Sociology of “kawaii”: from Japan to the world

The meaning of the word and the characters of “kawaii.” The “Japan mania” of recent years, conveyed mainly by pop culture products such as anime and manga, has made certain terms such as the one we discuss here familiar: “kawaii.” I will devote a few lines to somewhat scholastic but necessary definitions to understand what we are talking about, and then move on to a freer approach in investigating this phenomenon. This approach would like to be inspired by contamination between disciplines and, above all, characterized by a freedom to follow all cues for interpretation without fear of saying something unscholarly. The word “kawaii” is translatable as Italian for “cute,” but there is a nuance in the original Japanese word that is somehow lost in its rendering in a different language. Indeed, a word is also anchored in the social context in which it was born, and the loss of these ties, which also has semantic implications, brings a certain degree of emptying. We will try to identify the characteristics of “kawaii” later; here we content ourselves with defining the word in general. Thus, the adjective “kawaii” describes that which is “cute,” “adorable.” But it has a feminine undertone. In fact, a girl is “kawaii,” but a boy is not, another adjective is used (unless we want to give a particular connotation to our comment). The use of the term is also more frequently employed by female subjects.

Outside of this sociolinguistic consideration, “kawaii” has become something else, something beyond a simple observation that something is cute, and it is this phenomenon that we are interested in here.

“Kawaii” has become a real specific expressive language, recognizable and framed within fairly defined boundaries, though not sharply so. Let us see below what it consists of and why it has developed in this way.

In 1974 Yuko Shimizu created one of the most famous kittens ever: Hello Kitty (ハローキティ Harō Kiti). Hello Kitty is the perfect ambassador of “kawaii” in the world: she is a female character, drawn with childlike features, she is absolutely devoid of aggression, and the color scheme that characterizes her clothes and the countless gadgets dedicated to her have always been colors associated with the feminine. For the politically correct, this is certainly a clutch of stereotypes about the feminine that is difficult to digest. But our Hello Kitty doesn’t seem to care much, as her success has lasted for half a century. And apparently, it does not seem to upset the kitty’s fans either, as evidenced by the immense industry that – far beyond the figure of Hello Kitty herself – produces clothes, accessories, fashions, attitudes, pop music and so much more; and all of this unquestionably falls within the universe of “kawaii.”

The aesthetic and external characters of “kawaii” are easy to list: sweetness and naiveté associated with childishness, a vision of women stereotyped as devoid of aggression, a color palette of bright colors, and a visual style that results, according to the dominated aesthetic and social parameters, in delicate, graceful and adorable, soft-featured features. On this basis then countless variations develop, somewhat contradictory to the starting point, some even declined in the direction of the sensual and erotic.

Every social object is formed through specific socio-cultural dynamics of the community that produces it and is the result of continuous negotiation. Even “kawaii” does not escape this fate. However, the interest it arouses as an object of interdisciplinary investigation also finds different reasons: the “kawaii” was born in a very characterized context (the Japan of the economic boom), but it becomes global and it is possible to take it as a universal paradigm of certain attitudes of contemporary man.

The psychological and social dimensions of “kawaii” and the “Cute Studies.” This enduring success of “kawaii” at home and in the rest of the world is explained by reasons that go beyond the impulse of a million-dollar market underneath it and the clever marketing that supports it. “kawaii” likes, attracts and entertains because it anchors to certain primal human needs, returns a reassuring and consoling image of the characters and relationships it represents, reduces the conflicting element and simplifies the complexity of reality.

Paradoxically, however, the sweetness of “kawaii” is also a form of rebellion. Being a subculture, or even a counterculture (counterculture understood as “a complex of cultural values and models that, in a consumerist society, are opposed to those traditionally held to be the only valid ones.”), it proposes an alternative, albeit a consolatory one and actually cleverly ridden by the market, to the dominant values that include competition, aggression, masculinity.

Not surprisingly, in the consumerist use of gadgets, clothes, and kawaii make-up, social behaviors deemed “deviant” creep in, which include girls dressing in conspicuously theatrical outfits on every occasion, playing real fictional characters in daily life. There is, in this regard, an interesting film about this very thing: Kamikaze Girls from 2004, and based on the light novel of the same name.

So, can embracing an unconventional visual style and aesthetic even in everyday life constitute an act of rebellion? Those who highlight critical aspects of “kawaii” point, on the contrary, to things such as stereotypical representation of the feminine, excessive focus on youth as the only aesthetic ideal, and to behaviors that are interpreted as irrational escape from the responsibilities of adult life. Escape and stereotypical view, in practice, would constitute more of a limitation of individual freedom than a form of rebellion.

Crystal Abidin, for example, points out the revolutionary missed opportunity of “cuteness” with the opportunistic use of the stereotypical view of women. In Agentic cute (^.^): Pastiching East Asian cute in Influencer commerce, Abidin points out that “the subversive power of this performative cuteness is obscured by the corresponding sensual pleasure, romantic docility, and homosocial desire that influencers develop along with their cute self-representations. By continually emphasizing stereotypical gender relations with their male partners and relationships with their followers, these Influencers are able to position themselves as nonthreatening and submissive, when in fact they are quietly subverting these hierarchies for personal gain.” (East Asian Journal of Popular Culture cited; Volume 2, Issue 1, Apr 2016, p. 33 – 47)

Whatever emphasis is placed on the poles of rebellion\conformism, it is undeniable that both of these aspects coexist in “kawaii”; removed from either pole, “kawaii” itself ceases to exist. But in these contradictions also lies its appeal and the interest it arouses.

