What gave rise to the global power of cute and kawaii? (long article)
This is an op-ed I wrote for The Japan Times.
Photo by Yoshikazu TAKADA, CC BY 2.0 DEED
On social media feeds all over the world, puppies experience hiccups for the first time, hamsters eat tiny tacos and cats befriend monkeys. And they do it a lot. Since kawaii is everywhere in Japan, the global rise of adorable content didn’t surprise me. But it did make me want to understand how and why it happened, and I was intrigued to discover how little research had been done about it.
As of the time of writing, 675 million posts are tagged #cute on Instagram. The 66 million TikTok videos with the same hashtag have over 625 billion views.[i] A constant presence online, cuteness occasionally rises to prominence in other ways too. Baby Yoda became a sensation in 2019, while “Barbie,” the movie, blew up in 2023, topping the global box office.
Corporations have long known the power of cuteness. The highest-grossing media franchises in the world include Pokémon, Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh.[ii] In Japan, known globally for its kawaii culture, cuteness has taken over public spaces as well as screens. Railway safety posters feature adorable characters, roadway construction barriers are made to look like frogs and rabbits, and Pokemon and Hello Kitty-themed trains run through the countryside.
As an aesthetic, cuteness is heartwarming, popular — and profitable. Even though it touches everyone’s life, people rarely ask themselves why it has such a strong presence and magnetic pull, even in Japan. In fact, we tend to dismiss the cute as trivial, even infantile. Yet with Hello Kitty celebrating her 50th birthday this year and Disney’s Mickey Mouse his centenary last year, it is worth asking why and how cuteness came to have such a hold on us.
Scientists have been investigating this phenomenon for 80 years. In 1943, the Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz noted that animals with baby-like characteristics trigger our cuteness response as readily as babies do. This spillover effect indicates that the cuteness of children is a strongly beneficial evolutionary trait — one that is likely to have evolved up to 100,000 years ago as the first Homo sapiens emerged and that expanded to affect our whole species.
Humans are neotenous, or young-looking, even as adults. Simply put, we are cuter than our Neanderthal ancestors. And neoteny characterizes our behavior, as well as our appearance: We are far more curious, playful and open to new experiences than other primates, who only show these traits as babies.
As humans evolved, adults were more likely to provide care and attention to cute children, even if they were not their own, making this more than a family affair. When adults play with children, the latter learn skills like communication and cooperation that benefit an entire group. In this way, throughout our evolution and social conditioning, cuteness has played an important role in forming us as a highly social species.
True, we may not always play nicely, but we are much better at doing so than chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives.
That is why the primary traits that set off our cuteness detector are baby-like. A big, round head with large eyes and chubby cheeks, short arms and legs, and tottering movements are not guaranteed to make us coo and chortle, but they do capture our attention, immediately.
Neuroimaging studies show that cute images draw our eye within one-seventh of a second and activate the reward centers of our brains.[iii] Cuteness affects our behavior as well, preparing us to act with compassion and empathy.[iv] Research also shows that people are more likely to help strangers if they have a puppy or a dog with them.[v] Cute images prompt people to sign petitions, fill out surveys, or even use recycling bins more.[vi]
Our cuteness bar is set so low that it can be triggered by anything that has childlike characteristics, from Snoopy to a Kewpie doll. In fact, Kewpie — created by American illustrator Rose O'Neill in the early 20th century and first produced as dolls in Germany — was the first cute product to become a worldwide hit.
The early 20th century saw a boom in cuteness’ popularity, as children, both imaginary and real, became the new symbol of an optimistic age. In the 1930s, American child actress Shirley Temple was the world’s most popular star and her signature blend of mischievous innocence was also captured by advertising images like the Campbell Kids, who appeared on the homonymous soup cans in the United States. Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat, stars of the new genre of animation, were impishly cute child characters in animal form.
This phenomenon was in no way confined to the West, as images of adorable children and animals were popular in Japan, too. Kewpie Mayonnaise adopted the image of O'Neill’s doll as its logo in 1925 and Disney films were also wildly popular.
