Journal articles: 'Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and his Wild West show have not wanted for ink. There are Cody's own autobiographical accounts of his frontier and his theatrical adventures, Don Russell's well-researched standards on Cody's life and the Wild West shows, Sarah Blackstone's examination of the economic basis of the Wild West show in general, Joseph G. Rosa and Robin May's pictorial biography of Cody, Paul Reddin's overview of Wild West images, and a host of other, related books. In fact, there have been so many books written about “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Wild West shows, it is somewhat remarkable that Joy Kasson has found such a productive new angle on the western hero and his dramatic presentations.

Abstract:

Abstract In early exhibition planning, Buffalo Bill Museum curatorial staff hoped to center a reinstallation around William F. Cody while reflecting thinking influenced by study of New Western History. Gallery planning included consultation with historical experts including a Lakota historian and Wild West Show Indian descendant. One section of the museum was set aside to feature a Lakota point of view concerning Indian participation in Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Visitor studies regarding the plan showed the museum's board and staff that taking a broader approach to Cody's life and including a Lakota voice would not engender public scandal but instead would pique visitor interest.

Abstract:

Abstract The article juxtaposes two perspectives guiding the perception of ethnographic shows, namely, a contemporary and an earlier one. The article uses the example of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, staged in 1906 in the Polish territories under Austrian rule. Deriving from present criticisms of ethnographic shows and their interpretation through the prism of colonial studies, the author examines the types of reception of such performances met in places in which the inhabitants did not identify with colonialism. Analyzing reactions to the Wild West shows published in the Polish-language dailies, the author offers an interpretation of these performances as foreign, distant from the local social context, and evoking antipatriotic acts. While presently, criticism of ethnographic shows inspires reflection on human rights and equality, the article looks at how the philippics directed against Buffalo Bill’s performances contributed to the promotion of patriotic attitudes by the intellectual elites of the time.

Abstract:

When I was growing up, the most famous and popular building in my hometown of Sheridan, Wyoming, was the Sheridan Inn because it was once owned by William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Nearly everything he was associated with became as well known as he. "Perhaps no popular idol ever lived who is so well known as "Buffalo Bill" reads the document featured in this article, an advertisem*nt for Buffalo Bill's three-reel film biography that appeared in the 1912 issue of The Moving Picture World magazine. With the announcement of the film in May of 1912, The Moving Picture World stated," ... no doubt with the great popularity of Wm. F. Cody, who is retiring to private life after having toured the world for thirty years as America's representative frontiersman and Wild West hero, these pictures, depicting actual happenings in the life of the Last of the Great Scouts, should prove to be one of the most successful features yet offered to the showmen of America." According to the magazine's January 4, 1913, issue, "the 'Life of Buffalo Bill' has re-awakened great interest in the western productions of a historical nature ... playing to record breaking houses .... shown after school hours, the picture seems to appeal chiefly to school children." This document advertised not only Buffalo Bill Cody's film biography but his life as well for Cody embodied the West for millions of Americans. He helped create an image of the West that was part of a national myth about frontier life. Elements of that myth still exist today.

Abstract:

The rodeo has long been a tool for America to understand nationalism and the American West. The space has been traditionally geared towards masculinity, telling the story of how the men conquered the West and tamed wild beasts. While rodeo remains an essential political tool of American nationalism, it has also served as a space for groups to challenge dominant narratives. Through non-traditional spaces, Black, gay, and other diverse rodeo spaces have created an environment that challenges normative American nationalism. This work studies these spaces and the people associated with the rodeo to understand the political space of rodeos. Looking at rodeos as a contact zones, this paper researches Buffalo Bill's Wild West and the creation of mythology in the West, explores nationalism, and defines political space. Finally, the study of a diversity of rodeos concludes with a new understanding of the power of the Rodeo in American culture.

Abstract:

This article explores representations of the American West in computer and videogames from the late 1970s through 2006. The article reveals how several titles, including the early Boot Hill (1977), invoked classic nineteenth-century western motifs, employing the six-shooter, wagon train, and iron horse to sell late twentieth-century entertainment technology to a global audience. Such games allowed players, typically adolescent males, to recreate a version of history and to participate actively in the more violent aspects of the ““Wild West.”” The arcade Western emerged as a subgenre within computer entertainment, offering a distinctive, interactive amalgam of popular frontier-based fictions, including the nineteenth-century dime novel, Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, and the modern Hollywood western. Computer technology thus served established myths surrounding the ““Wild West,”” even as New Western History was challenging their authenticity.

Abstract:

Abstract The article reviews a current bluetongue (BT) epidemiological situation in Europe, BT restricted zones and the role of wild ungulates as a reservoir for bluetongue virus (BTV) and its transmission. BT has been eradicated from central and northern Europe, however it is still circulating in some regions of southern and south-eastern Europe. According to the recent information of the Directoriate General for Health and Consumer Affairs (DG SANCO) disease caused by BTV1 was spreading at the beginning of 2014 in Corsica (France). Moreover, four BTV1 cases were noticed in the west Spain (Cáceres province), 59 BTV4 outbreaks in south Spain (Andalusia), 10 in the region of Algarve in Portugal and about 200 outbreaks of BTV4 in Greece (Peloponesse and Evros regions). On 4th July the first outbreak of BTV4 was also confirmed at the south Bulgarian border and by 5th September 2014 disease was noticed in 21 of 28 administrative districts of Bulgaria. In August 2014 the BTV4 disease was reported in south-east of Romania and as for 8th September 184 outbreaks of BT were confirmed in 17 counties of this country. As of 3 September 2014 in Europe there has been fourteen BT-affected zones, in different regions of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Malta, France (Corsica), Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. Most species of wild ruminants and camelids are susceptible to BTV infection, although frequently asymptomatically. Wild sheep, bighorn and mouflon, are susceptible to BTV infection and can develop fatal clinical disease, as do domestic sheep. Experimental or natural infection of antelope, wapiti, musk, ox, bison, yak, white-tailed deer and African buffalo also produced clinical disease, whereas blesbock, mountain gazelle, roe deer, red deer and Eurasian elk did not show clinical sign after natural or experimental infection and infection was recognized by the presence of BTV viral RNA or specific antibodies. The wildlife due to the long-term carrier state may act as a reservoir for BTV and play an important role in its transmission.

