Women, Manga, and Cute: The Iconification of the Japanese Woman

Work, house payments, car repairs, kids, soccer practice, and much more are what most adults face every day. The rigors of everyday life as an adult are not especially conducive to having fun or freedom, especially in Japan, and for women in particular. Women in Japan, in years past, have faced a stark reality of marriage and child rearing without much reprieve. Days were spent cooking and cleaning, caring for children, helping with homework and entrance exams, and many more fairly tedious tasks. It is no surprise then, that the Cute movement has been a particular draw for women in Japan. Even less surprising is the ability of the movement to provide an escape. Much of the popularity of Shojo manga in the 20th century can be attributed to the willingness of the Japanese, especially women, to enter an alternate identity in order to escape the bounds of a highly stifling society.

For the Japanese, adulthood was not considered a time of freedom. This was true women even more than for men. The average adult Japanese man was expected to finish school and work as a salary man of some kind. The average Japanese woman was expected to perhaps work for a few years and then after finding a husband, resign from her job to raise children. “Adulthood was directly understood to mean society, and vice versa; it was not viewed as a source of freedom or independence, it was viewed as quite the opposite, as a period of restrictions and hard work.” (Kinsella 242) Expectations of adulthood were generally negative. Adulthood was assessed as a time of social responsibility and conformity for the sake of the group. Confucian ideals propel this expectation forward in Japanese society, specifically the expectation to fulfill obligations to employers, and for women, their husbands. (243) The Cute movement came about in response to this.

Belson and Bremner hypothesize that the kawaii movement did not begin with the commercial marketing, but that it was, in fact, proliferated randomly. “It looks like Japan’s whole kawaii cultural movement began kind of in a burst of spontaneity in the early 1970s, spawned from handwriting and linguistic fads.” (15) Kinsella expounds on this in her essay, saying that the cute style of writing did not begin in media, but in the schools. “It began as an underground literary trend amongst young people who developed the habit of writing stylized, childish letters to one another and to themselves.” Likewise, the emergence of childish slang in place of normal words occurred. The slang Norippigo became popular in order to “cute-ify” words. Gradually, the craze expanded from speaking in childish ways to dressing as a child. The movement of burriko suru (to fake-child it) became increasingly popular. (Kinsella 225) Soon after the trend had manifested in handwriting, and manga following that, the markets grasped this trend and the Commercial Cute movement exploded in Japan.

At the forefront of the Commercial Cute movement is Sanrio, the company that produces the wildly popular Hello Kitty. Originally a paper goods company, Sanrio expanded their production to include cute characters on their goods. Their timing was perfect and the company boomed from its “fancy goods” merchandising. (225) in 1974, Sanrio launched Hello Kitty and she became a success. Kitty-chan, as she is sometimes called, embodied what could be considered by kawaii and kawaisou: cute and pitiful. “The typical anatomy of cute characters such as Kitty, in the words of one authority on the subject, is “small, soft, infantile, mammalian, round, without bodily appendages (arms), without bodily orifices (mouths), non-sexual, mute, insecure, helpless or bewildered.” (Belson and Bremner 11) The popularity of this and other “pathetic” creatures was influenced by the greater movement towards rejection of adult responsibilities and the embrace of the trend towards immaturity.

Kinsella discusses the attractiveness of the helpless and why it was so readily grasped by the Cute generation. The type of cute that prospered in Japan was, more often than not, more on the side of pathetic than simply cute. She says of these new products. “Cute characters [. . .] have stubbly arms, no fingers, no mouths, huge heads, massive eyes—which can hide no private thoughts from the viewer—nothing between their legs, pot bellies, swollen legs or pigeon feet—if they have feet at all. Cute things can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t in fact do anything at all for themselves because they are physically handicapped.” (236) Kinsella cites Harris who explains this attraction to the pathetic as something more than maternal. He expresses that a person’s quest to appear big hearted and able to feel pity extends so far as to mutilate the object of its affections. Though the Japanese were certainly attracted to the kawaisou, they took it a step further and sought to become like these pathetic, helpless objects. For the Japanese woman, instead of leaping headlong to the responsibility of the family, the option of regressing to a pre-sexual stage presented itself through Cute. By becoming this kawaisou character, women were able to reject responsibility by asserting that they could not care for themselves, let alone care for another. Cute gave an outlet for this manifestation, and Shojo manga (girl’s comics) also presented itself as an opportunity for such personal identity adaptation.

Kinko Ito writes that Shojo manga emerged around 1960. “It was the time when the girls ‘started hating ugly stuff, boys, and dirty, violent things,’ and collected ‘cute color pens, erasers, writing boards, folders, pencil cases, notebooks, etc.’” (Ito 556) Susan Napier contends that the heroines of Shojo manga became icons of the modern woman, but influencing and influenced by the dominant generation. “It is my contention . . . that it is in the genre of the fantastic that the numerous changes in the contemporary Japanese woman’s conception of her identity are most vividly presented, either literally or metaphorically…” (Napier 3) In other words, the young woman growing up during the height of the Cute movement was both embodying and being embodied in Shojo manga. Furthermore, Kanaka Shiokawa says that especially young women are particularly vulnerable to the draw of manga. During times of outer and inner turmoil, things seem “uncertain and transient” and “thus, a girl enters into the soft-edged, indefinite world with which she can identify herself.” (Shiokawa, 11)

As Kinsella mentioned in her article, before the explosion of Sanrio and the Commercial Cute, manga had grasped onto these literary trends and used them to further attract audiences. Japanese women, eager to escape their bonds, were willingly thrust into new worlds where the pathetic child they strove to be could be queen. A prime example of this is in Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon. It could be theorized that Sailor Moon embodies not only kawaisou but also the ability of the pathetic to escape traditional roles and become autonomous. Sailor Moon is a narration of a young girl named Usagi who is pathetic. She is the crybaby that would literally become queen. An ordinary (or extraordinarily whiny) fourteen year old girl is approached one day by a cat and told that she is to be Sailor Moon, and that she must continue a battle that was waged a thousand years ago against the maniacal Queen Beryl. A girl who achieved terrible marks in school, loved sweets and video games became a hero. Sailor Moon, it could be argued, embodied both the pathetic child and a ruler that did not answer to the whims of men. It should be noted that later in the series in Neo Crystal Tokyo, Queen Serenity ruled, not Prince Endymion.

