How Cute Culture Conquered the World

Are we biologically programmed to be attracted to anything cute? What is kawaii, and how does it relate to global pop culture? A recent art exhibition that was held in London and cute culture expert Joshua Dale show us a different way of seeing the world.

A pair of canary-yellow Pikachu socks stands out among the blackness of my closet. No one gifted them to me—I bought them myself because I found them cute. And when I got home and wore them, my mood lifted. I saw the world through their distorted, cartoonish euphoria. The same euphoria I felt in the mid-1980s and early ’90s when I was reading Mickey Mouse Mystery Magazine or when I was playing with a Hello Kitty stamp. Hello Kitty is a symbol of the rise of kawaii—modern Japan’s take on cute culture, which is not endemic to Japan but a global phenomenon. It’s worth noting that kawaii in Japanese originally means that someone’s face is red—like Pikachu’s cheeks—from excitement or embarrassment.

Hitler and the Fawn

My little socks’ story seems, maybe, very sweet and… cute. Though, cute culture’s nature is morally ambiguous. On the internet, you can find a photograph of Adolf Hitler posing to the camera while feeding a fawn, thus portraying a “tender” image of him for propaganda purposes. There is a darker side of cute culture and a big part of it has to do with its use for manipulative reasons.

On the phone with me is Joshua Dale, professor of American Literature and Culture at Chuo University in Tokyo. Originally from the U.S., he moved to Japan in the 1990s and is considered the “pope of cute studies.” His recent book, Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired Our Brains and Conquered the World (ed. Profile Books), explores how cute culture has permeated Western society, even if it took us a while to recognize its influence. “Last year, I visited Seattle to see my family,” he recalls. “In my hotel room, I looked for a hairdryer, and found it in a pouch labeled ‘Shh, the hairdryer is sleeping.’” As Dale explains, anthropomorphizing objects—assigning human traits or forms to non-human entities like a hairdryer—makes us perceive them as cute.

What Attracts Us to Pikachu?

In his book, Dale attempts a genealogy of cute culture in both the West and the “land of kawaii” showing that it’s not just a modern trend but that it has a long and significant history in both folk and then pop culture of these two worlds. One early, albeit problematic, explanation for this timeless attraction we humans have to anything cute can be given, as he mentions, through the “Kindchenschema” (baby schema), introduced in 1943 by the Nobel laureate Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz. This schema includes a series of features that are commonly observed in creatures and objects we find cute: a large head in proportion to the body, a broad forehead, large downward-looking eyes, round and puffy cheeks, short and thick limbs, a body with soft and elastic skin, and clumsy or unsteady movements. Lorenz believed that this schema instinctively triggered nurturing and protective behaviors in adults—behaviors essential for the survival of children.

If we accept Lorenz’s hypothesis, we agree that, in a way, we are genetically programmed to have a specific response whenever we encounter something cute. In reality, though, not all people find cute things appealing. Moreover, as Dale notes, sweet treats, flowers, and smiley faces, which are part of cute culture, don’t fit the baby schema description. The same applies to other elements, such as songs with very high-pitched notes, which may resemble bird chirping, and pastel colors. Moreover, some scientists have concluded that when we encounter something we recognize as cute, we might feel compelled to approach it, though not necessarily to protect or care for it.

Cats, Mickey Mouse, and Astro Boy

Cuteness has always been a part of Japanese culture and art, although it wasn’t always at their forefront. Dale uses the term “proto-kawaii” to refer to things that are perceived as cute but predate modern Japanese cute culture, such as the Edo period paintings (1603-1868), which depict cats dressed in kimonos playing musical instruments. But where do the origins of the slow emergence of cuteness in the West lie?

Long before the Cool Japan craze (the current Western obsession with all things Japanese, from Pikachu to sushi and matcha tea), and even before the Japonisme movement in the visual and decorative arts, or the cat paintings of Harry Pointer and Louis Wain in 19th-century Europe, between the Renaissance and the Rococo period (roughly from the 15th to the 18th century), tiny winged cherubs (or “cupids” in Latin, also known as cherubim) found their place in the corners of paintings and frescoes, serving as the main expression of cuteness in the West. Their image, over time, adorned everything from commodes to candlesticks, falling into the tradition of “cute anthropomorphism” that later gave birth to teddy bears and Mickey Mouse.

In Japan, among all the factors that contributed to the rise of its modern cute culture, one worth highlighting is the establishment of universal compulsory education, first implemented in 1899—with girls attending separate schools from boys. This gender separation led to the emergence of a girl culture, centered around novels and illustrated magazines targeted to schoolgirls. This culture reached its peak in the 1970s with the appearance of Hello Kitty, cute stationery sets, and mechanical pencils. During this time, schoolgirls began decorating their handwriting by drawing hearts, stars, etc., between words. Yes, they are the ones who invented emojis (the term comes from the Japanese words for “picture” and “letter”).

