Cuties in Japan

Abstract

Cute people and cute accessories were extremely popular. So much so that original cute fashion became a basic style or aesthetic into which many other more specific and transient fashions such as preppy, punk, skater, folk, black and French were mixed. Cute fashion gradually evolved from the serious, infantile, pink, romanticism of the early 1980s to a more humorous, kitsch, androgynous style which lingered on into the early 1990s. The results of a survey I conducted as late as 1992 showed that 71 per cent of young people between eighteen and 30 years of age either liked or loved kawaii-Iooking people, and 55.8 per cent either liked or loved kawaii attitudes and behaviour. 3 Although many respondents encountered difficulties deciding what social class they were in and what politics they supported, few had any problems explaining their relative fondness for the cute.

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