of the three Ambassadors of Cute in 2008 reflects that schoolgirls have truly come to be representative of Japanese culture. Fujioka explains, “My duties include introducing Japanese fashion, in my case, by starting off with school uniforms. By doing so, I will spread the message to Japanese people that school uniforms are very popular abroad as well as within Japan, and also induce an interest in Japanese culture in the minds of people abroad. The Thai people kept saying ‘kawaii,’ which made quite an impression on me. They told me over and over that they think Japanese people are really pretty. They said they were jealous that Japanese girls could wear such cute school uniforms.” (Betros and Honda, 2009)

Schoolgirls are also deeply immersed in Japan’s idol culture. The Wikipedia page for Japanese Idol emphasizes how cute is the key in its definition, “Japanese pop culture “idol” is a term typically used to refer to young manufactured stars/starlets marketed to be admired for their cuteness. Idols are intended to be role models.” The idols set the standards of Kawaii. According to Sayumi Michishige who is a sixth-generation member of Morning Musume and joined the popular idol group when she was only 13, “Idols are cute. Whenever and wherever, it doesn’t matter, I think idols have to be cute.” (Ashcraft, 47)  In Hello! Project’s  Hello! Morning Theatre show, she often plays a character called ‘Ichibaan Kawaii’ or ‘the cutest’.

But beneath the glamour of it all, the schoolgirl continues to be a widely fetishized figure, a fact made most apparent by the practice of compensated dating or enjo kosai. A 1996 survey by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government found that 4.6 percent of 504 female high school students in Tokyo who responded said they had engage in enjo kosai at least once. In as recent as 2015, there was an unverified claim by Maud de Boer- Buqicchio, UN’s special rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography that 13% of Japanese schoolgirls are engaged in enjo kosai. (Japan Times, n.d.) Besides this, Burusera shops sell girls’ used school uniforms, panties and other fetish items. In the 1990s, used underwear vending machines were quite popular in Japan. A law was instituted in Tokyo against the buying of used underwear from girls under sixteen as late as 2004. From the point of view of popular cinema, classic porn themes such as bored housewives and nubile young secretaries were common, but schoolgirls were prime exploitation fodder. (Ashcraft, 62) One of the top grossing films of 1950, A Virgin’s Sex Manual, was promoted with the promise of a “knocked-up schoolgirl”. Film critic Toshio Takasaki says, “Schoolgirls were symbol or a metaphor. They’re not meant to be real schoolgirls — they’re fantasy. Taking something very pure like a schoolgirl and putting them in an impure situation to see what happens is male reverie.” (Ashcraft, 64) Mr., the artist behind the Kawaii war short film Nobody Dies, says “The one thing adults don’t have is youth. Schoolgirls and men live in different worlds, but men are under the delusion that somehow they can enter the schoolgirl world.”

Eric Smith, whose company E.G. Smith introduced loose socks in the Japanese market, shares that on his trips to Tokyo, he’d see schoolgirls changing out of knee-high school-prescribed socks into loose socks to go meet their friends. This, he thinks, might have caused the loose socks to be fetishized by some businessman. The glaring stereotype was that a pure, young, Kawaii girl could be dirtied up. Thus, Kawaii has, beneath its several layers undertones of sexism, that are deeply embedded in Japanese culture.

Works Cited:

Asano-Cavanagh, Yuko. (2012). Expression of kawaii (‘cute’): Gender reinforcement of young Japanese female school children. Joint AARE, APERA International Conference Proceedings, 5/12/2012. Sydney: Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE).

Ashcraft, B., & Ueda, S. (2010). Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool. Tokyo: Kodansha International

Kinsella, Sharon. (1995). Cuties in Japan. In L. Skov and B. Moeran Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, Hawaii University Press.

Knight, S. (2014, December 12). Japan Has a Cute Problem. Retrieved January 16, 18, from https://medium.com/matter/japan-has-a-cute-problem-efe1f46d402c

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^[1] Handheld digital pets called Tamagotchi created by Akihiro Yokoi that were a major trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

^[2] Short for Print Club. Sticker photo booths that emerged in 1995.