Abstract:

: Masyarakat Manggarai Barat merupakan masyarakat yang kental adat istiadat maupun budaya, terutama melestarikan budaya adat pembagian harta warisan untuk anak laki-laki maupun anak perempuan. Dalam budaya Manggarai ada beberapa harta warisan yang dapat dibagikan orang tua kepada anak kandungnya berupa tanah, lembu liar, kerbau, ladang, sawah dll. Seiring meningkatnya jumlah penduduk, pengaruh globalisasi, teknologi semakin canggih dan kebijakan aturan hukum di Indonesia terutama hukum warisan dapat mempengaruhi perilaku masyarakat adat Manggarai dalam melakukan pembagian warisan kepada pewarisnya. Metode penelitian yang telah digunakan dalam penelitian adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan pendekatan yuridis normative dan studi kasus. Subyek penelitian yang telah dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini adalah tokoh adat, tokoh agama, tokoh pemuda dan tokoh masyarakat dan aparat desa. Pengumpulan data yang telah dilakukan menggunakan observasi, interview, observasi dan studi literature. Analisis data menggunakan analisis deskriptif interaktif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa masyarakat manggarai barat menganut asas patrilineal dalam pembagian harta warisan dimana pembagian harta warisan lebih banyak untuk anak laki-laki karena menurut adat manggarai anak laki-laki memiliki tanggung jawab tinggal bersama orang tuanya meskipun tidak dalam satu rumah, sem*ntara anak perempuan tidak berikan harta warisan karena setelah anak perempuan ini menikah maka akan mendapatkan harta warisan yang ada pada suaminya. Masyarakat adat di Desa Golo Leleng sebagian menganut system mayorat laki-laki, yang apabila anak laki-laki tertua pada saat tertua pada saat pewaris meninggal atau anak laki-laki sulung (atau keturunan laki-laki) merupakan ahli waris tunggal. Anak laki-laki tertua sebagai pengganti orang tua yang telah meninggal dunia bukanlah pemilik harta peninggalan ia berkedudukan sebagaimana dapat orang tua mempunyai kewajiban mengurus anggota keluarga yang lain yang ditinggalkan, termasuk mengurus ibu apabila ayah yang meninggal dan begitu juga sebaliknya, berkewajiban mengurus ayah apabila ibu yang meninggal.The West Manggarai community is a society that is thick with customs and culture, especially preserving the customary culture of dividing inheritance for boys and girls. In Manggarai culture, there are several inheritances that parents can share with their biological children in the form of land, wild oxen, buffalo, fields, rice fields, etc. Along with the increasing population, the influence of globalization, increasingly sophisticated technology and the rule of law in Indonesia, especially inheritance law, can influence the behavior of the Manggarai indigenous people in distributing inheritance to their heirs. The research method that has been used in this research is qualitative research with a normative juridical approach and case studies. Research subjects who have been involved in this research are traditional leaders, religious leaders, youth leaders and community leaders and village officials. Data collection has been done using observation, interviews, observations and literature studies. Data analysis used interactive descriptive analysis. The results show that the West Manggarai community adheres to the patrilineal principle in the distribution of inheritance where the distribution of inheritance is more for boys because according to Manggarai custom, boys have the responsibility to live with their parents even though they are not in the same house, while girls do not. give inheritance because after this daughter is married, she will get the inheritance that is in her husband. Indigenous peoples in Golo Leleng Village partially adhere to the male majority system, in which the eldest son is the oldest when the heir dies or the eldest son (or male offspring) is the sole heir. The eldest son as a substitute for parents who have died is not the owner of the inheritance, he is domiciled as can parents have the obligation to take care of other family members who are left behind, including taking care of the mother if the father dies and vice versa, is obliged to take care of the father if the mother who died.

Abstract:

: Masyarakat Manggarai Barat merupakan masyarakat yang kental adat istiadat maupun budaya, terutama melestarikan budaya adat pembagian harta warisan untuk anak laki-laki maupun anak perempuan. Dalam budaya Manggarai ada beberapa harta warisan yang dapat dibagikan orang tua kepada anak kandungnya berupa tanah, lembu liar, kerbau, ladang, sawah dll. Seiring meningkatnya jumlah penduduk, pengaruh globalisasi, teknologi semakin canggih dan kebijakan aturan hukum di Indonesia terutama hukum warisan dapat mempengaruhi perilaku masyarakat adat Manggarai dalam melakukan pembagian warisan kepada pewarisnya. Metode penelitian yang telah digunakan dalam penelitian adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan pendekatan yuridis normative dan studi kasus. Subyek penelitian yang telah dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini adalah tokoh adat, tokoh agama, tokoh pemuda dan tokoh masyarakat dan aparat desa. Pengumpulan data yang telah dilakukan menggunakan observasi, interview, observasi dan studi literature. Analisis data menggunakan analisis deskriptif interaktif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa masyarakat manggarai barat menganut asas patrilineal dalam pembagian harta warisan dimana pembagian harta warisan lebih banyak untuk anak laki-laki karena menurut adat manggarai anak laki-laki memiliki tanggung jawab tinggal bersama orang tuanya meskipun tidak dalam satu rumah, sem*ntara anak perempuan tidak berikan harta warisan karena setelah anak perempuan ini menikah maka akan mendapatkan harta warisan yang ada pada suaminya. Masyarakat adat di Desa Golo Leleng sebagian menganut system mayorat laki-laki, yang apabila anak laki-laki tertua pada saat tertua pada saat pewaris meninggal atau anak laki-laki sulung (atau keturunan laki-laki) merupakan ahli waris tunggal. Anak laki-laki tertua sebagai pengganti orang tua yang telah meninggal dunia bukanlah pemilik harta peninggalan ia berkedudukan sebagaimana dapat orang tua mempunyai kewajiban mengurus anggota keluarga yang lain yang ditinggalkan, termasuk mengurus ibu apabila ayah yang meninggal dan begitu juga sebaliknya, berkewajiban mengurus ayah apabila ibu yang meninggal.The West Manggarai community is a society that is thick with customs and culture, especially preserving the customary culture of dividing inheritance for boys and girls. In Manggarai culture, there are several inheritances that parents can share with their biological children in the form of land, wild oxen, buffalo, fields, rice fields, etc. Along with the increasing population, the influence of globalization, increasingly sophisticated technology and the rule of law in Indonesia, especially inheritance law, can influence the behavior of the Manggarai indigenous people in distributing inheritance to their heirs. The research method that has been used in this research is qualitative research with a normative juridical approach and case studies. Research subjects who have been involved in this research are traditional leaders, religious leaders, youth leaders and community leaders and village officials. Data collection has been done using observation, interviews, observations and literature studies. Data analysis used interactive descriptive analysis. The results show that the West Manggarai community adheres to the patrilineal principle in the distribution of inheritance where the distribution of inheritance is more for boys because according to Manggarai custom, boys have the responsibility to live with their parents even though they are not in the same house, while girls do not. give inheritance because after this daughter is married, she will get the inheritance that is in her husband. Indigenous peoples in Golo Leleng Village partially adhere to the male majority system, in which the eldest son is the oldest when the heir dies or the eldest son (or male offspring) is the sole heir. The eldest son as a substitute for parents who have died is not the owner of the inheritance, he is domiciled as can parents have the obligation to take care of other family members who are left behind, including taking care of the mother if the father dies and vice versa, is obliged to take care of the father if the mother who died.

