ABSTRACT
What is kawaii, the Japanese version of cute or adorable? How did it become so ubiquitous in Japan? This chapter traces the beginnings of the modern manifestation of kawaii to the early 1970s, a period immediately following significant political and social unrest. While some aspects can be traced earlier, especially kawaii’s prevalence in manga and anime, this is when it fully entered fashion and self-styling. While kawaii originally became popular in fashion and self-styling as a political statement of rebellion, it has developed its own self-sustaining logic. It has shed much of its rebellious role, increasingly becoming an aesthetic disconnected from its original purpose. Fashion often stands somewhere between the worlds of high art and popular culture, claiming occasionally a central role in both. One thing that kawaii fashion still does, however, is destabilize the distinctions of high and low by holding up a mirror to social and cultural structures that claim the space of maturity and seriousness by being deliberately neither. Kawaii is a central element of Japanese popular culture providing not just a contemporary look but also a set of behavioral norms and expectations.
