The New York Times business writer Ken Belson recently presented his book “Hello Kitty: The remarkable story of Sanrio and the billion dollar feline phenomenon” (John Wiley & Sons) at the American Book Center in Amsterdam, and took some time to chat with Expatica editor Danielle Latman about the cartoon cat, expat life in Japan, and business opportunities during a recession.

You’re both a business reporter and a Hello Kitty fan. Which trait was more prominent during the writing of this book?

There’s two parts to the answer: Hello Kitty is the motivator, but at the end of the day it was a business writing job.

I was in love with the topic, but I had to hand in a book that tells a story, and that is both a writing and a research exercise. I spent several months doing interviews and research, so that I had more than enough to start writing.

How does Hello Kitty represent some of the central elements of Japanese pop culture?

One is its graceful, simplistic design. She’s very two-dimensional and minimalist. As I pointed out in the lecture the other day, she’s a Zen cat, very flat and emotionless.

The other is the way she’s packaged on everything. In Japan she’s on all manner of things and I think it speaks to Sanrio’s [the company that created Hello Kitty] success at branding her, but also the Japanese acceptance of characters. Practically everything in Japan has some sort of logo or character. 

The book was written in 2004. Have you noticed any changes since then within Japanese pop culture that Hello Kitty or Sanrio represent?

Sanrio is now marketing Hello Kitty to men in Japan. I think that’s a sign of a shrinking market in Japan; declining population, deflation, and a slow economy have forced Sanrio to look elsewhere.

Also, Japanese pop culture has become more global even since 2004. When I went to college, people approached Japan through business in order to make money. Now it’s completely different; Japanese pop culture is the motivator for foreign language study in American universities.

This is an interview for Expatica.com, and you were an expat yourself from the US to Japan. What was the biggest culture shock?

I lived in Japan off and on for 12 years between 1988 and 2004, working first as an English teacher and then as a freelance reporter.

The hardest thing to adjust to initially was the physical space. I’d lived in New York and other places, but I found that my body didn’t fit into things that they normally fit into. Bathrooms, closets; everything was smaller.

The other very important discovery I made after the initial honeymoon phase was that there are idiots in Japan just like there are idiots in every country. I was blissfully ignorant the first couple of months, but then I realised there’s the same variety of people you would find anywhere else, the only difference is if you don’t speak Japanese you can form stereotypes without ever confirming their validity.

I was very earnest about trying to learn Japanese when I first arrived. In fact, the second day I got there, I signed up for Japanese classes and went for about six months. My difficulty living in Japan dissolved slowly in direct proportion with how much language I was learning.

You lived in Japan during their recession in the 1990s. Do you have any input or advice for our readers, who are expats during this current global recession?

When I first moved to Japan in 1988, money was flowing freely and people were willing to overpay for things. When I returned in 1993, it was slowly sinking in that Japan was never going to return to those good old days. That didn’t truly sink in until about 1997, when several banks started to fail. It took six or seven years for the country to accept the end of the bubble, and then another three or four years for the government and policymakers to grasp how to fix all of the bad debts that the banks accumulated, the rising unemployment, homelessness, strain on the national health care and pension system, the aging of society, the rise of China, and the closing of small Japanese companies.

As an expat you’re in a great position because you can go home if you have to. On the other hand, if you have a skill that’s valuable and transportable, you can take advantage of observing America without having to be in America.

Do you have any final comments?

Recessions can actually be an opening for innovation. In the 1990s as the Japanese economy struggled, the government deregulated certain sectors. Deregulation was an opportunity for foreigners to enter businesses they never could have before.

When I arrived in the 80s, travel agencies were very strictly licensed. That was deregulated during the time I was there. All of a sudden, foreigners got involved in travel agencies and the price of international tickets fell dramatically. Instead of using a proto-national travel agency I ended up going to one started by foreigners that offered services online well before the Japanese did.

Foreign-owned travel agencies had a much better level of service; they offered discounting and flexibility in the tickets. They weren’t just catering, like many Japanese agencies, to people who were simply going to Hawaii and coming back.

I think there are opportunities for foreigners overseas to take advantage of the crisis and some of the openings that result as a consequence of it. Often in a recession prices are batted down, so assets and licences are cheaper to buy. Locals aren’t starting new businesses, so now is a good time take an idea from your own country and seed it overseas.

Text edited by Danielle Latman / Expatica 2009

Photo credits: Hello Kitty on toast by antigone78, Hello Kitty purse by loosepunctuation, Ken Belson provided the photo of himself with co-authour Brian Bremner and Hello Kitty, map of Japan by CharlesLam