Abstract:

: Masyarakat Manggarai Barat merupakan masyarakat yang kental adat istiadat maupun budaya, terutama melestarikan budaya adat pembagian harta warisan untuk anak laki-laki maupun anak perempuan. Dalam budaya Manggarai ada beberapa harta warisan yang dapat dibagikan orang tua kepada anak kandungnya berupa tanah, lembu liar, kerbau, ladang, sawah dll. Seiring meningkatnya jumlah penduduk, pengaruh globalisasi, teknologi semakin canggih dan kebijakan aturan hukum di Indonesia terutama hukum warisan dapat mempengaruhi perilaku masyarakat adat Manggarai dalam melakukan pembagian warisan kepada pewarisnya. Metode penelitian yang telah digunakan dalam penelitian adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan pendekatan yuridis normative dan studi kasus. Subyek penelitian yang telah dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini adalah tokoh adat, tokoh agama, tokoh pemuda dan tokoh masyarakat dan aparat desa. Pengumpulan data yang telah dilakukan menggunakan observasi, interview, observasi dan studi literature. Analisis data menggunakan analisis deskriptif interaktif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa masyarakat manggarai barat menganut asas patrilineal dalam pembagian harta warisan dimana pembagian harta warisan lebih banyak untuk anak laki-laki karena menurut adat manggarai anak laki-laki memiliki tanggung jawab tinggal bersama orang tuanya meskipun tidak dalam satu rumah, sem*ntara anak perempuan tidak berikan harta warisan karena setelah anak perempuan ini menikah maka akan mendapatkan harta warisan yang ada pada suaminya. Masyarakat adat di Desa Golo Leleng sebagian menganut system mayorat laki-laki, yang apabila anak laki-laki tertua pada saat tertua pada saat pewaris meninggal atau anak laki-laki sulung (atau keturunan laki-laki) merupakan ahli waris tunggal. Anak laki-laki tertua sebagai pengganti orang tua yang telah meninggal dunia bukanlah pemilik harta peninggalan ia berkedudukan sebagaimana dapat orang tua mempunyai kewajiban mengurus anggota keluarga yang lain yang ditinggalkan, termasuk mengurus ibu apabila ayah yang meninggal dan begitu juga sebaliknya, berkewajiban mengurus ayah apabila ibu yang meninggal.The West Manggarai community is a society that is thick with customs and culture, especially preserving the customary culture of dividing inheritance for boys and girls. In Manggarai culture, there are several inheritances that parents can share with their biological children in the form of land, wild oxen, buffalo, fields, rice fields, etc. Along with the increasing population, the influence of globalization, increasingly sophisticated technology and the rule of law in Indonesia, especially inheritance law, can influence the behavior of the Manggarai indigenous people in distributing inheritance to their heirs. The research method that has been used in this research is qualitative research with a normative juridical approach and case studies. Research subjects who have been involved in this research are traditional leaders, religious leaders, youth leaders and community leaders and village officials. Data collection has been done using observation, interviews, observations and literature studies. Data analysis used interactive descriptive analysis. The results show that the West Manggarai community adheres to the patrilineal principle in the distribution of inheritance where the distribution of inheritance is more for boys because according to Manggarai custom, boys have the responsibility to live with their parents even though they are not in the same house, while girls do not. give inheritance because after this daughter is married, she will get the inheritance that is in her husband. Indigenous peoples in Golo Leleng Village partially adhere to the male majority system, in which the eldest son is the oldest when the heir dies or the eldest son (or male offspring) is the sole heir. The eldest son as a substitute for parents who have died is not the owner of the inheritance, he is domiciled as can parents have the obligation to take care of other family members who are left behind, including taking care of the mother if the father dies and vice versa, is obliged to take care of the father if the mother who died.

Abstract:

Abstract This article examines the first tour of Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Italy and the so-called ‘sfida dei butteri’ (the challenge of the Italian cowboys of the Pontine marshes), which took place in Rome in March 1890. Analysing nineteenth-century Italian newspapers and photographs, I demonstrate that populist, anti-capitalist, and anti-American sentiments marked the Italian media's responses to the American show. In the historical context of Italy's socioeconomic crisis and of the first phase of colonial expansion in Africa (1870–1922), the mixed reception of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, amplified by the media event of the sfida, shaped the fate of the western genre in Italy.

Abstract:

Between 1902 and 1945, the Banff Indian Days and annual Indian Exhibition promoted by local Banff entrepreneur Norman Luxton, were a success both locally and internationally. Tourists came from around the world to attend the week-long festivities. The Banff Indian Days could be considered the Canadian equivalent of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. These Banff Indian Days form not only an undescribed part of Canada's popular culture history, but are also an important source of information on the nature of Indian-White relations in the province of Alberta between 1902 and 1945 - a period and region relatively little investigated by historians interested in Native history. In this paper the structure and function of the Banff Indian Days are investigated using traditional historical methods as well as theoretical concepts borrowed from the discipline of Anthropology. The article concludes that the Banff Indian Days constituted a form of public ritual through which participating Indians were able to invent, assert, and have sanctioned, their separate and unique identities.

Abstract:

Dramaga sub-district is an area that has rice fields close to buffalo stalls and a population of wild Macaca fascicularis as natural hosts for several species of Plasmodium. This causes the Dramaga sub-district to become a potential vector habitat for malaria, including Anopheles vagus. This study aims to analyze distribution of An. vagus larval stage in 4 villages (Cikarawang, Babakan, Margajaya, and Ciherang) in Dramaga subdistrict which have paddy field areas. Larvae were collected using a dipper, and each collection sites of the larvae habitat were marked using Global Positioning System. The physical characteristics of the water habitat measured were temperature, pH, total dissolved solids and the electrical conductivity of the water. Pearson's correlation test was used to analyze the relationship between the number of larvae An. vagus with each of the parameters water physical characteristics. The results of this study obtained 309 An. vagus larvae from the 27 collection points. Larvae of An. vagus was found in 3 villages (i.e. Cikarawang, Babakan and Ciherang), but was not found in Margajaya village. The habitat characteristics of An. vagus in paddy fields showed a water temperature of 26.6-31.7oC, pH 6.40-8.10, the total dissolved solid 36-285 ppm, and the electrical conductivity 72-262 μm/cm. The Pearsons correlation test results did not show a significant difference between the number of An. vagus larvae and each parameter (r= -0.26, 0.13, -0.15 and -0.16, respectively). The presence of An. vagus in this area could be considered in malaria vector control programs.

Abstract:

