Why no one does cuteness like Japan

A ‘cute studies’ scholar shines new light on ‘kawaii’ girls, Mickey Mouse and his aunt’s gullible dog

288pp, Profile, T £16.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP£18.99, ebook £9.99 ÌÌÌÌÌ

Wandering out of the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, a jet-lagged sleepwalker under the midday cloud, I hadn’t gone 30 steps before I encountered my first girl group. They were dancing on a stage below the roadway, wearing neoncoloured dresses with ample ribbons and puffy sleeves. In front of this apparent hallucination swayed a crowd of men, many suited and obviously on their lunch break, waving glowsticks and yelling names, attempting to catch the eyes of their favourite dancers. The song ended. The men yelled as one: “Kawaii!” Cute!

My bemusement may have been a typical Western reaction, but Joshua Paul Dale, a professor at Tokyo’s Chuo University, would advise us all to get stuck in. His new book, Irresistible, argues that human beings – a “selfdomesticated species” – need heavy dollops of cuteness to flourish. As founder of “cute studies”, Dale practises what he preaches, whether hugging a parade of Pikachus in Yokohama, touring a petting zoo of tame foxes in Zao, or joining the world’s largest “furry” conference in Pittsburgh – all strictly in the name of academic dialogue. The result is this fun if spotty book, a layer cake of cultural history and developmental biology.

Chapters on the history of Japanese kawaii alternate with chapters on Western “cuteness” and animal domestication. His theory is that our response to cuteness is biological, but that its cultural development is uniquely advanced in Japan. After introducing the observations of the Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz that “cute things” share a set of common characteristics across species – large heads, bulging cheeks, soft bodies, and wobbly movements – he compares the list of “adorable things” written by the court lady Sei Shōnagon (AD c. 966-1025): a baby bird being fed, a tiny lotus leaf on a pond, a child’s face drawn on a melon.

Although the jump from science to culture can be jarring, he is convincing on the details. He explains how and why Japanese animé characters are more “neotenous” (child-like) than American ones, and notes how many products aimed at children, from teddy bears to Mickey Mouse, have transformed this way over the past century. Dale outlines the parallel etymologies of cute, from “acute” or smart, and kawaii, from kao hayushi, a flushed or shining face (curiously hidden behind the current Japanese

The cutting edge of cute: kawaii fashion at a Vogue party in Milan, 2019

characters, which translate instead to something more like “loveable”). He then ties these differing definitions to broader cultural theories: American admiration for rebellious non-conformists contrasts with pure Japanese affect and mutuality.

Other sections, however, fit less snugly into wider narratives. Dale’s joins are often clever: he describes his aunt’s dog barking at an 800-year-old Japanese statue of a puppy, which naturally leads to discussion of the “cuteness” of wild wolves.

But even the smartest arrangement cannot disguise the chasm between an examination of neural crests in personality development and a description of Victorian pulpmagazine writing. Irresistible seems to have absorbed the loose, discursive feel of many Japanese novels. Whole stretches of it are included just because the author likes the subject.

Liking things is not a bad principle. Nonetheless, when Dale criticises European medieval art for being backward in cuteness, or when he dismisses as mere sexists those Japanese critics, such as the well-known writer Eiji Otsuka, who have read infantilisation in kawaii culture and linked it to their country’s ongoing role as the ward of America, you feel the lack of argumentation. Is there nothing to answer in teenagers dressing up in animal suits to live out their “fursonas”? Is there no “Trojan horse” risk of special interests using cuteness to bypass our conscious thought? Dale seems to be right that more of us are prolonging our youth, but his easygoing approval made me want a more incisive valuation of “cute”.

In the meantime, Irresistible amounts to a peculiarly charming index. I discovered that it’s impossible to lasso a zebra, that a biologist attempted to breastfeed wolf pups, and that a rogue Soviet scientist bred domesticated Siberian foxes, which are now on sale as pets. I learnt about the illustrative innovations of artists Yumeji Takehisa, Junichi Nakahara and Rune Naito, the minstrel origins of Felix the Cat, and the rather queasy attention paid to the prepubescent sexuality of Shirley Temple. Cute studies has only just begun. There’s plenty more to see, and plenty more to wave a glowstick at.

Some Japanese critics call kawaii culture infantile – but Dale brands them sexist