As Thorsten Botz-Bornstein points out in Kawaii, kenosis, Verwindung: A reading of kawaii through Vattimo’s philosophy of ‘weak thought,’ “kawaii is different from Western cute because it can also include ‘cool.’ The paradoxical coexistence of weakness and strength, of cute and cool, is interesting in philosophical terms. Kawaii is not simply weak, but is endowed with its own kind of strength.” (East Asian Journal of Popular Culture; Volume 2, Issue 1, Apr 2016, p. 111 – 123).

The growing interest in this object of study is also well represented in academic studies on the subject, as evidenced by the articles devoted to “kawaii” mentioned above. Probably the generational component has also had its impact in this, as scholars active in these decades have grown up in contact with consumerist phenomena that have represented “kawaii” from various perspectives. The topic has taken on its own academic dignity, so much so that we refer to it with a specially coined label: “Cute Studies.” (Joshua Paul Dale, Cute studies: An emerging field, in East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 2, Issue 1, Apr 2016, p. 5 – 13).

Remaining with the source repeatedly cited above, the disciplinary direction proper to behavioral sciences, an article by Hirosi Nittono, is particularly significant. In The two-layer model of ‘kawaii’: A behavioral science framework for understanding kawaii and cuteness, Hirosi Nittono proposes a two-layer model of “kawaii”: “[…] a research framework on kawaii is proposed from a behavioral science perspective. After introducing the dictionary definition, history and current usage of kawaii, the article reports the results of a survey of Japanese students and employees on their attitudes toward kawaii. These results and previous psychological and behavioral science research lead to a two-tiered model that represents kawaii as an emotion and as a social value. This model postulates that the basis of kawaii is a positive emotion related to the social motivation to look at and be with preferable people and objects, which is typically observed in affection toward children and infants, but not only. This culturally nonspecific biological trait has been appreciated and fostered in Japan by certain features of Japanese culture. Because previous research on cuteness has been associated almost exclusively with children’s physical attractiveness and the child’s pattern, the use of the relatively recent and exotic term “kawaii” may be useful in describing this broader psychological concept.” (“East Asian Journal of Popular Culture,” Volume 2, Issue 1, Apr 2016, p. 79 – 95).

Is “kawaii” a totalizing paradigm? As is often the case, when we focus on a specific phenemena, with this same focus comes the risk that the very object of research and the interpretations of it will become the dominant paradigm, overlapping everywhere and in any case. Aware of this danger, we cannot help but notice that the aesthetic language of “kawaii” has invaded much of Japanese pop culture, and on the back of its status as a global cultural influencer is branching out to the rest of the world.

“Kawaii” has always had a large representation in j-pop. The j-pop industry is so ephemeral and volatile in its continual offering of new artists and the relative short duration of phenomena, that in presenting emblematic examples of “kawaii” based on specific artists one runs the risk that the examples will not only quickly turn out to be dated (this is inevitable), but that what precisely appears to be a significant example today may turn out in the medium term to be a media meteor with little interest even in general sociological interest. This does not detract from the fact that from the famous Akb48 onward, a phenomenon that reached its peak around 2010, we also come to the situation with the continued presence of girl groups inspired by the language of “kawaii,” and that having ceased the fashion of any one of these, a similar one will spring up in a short time, with renewed interest and a new fan following.

Among the leading Japanese export products in terms of pop culture are certainly anime and manga. The range of genres and target audiences for these cultural products is vast, but the language of “kawaii” is present in much of this projection, especially in narratives involving female characters in the high school age group.

Even within contemporary literature, perceptible traces of “kawaii” can be discerned against the light, albeit not as distinctly as in the anime and manga market. In some cases, the hybridization of languages in a media continuum between videogames, anime, manga, and novels has created real worlds (Paola Scrolavezza, for example, often talks about this in various interventions).

The generation of writers who found themselves young in the 1980s inevitably absorbed certain aesthetic cues and ways of seeing things. Mention is often made of “kawaii” in relation to Yoshimoto Banana’s debut novel, Kitchen. But we will not elaborate on this theme.

Conclusion. We said, then, that “kawaii” is articulately definable. It is aesthetic language that is expressed in a set of fashions and attitudes and is employed in a diverse range of pop culture products. At a superficial glance, this can be downgraded to a passing and frivolous phenomenon, driven primarily by the market that supports it. But “kawaii” actually conceals unexpected depths that concern individual and collective psychology: from ancestral references to femininity, youth, and childhood-with the comforting sweetness that goes with it,-through refuge from the complexity of reality by escaping into a cheerful and carefree world, and finally, thanks to a multimedia transversality that allows these languages to spread in a ramified way in popular culture, landing on a metaphorical role and exemplifying certain anxieties of contemporary society. Its critical points, such as the stereotypical view of femininity and its function as an escape from responsibility, cannot overshadow the fact that our time also generates worlds and utopias. The “kawaii” is one of them. And someone will say, “everyone has the utopias they deserve.” Yet, as you will have guessed from the time we spent putting this article together, the writer nevertheless has a certain sympathy for “kawaii.”

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If native English readers find any part of the text unclear, please let me know. The article has been translated from Italian.