It takes a particular kind of political weather for a cartoon cat with no mouth to be told, in the pages of a state-run newspaper, that she should not dance with Japan's right wing. Yet that was the rebuke delivered this week by the Global Times to Hello Kitty, the bow-wearing icon who has spent half a century selling friendship from lunchboxes in Osaka to pencil cases in Chengdu and phone cases in São Paulo. The trouble began with Vivant, a Japanese spy thriller that has been condemned by Chinese state media and a great many social media users for its scenes in which Chinese agents torture a Japanese operative. Sanrio, the company that owns Hello Kitty, had licensed merchandise in which its characters, among them My Melody and Cinnamoroll, were dressed as figures from the series.

To Chinese critics, the sight of such gentle creatures in costume for a story they consider hostile was not harmless whimsy but a quiet endorsement. Sanrio's retreat was swift. Late on Wednesday it apologised, ended the collaboration, and promised tougher scrutiny of future partnerships, insisting that its characters exist to spread care and connection rather than to take sides. The speed is easier to understand against the wider backdrop: relations between China and Japan have sunk to their lowest point in years since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested last November that Japan might deploy its self-defence forces if China attacked Taiwan.

Beijing has since curbed rare earth exports and tourism and even recalled its pandas, while Takaichi herself said she had recorded Vivant to watch over the holidays. What the episode reveals is how little room remains for the apolitical in an age of economic coercion, where a brand built on softness can be held to account for a drama it merely decorated.