Hello my beautiful doves. Welcome or welcome back. My name is Mina. And today we're going to be talking about... ♪ Kawaii ♪ The kawaii industry. Also, I just got my hair done last week
and I would like some input on this color. It's definitely redder than I was going for. I was going for more of a natural red and... - Oh no! The box said it was supposed
to be a honey-mist auburn! - Honey, you missed auburn BIG TIME! I haven't done a fashion
color in a really long time and I felt like I was over
that phase in my life, and now I'm back it in
and it feels a little weird. I don't dislike it,
I actually kind of like it, but... Yeah, it's interesting! Anyways, about this topic, I'm not really sure what
compelled me to make this video. Nothing really happened
that made me think: "Oh, I should do a
video on cute stuff". But, you know, how we like to talk about
aesthetics and culture on this channel and I feel like the word "kawaii"
is kind of taken for granted in the West, as just like a cutie trend in Japan. Or as just an integral part
of weaboo vocabulary. But there's actually a lot more to it and
I just can't wait to explore with you all. For anyone lost on what "kawaii" means,
in basic terms, it's the Japanese word for "cute". For a more in-depth definition, Shiri Lieber Milo and Hiroshi Nittono
define "kawaii" as describing: "Playfulness, warmth, cuteness,
eliciting maternal instincts "and even feelings of empathy and compassion. "and is usually used to indicate small
objects, like infants and young animals, "young women who look lovely,
and fancy goods "(such as decorations and toys)
that please us". Rather than just being an adjective,
kawaii has exploded into a whole industry, producing thousands and thousands
of consumer goods every year. In 2012, New York Daily News
published an article with the headline: "Japan's pursuit of cute
spawns $30 billion industry". What this headline refers to is
Japan's character licensing industry, which actually only makes up a
segment of the total kawaii industry. But let's get into the history. I also apologize in advance for any possible
mince pronunciations from this point forward. And also I guess
from this point before, because I think I probably
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formula 50% off using my link below. The roots of "kawaii" go back as far as
the 11th Century via Sei Shōnagon "Pillow Book". This was a book of observations recorded by a court lady to the
empress Consort Teishi in Heian Japan. In the book there's a section detailing
things that are considered "utsukushi", which is kind of like an adjective
that shares a lot of meaning with the modern word "kawaii". Such things include a baby
face written on a melon, children wearing baggy kimono, chicks sparrows, doll furniture bird eggs and glass pots. Etymologically, the word "kawaii".
originates from the word "kawahayushi", which means "embarrassed", and was used to describe
a sense of sympathy and pity towards weaker members
of society such as children. Over the years, the pity meeting vanished and now today there are no negative
connotations for the word "kawaii" in Japan. Aesthetically, kawaii icons
usually have round faces, large eyes and a small body, very baby-like. Konrad Lorenz's theory of
baby schema or "Kindchenschema", is normally cited to explain why
kawaii things are so appealing to us. According to him, visual features like a high forehead, big eyes, oversized head and full cheeks, trigger positive feelings and a desire to
protect and care for the observed object. And, apparently, this affects women more heavily because
it triggers our "maternal instincts". So now we know that humans are biologically
predisposed to like cute things, but what triggered the cute industry
that we know and love today? According to Sharon Kinsella
and her paper "Cuties in Japan": "The emergence of the modern
term 'kawaii' in the early 1970s "coincides with the beginning of the cute
handwriting craze in childish fashion. "In 1974, large numbers of teenagers,
especially women, "began to write using a new
style of childish characters. "By 1978 the phenomenon had become nationwide "and in 1985 it was estimated that "upwards of five million young
people were using the new script. "It's important to understand that, "before this handwriting craze,
Japanese script was written vertically, "with very thickness per each stroke. "The new style known generally as
'marumoji' was written laterally, "with unified thin lines per stroke". Teenage girls, the major practitioners of
this handwriting style, would also insert random English
characters and cartoon images. Overall, this handwriting was pretty
difficult to read for traditionalists. If you're an English speaker/writer, think of it as bubble handwriting
or a popular girl handwriting. Kinsella says that the right to-- Left to right... Yeah. Left to right writing format
and the inclusion of English characters, suggest that teenagers were rebelling
against traditional Japanese customs. So kawaii culture came about as
an underground literary trend and spread from there. Not only were girls
writing with a cute style, they started also incorporating infantile
slang in their day-to-day lives. For example, "sex"
was referred to as "Nyannyan Suru", which directly translates
to "meow meow". Kinsella is firm that cute culture
originated among the youth, but notes that the consumer boom,
which started in the 1970s, led companies to capitalize on the cute trend. Sanrio created the first
'Hello Kitty' product, a vinyl coin purse in 1974. At this time, the company was
