Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Racist Attachments: Dakko-chan, Black Kitsch, and Kawaii Culture

Racist Attachments: Dakko-chan, Black Kitsch, and Kawaii Culture This article explores the ties between anti-Black racist kitsch and kawaii culture through the history of the Dakko-chan doll. In what came to be called the “Dakko-chan boom” of 1960, tens of thousands of Japanese people lined up to purchase an inflatable blackface doll with a circular red mouth, grass skirt, and winking hologram eyes. Dakko means “to hug,” and Dakko-chan's astronomical popularity resulted in part from the way the doll could be worn as an accessory, attached to the body by its hugging arms. This article asks what it meant for Japan, a nation still recovering from World War II and the American occupation, to quite literally embrace American blackface in the form of an embraceable doll. Rejecting the claim that blackface loses its significance in a Japanese context, this article argues that Dakko-chan cannot be considered devoid of racist meanings. Emerging amid the political turmoil surrounding the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty, Dakko-chan came to express a wide range of contradictory feelings about race, sex, and nation, illustrating how affective attachments to racist forms have accrued rather than dissipated through their movement into new cultural contexts. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions Duke University Press

Racist Attachments: Dakko-chan, Black Kitsch, and Kawaii Culture

Kanesaka, Erica
positions , Volume 30 (1) – Feb 1, 2022
Download PDF
29 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/duke-university-press/racist-attachments-dakko-chan-black-kitsch-and-kawaii-culture-OCiCCXNFY5
Copyright
Copyright 2022 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-9418007
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article explores the ties between anti-Black racist kitsch and kawaii culture through the history of the Dakko-chan doll. In what came to be called the “Dakko-chan boom” of 1960, tens of thousands of Japanese people lined up to purchase an inflatable blackface doll with a circular red mouth, grass skirt, and winking hologram eyes. Dakko means “to hug,” and Dakko-chan's astronomical popularity resulted in part from the way the doll could be worn as an accessory, attached to the body by its hugging arms. This article asks what it meant for Japan, a nation still recovering from World War II and the American occupation, to quite literally embrace American blackface in the form of an embraceable doll. Rejecting the claim that blackface loses its significance in a Japanese context, this article argues that Dakko-chan cannot be considered devoid of racist meanings. Emerging amid the political turmoil surrounding the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty, Dakko-chan came to express a wide range of contradictory feelings about race, sex, and nation, illustrating how affective attachments to racist forms have accrued rather than dissipated through their movement into new cultural contexts.