If thinking about home necessitates thinking about “place, space, scale, identity and power,” as Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling (2) suggest, then thinking about home themes in popular music makes no less a conceptual demand. Song lyrics and titles most often invoke dominant readings such as intimacy, privacy, nurture, refuge, connectedness and shared belonging, all issues found within Blunt and Dowling’s analysis. The spatial imaginary to which these authors refer takes vivid shape through repertoires of songs dealing with houses and other specific sites, vast and distant homelands, communities or, less tangibly, geographical or cultural settings where particular relationships can be found, supporting Blunt and Dowling’s major claim that home is complex, multi-scalar and multi-layered. Shelley Mallett’s claim that the term home “functions as a repository for complex, inter-related and at times contradictory socio-cultural ideas about people’s relationships with one another…and with places, spaces and things” (84) is borne out heavily by popular music where, for almost every sentiment that the term home evokes, it seems an opposite sentiment is evoked elsewhere: familiarity versus alienation, acceptance versus rejection, love versus loneliness. Making use of conceptual groundwork by Blunt and Dowling and by Mallett and others, the following discussion canvasses a range of meanings that home has had for a variety of songwriters, singers and audiences over the years. Intended as merely partial and exploratory rather than exhaustive, it provides some insights into contrasts, ironies and relationships between home and gender, diaspora and loss. While it cannot cover all the themes, it gives prominence to the major recurring themes and a variety of important contexts that give rise to these home themes. Most prominent among those songs dealing with home has been a nostalgia and yearning, while issues of how women may have viewed the home within which they have often been restricted to a narrowly defined private sphere are almost entirely absent. This serves as a reminder that, while some themes can be conducive to the medium of popular music, others may be significantly less so. Songs may speak directly of experience but not necessarily of all experiences and certainly not of all experiences equally. B. Lee Cooper claims “most popular culture ventures rely upon formula-oriented settings and phrasings to attract interest, to spur mental or emotional involvement” (93). Notions of home have generally proved both formulaic and emotionally-charged. Commonly understood patterns of meaning and other hegemonic references generally operate more successfully than alternative reference points. Those notions with the strongest cultural currency can be conveyed succinctly and denote widely agreed upon meanings. Lyrics can seldom afford to be deeply analytical but generally must be concise and immediately evocative. Despite that, this discussion will point to diverse meanings carried by songs about home. Blunt and Dowling point out that “a house is not necessarily nor automatically a home” (3). The differences are strongly apparent in music, with only a few songs relating to houses compared with homes. When Malvina Reynolds wrote in 1962 of “little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” she was certainly referring to houses, not homes, thus making it easier to bypass the relationships which might have vested the inhabitants with more warmth and individuality than their houses, in this song about conformity and hom*ogeneity. The more complex though elusive concept of home, however, is more likely to feature in love songs and to emanate from diasporal songs. Certainly these two genres are not mutually exclusive. Irish songs are particularly noteworthy for adding to the array of music written by, or representational of, those who have been forced away from home by war, poverty, strife or other circ*mstances. They manifest identities of displacement rather than of placement, as studied by Bronwen Walter, looking back at rather than from within their spatial imaginary. Phil Eva claims that during the 19th Century Irish émigrés sang songs of exile in Manchester’s streets. Since many in England’s industrial towns had been uprooted from their homes, the songs found rapport with street audiences and entered popular culture. For example, the song Killarney, of hazy origins but thought to date back to as early as 1850, tells of Killarney’s lakes and fells, Emerald isles and winding bays; Mountain paths and woodland dells… ...her [nature’s] home is surely there. As well as anthropomorphising nature and giving it a home, the song suggests a specifically geographic sense of home. Galway Bay, written by A. Fahy, does likewise, as do many other Irish songs of exile which link geography with family, kin and sometimes culture to evoke a sense of home. The final verse of Cliffs of Doneen gives a sense of both people and place making up home: Fare thee well to Doneen, fare thee well for a while And to all the kind people I’m leaving behind To the streams and the meadows where late I have been And the high rocky slopes round the cliffs of Doneen. Earlier Irish songs intertwine home with political issues. For example, Tho’ the Last Glimpse of Erin vows to Erin that “In exile thy bosum shall still be my home.” Such exile resulted from a preference of fleeing Ireland rather than bowing to English oppression, which then included a prohibition on Irish having moustaches or certain hairstyles. Thomas Moore is said to have set the words of the song to the air Coulin which itself referred to an Irish woman’s preference for her “Coulin” (a long-haired Irish youth) to the English (Nelson-Burns). Diasporal songs have continued, as has their political edge, as evidenced by global recognition of songs such as Bayan Ko (My Country), written by José Corazon de Jesus in 1929, out of love and concern for the Philippines and sung among Filipinos worldwide. Robin Cohen outlines a set of criteria for diaspora that includes a shared belief in the possibility of return to home, evident in songs such as the 1943 Welsh song A Welcome in the Hillside, in which a Welsh word translating roughly as a yearning to return home, hiraeth, is used: We’ll kiss away each hour of hiraeth When you come home again to Wales. However, the immensely popular I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, not of Irish origin but written by Thomas Westendorf of Illinois in 1875, suggests that such emotions can have a resonance beyond the diaspora. Anti-colonial sentiments about home can also be expressed by long-time inhabitants, as Harry Belafonte demonstrated in Island in the Sun: This is my island in the sun Where my people have toiled since time begun. Though I may sail on many a sea, Her shores will always be home to me. War brought a deluge of sentimental songs lamenting separation from home and loved ones, just as likely to be parents and siblings as sweethearts. Radios allowed wider audiences and greater popularity for these songs. If separation had brought a longing previously, the added horrors of war presented a stronger contrast between that which the young soldiers were missing and that which they were experiencing. Both the First and Second World Wars gave rise to songs long since sung which originated in such separations, but these also had a strong sense of home as defined by the nationalism that has for over a century given the contours of expectations of soldiers. Focusing on home, these songs seldom speak of the details of war. Rather they are specific about what the singers have left behind and what they hope to return to. Songs of home did not have to be written specifically for the war effort nor for overseas troops. Irving Berlin’s 1942 White Christmas, written for a film, became extremely popular with US troops during WWII, instilling a sense of home that related to familiarities and festivities. Expressing a sense of home could be specific and relate to regions or towns, as did I’m Goin’ Back Again to Yarrawonga, or it could refer to any home, anywhere where there were sons away fighting. Indeed the American Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home, written by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmour, was sung by both Northerners and Southerners, so adaptable was it, with home remarkably unspecified and undescribed. The 1914 British song Keep the Home Fires Burning by Ivor Novello and Lena Ford was among those that evoked a connection between home and the military effort and helped establish a responsibility on those at home to remain