In the 1970s, Dale tells me, Japanese media began to see schoolgirls not only as consumers but also as trendsetters, while kawaii started gaining broader visibility and steadily expanded into mainstream culture among adult women. “At the same time,” he continues, “similar processes were happening in the West, but they flew under our radar. There were student protests, the hippie movement; men were growing their hair long, and women were adorning theirs with flowers—many cute elements were present in all the youth cultures of the time. Though, because these movements had political, revolutionary characteristics, people didn’t pay attention to their cute dimensions. Later, in the 1980s, many Western blockbusters had cute features, such as Steven Spielberg’s E.T. I believe that as we began to put youth in the center of our culture, we also placed the element of cute at its core.” In other words, the famous youthquake was accompanied by a cutequake.

However, while in the West, and particularly in the United States, this culture, once it matured, became sexy, in Japan, kawaii evolved into a form of self-expression that sometimes symbolized the rejection not only of adult values but also of what is described as “mature behavior.” Dale tells me that cute culture developed differently, at different times, and in different places. “For example, in Korea, K-pop has been influenced by kawaii but represents a distinct Korean phenomenon, more focused on beauty and physical attractiveness than on the cute element. Also, it’s important to clarify that Japanese pop culture includes many things that aren’t cute; kawaii isn’t Japan’s answer to Western pop culture.”

Mickey Mouse, the most famous Western cute character in global pop culture, in his debut film Steamboat Willie, which premiered in American theaters in 1928, wasn’t initially as cute as he was mischievous and manipulative. His appearance gradually became younger (following the Lorenz schema), and his character sweeter and more harmless. Indeed, it’s said that Walt Disney had pinned a note above the desks of his animators with the phrase “keep it cute!” His Japanese counterpart, Osamu Tezuka, who created Astro Boy, a robot boy who holds a similar cultural status in Japan as Mickey Mouse does in America and the West, surpassed Mickey Mouse in terms of how youthful and cute his face features were, again according to the Lorenz schema: it had broader foreheads, larger eyes, and rosy cheeks.

Hello Kitty, Protect Us!

In his book, Dale writes about the Harajuku neighborhood—which was built a year after the great earthquake that struck Tokyo in 1924 and remained the center of youth culture in Japan until the 1990s—that, long before the popularity of the term “safe space,” it functioned as a de facto neighborhood of free expression for young people. It was full of rock bands playing music on the street and girls who called themselves Lolitas, arriving there by train, dressed, made up, and wearing wigs that made them look like living dolls, in a mix of French Rococo and Victorian style, “because it was kawaii.” When these kawaii expressions were curtailed following a decision by the Harajuku merchants’ association to ban all forms of adult entertainment in the area, from nightclubs and bars to arcades, new expressions shifted—where else?—to the “safe space” of the internet. At the same time, kawaii broke out of the female sphere and became gender-blind, with new generation Japanese men creating a sweeter image of masculinity under its influence.

Dale tells me that the most significant criticism of cute culture is that it fuels consumerism: “Companies use cuteness on a massive scale to get people to buy their products.” Nonetheless, we shouldn’t demonize it. Modern Japanese people believe that cultivating admiration for cute things has a positive impact on their lives. For example, it helps them combat negative feelings caused by depression, health issues, anxiety, or dissatisfaction with their jobs. This is why, at temples in Japan, one can find for sale amulets depicting Hello Kitty. Consolation with a price tag? Perhaps! This makes things complicated, but not necessarily bad. Claire Catterall, curator of the Cute exhibition at Somerset House in London (it run from January till April 2024), will tell me by email that cute culture’s proximity to capitalism might actually place it in a position of power against it: “If we want to change the world, there’s no better way than to undermine it from within.”

Robot Apocalypse

The rebels, though, should rein their optimism in. One of the reasons why the Japanese people, in contrast to what’s happening in the West, are not afraid of an impending “Robot Apocalypse” is that Astro Boy paved the way for an army of friendly and cute robots in manga and Japanese animation that familiarized its readers and viewers with humanoid machines. However, in 1999, a shift occurred that changed the rules of the game: Sony introduced the AIBO robot (whose name stands for Artificial Intelligent robot; in Japanese, “aibo” also means companion), designed to be loved like a pet rather than, say, to perform household chores. Its sales success was attributed to its cuteness.

When I ask Dale if there’s a trend within cute culture that points to its future, he refers to me a scenario with potentially nightmarish implications. “If I were to make only one prediction, I would say that the next big thing in the realm of cuteness will involve the use of artificial intelligence in robots with cute appearances and behaviors.” It’s not just AIBO; Japan has long had many robots that are truly “cute.” However, AIBO was recently released in a new, improved version. The latest models can connect to the cloud, where all AIBO experiences, wherever they are, can be uploaded, feeding an AI software that processes them through deep learning technology. Then, the data are downloaded back to the AIBOs while they charge.

Once this learning process truly begins to function —which hasn’t happened yet—the robots will start to respond better and faster to their owners, knowing exactly what triggers their “cute instinct,” so they will be able to manipulate them. This adds another layer of concern to a series of philosophical dilemmas that have arisen from the fact that these “cute little robots” are equipped with sensors and cameras that allow them to know the ins and outs of their owners’ houses and to monitor them, while at the same time, as Dale pointedly notes, “because they are cute, people perceive them as harmless.” As harmless as Hitler looks in the photo of him feeding a fawn by hand.

[Featured image: Courtesy of Panagiotis Koustas]
A different version of this text has been published in K Magazine in April 2024.