Imagining Love in a Neoliberal Japan: Yanagi Miwa’s Elevator Girl

Abstract

Nobuko Anan explores a feminist response to neoliberal Japanese society through visual/theatre artist Yanagi Miwa’s Elevator Girl (1994–1998), a collection of digitally composite photographs produced during the time when the Japanese government started to vigorously implement neoliberal policies. In her images, Yanagi turns the free-market department store into a protected enclosed space where the identically clothed elevator girls can detach themselves from the feeling of being disposable, under-represented members of the female working poor. Instead, they are wanted and loved by those who share the same experiences. Thus, Anan argues, Elevator Girl presents another kind of feminist approach, one in which women transform their harsh economic conditions by fantasizing a utopic space of deep affective connection where they can imagine love by loving themselves.