optimistic: Keep the Homes fires burning While your hearts are yearning, Though your lads are far away They dream of home, There’s a silver lining Through the dark clouds shining, Turn the dark clouds inside out, Till the boys come Home. No space exists in this song for critique of the reasons for war, nor of a role for women other than that of homemaker and moral guardian. It was women’s duty to ensure men enlisted and home was rendered a private site for emotional enlistment for a presumed public good, though ironically also a point of personal hope where the light of love burned for the enlistees’ safe return. Later songs about home and war challenged these traditional notions. Two serve as examples. One is Pink Floyd’s brief musical piece of the 1970s, Bring the Boys Back Home, whose words of protest against the American war on Viet Nam present home, again, as a site of safety but within a less conservative context. Home becomes implicated in a challenge to the prevailing foreign policy and the interests that influence it, undermining the normal public sphere/private sphere distinction. The other more complex song is Judy Small’s Mothers, Daughters, Wives, from 1982, set against a backdrop of home. Small eloquently describes the dynamics of the domestic space and how women understood their roles in relation to the First and Second World Wars and the Viet Nam War. Reinforcing that “The materialities and imaginaries of home are closely connected” (Blunt and Dowling 188), Small sings of how the gold frames held the photographs that mothers kissed each night And the doorframe held the shocked and silent strangers from the fight. Small provides a rare musical insight into the disjuncture between the men who left the domestic space and those who return to it, and we sense that women may have borne much of the brunt of those awful changes. The idea of domestic bliss is also challenged, though from the returned soldier’s point of view, in Redgum’s 1983 song I Was Only Nineteen, written by group member John Schuman. It touches on the tragedy of young men thrust into war situations and the horrific after-affects for them, which cannot be shrugged off on return to home. The nurturing of home has limits but the privacy associated with the domestic sphere has often concealed the violence and mental anguish that happens away from public view. But by this time most of the songs referring to home were dominated once more by sentimental love, often borne of travel as mobility rose. Journeys help “establish the thresholds and boundaries of home” and can give rise to “an idealized, ideological and ethnocentric view of home” (Mallett 78). Where previously songsters had sung of leaving home in exile or for escape from poverty, lyrics from the 1960s onwards often suggested that work had removed people from loved ones. It could be work on a day-by-day basis, as in A Hard Day’s Night from the 1964 film of the same name, where the Beatles illuminate differences between the public sphere of work and the private sphere to which they return: When I’m home, everything seems to be alright, When I’m home feeling you holding me tight, tight, yeah and reiterated by Paul McCartney in Every Night: And every night that day is through But tonight I just want to stay in And be with you. Lyrics such as these and McCartney’s call to be taken “...home to the Mull of Kintyre,” singled him out for his home-and-hearth messages (Dempsey). But work might involve longer absences and thus more deepfelt loneliness. Simon and Garfunkel’s exemplary Homeward Bound starkly portrays a site of “away-ness”: I’m sittin’ in the railway station, got a ticket for my destination… Mundaneness, monotony and predictability contrast with the home to which the singer’s thoughts are constantly escaping. The routine is familiar but the faces are those of strangers. Home here is, again, not simply a domicile but the warmth of those we know and love. Written at a railway station, Homeward Bound echoes sentiments almost identical to those of (Leaving on a) Jet Plane, written by John Denver at an airport in 1967. Denver also co-wrote (Take Me Home) Country Roads, where, in another example of anthropomorphism as a tool of establishing a strong link, he asks to be taken home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain momma, Take me home, Country Roads. The theme has recurred in numerous songs since, spawning examples such as Darin and Alquist’s When I Get Home, Chris Daughtry’s Home, Michael Bublé’s Home and Will Smith’s Ain’t No Place Like Home, where, in an opening reminiscent of Homeward Bound, the singer is Sitting in a hotel room A thousand miles away from nowhere Sloped over a chair as I stare… Furniture from home, on the other hand, can be used to evoke contentment and bliss, as demonstrated by George Weiss and Bob Thiele’s song The Home Fire, in which both kin and the objects of home become charged with meaning: All of the folks that I love are there I got a date with my favourite chair Of course, in regard to earlier songs especially, while the traveller associates home with love, security and tenderness, back at home the waiting one may have had feelings more of frustration and oppression. One is desperate to get back home, but for all we know the other may be desperate to get out of home or to develop a life more meaningful than that which was then offered to women. If the lot of homemakers was invisible to national economies (Waring), it seemed equally invisible to mainstream songwriters. This reflects the tradition that “Despite home being generally considered a feminine, nurturing space created by women themselves, they often lack both authority and a space of their own within this realm” (Mallett 75). Few songs have offered the perspective of the one at home awaiting the return of the traveller. One exception is the Seekers’ 1965 A World of Our Own but, written by Tom Springfield, the words trilled by Judith Durham may have been more of a projection of the traveller’s hopes and expectations than a true reflection of the full experiences of housebound women of the day. Certainly, the song reinforces connections between home and intimacy and privacy: Close the door, light the lights. We’re stayin’ home tonight, Far away from the bustle and the bright city lights. Let them all fade away, just leave us alone And we’ll live in a world of our own. This also strongly supports Gaston Bachelard’s claim that one’s house in the sense of a home is one’s “first universe, a real cosmos” (qtd. in Blunt and Dowling 12). But privacy can also be a loneliness when home is not inhabited by loved ones, as in the lyrics of Don Gibson’s 1958 Oh, Lonesome Me, where Everybody’s going out and having fun I’m a fool for staying home and having none. Similar sentiments emerge in Debbie Boone’s You Light up My Life: So many nights I’d sit by my window Waiting for someone to sing me his song. Home in these situations can be just as alienating as the “away” depicted as so unfriendly by Homeward Bound’s strangers’ faces and the “million people” who still leave Michael Bublé feeling alone. Yet there are other songs that depict “away” as a prison made of freedom, insinuating that the lack of a home and consequently of the stable love and commitment presumably found there is a sad situation indeed. This is suggested by the lilting tune, if not by the lyrics themselves, in songs such as Wandrin’ Star from the musical Paint Your Wagon and Ron Miller’s I’ve Never Been to Me, which has both a male and female version with different words, reinforcing gendered experiences. The somewhat conservative lyrics in the female version made it a perfect send-up song in the 1994 film Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. In some songs the absentee is not a traveller but has been in jail. In Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Ole Oak Tree, an ex-inmate states “I’m comin’ home. I’ve done my time.” Home here is contingent upon the availability and forgivingness of his old girl friend. Another song juxtaposing home with prison is Tom Jones’ The Green, Green Grass of Home in which the singer dreams he is returning to his home, to his parents, girlfriend and, once again, an old oak tree. However, he awakes to find he was dreaming and is about to be executed. His body will be taken home and placed under the oak tree, suggesting some resigned sense of satisfaction that he will, after all, be going home, albeit in different circ*mstances. Death and home are thus sometimes linked, with home a euphemism for the former, as suggested in many spirituals, with heaven or an afterlife being considered “going home”. The reverse is the