Finding My Voice as a Japanese Woman—Why Hello Kitty Needs a Mouth

The curse of cuteness in Japan

On November 10, 2021, the second cabinet of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was inaugurated in Japan. He appointed three women as ministers out of the twenty representatives. It is a paltry 15% of women holding ministerial portfolios. This share of women ministers is the lowest among G7 nations and lower than even the worldwide average of 21.9%, which UN Women confirmed in March 2021.

The very next day, out of the 26 vice ministers, the cabinet appointed only one woman. Then, Takako Suzuki, the state minister for foreign affairs herself, defended this gender imbalance saying, “each member has a diverse background and diversity shouldn’t be judged solely by appearance.”

This is our reality in Japan. Women’s voices are still ignored as if what they say doesn’t matter. Every time I see this sort of situation, I recall that Hello Kitty doesn’t have its mouth.

My Struggles and Hello Kitty

My first purse given by my mom was a red vinyl wallet with Hello Kitty on it. I liked Kitty’s big red ribbon and carried it everywhere with me in my childhood. Many women around my age all had this wallet when they were little. We grew up with Hello Kitty around us.

My intimate time with Sanrio characters didn’t last long. I quickly grew out of them when I became a teenager. While many of my friends kept adoring Hello Kitty, it lost its hold on me. I no longer spent my allowance on expanding my Kitty collection. For some reason, my attention drifted to the PEANUTS gang. Call it a secret rebellion phase against the kawaii culture already, but at the time, Linus’s security blanket habit spoke to me. My parents were typical of rural Japan; conservative and lived by the old saying; men should be brave, women should be affable. My dad would often point out, “that’s not ladylike,” when I bought a pair of pants. As I didn’t follow his advice on what to read and what to wear, “that’s not how women behave” was a common refrain in our home.

After becoming financially independent, I traveled a lot in my 20s. I found myself being drawn towards powerful female icons from around the world. They looked independent and sexy by their own choices. Whenever I came back to Japan, my heart sank seeing ads that treat women like products everywhere on my way home. Oversexed anime characters blared on posters, women on magazine covers with barely their bikinis, and models with identical fashion and curled hair. The rest of the world now looked more natural and authentic in my eyes, including news anchors and actors. I wondered who shaped the kawaii mold for Japanese women.

A Japanese Firm Rife with Sexism

It was when I was in my late 20’s and working hard to build a solid career that I almost hated Hello Kitty. To me, the pure white cat came to seem like a symbol of suppression for a country of women that were cast as content to have no voice. Being expected to be a mascot at work only because of some backwards beliefs about gender, I cursed the patriarchal system so well established in Japan.

Although I was an office worker who belonged to an international sales division in my early career, my main job seemed often serving tea for customers and handing out promotional giveaways at exhibitions. Despite the same job description, only male employees were allowed to travel overseas no matter their language skills or lack thereof. There was more than once I’d be cleaning the office kitchen after the job, wishing I were a man.

Eventually, there was one incident that became my last straw. At the Japanese firm I’d worked for, there was an annual year-end party to welcome the CEO and board members. Attendance at the event was critical for managers hoping to build a bond with upper management. The night of the event, my manager called only the female employees into a conference room. I was informed that my role was to sit between male directors to serve their meals and drinks and guide the company president to karaoke after the party. It was surreal for me, but this was Japan. Harassment wasn’t a thing, according to anyone you asked there. Even older female employees encouraged their younger female coworkers to serve their male bosses.

When I got a photo of me with the CEO holding me by the shoulders, I felt hopeless. I didn’t have an ounce of enjoyment that night, but I was faking a smile in it. It was too toxic. I left the job soon after the photo was taken.

Looking back now, I should have reported that to the human resource department to protect fellow female employees. But to be honest, I wouldn’t have trusted the whole organization anyway. I felt vulnerable, but I refused to keep my mouth shut and decided to find somewhere my voice could be valued.

