A popular legend states that this popular children's icon would have been created by a Japanese designer, in exchange for restoring her daughter with terminal cancer to health.
The friendly and well-known kitten Hello Kitty (the name is originally written with the Japanese characters “ハローキティ”, which are pronounced as HarōKiti) does not need, at this point, any further introduction.
This white cat, with an anthropomorphic shape, which has no mouth and usually wears flirty decorations on its left ear, is a fictional character created by designer Yuko Shimizu in the 1970s for the Japanese company Sanrio, which He turned it into his star product over the years.
First launched as a purse in 1974. Later its figure adorned thousands of other products such as bags, notebooks, stuffed animals and all kinds of portable items, currently generating income of more than 250 million euros annually.
After the first design made by Shimizu, Yuko Yamaguchi became the official designer of Hello Kitty. This same designer, by the way, clarified in an interview granted in 2008 why the character did not have a mouth. “It's so that people looking at her can project their own feelings onto her, since she has an expressionless face. Kitty seems happy when people are happy and seems sad when they are sad. For this psychological reason we thought that she should not be linked to an emotion and that is the reason why the character does not have a mouth.”
Pact with the devil?
Up to that point, the story of Hello Kitty would not differ from that of other children's characters, if it were not for the fact that a kind of urban legend states that the devil himself would hide behind the creation of the character.
This story states that the daughter of the first designer, Yuko Shimizu (also known as Ikuko Shimizu) suffered from an aggressive mouth cancer that left her in an almost terminal state. The girl's mother, desperate to keep her alive, would have made a pact with the devil in exchange for restoring her daughter's health.
He only had to create a character and a brand that was famous throughout the world, in order to attract millions of potential followers (with each purchase of an item themed to the childish character, a kind of involuntary offering would be made to the prince of darkness) . The two parties who signed the alleged pact, of course, would have fulfilled what they promised. The devil restored the dying minor to health and the woman, in turn, created an adorable children's character based on a cat - an animal that has been associated with witchcraft practices for centuries - who would be known throughout the world as Hello. Kitty.
Of course, to remember the ordeal her daughter had gone through, the designer took care to create the character without a mouth.
Shimizu, after creating the character that would make her famous, would only remain in the company for a year and currently there is little reliable information about her.
Internet search engines and the Wikipedia site itself only provide a brief professional profile about him, but do not detail anything about his family and even less about the existence of a daughter who was miraculously cured of cancer.
On the other hand, although many claim that Hello Kitty would mean “Hello, demon” (Kitty would be equivalent to saying “demon” in Chinese), the truth is that the word in that language for that name is “mó gui.” And, finally, regarding the fact that the Hello Kitty drawing does not have a mouth, this would be explained by the well-known artistic inclination of Japanese cartoonists and designers to give original peculiarities to their creations (the well-known cartoon Pucca does not have nose, for example).
For others, however, this urban legend would be far from being a hoax. It is said that several satanic cults tattoo the word Kitty on their skin and in some videos that circulate on the Internet the image of the kitten can be seen in some of their black masses.
On the other hand, the character has also been associated with quite bloody police events, such as the one that occurred in Hong Kong in 1999, when a group of subjects raped, murdered and beheaded a woman, subsequently hiding the victim's head in a doll. from Hello Kitty. Of course, for the vast majority of people, stories like this, which like any urban legend are not sufficiently documented, would only seek to scare the unwary and gullible and would only be the product of a “hoax” or a false rumor. that starts to run and that gains verisimilitude as it is repeated.