Sailor Moon’s extreme popularity can be attributed to the willingness of women to project their identities into this ideal situation. Sailor Moon’s life presented itself not only as an escape from a boring reality, but as an ideal solution to the problems of responsibility and being forced to subjugate themselves to men. Numerous manga in the same genre do this in similar ways: Card Captor Sakura, Fushigi Yuugi, Imadoki, and many more. Manga possesses a unique power to draw the person into its world. Belson and Bremner explain these phenomena using Hello Kitty and other pathetic creatures. “She is an icon that allows viewers to assign whatever meaning to her that they want, a character suitable not only for children, but for adults who may see Kitty as an escape back to childhood [. . .].” (72) Scott McCloud makes a similar argument using the theory of Iconism, arguing that readers assign meaning to a character because of its simplicity of appearance.

McCloud defines icons as “any image used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea." (McCloud 27) He theorizes that by ignoring certain attributes of a face or object, it becomes a concept rather than a thing and meaning can be more easily assigned by the one reading it. He says of cartooning style: "Cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification." (30) Simplifying these objects, he argues, allows them a certain type of universality. "The ability of cartoons to focus our attention on an idea is an important part of their special power, both in comics and in drawings in general. Another is the universality of cartoon imagery. The more cartoony a face is, for instance, the more people it could be said to describe." (31) He asserts that if a face can be more descriptive of more people by being simplified, readers place themselves into the identities and adventures of that character and become more thoroughly attached than they otherwise would. He points out that this style was deliberate and useful in drawing in specific crowds. McCloud says: "In Japan [. . .] the masking effect was, for a time, virtually a national style.” (43)

The popularity of cute products, then, can be attributed to this concept of Iconism. These young women not only adore the cute, but strive to become it, are easily able to project themselves into the images of the products. Hello Kitty can that this phenomenon for its vast success. The very design of the kawaii products: the large heads, the big, simple eyes, the lack of mouth and other detail, allows the owner to place their identity into a simple little cat. The more young women strove to become kawaisou in an attempt to escape the responsibility and shackles of their lives, the more they identified with, and were able to identify with such stylistically simple and universal images.

It is little wonder, then, how Shojo manga like Sailor Moon became such a franchise, especially following the rise of Cute culture. Women mangaka (comic artists) were in control of their works and were allowed to project these messages of freedom from mundane life. Because of the Iconism that McCloud describes in his book, women not only aspired toward this but lived it through the world of manga. Adventurous girls and women joined Sailor Moon and her Senshi to the Black Moon and beyond, escaping their lives, if briefly, to follow the Senshi in battles against enemies, to experience the childish drama of every day life, and to vie for the handsome man (who, though he may save Sailor Moon is never really in control and is often saved by her). The swelling popularity of the Shojo manga genre between the 1970s and today can be very much attributed to this escapist desire.

Though the Feminist movement in the West was characterized by a rejection of the childish and assertion of women as independent and equal, the movement towards “cute” and “pathetic” actually acted as another type of feminist movement. “Without quite knowing it, Japan has experienced the subtle emergence of a girl-power movement over the last several decades and Hello Kitty, at the symbolic level, is leading the way.” (Belson and Bremner 23) The emergence of Cute culture and the growth of the Shojo manga industry can easily be attributed to these Japanese women’s desires to create a different reality, to rebel against the traditional roles in which they were placed and excuse themselves based on a self-created premise.

In ways they were never able to express before, women could jump into the world of a heroine who wasn’t forced to rely on men to save the day. Shojo manga has provided an outlet for generations of women and helped fan the flame of the newest Japanese Feminist movement. No longer are women confined only to small apartments, sending children to school and helping them with their homework. Shojo manga’s main female characters were often both pathetic and heroic at the same time. They burst the confines of traditional society in order to enter a world of adventure where they were both childish and able to be cared for, expressing their rejection of caring for another, while at the same time they exhibited a more Western feminist ideal of heroism and autonomy. The Cute movement in Japan, it could be argued, was only a manifestation of the desire for women to escape their traditional roles. Shojo manga, with its iconistic tendencies, provided an escape from these roles, and perhaps even spurred on the Feminist movement in Japan.

Works Cited

Belson, K. and B. Bremner (2004). The Cat Comes Alive and Kitty Goes Abroad. Hello Kitty. Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Sons: 3-28, 59-116.

Ito, Kinko. (2005). “A History of Manga in the Context of Japanese Culture and Society” The Journal of Popular Culture. 38.3: 556.

Kinsella, S. (1995). Cuties in Japan. Women, Media and Consumption in Japan. L. Skov and B. Moeran. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press: 220-254

McCloud, Scott. (1993). Understanding Comics. North Hampton, MA, Sink Press Inc.

Shiokawa, Kanako. Lecture. Popular Culture Association 18^th Meeting. Las Vegas, NV. March 28, 1996.

Napier, Susan J. (1998). “Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four Faces of the young female in Japanese popular culture” in The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture. Cambridge University Press.

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