How a cute Japanese icon turned into a $6b industry. ... a specialist in Cute Studies at Chuo University in Tokyo. The simplicity of the design makes it easy to reproduce on all manner of items.

After all, if there’s anything Americans know about Japan, it’s that as a country, they are absolutely obsessed with cute things. The Japanese have a name for the obsession: Kawaii.

Editor’s Note: Joshua Paul Dale is a professor at Tokyo Gakugei University. He is co-editor of “The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness”, and the editor of “Cute Studies,” a special issue ...

A Japanese girl would prefer to be called kawaii than sexy or pretty.” For Grace St John, a 21-year-old drama student and kawaii convert from Birmingham, this is one of the key appeals.

Pink globalisation, the spread of cute goods from Japan to other parts of the industrial world, has been a stronghold of consumption in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, particularly with Hello ...

Kawaii, often associated with fashions and character goods, is a representative aspect of Japan’s pop culture in the spotlight now.But kawaii is a difficult concept to convey, and the author has ...

"Cool" may have been the official buzzword recently attached to Japanese pop culture by the national government, but if the chants of the 20,000 strong audience who turned out for the Kawaii!!

As our latest issue is about exploring the cute side of Tokyo – which you can download now for FREE – we check in with Japanese artist Sebastian Masuda about th ...