experimenting with cute designs, printing them on a category of
products called "fancy goods", AKA, stationery toys,
gimmicks toiletries, lunch boxes, towels
and other personal paraphernalia. As far as '70s and '80s,
kawaii fashion goes, white pink or pastel
were popular color choices. Clothes were often frilly,
with puffy sleeves and ribbons. By the late 1980s, cute
fashion was more androgynous, rather than nursery colors and frills, women opted for naughty hats,
dungarees and tight sweaters. During the '80s, the kawaii craze kind
of fell out of popularity, but then, in the '90s, that's when the Japanese
yet felt drastically and major banks filed for bankruptcy. Companies scrambled and ended
up going back to "kawaii", as a way to increase profits again. For example, we got
Tamagotchi and Pokémon, which both relied on the cute
character-oriented marketing, rather than traditional
storyline marketing. And this time around,
companies not only targeted the youth, but they also targeted men and women who were part
of the initial kawaii craze in the '70s and '80s. As Lieber-Milo writes: "In an attempt to adjust their
brand by targeting other age groups, the company Sanrio, for example,
has developed a fresh line of products "that include adult-oriented goods,
such as personal electronics and jewelry. "The success of these adult targeted
products was reflected by the fact that, by 2000, the core 'Hello Kitty' customer base
was mature women between the ages of 18 and 40". So, the next question we're tackling here is: "Why do people like cute things?" And I kind of talked about it a little bit
earlier, about our biological predisposition, but why has that enabled
this industry to get SO BIG? First of all, this is global. People all across the world
are drawn to cute things, not just the Japanese. In America, we have Walt Disney Animation, which
first based its cute joyful animal cartoons on an idealized country culture. What I mean by that is that,
in the West, during the turn of the Century, which is when industrialization and
urbanization started to increase dramatically. Some philosophers criticized
modern society and urbanization as "having a spiritual poverty". Rural communities,
on the other hand, were stereotyped as being simplistic
and innocent and spiritually intact. This has some major roots
in racism, by the way, because a lot of these philosophers
felt this way about cities, because in cities, white people were intermingling and
coexisting with ethnic minorities. But anyways, in the early 20th Century, Disney capitalized off this
urban nostalgia for country life and repackaged it into a cutesy animated aesthetic
with dancing and singing woodland animals. And while Disney did inspire
Japanese animation and comics, Kinsella notes that there's a major difference
between "Disney cute" and "Japanese cute". Historically, like I said, Disney cute is rooted
in an idealized countryside, whereas Japanese cute is rooted
in an idealized childhood. In 1992, Kinsella conducted a survey
in Tokyo asking young adult respondents to describe the way
they felt about adulthood. Adulthood versus childhood! She writes: "Although some respondents gave
positive appraisals of adulthood, "describing it as a period
of 'freedom' and 'potential', "the great majority of respondents described
adulthood as a bleak period of life. She noticed that the most common
impression of adulthood was that it had too much responsibility: To society, to family,
to work... Which I totally understand! "Young women—
even more than young men— "desire to remain free,
unmarried and young. "Whilst a woman was still a shojo, "outside the labor market
and out of the family, "she could enjoy the vacuous
freedom of an outsider in society, "with no distinct
obligations or role to play. "But when she grew up
and got married, "the social role of a young woman
was possibly more oppressive "than that of a young company man". In this sense, we can deduce that young woman
and even teenagers and children, who are kind of aware of this
impending doom of adulthood, would resort to cute
things as a form of rebellion. In the West, we perceive
rebellion as more aggressive, like with the punk movement,
or even the seeing kids, there was kind of an aggression
compared to these pastel pink dreams of some of the teenagers in Japan. And that's not to say that
Japan didn't have subcultures that were way more
provocative or political, it's just that this "cutesy stuff",
was also a form of rebellion that we see way less of in the West. Ōtsuka Eiji wrote about how young girls in the
'80s decorating their rooms into kawaii fortresses was a form of rebellion against the confining
roles they were assigned in modern society. He writes: "Included in the image
of the girl's room, "is the undeniable fact that the girl
is trying to make a space for herself, "separated from normal life
and reproduction". It's also important to remember that kawaii
culture originated via young girl's handwriting! And, at the time, educators,
parents and other adults deemed this handwriting
as a deviant social practice. Some schools even banned it! But cute things can also make
us feel comfortable and warm and act as like a self-care practice. Lieber-Milo uses the
term "shadow family" to describe the cute items and characters
that people create connections with. We live in a time,
especially with the pandemic, where social interaction
between people face to face is an increasingly fleeting concept. And, honestly, I consider myself