case in the haunting Bring Him Home of the musical Les Misérables. With Marius going off to the barricades and the danger involved, Jean Valjean prays for the young man’s safe return and that he might live. Home is connected here with life, safety and ongoing love. In a number of songs about home and absence there is a sense of home being a place where morality is gently enforced, presumably by women who keep men on the straight and narrow, in line with one of the women’s roles of colonial Australia, researched by Anne Summers. These songs imply that when men wander from home, their morals also go astray. Wild Rover bemoans Oh, I’ve been a wild rover for many a year, and I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer… There is the resolve in the chorus, however, that home will have a reforming influence. Gene Pitney’s Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa poses the dangers of distance from a wife’s influence, while displaying opposition to the sentimental yearning of so many other songs: Dearest darlin’, I have to write to say that I won’t be home anymore ‘cause something happened to me while I was drivin’ home And I’m not the same anymore Class as well as gender can be a debated issue in meanings attached to home, as evident in several songs that take a more jaundiced view of home, seeing it as a place from which to escape. The Animals’ powerful We Gotta Get Outta This Place clearly suggests a life of drudgery in a home town or region. Protectively, the lyrics insist “Girl, there’s a better life for me and you” but it has to be elsewhere. This runs against the grain of other British songs addressing poverty or a working class existence as something that comes with its own blessings, all to do with an area identified as home. These traits may be loyalty, familiarity or a refusal to judge and involve identities of placement rather than of displacement in, for instance, Gerry and the Pacemakers’ Ferry Cross the Mersey: People around every corner, they seem to smile and say “We don’t care what your name is, boy. We’ll never send you away.” This bears out Blunt and Dowling’s claim that “people’s senses of themselves are related to and produced through lived and metaphorical experiences of home” (252). It also resonates with some of the region-based identity and solidarity issues explored a short time later by Paul Willis in his study of working class youth in Britain, which help to inform how a sense of home can operate to constrict consciousness, ideas and aspirations. Identity features strongly in other songs about home. Several years after Neil Young recorded his 1970 song Southern Man about racism in the south of the USA, the group Lynyrd Skynyrd, responded with Sweet Home Alabama. While the meaning of its lyrics are still debated, there is no debate about the way in which the song has been embraced, as I recently discovered first-hand in Tennessee. A banjo-and-fiddle band performing the song during a gig virtually brought down the house as the predominantly southern audience clapped, whopped and stamped its feet. The real meanings of home were found not in the lyrics but in the audience’s response. Wally Johnson and Bob Brown’s 1975 Home Among the Gum Trees is a more straightforward ode to home, with lyrics that prescribe a set of non-commodified values. It is about simplicity and the right to embrace a lifestyle that includes companionship, leisure and an enjoyment of and appreciation of nature, all threatened seriously in the three decades since the song’s writing. The second verse in which large shopping complexes – and implicitly the consumerism they encourage – are eschewed (“I’d trade it all tomorrow for a little bush retreat where the kookaburras call”), is a challenge to notions of progress and reflects social movements of the day, The Green Bans Movement, for instance, took a broader and more socially conscientious attitude towards home and community, putting forward alternative sets of values and insisting people should have a say in the social and aesthetic construction of their neighbourhoods as well as the impacts of their labour (Mundey). Ironically, the song has gone on to become the theme song for a TV show about home gardens. With a strong yet more vague notion of home, Peter Allen’s I Still Call Australia Home, was more prone to commodification and has been adopted as a promotional song for Qantas. Nominating only the desire to travel and the love of freedom as Australian values, both politically and socially innocuous within the song’s context, this catchy and uplifting song, when not being used as an advertisem*nt, paradoxically works for a “diaspora” of Australians who are not in exile but have mostly travelled for reasons of pleasure or professional or financial gain. Another paradox arises from the song Home on the Range, dating back to the 19th century at a time when the frontier was still a strong concept in the USA and people were simultaneously leaving homes and reminiscing about home (Mechem). Although it was written in Kansas, the lyrics – again vague and adaptable – were changed by other travellers so that versions such as Colorado Home and My Arizona Home soon abounded. In 1947 Kansas made Home on the Range its state song, despite there being very few buffalo left there, thus highlighting a disjuncture between the modern Kansas and “a home where the buffalo roam” as described in the song. These themes, paradoxes and oppositional understandings of home only scratch the surface of the wide range of claims that are made on home throughout popular music. It has been shown that home is a flexible concept, referring to homelands, regions, communities and private houses. While predominantly used to evoke positive feelings, mostly with traditional views of the relationships that lie within homes, songs also raise challenges to notions of domesticity, the rights of those inhabiting the private sphere and the demarcation between the private and public spheres. Songs about home reflect contexts and challenges of their respective eras and remind us that vigorous discussion takes place about and within homes. The challenges are changing. Where many women once felt restrictively tied to the home – and no doubt many continue to do so – many women and men are now struggling to rediscover spatial boundaries, with production and consumption increasingly impinging upon relationships that have so frequently given the term home its meaning. With evidence that we are working longer hours and that home life, in whatever form, is frequently suffering (Beder, Hochschild), the discussion should continue. In the words of Sam Cooke, Bring it on home to me! References Bacheland, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994. Beder, Sharon. Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR. London: Zed Books, 2000. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London: Routledge, 2006. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCL Press, 1997. Cooper, B. Lee. “Good Timin’: Searching for Meaning in Clock Songs.” Popular Music and Society 30.1 (Feb. 2007): 93-106. Dempsey, J.M. “McCartney at 60: A Body of Work Celebrating Home and Hearth.” Popular Music and Society 27.1 (Feb. 2004): 27-40. Eva, Phil. “Home Sweet Home? The Culture of ‘Exile’ in Mid-Victorian Popular Song.” Popular Music 16.2 (May 1997): 131-150. Hochschild, Arlie. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. New York: Metropolitan/Holt, 1997. Mallett, Sonia. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review 52.1 (2004): 62-89. Mechem, Kirke, “The Story of ‘Home on the Range’.” Reprint from the Kansas Historical Quarterly (Nov. 1949). Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society. 28 May 2007 http://www.emporia.edu/cgps/tales/nov2003.html>. Mundey, Jack. Green Bans and Beyond. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1981. Nelson-Burns, Lesley. Folk Music of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and America. 29 May 2007 http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/tho*rin.html>. Summers, Anne. Damned whor*s and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Walter, Bronwen. Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place and Irish Women. London: Routledge, 2001. Waring, Marilyn. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth. Wellington, NZ: Allen & Unwin, 1988. Willis, Paul. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia UP, 1977. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Varney, Wendy. "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>. APA Style Varney, W. (Aug. 2007) "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>.

