Megan Rose: Hyperfeminine Harajuku: Exploring Queer KAWAII Practices in a Tokyo Subcultural District
Hyperfeminine Harajuku: Exploring Queer KAWAII Practices in a Tokyo Subcultural District
Megan Rose
Postdoctoral Researcher, Vitalities Lab, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Visiting Scholar, Interfaculty Initiative for Information Studies at the University of Tokyo
Wednesday, 21 May 2025 (in person and online)
15:30–17:00
Room 8015
Kanagawa University, Minatomirai Campus
Yokohama
Abstract
In this talk I explore the creative practices of Harajuku’s subcultures. Harajuku is a town in Tokyo that is a safe space for women, men and gender diverse people as early as the 1970s. Over recent decades, numerous KAWAII fashion subcultures have emerged in this district, each with their own specific conventions, aesthetics, purposes and intents including lolita fashion, decora fashion, yume kawaii, fairy kei, menhera. KAWAII is a significant cultural site for marginalized people to find collective safety and creatively work through their experiences and find a place of belonging. In the increasingly fractured social landscape of Tokyo, an eclectic group of artists, photographers, musicians, and designers come together in a constellation of spectacular bodies to play with KAWAII fashion. Their efforts are supported by underground queer feminist movements of Tokyo that protest, disrupt, and agitate through art, talk, and zine collectives in a blaze of shimmering hot pink.
The talk considers the differing ways KAWAII is queered by these groups as an expression of dis/affection, in/dependence and a/sexuality. Queering KAWAII refers to a process of estrangement and de-familiarisation of cuteness as a form of hyperfemininity. As part of global queer femme cultures, hyperfemininity contaminates gender binaries, and exaggerates and pushes the parameters of patriarchal femininity as a form of disruption, experimentation, and reflection. Centred on the affective stories, fashion objects and garments and texts that KAWAII fashion practitioners create, this talk explores the social motivations, politics and ideologies of this subcultural movement. The talk traverses themes of marginality, vulnerability, and women and gender diverse people’s defiance in facing structural sexism, sexual violence, queerphobia, and ableism.
To Attend Online (Zoom)
Access the Zoom Meeting via the following Meeting ID and Passcode. Preregistration is NOT required to attend via Zoom.
Meeting ID: 985 5806 9693 Passcode: KUMMC
To Attend in Person
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Future Lectures
The International Japanese Studies Group at Kanagawa University also plans the following future lecture the remainder of the Japanese academic year. All lectures will be from 3:30 to 5:00 pm at our Minatomirai Campus. Lectures will be hybrid when possible. (Which second semester lectures will be hybrid will be announced later.) Please mark your calendars.
Wednesday, 18 June 2025 (In person only)
Daniele Durante, Ca’ Foscari University & Kanagawa University
Why Is Cross-Dressing Perceived as a Fray in the Social Fabric? A Case Study from Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan
Wednesday, 23 July 2025 (Hybrid)
Julia C. Bullock, Emory University
Beauvoir in Japan: Japanese Women and The Second Sex
Wednesday, 24 September 2025
Chen Yen-yi, Sophia University
Bodies Performed: Images and Worship of Shaka in Medieval Japan.
Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Alejandro Morales, Kanagawa University
Monstrous Obsessions: The Undercurrents of Desire in the Aesthetics of Izumi Kyoka
Wednesday, 19 November 2025
P.A. George, Kanagawa University
Difficulties of Translating Japanese Literature into Foreign Languages: With Special Reference to Malayalam Translation of Ishikawa Takuboku’s Ichiaku no suna (A handful of sand)
Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Elise Voyau, Kanagawa University
Japan in Tension After 1968: The Workshop School of Photography in Focus
Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Quintana Scherer, Kanagawa University
Yokohama-e and the Imagined Foreigner
Details on upcoming lectures will be announced one to two weeks in advance. If you would like to be on our direct email list to be sure you do not miss an announcement, please contact James Welker (jrwelker[at]kanagawa-u.ac.jp).
More information at human.kanagawa-u.ac.jp/kenkyu/symposium/pdf/spring_2025.pdf.