This year has been anything but cute. It’s been occasionally optimistic, but mostly unpredictable, tumultuous, and painful. But cute? Far from it. Enter the timeline cleanse. You may have seen them: ...

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 ...

How Japan's "most famous" artist, and others, are subverting the country's cute "kawaii" aesthetic to question the world we live in. More than a millennium ago, the Japanese empress Fujiwara no Teishi ...

All images courtesy of Two Kids and a Coupon Quench your thirst for creativity with our collection of adorable kawaii drinks coloring pages! Kawaii, the Japanese aesthetic of all things cute, has ...

Kawaii. You hear it in anime, you hear it on TV shows, and you hear it on the streets of Japan, where the word is spoken by young and old alike. With people around the world growing up on Japanese ...

Born from the trauma of World War II, this bow-wearing cartoon icon became a powerful tool for diplomacy, reinvention, and cultural soft power. Dressed in a kimono, Hello Kitty performs a classical ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. In the late 1970s, British inventor James Dyson painstakingly refined his design for a new, improved vacuum cleaner.