to be a pretty social person. Like, I try to go out and do things with people, but I still have tons of friendships
that are just perpetually online. Because either the friends
that I have are too busy, or like, we can never figure out a time
in our schedules where we match up, or because they moved
or I moved and we don't live anywhere
close to each other... In this case, which I think is pretty
common for Millennials and Zoomers, consumption of cute things
makes a lot of sense to replace the intimacy that we're missing. Like, triggers
the sweet, sweet, oxytocin that we all need to live. An example of this blend between
cute and mental health, is the subculture "Yami Kawaii",
which directly translates to "sick cute". This style, like the name says,
combines cute and sick aesthetics, so pastel colors but with
bandages or syringes or blood. The concept of Yami Kawaii is about expressing deep feelings of sadness, but in a cute way. And is thus an aesthetic outlet
or a release, for some people dealing
with mental health issues. In an interview with Christine Yano, she talks about the empathy
gap in today's society. She says that: "Objects may be considered promoters
of happiness, solace, and comfort. "When a society needs to heal, "it seeks comfort in the familiar. "And often the familiar may reside in 'cute' ". Like teddy bears for firefighters. When Japan's island Kyoshi suffered from
the 6.2 magnitude earthquake in 2016, three weeks after it happened, the character Kumamon visited
the conventional hall of Mashiki, a town that was hit hard. Children who lost their homes to
the earthquake flocked around him, hugged him and
took pictures. Something I also noticed about popular
Japanese mascots like Kumamon and Gudetama, they have very blank faces, even though their mouths are
creating some kind of expression, it's not like a super clear smiley
face like Mickey Mouse, for instance. Hello Kitty doesn't
even have a mouth, but the blankness of these characters
faces adds to the power that they yield. Sanrio's Nakajima Seiji says: "Without the mouth it is easier
to imagine Kitty-chan shares "whatever feeling you
have at the moment. "If Kitty-chan was smiling all the time, "and you just broken up with your
boyfriend or something and were very sad, "the last thing you'd want to look
at was a grinning Hello Kitty. "Without a mouth, you can
imagine she is sad with you". Of course nothing can exist in our
society without a group of haters. In Japan, conservative adults feel like the cute
industry is leading to some kind of moral panic. They believe cute things encourage
young people to be selfish, to put off work and responsibility. To not want to grow up. And, honestly, I don't really
care about that point of view, because I think young people are pressured
in our society to overwork themselves anyway. Work is not that fun! The cuties are right
and they should say it! But cuteness is also strongly correlated
with indulgence and overconsumption, which I can understand. With the way that corporations
have monetized off of cuteness, remember we're talking
about BILLIONS of dollars here. It has led to over consumption, which has a negative
environmental impact and also a negative
impact on our wallets. The capitalist nature of kawaii
marketing is also kind of scary. In Asia, there are Hello Kitty amusement
parks, restaurants and hotel suites. EVA Air flies seven
Hello Kitty themed jets, which carry images of Hello Kitty and
her friends throughout the interior, from the pillows to toilet paper. It seems nice for people
who are into Hello Kitty, but remembering that it's a ploy
to literally get you to buy into the hype. And it doesn't sit right with me! It's kind of like how in Disney World,
there's just a bunch of hidden Mickeys everywhere. Same effect. Similarly, governmental institutions and police
departments have resorted to using cute mascots to soften their image
and distract from the-- [ Cough ] War crimes. Rather than posing
as an authority figure, the government wants to let you
know that they're your friend. It feels a little dystopian! There's also a problem with cuteness
being linked to sexual perversion, which is something I talked about
in my Japanese schoolgirl video, but, you know, it needs to be said. Again. Because it's important. I'm not saying Hello Kitty
created the pedo. I'm not saying that at all. And I'm not saying that teenage girls
shouldn't be able to indulge in cute things, adult women who play up the cute factor
are in a morally gray area to me, but anyways! It's hard not to see the correlation
between the growth of the cuteness industry with the way that pornography
has developed over the years. According to Leila Madge: "Studies of male pornography note a
distinct switch in female type preferences "between the pre- and postwar years. "Commonly accepted perceptions of female
attractiveness in the prewar years "were largely maternal in character
with the woman playing a motherly role "and the man that of the child. "In contrast, the post-war years are marked by a
distinct preference among men for childish women "in what has come to be referred
to as Rorikon (Lolita Complex)". And there are disgusting
ramifications, for example: Stores that sell school
girls used underwear and telephone clubs where adolescent
girls can talk to mostly older, mostly male clients, for money. There's also the
problem of "princess culture", which is the fear that a lot of
older Millennial parents have. It's basically the fear that
Keira Knightley expressed in 2018. - She's banned from seeing
certain children's movies, right? - Yeah.