Abstract:

Introduction The sensational appearance of kawaii fashion in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood—full of freedom, fun, and frills— has captivated hearts and imaginations worldwide. A key motivational concept for this group is “kawaii” which is commonly translated as “cute” and can also be used to describe things that are “beautiful”, “funny”, “pretty”, “wonderful”, “great”, “interesting”, and “kind” (Yamane 228; Yomota 73; Dale 320). Representations in media such as the styling of Harajuku street model and J-pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, directed by Sebastian Masuda, have helped bring this fashion to a wider audience. Of this vibrant community, decora fashion is perhaps best known with its image well documented in in street-fashion magazines such as Shoichi Aoki’s FRUiTS (1997–2017), Websites such as Tokyo Fashion (2000–present), and in magazines like KERA (1998–2017). In particular, decora fashion captures the “do-it-yourself” approach for which Harajuku is best known for (Yagi 17). In this essay we draw on New Materialism to explore the ways in which decora fashion practitioners form kawaii affective assemblages with the objects they collect and transform into fashion items. We were motivated to pursue this research to build on other qualitative studies that aimed to include the voices of practitioners in accounts of their lifestyles (e.g. Nguyen; Monden; Younker) and respond to claims that kawaii fashion is a form of infantile regression. We—an Australian sociologist and kawaii fashion practitioner, a Japanese decora fashion practitioner and Harajuku street model, and a Japanese former owner of a tearoom in Harajuku—have used an action-led participatory research method to pool our expertise. In this essay we draw on both a New Materialist analysis of our own fashion practices, a 10-year longitudinal study of Harajuku (2012–2022), as well as interviews with twelve decora fashion practitioners in 2020. What Is Decora Fashion? Decora is an abbreviation of “decoration”, which reflects the key aesthetic commitment of the group to adorn their bodies with layers of objects, accessories, and stickers. Decora fashion uses bright clothing from thrift stores, layers of handmade and store-bought accessories, and chunky platform shoes or sneakers. Practitioners enjoy crafting accessories from old toys, kandi and perler beads, weaving, braiding, crocheting novelty yarn and ribbon, and designing and printing their own textiles. In addition to this act of making, decora practitioners also incorporate purchases from specialty brands like 6%DOKI DOKI, Nile Perch, ACDC Rag, YOSUKE USA, and minacute. According to our interviewees, whom we consulted in 2020, excess is key; as Momo told us: “if it’s too plain, it’s not decora”. Decora uses clashing, vibrant, electric colours, and a wild variety of kawaii versions of monsters, characters, and food which appear as motifs on their clothing (Groom 193; Yagi 17). Clashing textures and items—such as a sweat jackets, gauzy tutus, and plastic toy tiaras—are also a key concept (Koga 81). Colour is extended to practitioners’ hair through colourful hair dyes, and the application of stickers, bandaids, and jewels across their cheeks and nose (Rose, Kurebayashi and Saionji). These principles are illustrated in fig. 1, a street snap from 2015 of our co-author, Kurebayashi. Working with the contrasting primary colours across her hair, clothes, and accessories, she incorporates both her own handmade garments and found accessories to form a balanced outfit. Her Lisa Frank cat purse, made from a psychedelic vibrant pink faux fur, acts as a salient point to draw in our eyes to a cacophony of colour throughout her ensemble. The purse is a prized item from her own collection that was a rare find on Mercari, an online Japanese auction Website, 15 years ago. Her sweater dress is handmade, with a textile print she designed herself. The stickers on the print feature smiley faces, rainbows, ducks, and candy—all cheap and cheerful offerings from a discount store. Through intense layering and repetition, Kurebayashi has created a collage that is reminiscent of the clips and bracelets that decorate her hair and wrists. This collage also represents the colour, fun, and whimsy that she immerses herself in everyday. Her platform shoes are by Buffalo London, another rare find for her collection. Her hair braids are handmade by Midoroya, an online artist, which she incorporates to create variety in the textures in her outfit from head to toe. Peeking beneath her sweater is a short colourful tutu that floats and bounces with each step. Together the items converge and sing, visually loud and popping against the urban landscape. Fig. 1: Kurebayashi’s street snap in an decora fashion outfit of her own styling and making, 2015. Given the street-level nature of decora fashion, stories of its origins draw on oral histories of practitioners, alongside writings from designers and stores that cater to this group (Ash). Its emergence was relatively organic in the early 1990s, with groups enjoying mixing and combining found objects and mis-matching clothing items. Initially, decorative styles documented in street photography used a dark colour palette with layers of handmade accessories, clips, and decorations, and a Visual-kei influence. Designers such as Sebastian Masuda, who entered the scene in 1995, also played a key role by introducing accessories and clothes inspired by vintage American toys, Showa era (1926-1989) packaging, and American West Club dance culture (Sekikawa and Kumagi 22–23). Pop idols such as Tomoe Shinohara and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu are also key figures that have contributed to the pop aesthetic of decora. While decora was already practiced prior to the release of Shinohara’s 1995 single Chaimu, her styling resonated with practitioners and motivated them to pursue a more “pop” aesthetic with an emphasis on bright colours, round shapes, and handmade colourful accessories. Shinohara herself encouraged fans to take on a rebelliously playful outlook and presentation of self (Nakao 15–16; Kondō). This history resonates with more recent pop idol Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s costuming and set design, which was directed by Sebastian Masuda. Kyary’s kawaii fashion preceded her career, as she regularly participated in the Harajuku scene and agreed to street snaps. While the costuming and set design for her music videos, such as Pon Pon Pon, resonate with the Harajuku aesthetic, her playful persona diverges. Her performance uses humour, absurdity, and imperfection to convey cuteness and provide entertainment (Iseri 158), but practitioners in Harajuku do not try to replicate this performance; Shinohara and Kyary’s stage persona promotes ‘immaturity’ and ‘imperfection’ as part of their youthful teenage rebellion (Iseri 159), while kawaii fashion practitioners prefer not to be seen in this light. When considering the toys, stickers, and accessories incorporated into decora fashion, and the performances of Shinohara and Kyary, it is understandable that some outsiders may interpret the fashion as a desire to return to childhood. Some studies of kawaii fashion more broadly have interpreted the wearing of clothing like this as a resistance to adulthood and infantile regression (e.g., Kinsella 221–222; Winge; Lunning). These studies suggest that practitioners desire to remain immature in order to “undermin[e] current ideologies of gender and power” (Hasegawa 140). In particular, Kinsella in her 1995 chapter “in Japan” asserts that fashion like this is an attempt to act “vulnerable in order to emphasize … immaturity and inability to carry out social responsibilities” (241), and suggests that this regression is “self-mutilation [which denies] the existence of a wealth of insights, feelings and humour that maturity brings with it” (235). This view has spread widely in writing about kawaii fashion, and Steele, Mears, Kawamura, and Narumi observe for instance that “prolonging childhood is compelling” as an attractive component of Harajuku culture (48). While we recognise that this literature uses the concept of “childishness” to acknowledge the rebellious nature of Harajuku fashion, our participants would like to discourage this interpretation of their practice. In particular, participants highlighted their commitment to studies, paying bills, caring for family members, and other markers they felt indicated maturity and responsibility. They also found this belief that they wanted to deny themselves adult “insights, feelings and humour” deeply offensive as it disregards their lived experience and practice. From a Sociological perspective, this infantilising interpretation is concerning as it reproduces Orientalist framings of Japanese women who enjoy kawaii culture as dependent and submissive, rather than savvy consumers (Bow 66–73; Kalnay 95). Furthermore, this commentary on youth cultures globally, which points to an infantilisation of adulthood (Hayward 230), has also been interrogated by scholars as an oversimplistic reading that doesn’t recognise the rich experiences of adults who engage in these spaces while meeting milestones and responsibilities (Woodman and Wyn; Hodkinson and Bennett; Bennett). Through our lived experience and work with the decora fashion community, we offer in this essay an alternative account of what kawaii means to these practitioners. We believe that agency, energy, and vibrancy is central to the practice of decora fashion. Rather than intending to be immature, practitioners are looking for vibrant ways to exist. A New Materialist lens offers a framework with which we can consider this experience. For example, our informant Momota, in rejecting the view that her fashion was about returning to childhood, explained that decora fashion was “rejuvenating” because it gave them “energy and power”. Elizabeth Groscz