In parallel, the rise of Japan’s own ute culture largely occurred in the context of girls’ culture. The new, universal education system that emerged in the Meiji period was sex-segregated. This gave girls a breathing space between childhood and marriage in which they were more able to form connections and explore new worlds. Magazines for schoolgirls exploded in popularity in the early 20th century, and illustrators like Takehisa Yumeji and Junichi Nakahara created a novel, cute style that soon spilled over into fashion, makeup and “fancy” goods such as stationery.[vii]
Manga began to rise in popularity after the war and proved key to extending kawaii’s reach beyond girls’ culture. Osamu Tezuka, the most famous manga artist, was influenced not only by Disney — he reported seeing “Bambi” 80 times — but also by the Takarazuka Revue, an all-women performance troupe that he often saw as a child. The performers’ striking eye makeup made their emotions visible from the stage, inspiring the large, white eyes of Tezuka’s own manga characters.[viii]
Large eyes, along with lashings of kawaii, became a hallmark of manga for girls. And in the 1980s, this distinctive girls’ (shōjo) manga style spread to anime and became popular with boys as well.
Young Japanese women led the way in other areas too. In the 1990s, they became nationwide style leaders and trendsetters, for example, by being early adopters of pagers. Even though the devices could send simple text messages, their young female users wanted to communicate emotions through more than just words. So, they developed a sophisticated palette of emoticons (kaomoji or “face words”) as a cute way of expressing themselves.
When cell phones came along, Japanese companies started including rudimentary emoji, or “picture words,” which took off especially with female users — who expected the men in their lives to reply back to them with emoji. Any new cell phone model without a robust emoji palette failed, including the early iPhones. Apple quickly teamed up with Google to create an international standard for these minute pictograms, now ubiquitous on all smartphones.[ix]
Emoji are just one example of how kawaii culture was globalized. As the internet grew and social media came onto the scene, the world gained near-instantaneous access to many more forms of kawaii. From J-pop, manga and anime, to Harajuku fashion, colorful crepes and 3D latte art, the Japanese penchant for kawaii has sparked trends in music, characters, makeup, food and much more.
Kawaii has become a major expression of Japan’s “soft power,” enhancing the country’s image through appealing cultural exports. So much so that the Japanese government took notice and named three women in their 20s as official “kawaii ambassadors” in 2009. Fashion model Yū Kimura represented Harajuku style, from the neighborhood that’s often called the center of kawaii. Misako Aoki was chosen to represent Lolita fashion, while the actor and stylist Shizuka Fujioka represented school-girl fashion.
Yet it was another ambassador who did the most to bring kawaii to the world, and without the government’s help. Born in 1974 and still going strong 50 years later, her name is Hello Kitty — the world’s most famous cartoon feline, estimated to have earned her company, Sanrio, $80 billion over her career.
Youthful fashion and cat characters seem childish pursuits when embraced by adults. Surely, the many difficulties facing our world demand a more mature response. Yet, I believe the global rise of cute and kawaii has something to offer us. Creativity, play, experimentation and exploration are virtues associated with youth. These childlike, neotenous traits are also legacies of our evolutionary past. Championed by adults, they might well be the key to a future in which humankind is able to both survive and thrive.
[i] I counted 66 million. The view count comes from The Economist https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/02/02/small-but-mighty-how-cuteness-has-taken-over-the-world
[iii] Kringelbach, M.L. et. al. (2008) “A Specific and Rapid Neural Signature for Parental Instinct.” PLoS ONE 3(2): e1664.
Kringelbach, M.L. et. al. (2016) “On cuteness: unlocking the parental brain and beyond.” Trends in Cognitive Science. 20(7): 545–558.
[iv] ibid.
[v] Bellfield, J., Bimont, C., Blom, J., Dommeyer, C. J., Gardiner, K., Mathenia, E. and Soto, J. (2011), 'The effect of a cute stimulus on personally-initiated, self-administered surveys', Marketing Bulletin, 22, Research Note 1. See also Guéuen, N. and Ciccotti, S. (2008). “Domestic dogs as facilitators in social interaction: An evaluation of helping and courtship behaviors.” Anthrozoos 21(4): 339-349.
[vi] Bellfield, J., Bimont, C., Blom, J., Dommeyer, C. J., Gardiner, K., Mathenia, E. and Soto, J. (2011), 'The effect of a cute stimulus on personally-initiated, self-administered surveys', Marketing Bulletin, 22, Research Note 1. See also Ahn, H. K., Kim, H. J. and Aggarwal, P. (2014), 'Helping fellow beings: Anthropomorphized social causes and the role of anticipatory guilt', Psychological Science, 25(1): 224-229 and Wang, Tingting et. al. "Getting Consumers to Recycle NOW! When and Why Cuteness Appeals Influence Prosocial and Sustainable Behavior." Journal of Public Policy & Marketing Vol. 36 (2) Fall 2017, 269–283 DOI: 10.1509/jppm.16.089.
[vii] Shamoon, Deborah. (2012) Passionate Friendship: the Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
[viii] Shamoon, 89
[ix] Alt 192, 193.
