Hyperfeminine Harajuku: Exploring Queer KAWAII Practices in a Tokyo Subcultural District

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.