Hello Kitty turns 50 on Friday. Befitting a pop icon at midlife, the bubble-headed, bow-wearing character's fictional birthday has brought museum exhibits, a theme park spectacle and a national tour.

Providing an in-depth overview of all things kawaii (cute), this book traces the cute aesthetic from its inception in the 1970s as a schoolgirl trend to its position as a leading cultural norm, and ...

Hiroshi Nittono receives funding from The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI No. 23330217. However, why cute things attract us and how they ...

All images courtesy of Two Kids and a Coupon Get ready for a burst of sweetness and a dose of adorable with our new collection of kawaii inspired fruit coloring pages! We've been adding more free ...

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 of the East ...

“I don’t think it’s to appear to be healthy, it’s purely a style statement,” Tokyo-based French fashion designer Julien David said of activewear’s rise in the country. “The biggest shift in Kawaii is ...

What is cute, or kawaii, to use the almost synonymous Japanese term? In 1943, an Austrian zoologist named Konrad Lorenz proposed that our perception of cuteness is based on certain physical ...

You can trace the word “kawaii” all the way back to the start of the 11th century, when an early form of it, “kawayushi,” which at the time translated more to “having pitiable qualities,” appeared in ...