Transpacific Muumuus and the Rise of Japanese Neocolonial Tourism in Hawai‘i

Abstract: Introduced by American missionaries during the 1820s, the loose-fitting Mother Hubbard muumuu undergarment was indigenized by Native Hawaiian women into a dress embodying modern Pacific femininity. But it was Japanese textile and garment exports that fueled the mass production of muumuus as neocolonial tourist commodities under US-Japan trade agreements and postwar export-led growth policy. Using magazines and newspapers in Japan, as well as archival material from Hawai‘i, this essay explores the transpacific discourse and political economy of the muumuu’s reinvention into a garment that would mobilize middle-class Japanese women’s participation in Hawai‘i’s neocolonial tourism industry. It illuminates how the transpacific muumuu’s circuits of production, distribution, and desire drew Japanese consumer practices into Hawai‘i’s restructuring from industrial agriculture to international tourism. The movement of Japanese textiles and the women who wore them integrated Japan, Hawai‘i, and the United States in the formation of the neocolonial Pacific’s preeminent consumer space.