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April Lavigne, week three. We talk about the incredibly controversial Avril song "Hello Kitty." We're joined by Dr. Christine Yano, Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii. She is the author of Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek across the Pacific. Buy her book here, it's really good:https://www.dukeupress.edu/pink-globalization Support the pod on Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/155pod
In this episode, AAS President Dr. Christine Yano (Hawaii) talks about how recent developments including COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement have presented an opportunity for scholars to tear down the traditional hierarchies and rigid structures that have propped up the Ivory Tower for so long and to rebuild a new academic environment.
The world is still very much in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic - but the blame game has already begun. China, where the virus was first reported last December, has been singled out by many countries as the culprit - or scapegoat, depending on your viewpoint. One major consequence of the scramble to apportion guilt has been a surge in anti-Asian sentiment, especially in the US. But how new is this phenomenon there? What are its roots, and how has it changed into what we see today? To discuss this, we're joined by Christine Yano, professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and President of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). And we also speak to Jennifer Pan (@jenjpan), a political scientist at Stanford University, about her study on how anti-Chinese discrimination seems to boost support for the Chinese political system among Chinese students in the US. Support the show (https://twitter.com/AsiaMattersPod)
This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga, and artistic renderings from Hello Kitty Nativity to Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels. In Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific (Duke University Press, 2013), Christine Yano offers a fascinating study of Hello Kitty as a global commodity and “world idol.” Focusing on the period from 1998-present, the book considers the iconic spread and transformation of Sanrio’s character in the context of marketing strategies based on creating an ideal of “happiness” sustained through gift-mediated sociality and the production of nostalgia. Yano considers the Hello Kitty phenomenon as a process of “pink globalization” in which Kitty becomes a cultural “wink,” an invitation to play, a friend, a mediator of the realms of childhood and adult desire. The narrative is grounded in a series of ethnographic accounts of fans and critics of the global icon, including artists, collectors, Sanrio employees, and others. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga, and artistic renderings from Hello Kitty Nativity to Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels. In Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific (Duke University Press, 2013), Christine Yano offers a fascinating study of Hello Kitty as a global commodity and “world idol.” Focusing on the period from 1998-present, the book considers the iconic spread and transformation of Sanrio’s character in the context of marketing strategies based on creating an ideal of “happiness” sustained through gift-mediated sociality and the production of nostalgia. Yano considers the Hello Kitty phenomenon as a process of “pink globalization” in which Kitty becomes a cultural “wink,” an invitation to play, a friend, a mediator of the realms of childhood and adult desire. The narrative is grounded in a series of ethnographic accounts of fans and critics of the global icon, including artists, collectors, Sanrio employees, and others. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga, and artistic renderings from Hello Kitty Nativity to Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels. In Pink Globalization:... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga, and artistic renderings from Hello Kitty Nativity to Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels. In Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific (Duke University Press, 2013), Christine Yano offers a fascinating study of Hello Kitty as a global commodity and “world idol.” Focusing on the period from 1998-present, the book considers the iconic spread and transformation of Sanrio’s character in the context of marketing strategies based on creating an ideal of “happiness” sustained through gift-mediated sociality and the production of nostalgia. Yano considers the Hello Kitty phenomenon as a process of “pink globalization” in which Kitty becomes a cultural “wink,” an invitation to play, a friend, a mediator of the realms of childhood and adult desire. The narrative is grounded in a series of ethnographic accounts of fans and critics of the global icon, including artists, collectors, Sanrio employees, and others. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This cat has a complicated history. In addition to filling stationery stores across the globe with cute objects festooned with little whiskers and bowties, Hello Kitty has inspired tributes from Lisa Loeb and Lady Gaga, and artistic renderings from Hello Kitty Nativity to Hello (Sex) Kitty: Mad Asian Bitch on Wheels. In Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific (Duke University Press, 2013), Christine Yano offers a fascinating study of Hello Kitty as a global commodity and “world idol.” Focusing on the period from 1998-present, the book considers the iconic spread and transformation of Sanrio’s character in the context of marketing strategies based on creating an ideal of “happiness” sustained through gift-mediated sociality and the production of nostalgia. Yano considers the Hello Kitty phenomenon as a process of “pink globalization” in which Kitty becomes a cultural “wink,” an invitation to play, a friend, a mediator of the realms of childhood and adult desire. The narrative is grounded in a series of ethnographic accounts of fans and critics of the global icon, including artists, collectors, Sanrio employees, and others. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode, Chris, Nate, Travis, and guest host Alison Rapp have a roundtable discussion about the 18th annual Japan Studies Association conference held in Honolulu, Hawaii on the Hawaii Tokai International College campus. This episode is part one of three, and topics include the "soft power" of Hello Kitty, economic theories of roving bandits and their applicability to 16th century Japan, the give and take between Japan and China vis a vis Chinese museum exhibits, and more. Follow Alison Rapp on Twitter: @mnemosynekurai Presentations mentioned: Japan's Cute-Cool as Global Wink - Dr. Christine Yano, University of Hawaii at Manoa. The Politics of War Memory in Sino-Japanese Relations: Negotiating the Contents of War Exhibitions - Karl Gustafsson, Lund University. Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Roving Bandits: Are the Farmers Really Safe? - Arthur "Trey" Fleisher, Metropolitan State College of Denver. Singing Sustenance: An Ethnographic Account of Village Songs and Rural Sustenance in Kyushu, Japan - Eid-Ul Hasan, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. Farming in Japan: Cultural Icon Under Siege - William "Sandy" Pfeiffer, Warren Wilson College. Living Ghosts: POWs, Japan, and Ghostly Memories - Matthew Allen, University of Wollongong. Kamikaze, Yushukan, and the Cult of Self Sacrifice in War Memory- Rumi Sakamoto, University of Auckland. Mentioned in this Podcast: Let the Sea Make a Noise...: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur By Walter A. McDougall, Harper Perennial; First Edition edition (March 30, 2004) http://tinyurl.com/873pnw2 Support this podcast: Shop Amazon.com, suport the podcast: http://amzn.to/wnDX2j Samurai Archives Bookstore: http://astore.amazon.com/samurai-20 Samurai Archives Shop (T-Shirts, etc) http://www.cafepress.com/samuraiarchives Contact Us: Twitter @SamuraiArchives https://twitter.com/#!/samuraiarchives Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Samurai-Archives/104533213984 Samurai Archives podcast blog: http://www.samuraipodcast.com Samurai Archives Forum: http://www.japanhistoryforum.com
This presentation examines race and the Obamamania phenomenon in Japan, particularly during Barack Obama's presidential campaign and continuing through 2010. Obama has been wildly popular in Japan, with best-selling books of his speeches as English-speaking lessons, a rural town sharing the same name ("Obama" in Fukui prefecture) re-branding itself with his literal image on souvenir goods, and the coinage of the term "Obamajority" by the mayor of Hiroshima Tadatoshi Akiba upon the 64th anniversary of the bombing of his city to refer to the "majority of people and nations" who want to eliminate nuclear weapons. Obama's many fans in Japan have adopted his two slogans - "Yes we can!" and "Change" - as rallying cries for social and political reform. When asked, many of these fans claim that Obama's race (whether African American or mixed) plays little or no part in his image or popularity, and that he thus heralds the possibility and acceptability of a "post-racial" figure. How is Obama's purported post-raciality inflected by the persistence of blood ideology in contemporary Japan? This presentation is a preliminary talk-through of issues surrounding "post-race" as part of my ongoing research on Obamamania in Japan.