ABSTRACT
When we run across a beautiful woman, our feelings say, “What a pretty woman!” When we see a woman in appropriate, graceful (not flashy) makeup and elegantly dressed, we feel that she has been raised in a good environment and has a sense of elegance. We make inferences about the person’s gentle character, privileged home environment, and so forth. This kind of feeling is called Kansei. Kansei is the feeling felt by the receiver of stimuli contained in the atmosphere of a situation. If the receiver is rich with emotions, a feeling that matches the stimuli will come out, but if the receiver is lacking in emotions or being defiant, he or she can only respond to a portion of the stimuli, and the feeling will be distorted. When a child who loves animals finds a puppy on a roadside, he or she will hug the puppy with sparkling eyes, but another child who has no such emotion will chase the puppy around with a stick. Even if the stimuli from the environment is the same, the emotion created by the stimuli, which is Kansei, may be different.
