Discursive intersection?: Kawaii consumption and the representation of young Japanese women in national discourses of social prescription and in international techno-orientalism

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Artur Lozano-Méndez
Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4787-2020

This article analyzes and classifies the criticisms that, since the nineties, are directed towards kawaii products (“cute”, “precious”) and young Japanese women who consume them. It is found that these criticisms, within the country and from abroad, are motivated by opposite motivations. The “discursive formations” (Foucault, 2006) that have stood out for their causticity towards the kawaii are: a) from Japan, the hegemonic social discourse that prescribes gender roles and appropriate behaviors; b) internationally, techno-orientalism (Morley & Robins, 1995), which, after the collapse of the housing bubble in Japan (1990) and the equating of the country with other economies of advanced capitalism of low annual growth, ceases to present Japan as a rival for modernity. Recent techno-orientalism ridicules the model of modernity prevailing in Japan, with attention to its postmodern characteristics of amnesia and seemingly indiscriminate consumerism. Likewise, overlaps and divergences are identified in both reprobatory positions, in their representations of consumer practices, according to the “enunciative function” (Foucault, 2006) formulated by the criticism towards the kawaii. The discursive archive of both formations is regularly (re)enunciated and, as long as kawaii aesthetics remain ubiquitous in Japan, these critiques are expected to continue with transformations.

Keywords
Kawaii, shōjo or young girls, Japanese culture, consumerism, tecno-orientalism

Article Details

How to Cite
Lozano-Méndez, Artur. “Discursive intersection?: Kawaii consumption and the representation of young Japanese women in national discourses of social prescription and in international techno-orientalism”. Digithum, no. 27, pp. 1-12, doi:10.7238/d.v0i27.374156.
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(c) Artur Lozano-Méndez, 2021


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Author Biography

Artur Lozano-Méndez, Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)

Artur Lozano-Méndez is a Ph.D. in Translation and Intercultural Studies and a Serra Húnter Lecturer at the Department of Translation and Interpretation and East Asian Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He teaches Japanese politics, philosophy, popular culture and society of Japan. His research focuses on those same areas as a member of the InterAsia research group (UAB). His publications include: “Techno-Orientalism in East-Asian Contexts: Reiteration, Diversification, Adaptation” (chapter in Counterpoints: Edward Said’s Legacy, 2010); editor of El Japón Contemporáneo. Una aproximación desde los Estudios Culturales (2016); “Mamoru Oshii’s Exploration of the Potentialities of Consciousness in a Globalised Capitalist Network” (in EJCJS – Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 15:3, 2015); co-editor of Persistently Postwar. Media and the Politics of Memory in Japan (2019).

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