ABSTRACT
Kawaii style dominated Japanese popular culture in the 1980s. Kawaii or ‘cute’ essentially means childlike; it celebrates sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak, and inexperienced 2 social behaviour and physical appearances. It has been well described as a style which is ‘infantile and delicate at the same time as being pretty’ (Yamane 1990) (Figure 6.1). Cute style saturated the multi-media and consumer goods and services whilst they were expanding rapidly between 1970 and 1990 and reached a peak of saccharine intensity in the early 1980s. Cute and free in fantasy land. Illustration courtesy of Tsuzuki Katō at Kadokawa Shoten https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315026312/df22a5e3-11fb-47b5-ba27-ec1051f69eec/content/fig6_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