in her essay on freedom in New Materialism encourages us to consider new ways of living, not as an expression of “freedom from” social norms, but rather “freedom to” new ways of being, as expression of their “capacity for action” (140). In other words, rather than seeking freedom from adult responsibilities and regressing into a state where one is unable to care for oneself, decora fashion is a celebration of what practitioners are “capable of doing” (Groscz 140–141) by finding pleasure in collecting and making. Through encounters with kawaii objects, and the act of creating through these materials, decora fashion practitioners’ agential capacities are increased through experiences of elation, excitement and pleasure. Colourful Treasures, Fluttering Hearts: The Pleasures of Collecting kawaii Matter Christine Yano describes kawaii as having the potential to “transform the mundane material world into one occupied everywhere by the sensate and the sociable” (“Reach Out”, 23). We believe that this conceptualisation of kawaii has strong links to New Materialist theory. New Materialism highlights the ways in which human subjects are “are unstable and emergent knowing, sensing, embodied, affective assemblages of matter, thought, and language, part of and inseparable from more-than human worlds” (Lupton). Matter in this context is a social actor in its own right, energising and compelling practitioners to incorporate them into their everyday lives. For example, kawaii matter can move us to be more playful, creative, and caring (Aiwaza and Ohno; Nishimura; Yano, Pink Globalization), or help us relax and feel calm when experiencing high levels of stress (Stevens; Allison; Yano, “Reach Out”). Studies in the behavioral sciences have shown how kawaii objects pique our interest, make us feel happy and excited, and through sharing our excitement for kawaii things become kinder and more thoughtful towards each other (Nittono; Ihara and Nittono; Kanai and Nittono). Decora fashion practitioners are sensitive to this sensate and sociable aspect of kawaii; specific things redolent with “thing-power” (Bennett) shine and twinkle amongst the cultural landscape and compel practitioners to gather them up and create unique outfits. Decora fashion relies on an ongoing hunt for objects to upcycle into fashion accessories, thrifting second-hand goods in vintage stores, dollar stores, and craft shops such as DAISO, Omocha Spiral, and ACDC Rag. Practitioners select plastic goods with smooth forms and shapes, and soft, breathable, and light clothing, all with highly saturated colours. Balancing the contrast of colours, practitioners create a rainbow of matter from which they assemble their outfits. The concept of the rainbow is significant to practitioners as the synergy of contrasting colours expresses its own kawaii vitality. As our interviewee, Kanepi, described, “price too can be kawaii” (Yano, Pink Globalization 71); affordable products such as capsule toys and accessories allow practitioners to amass large collections of glistening and twinkling objects. Rare items are also prized, such as vintage toys and goods imported from America, resonating with their own “uniqueness”, and providing a point of difference to the Japanese kawaii cultural landscape. In addition to the key principles of colour, rarity, and affordability, there is also a personalised aspect to decora fashion. Amongst the mundane racks of clothing, toys, and stationary, specific matter twinkles at practitioners like treasures, triggering a moment of thrilling encounter. Our interviewee Pajorina described this moment as having a “fateful energy to it”. All practitioners described this experience as “tokimeki” (literally, a fluttering heart beat), which is used to refer to an experience of excitement in anticipation of something, or the elating feeling of infatuation (Occhi). Our interviewees sought to differentiate this experience of kawaii from feelings of care towards an animal or children through writing systems. While the kanji for “kawaii” was used to refer to children and small animals, the majority of participants wrote “kawaii” to express the vivid and energetic qualities of their fashion. We found each practitioner had a tokimeki response to certain items that and informed their collecting work. While some items fit a more mainstream interpretation of kawaii, such as characters like Hello Kitty, ribbons, and glitter, other practitioners were drawn to non-typical forms they believed were kawaii, such as frogs, snails, aliens, and monsters. As our interviewee Harukyu described: “I think people’s sense of kawaii comes from different sensibilities and perspectives. It’s a matter of feelings. If you think it is kawaii, then it is”. Guided by individual experiences of objects on the shop shelves, practitioners select things that resonate with their own inner beliefs, interests, and fantasies of what kawaii is. In this regard, kawaii matter is not “structured” or “fixed” but rather “emergent through relations” that unfold between the practitioner and the items that catch their eye in a given moment (Thorpe 12). This offers not only an affirming experience through the act of creating, but a playful outlet as well. By choosing unconventional kawaii motifs to include in their collection, and using more standard kawaii beads, jewels, and ribbons to enhance the objects’ cuteness, decora fashion practitioners are transforming, warping, and shifting kawaii aesthetic boundaries in new and experimental ways (Iseri 148; Miller 24–25). As such, this act of collecting is a joyous and elating experience of gathering and accumulating. Making, Meaning, and Memory: Creating kawaii Assemblages Once kawaii items are amassed through the process of collecting, their cuteness is intensified through hand-making items and assembling outfits. One of our interviewees, Momo, explained to us that this expressive act was key to the personalisation of their clothes as it allows them to “put together the things you like” and “incorporate your own feelings”. For example, the bracelets in fig. 2 are an assemblage made by our co-author Kurebayashi, using precious items she has collected for 10 years. Each charm has its own meaning in its aesthetics, memories it evokes, and the places in which it was found. Three yellow rubber duck charms bob along strands of twinkling pink and blue bubble-like beads. These ducks, found in a bead shop wholesaler while travelling in Hong Kong, evoke for Kurebayashi an experience of a bubble bath, where one can relax and luxuriate in self care. Their contrast with the pink and blue—forming the trifecta of primary colours—enhances the vibrant intensity of the bracelet. A large blue bear charm, contrasting in scale and colour, swings at her wrist, its round forms evoking Lorenz’s Kindchenschema. This bear charm is another rare find from America, a crowning jewel in Kurebayashi’s collection. It represents Kurebayashi’s interest in fun and colourful animals as characters, and as potential kawaii friends. Its translucent plastic form catches the light as it glistens. To balance the colour scheme of her creation, Kurebayashi added a large strawberry charm, found for just 50 Yen in a discount store in Japan. Together these objects resonate with key decora principles: personal significance, rarity, affordability, and bright contrasting colours. While the bear and duck reference childhood toys, they do not signify to Kurebayashi a desire to return to childhood. Rather, their rounded forms evoke a playful outlook on life informed by self care and creativity (Ngai 841; Rose). Through bringing the collection of items together in making these bracelets, the accessories form an entanglement of kawaii matter that carries both aesthetic and personal meaning, charged with memories, traces of past travels, and a shining shimmering vitality of colour and light. Fig. 2: Handmade decora fashion bracelet by Kurebayashi, 2022. The creation of decora outfits is the final act of expression and freedom. In this moment, decora fashion practitioners experience elation as they gleefully mix and match items from their collection to create their fashion style. This entanglement of practitioner and kawaii matter evokes what Gorscz would describe as “free acts … generated through the encounter of life with matter” (151). If we return to fig. 1, we can see how Kurebayashi and her fashion mutually energise each other as an expression of colourful freedom. While the objects themselves are found through encounters and given new life by Kurebayashi as fashion items, they also provide Kurebayashi with tools of expression that “expand the variety of activities” afforded to adults (Gorscz 154). She feels elated, full of feeling, insight, and humour in these clothes, celebrating all the things she loves that are bright, colourful, and fun. Conclusion In this essay, we have used New Materialist theory to illustrate some of the ways in which kawaii matter energises decora fashion practitioners, as an expression of what Gorscz would describe as “capacity for action” and a “freedom towards” new modes of expression. Practitioners are sensitive to kawaii’s affective potential, motivating them to search for and collect items that elate and excite them, triggering moments of thrilling encounters amongst the mundanity of the stores they search through. Through the act of making and assembling these items, practitioners form an entanglement of matter charged with their feelings, memories, and the vitality and vibrancy of their collections. Like shining rainbows in the streets, they shimmer and shine with kawaii life, vibrancy, and vitality. Acknowledgements This article was produced with the support of a Vitalities Lab Scholarship, UNSW Sydney, a National Library of Australia Asia Studies scholarship, as well as in-kind support from the University of Tokyo and the Japan Foundation Sydney. 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