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Paper short abstract

Kawaii might be on the most successful cultural Japanese exports ever. But what are its roots in Japanese culture, what does its global acceptance mean, and how does it actually work as an aesthetic category distinct from that of the beautiful?

Paper long abstract

Kawaii might be a global phenomenon, with huge economic relevance and ramifications in marketing, design, and communication, and yet actual aesthetic or philosophical reflections on it are still scarce. In this paper, I wish to discuss it through the lens of phenomenology, then applying the gathered insight towards contemporary Japan and its cultural relevance.

Kawaii, or "cute", is a complex aesthetic stance that is not only turned towards specific kinds of objects, but which in turns allows the subject to assume a specific style of consciousness. On the object-pole (noema), the characterizing trait of kawaii is a dominance of the oral sensorium, the multimodal complex of taste-touch-smell that is dominant in the infant, and becomes secondary in an "adult" aesthetics centered on visual detachment. Kawaii things are thus "sweet", "round", "soft", "colorful" and "small", often meant to be owned, consumed and manipulated rather than simply admired from afar.

But on the subect-pole (noesis), the appeal of kawaii is the momentary, mediated return to infant-consciosuness that the attuned interaction with things kawaii can allow. As defining traits of this infant-consciosuness we can highlight "play", a state of whimsical suspension of adult responsability and of the usual distinction between real and unreal; "nostalgia", a more mediated sense of tenderness for a real or imaginary past, projected on objects or places; and "innocence", the emotional response before another subject that is not yet aware of harsher elements of existence.

As an aesthetic category connected to care and infancy, kawaii is also highly gendered, connected to forms of enforced, negotiated, and revolutionary femininity. Lastly, the interaction of the noematic and noetic elements of kawaii is evident in the "free deformation" that makes possible to "kawaiify" things that would not normally be so, such as reptiles, monsters, inanimate objects. In terms of image ecology, a study of kawaii reveals the importance of an "expressive function" in images, central to East Asian aesthetics, alongside and contrasting the "mimetic function" privileged in most European art, thus opening a whole new landscape for historical and comparative studies.