The Cuteness Obsession (Gillian)

We are many of us obsessed with cute things. Cats, babies, furry things, smiley faces, soft toys, etc. Evidently there is something about the appearance of something cute that releases happy chemicals in our brains and warms the cockles of our hearts. In Japan, however, the love of cute things seems to have escalated to an almost epidemic level. Cuteness in Japan is everywhere, and you can rest assured that wherever cuteness lies, there will be many Japanese people around to appreciate it.


If you think this seems like a ridiculous, minor thing, I can assure you that it is not. Cuteness in Japanese culture has become quite a major phenomenon. It started in the 1970s when teenage girls started writing using mechanical pencils. They would write using big round letters, and add little drawings and English letters to their writing. This writing style, being hard to read and radically different from ‘the norm’, was banned in many schools, but in the 1980s it was adopted by comics and magazines and used in advertising.


The Japanese obsession with cuteness developed further after this, with the introduction of franchises like Hello Kitty, and the rise of idols like Seiko Matsuda, whose 'cute' fashion style and mannerisms were adopted by many young women.

Seiko Matsuda, now 48 years old, has been dubbed Japan’s ‘Eternal Idol’ by the media, owing to her long career and popularity in the 1980s.


Since this cuteness culture has been in existence for quite a while now, it is no longer limited to teenagers. Older women and men have accepted and adopted it as well, with older women going crazy over cute Disney merchandise, and men of all ages attaching cute phone straps to their mobiles. But what really shows just how integrated cute culture now is in Japan, is how cuteness crops up even in the most serious of Japan’s businesses and services. Some examples of cuteness in major Japanese businesses and services include:

1.       The Pokemon planes – Three All Nippon Airways passenger aircraft have been given a Pokemon paint job. There is surely no finer way to wave off your relatives than to have Pikachu waving back at you.

2.       Prefecture mascots – All 47 prefectures in Japan have cute mascot characters. Chiba’s mascot is a dog called Chiiba-kun (if you tilt him and slot him into a Japanese map, he is roughly the same shape as Chiba prefecture), Akita’s mascot is a tree named Sugichi, Hyougo’s mascot is a funny bird-like creature called Habatan, and I could go on. Some of these mascots are more well-known than others, but they are all cute and they all represent a prefecture, which is pretty incredible.

         

The mascots for Akita-ken (l) and Chiba-ken (r)

3.       Police force mascots – As well as a generic prefecture mascot, each prefecture has its own police force mascot. Each mascot relates to something special involving that prefecture. Niigata is famouos for producing fine-quality koshihikari rice, and their police mascot is two rice grains. Nara has many deer, and their mascot is a deer, etc.

A chart showing the police mascots for every prefecture in Japan

4.       Several of the bank cards from Asahi Bank have the Dutch cartoon character, Miffy, adorned on them. Miffy also currently features in a Lawson coupon promotion, where is you collect a certain number of tokens from packs of ready-made Lawson-brand food, you’ll get a mug or a plate with Miffy on it.

Some of the Miffy designs on Asahi bank cards.

        

5.       Even packages from the post office have hearts on them.

     

Maybe this is not the biggest deal in the world, but I find it refreshing, and quite amusing, to see that Japan has taken to the concept of cuteness and gone with it to the extreme degree for which the Japanese are so well-known. It is nice to see that a normally quite serious country is able to bring a less serious side to the forefront, even in the industries that have to be the most professional. It is fair to say, I think, that the cuteness obsession is one of the coolest things about Japan.


Thanks to wikipedia.org and injapan.gaijinpot.com for the insight.