The word kawaii originally derives from the phrase 顔映しkao hayushi, which literally means "(one's) face (is) aglow," commonly used to refer to flushing or blushing of the face. The second morpheme is cognate with -bayu in mabayui (眩い, 目映い, or 目映ゆい) "dazzling, glaring, blinding, too bright; dazzlingly beautiful" (ma- is from 目 me "eye") and -hayu in omohayui (面映い or 面映ゆい) "embarrassed/embarrassing, awkward, feeling self-conscious/making one feel self-conscious" (omo- is from 面 omo, an archaic word for "face, looks, features; surface; image, semblance, vestige"). Over time, the meaning changed into the modern meaning of "cute", and the pronunciation changed to かわゆいkawayui and then to the modern かわいいkawaii.[6][7][8] It is most commonly written in hiragana, かわいい, but the ateji, 可愛い, has also been appended. The kanji in the ateji literally translates to "able to be loved, can/may love, lovable."
The original definition of kawaii came from Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji, where it referred to pitiable qualities.[9] During the Shogunate period under the ideology of neo-Confucianism, women came to be included under the term kawaii as the perception of women being animalistic was replaced with the conception of women as docile.[9] However, the earlier meaning survives in the modern Standard Japanese adjectival noun かわいそう kawaisō (often written with ateji as 可哀相 or 可哀想) "piteous, pitiable, arousing compassion, poor, sad, sorry" (etymologically from 顔映様 "face / projecting, reflecting, or transmitting light, flushing, blushing / seeming, appearance"). Forms of kawaii and its derivatives kawaisō and kawairashii (with the suffix -rashii "-like, -ly") are used in modern dialects to mean "embarrassing/embarrassed, shameful/ashamed" or "good, nice, fine, excellent, superb, splendid, admirable" in addition to the standard meanings of "adorable" and "pitiable."
The rise of cuteness in Japanese culture emerged in the 1970s as part of a new style of writing.[10] Many teenage girls began to write laterally using mechanical pencils.[10] These pencils produced very fine lines, as opposed to traditional Japanese writing that varied in thickness and was vertical.[10] The girls would also write in big, round characters and they added little pictures to their writing, such as hearts, stars, emoticon faces, and letters of the Latin alphabet.[10]
These pictures would be inserted randomly and made the writing difficult to read.[10] As a result, this writing style caused a lot of controversy and was banned in many schools.[10] During the 1980s, however, this new "cute" writing was adopted by magazines and comics and was put onto packaging and advertising.[10]
From 1984 to 1986, Kazuma Yamane (山根一眞Yamane Kazuma) studied the development of cute handwriting, which he called Anomalous Female Teenage Handwriting, in depth.[10] This type of cute Japanese handwriting has also been called: marui ji (丸い字), meaning "round writing", koneko ji (小猫字), meaning "kitten writing", manga ji (漫画字), meaning "comic writing", and burikko ji (鰤子字), meaning "fake-child writing".[11] Although it was commonly thought that the writing style was something that teenagers had picked up from comics, he found that teenagers had come up with the style themselves, spontaneously, as an underground trend. His conclusion was based on an observation that cute
handwriting predates the availability of technical means for producing rounded writing in comics.[10]
This is a true story. One Saturday night, I was sitting with a friend in a trendy downtown bar, when two grown women casually strolled past in ruffled dresses, bonnets and parasols, wheeling matching baby carriages. Out of these peeked little poodles wearing complementary pastel baby clothes. We were of course in Japan, but still, what on earth was going on?
Yes, I had once again been confronted by the strange, fascinating world of “kawaii”, or cute culture. Visits to Japanese cities reverberating with squeals of “Kawaaaiiiiiii!!!” may make this fad easy to dismiss as just another exoticism of the East. Yet the presence of costumed adults lining up for London’s own Comic-Con, a Swarovski-encrusted Hello Kitty worth thousands of pounds, and the profiling of Lolita fashion in magazine articles and V&A exhibits, show that cute culture is not just spreading beyond Asia, but it’s here to stay. And it means business.
So, what is kawaii and why here and why now? As the Japanese word for cute, kawaii has connotations of shyness, embarrassment, vulnerability, darlingness and lovability. Think babies and small fluffy creatures. In many cases, it is a signifier for innocence, youth, charm, openness and naturalness, while its darker aspects have led it to be rather brutally applied to frailty and even physical handicap as a marker of adorability. You may not have noticed, but look carefully and Hello Kitty has no mouth.
As kawaii cat suggests, cute culture first originated in Japan, emerging out of the student protests of the late-1960s. Rebelling against authority, Japanese university students refused to go to lectures, reading children’s comics (manga) in protest against prescribed academic knowledge.
As the economy progressed through the 1970s and 1980s, so did consumer subcultures – and cute as a style began to be expressed through childish handwriting, speech, dress, products, shops, cafes and food. Meanwhile, as Japanese women became more visible at work, so the “burikko” or childlike woman emerged, portraying an innocence and adorability that alleviated the threat of female emancipation, increasing her appeal as a potential marriage partner.
The Lost Decade
By the 1990s, Japan’s period of economic crisis was well underway, and many Japanese subcultures fled into the international market. Banks and commercial airlines began to explore cute as a strategy to increase their appeal, and cultural forms followed in the footsteps of the once invincible Japanese corporate machine, spreading the soft power of Japanese modernity.
Where Nissan, Mitsubishi, Sony and Nintendo had carved a path, so trod Japanese anime, film and music. The 1990s also saw the refreshing of the ultimate kawaii brand, Hello Kitty the ultimate Kawaii Cat, expanded to include products aimed at teens and adults rather than pre-adolescent girls.
As part of the 1990s wider spread of Japanese culture, kawaii cat is undoubtedly indebted. However, its persistence well into the 21st century shows that something else is now afoot. Cute culture is everywhere and claimed by everyone, regardless of age, gender and nationality. More than the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, it is the collectable branded official merchandise of cartoons and comics, the endless animations and superhero films, the doll-like dresses of “Lolita” fashion and the phone-clutching clusters of Pokemon Go players.
Importantly, it does not seem to rely on Japan, but has become homegrown in multiple locations, with global participants consuming and contributing in equal measure. At first glance, it appears these childlike adults, like the proverbial Peter Pan, don’t want to grow up – but how convenient for business that they can whip consumers into a frenzy, reducing grown men and women into childish, irrational desire. Cute culture is capitalism disguised, repackaged and covered in glitter.
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