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. Continua a leggere ““Kawaii!”” →