#1108924 added February 21, 2026 at 9:17am Restrictions: None
I Have No Mouth And I Must Meow
Many years ago, I had this recurring schtick about how a certain white kawaii cat from Japan was evil and taking over the world. I called her the Nefarious Neko. I dropped it because it got old for me, but along the way, I learned way more than I ever wanted to know about Hello Kitty. So this BBC article caught my attention:
I, of course, never actually hated Hello Kitty. If there's something I actually detest, I normally just leave it alone, like the way I almost never talk about sports in here.
The designer behind Hello Kitty is stepping down after 46 years, during which time she oversaw the feline character achieving world recognition.
"World domination" is more like it. I remember some years ago, I saw an article about what was called "the most remote community in the world" or something, a tiny village in northern Siberia that was the only place of human habitation for many kilometers around. (Perhaps there are islands more remote, technically.) I don't remember many details, but it's the kind of thing that's only accessible by rail, and, because it's Siberia, only for like three months out of the year or something. Point is, it is quite literally the farthest corner of the world, and I distinctly remember, in one of the photos, a little girl wearing a Hello Kitty shirt.
Yuko Yamaguchi took over design duties for the character - who isn't actually a cat, but a little girl from London - in 1980, five years after she first launched.
It's not widely known, but yes, she's actually a little girl and she's actually British and her name is actually Kitty White.
Yamaguchi herself often wore Kitty-style dresses in public and piled her hair in buns.
One of these days, I'm determined to visit Japan. I'll need to brace myself for that sort of thing.
The Hello Kitty character first appeared on a coin purse in 1980 and has become a global marketing phenomenon.
This is where I started to metaphorically scratch my head. Up there, it said she took over "in 1980, five years after [HK] first launched." Seems to be a glitch in the timeline there.
She has appeared on clothes, accessories, video games, and even an Airbus plane.
And I saw an entire bullet train with a Hello Kitty theme. Well, pictures of it, anyway. Not to mention the Hello Kitty vibrator and the Hello Kitty assault rifle, which I called the HK-47.
Unlike other Japanese exports such as Pokemon, there is little backstory to the character of Hello Kitty. Sanrio has said she "isn't a human, [but] she's not quite a cat either".
As she has an actual cat as a pet, if she were a cat, it might raise questions about slavery and feline trafficking.
She was born in London and has a twin sister named Mimmy and a boyfriend named Dear Daniel, according to Sanrio.
And yet, the article fails to mention her name. Fortunately, I covered that up there ^
Kitty will make her cinematic debut in a Warner Bros film in 2028. She has already appeared in several animated series but has never spoken, as she doesn't have a mouth.
Now, I want you to stop and think for a moment about the optics of a British little girl character, created in Japan some 30 years after WWII, whose distinguishing feature is being voiceless. And maybe you'll see one reason why I had that schtick going for a while.