From a Voiceless Woman to True Myself

Working for an American firm was liberating. Thanks to my language skills, I landed a job along with a much higher salary. Although most of my colleagues were Japanese, they differed from those I met in the former work environment. They made me feel much freer from kawaii pressure. Nobody asked me to act like a waitress. For the first time in my career, I ditched skin-colored tights and turned my focus to the job, and kept learning to contribute to my team. I was in my element.

The firm gave me opportunities to manage a team and work on several multi-national projects. At first, I kept my difficulties and challenges to myself to maintain the image of professionalism. Eventually, though, I learned the importance of speaking up with my boss and fellow team members. That was when I finally realized that my voice matters. The more transparent I became with my concerns, the more united were those around me. I was so thankful for the corporate culture that the occasional swear to never work for a Japanese firm again crossed my mind.

Reunion with Hello Kitty

When I was on maternity leave from the American firm, I rediscovered the culture I’d been trying to block out of my vision. I was astonished to see that some things never change when I visited the toy shops. You can tell which area is designed for girls and boys; kitchen toys and dolls for girls, cars and trains for boys. Moving through the aisle, I could see the old gender bias was still in full force. Ads promoting cooking toys for girls nagged me. I plucked the building blocks and trains off the shelf and put them in a basket that already had a Hello Kitty register for my daughter.

However, as time went on, I began to soften my stance, feeling an odd sense of nostalgia towards the cat-shaped character. When I explored a Sanrio store to get colored pencils for my daughter, many things looked unchanged from my childhood. Even the vinyl wallet was still there.

Coincidently, 2021 was Sanrio’s 60th anniversary year. The exhibition was held in Tokyo, and I ended up visiting with my best friend. I wanted to know their company strategy in this era and what exactly Japanese kawaii culture is.

The showcase was more informative than I’d expected. I learned that the firm’s business expansion has always been based on close communication with its fans. It was also a history of all the characters. Although some have garnered passionate support worldwide, many characters disappeared with or without a successful sales record. Their culturally diverse backgrounds surprised me; a couple raised in Kansas City, a rabbit from Paris, a merman born in China, and even a brother from a fictional land of thunder. Kawaii was diverse and subjective.

Sanrio’s philosophy is “to help build a bridge between the hearts and minds of people all over the world,” Shintaro Tsuji, the founder, says. According to them, Hello Kitty’s ribbon is a symbol to help people connect and befriend each other no matter where they are.

Despite this positive light, I still had questions about issues that felt important to me. Are there any new characters planned to be more inclusive with current topics such as LGBTQ? Why are all the panels only in Japanese though it’s exhibited in Roppongi? I left the venue with some lingering questions.

My Wish as a Woman and a Mom

After learning a wide range of characters, I tried to find my favorite one on their website. You can search by keyword of the characters, though it’s only available in Japanese. So I entered some words that would describe my role model: smart, independent, masculine. It didn’t show any characters, unfortunately. What Sanrio defines as kawaii is still pretty docile: honest, kind, cheerful, and sometimes careless. I closed the website with slight disappointment.

Sanrio announced its first leadership change in 2020. The new CEO, the grandson of the chairman, Tomokuni Tsuji, is in his early 30s. He says he wants to rebuild the management team based on numbers and logic. He hired three managing executive officers to make this change. They are all men over their 30s, to be specific.

Although I’m not holding my breath, I hope the brand evolves under the new leadership because it still has great influencing power in terms of cultural aspects of Japan. Their management is still overwhelmingly male-dominated. Of course, kawaii can be used by anyone from everywhere to describe almost anything if the person believes it is. Yet, characters produced by a backward-looking organization wouldn't grab the next generations’ hearts.

It’s a long way to go. For me, too. I quit my full-time job due to the lack of daycare. Now I’m juggling multiple freelance jobs to stay independent both mentally and financially. Living in this nation as a woman is often tough. Japanese women are still expected to be cute and silent in many cases.

Now, at least, I believe that my voice matters. It is nothing but the people’s voices that will change the old social norms. I haven’t decided yet whether to buy my daughter the Hello Kitty wallet.

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