Learned a new Japanese word today: Kawaii. What does this mean? Here's a paragraph from a great Time Magazine article on Kawaii fashion in Japan:Kawaii, an adjective usually mistranslated as simply "cute," has become much more than a word. It is a state of mind for Japanese teens, a modifier that means cool, bitchin', groovy, killer and I-love-it all rolled into one, then squared. For a clothing label trying to crack Asia's burgeoning teen fashion industry, business these days boils down to the quest for kawaii. Asian teenagers tend to wear today what Japanese teens wore a few minutes ago. And unlike the fashion industrial complex in the West, in which top designers and magazine editors dictate what's hot, Japan's teen fashion industry revolves entirely around what Tokyo girls say is kawaii. This word is also used to describe Japanese toy culture and drawings and all kinds of other things that fall under the umbrella of "cute." Here's a tumblr feed called Kawaii World showing how this aesthetic manifests in Japan... how much cute is too much?
It appears that the Japanese have a much more evolved understanding of "cuteness" than the rest of us. But not to be outdone, I offer up the following photo from cuteoverload.com. I'd like to think I can hold my own in a cute-off. 
No comments:
Post a Comment