Marketing Marie Kondo: Crossing Cultures, Gender Stereotypes, and Media Strategies
Faura AVR
21 Mar 2024 05:00 pm
Marketing Marie Kondo:
Crossing Cultures, Gender Stereotypes, and Media Strategies
A talk by Prof. Alisa Freedman of the University of Oregon
March 21, 2023
5:00-6:30PM
Faura AVR
Marie Kondo—“tidying consultant,” television celebrity, bestselling author, and entrepreneur—became an international sensation through savvy use of multimedia that innovatively combines American and Japanese culture, business strategies, and gender stereotypes. Kondo introduced her eponymous method of decluttering, premised on modes of Japanese cleaning, Mindfulness, and common sense, through a bestselling 2010 book, The Life- Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Jinsei ga tokimeku katazuke no mahō), that was translated into around forty languages and inspired adaptations and sequels. In 2014, the year her book was translated into English, Kondo moved to California with her family; her husband, Kawahara Takumi became the co-founder and chief executive of her media company in 2015. Concurrently, Kondo expanded her social media presence in Japan and abroad and spread her brand through TV appearances; these efforts culminated in Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, her 2019 US Netflix makeover reality series. Her program became the only US television show starring a Japanese woman to achieve a mass audience. In 2016, under the catchphrase, “Organize the World,” Kondo began offering consultant certification courses.
I will overview these media events and official means through which Kondo has strategically created, carefully timed, and tightly controlled her global lifestyle brand—print books, corporate websites, consultant certification programs, and television—to argue that her success relies on her mobilization of both long-held stereotypes of Japanese women and entrepreneurial strategies of the 2010s to craft a persona that seems both “transnational” (namely, American) and somehow “Japanese.” Using an interdisciplinary, text-based, cultural studies approach, I read the construction and circulation of media to understand the story that Kondo tells about doing business in Japan, the United States, and Asia. I disclose what her rise to cultural influence reveals about the endurance of stereotypes in an era of globalization of Japanese popular culture.
Alisa Freedman is a professor of Japanese literature, cultural studies, and gender at the University of Oregon. Her books include Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost; Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road; Women in Japanese Studies: Memoirs from a Trailblazing Generation (edited collection of 32 memoirs); Introducing Japanese Popular Culture (edited textbook featuring 42 trends); annotated translation of Kawabata Yasunari’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa; and Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (co-edited volume). She has published numerous articles for academic and general interest publications, literary translations, and guides to publishing. She served as the editor-in-chief of the US–Japan Women’s Journal (2016–2022). She is the Faculty Fellow of a University of Oregon residence hall and has received a national award for her mentorship work. Alisa enjoys presenting at public events like cultural festivals, anime cons, reading groups, and TEDx.