Japan’s kawaii culture is more than cute—it’s a global movement reshaping fashion, branding, and emotional connection.

“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 ...

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 ...

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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 ...

Pink globalisation, the spread of cute goods from Japan to other parts of the industrial world, has been a stronghold of consumption in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, particularly with Hello ...

"Gross" characters are proliferating in a country known for kawaii, and now even local governments' mascots are trying to out-weird one another. Long considered the global capital of cute, Japan is ...

Hui-Ying Kerr received funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) from 2010 - 2013 as part of her PhD research on Japan in the 1980s. This is a true story. One Saturday night, I ...

With digital overload and constant stress dominating life, soft colours and whimsical objects work like visual therapy. That’s what Kawaii interiors aims to do. When GS Shruti (@shrustudies), a ...