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.

"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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. I have a theory I bore people with at dinner parties called the "Googly Eye Effect". It ...

Bake Off is dishing up Japanese treats tonight (Picture: Channel 4) The Great British Bake Off is dishing up a treat for viewers tonight as the remaining bakers face the challenge of the show’s first ...