Journal

positions – Duke University Press

Published: Feb 1, 2022

References

  • Affective Economies
    Ahmed, Sara
  • Dakko-chan
    Aku, Yu 阿久悠
  • Racist Cute: Caricature, Kawaii-Style, and the Asian Thing
    Bow, Leslie
  • Fixin’ to Get Ready
    Brown, Tony
  • A Critical Review of Academic Perspectives on Blackness in Japan
    Carter, Mitzi Hunter, Aina Graburn, Nelson H. H. Ertl, John Tierney, R. Kenji
  • Xenophobes, Visual Terrorism, and the African Subject
    Chandler, Robin M.
  • Dakkochan Delirium
  • Dakko-chan ‘seiki no henshin’
  • Banned Hugging Doll Turns Its Back on ‘Racism.’
    Hadfield, Peter
  • Post-Identity Kawaii: Commerce, Gender, and Contemporary Japanese Art
    Hasegawa, Yuko Lloyd, Frank
  • Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance
    hooks, bell
  • The Convenient Scapegoating of Blacks in Postwar Japan: Shaping the Black Experience Abroad
    Hughes, Sherick A.
  • How ‘Japanese’ Is Pokémon?
    Iwabuchi, Koichi Tobin, Joseph
  • Imperial Innocence: The Kawaii Afterlife of Little Black Sambo
    Kalnay, Erica Kanesaka
  • Cute Culture
    Kato, Miki
  • Cuties in Japan
    Kinsella, Sharon Skov, Lise Moeran, Brian
  • The All-White World of Children's Books
    Larrick, Nancy
  • How Hello Kitty Commodifies the Cute, Cool, and Camp: ‘Consumutopia’ versus ‘Control’ in Japan
    McVeigh, Brian J.
  • Not Just Cute and Not a Cat: Hello Kitty's First Museum Retrospective
    Miranda, Carolina A.
  • Tiny Toy Turns Trade Tide, Canadians Imitate Japanese
    Nagle, Patrick
  • The Two-Layer Model of ‘Kawaii’: A Behavioural Science Framework for Understanding Kawaii and Cuteness
    Nittono, Hiroshi
  • Dakko-chan būmu: Kokujin ga moderu de wa arimsen
    Ōki, Kigen 紀元大木
  • Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary Japanese Mass Culture
    Russell, John G.
  • Consuming Passions: Spectacle, Self-Transformation, and the Commodification of Blackness in Japan
    Russell, John G.
  • The Other as Racist: Contrasted Mythologies of Self and Other in the Discourse of Racism in the United States and Japan
    Russell, John G. Ertl, John Mock, John Allan McCreery, John Poole, Gregory S.
  • Dakko-chan būmu: Yakuza ni ‘ure’ to sugomarete
    Satō, Yasuta
  • Old Black Stereotypes Find New Lives in Japan
    Shapiro, Margaret
  • 21 seiki no shinsei ‘Dakko-chan 21’ tanjō ni kansuru oshirase
  • ‘Pan-Pan Girls’ Performing and Resisting Neocolonialism(s) in the Pacific Theater: US Military Prostitution in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952
    Takeuchi, Michiko Höhn, Maria Moon, Seungsook
  • John Dominis, a Star Photographer for Life Magazine, Dies at 92
    Vitello, Paul
  • “Kawaii”-ron
    Yomota, Inuhiko 四方田犬彦
  • Affective Economies
    Ahmed, Sara
  • Dakko-chan
    Aku, Yu 阿久悠
  • Racist Cute: Caricature, Kawaii-Style, and the Asian Thing
    Bow, Leslie
  • Fixin’ to Get Ready
    Brown, Tony
  • A Critical Review of Academic Perspectives on Blackness in Japan
    Carter, Mitzi Hunter, Aina Graburn, Nelson H. H. Ertl, John Tierney, R. Kenji
  • Xenophobes, Visual Terrorism, and the African Subject
    Chandler, Robin M.
  • Dakkochan Delirium
  • Dakko-chan ‘seiki no henshin’
  • Banned Hugging Doll Turns Its Back on ‘Racism.’
    Hadfield, Peter
  • Post-Identity Kawaii: Commerce, Gender, and Contemporary Japanese Art
    Hasegawa, Yuko Lloyd, Frank
  • Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance
    hooks, bell
  • The Convenient Scapegoating of Blacks in Postwar Japan: Shaping the Black Experience Abroad
    Hughes, Sherick A.
  • How ‘Japanese’ Is Pokémon?
    Iwabuchi, Koichi Tobin, Joseph
  • Imperial Innocence: The Kawaii Afterlife of Little Black Sambo
    Kalnay, Erica Kanesaka
  • Cute Culture
    Kato, Miki
  • Cuties in Japan
    Kinsella, Sharon Skov, Lise Moeran, Brian
  • The All-White World of Children's Books
    Larrick, Nancy
  • How Hello Kitty Commodifies the Cute, Cool, and Camp: ‘Consumutopia’ versus ‘Control’ in Japan
    McVeigh, Brian J.
  • Not Just Cute and Not a Cat: Hello Kitty's First Museum Retrospective
    Miranda, Carolina A.
  • Tiny Toy Turns Trade Tide, Canadians Imitate Japanese
    Nagle, Patrick
  • The Two-Layer Model of ‘Kawaii’: A Behavioural Science Framework for Understanding Kawaii and Cuteness
    Nittono, Hiroshi
  • Dakko-chan būmu: Kokujin ga moderu de wa arimsen
    Ōki, Kigen 紀元大木
  • Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary Japanese Mass Culture
    Russell, John G.
  • Consuming Passions: Spectacle, Self-Transformation, and the Commodification of Blackness in Japan
    Russell, John G.
  • The Other as Racist: Contrasted Mythologies of Self and Other in the Discourse of Racism in the United States and Japan
    Russell, John G. Ertl, John Mock, John Allan McCreery, John Poole, Gregory S.
  • Dakko-chan būmu: Yakuza ni ‘ure’ to sugomarete
    Satō, Yasuta
  • Old Black Stereotypes Find New Lives in Japan
    Shapiro, Margaret
  • 21 seiki no shinsei ‘Dakko-chan 21’ tanjō ni kansuru oshirase
  • ‘Pan-Pan Girls’ Performing and Resisting Neocolonialism(s) in the Pacific Theater: US Military Prostitution in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952
    Takeuchi, Michiko Höhn, Maria Moon, Seungsook
  • John Dominis, a Star Photographer for Life Magazine, Dies at 92
    Vitello, Paul
  • “Kawaii”-ron
    Yomota, Inuhiko 四方田犬彦