- What are they? - 'Cinderella', banned. Because, you know, she waits around
for a rich guy to rescue her. Don't. Rescue yourself, obviously. 'Little Mermaid'... I mean the songs are great,
but do not give your voice up for a man! Hello? Update, she has since
lifted the Disney ban. Over the years people have been
concerned with, whether or not, little girls dressing up in princess clothes or absorbing these messages that... A man randomly starting to dance with
you in the woods is appropriate behavior. Is damaging for their development. Some feminists are concerned that
little girls are being told by the media that being nice and pretty
are the most important things to being a girl. So, while I wouldn't say that Gudetama
necessarily reflects those messages! I can see how people may be anxious
about younger girls being pressured into partaking in hyper feminine
cutesy interests and aesthetics. Brian Brenner, in his 2002 article
"In Japan, Cute Conquers All", cites: "Japanese feminists charge that "all this cute chic is really
about the cultural domination "and exploitation of
women in the country. "It encourages girls and young
women well into their late 20s "to act submissive,
weak and innocent "rather than mature,
assertive and independent". Also, all this talk about youthfulness
does push a glorification of being young versus being old. And like I've said millions of times, hopefully, at some point
I'll believe in myself, that getting older is not a problem,
especially for women. Hiroto Mirosawa,
of Osaka Shoin Women's University, talked about how in Japan single women
in their 30s are sometimes referred to as "leftover Christmas cake",
AKA, they're no good after the 25th. And I don't know if there's an
equivalent saying in America, but I feel like that's a common
sentiment in almost every culture. And I'm not saying that owning cute things or
liking cute things is inherently problematic, but I just wish there was more of a cultural
interest in the hobbies and characteristics associated with older women. I don't know what
those hobbies could be, because the first thing i thought of
when I was thinking of "adult culture" is literally filing taxes. But I think that's a
problem in and of itself. We, as a society, don't focus enough on
the benefits of getting older than 21. And, of course, there's the racial
fetishization that occurs in the West with these very specific cultural exports. Lest we forget miss Avril Lavigne's
'Hello Kitty' music video! Complete with the expressionless robotic
stairs of her Japanese background dancers, who act more like background props. Anna Lee Nowitz wrote
for the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2002: "Cute is a consumer item,
a mainstream aesthetic... "Asian-philia is at the heart of
America's obsession with cuteness... "Cuteness—
at least as it's consumed in America— "reduces all of Asian culture to its
more precious infantile and fluffy form". Writer Angela Choi echoed similar sentiments: " 'Hello Kitty' is such a symbol for Asian women. "We see her as this kind of mouthless kitty,
like a lot of the stereotypes of Asian women. "That they're submissive,
they have to be demure "and they have to be polite; "they have to be x, y, and z". "It fits very much into
that image of Kitty. "She doesn't have fangs,
like a proper kitty. "She doesn't have a mouth. "She doesn't have claws. "She's not really a kitty. "She doesn't even
have real eyebrows! "And she can't really express herself. "She's just kind of this
placid docile character "and I think she encapsulates
a lot of the stereotypes of Asian women". Okay that's all I have for today! Let me know in the comments what
you think about the kawaii industry, what you think about-- I don't know, Hello Kitty... Leave me on anything. What you do for Halloween... And I hope you liked this video,
thanks again for just sticking around! And why can't I speak English today? Thanks again for spending
this much of your day with me, and I'll see you next time! I hope you have a
lovely rest of your day. Bye!
