Cute people and cute accessories were extremely popular. So much so that original cute fashion became a basic style or aesthetic in to which many other more specific and transient fashions such as preppy, punk, skater, folk, black and French were mixed. Cute fashion gradually evolved from the serious, infantile, pink, romanticism of the early 1980s to a more humorous, kitsch, androgynous style which lingered on into the early 1990s. The results of a survey I conducted as late as 1992 showed that 71 percent of young people between 18 and 30 years of age either liked or loved kawaii looking people, and 55.8 percent either liked or loved kawaii attitudes and behaviour. (2) Although many respondents encountered difficulties deciding what social class they were in and what politics they supported, few had any problems explaining their relative fondness for the cute.

The word kawaii itself was by 1992 estimated to be 'the most widely used, widely loved, habitual word in modern living Japanese.' (CREA, 11.1992:58) Iwashita, president of the Kikan Fanshii (Fancy Goods Periodical) trade journal, recalls that, 'Rather than being another post-war value, the present meaning of kawaii has not been in existence for any longer than fifteen years.' (Shimamura, 1991a:225, my translation) The term kawaii appears in dictionaries printed in the Taisho to 1945 period as kawayushi. In dictionaries printed after the war until around 1970 kawayushi changed into kawayui but the meaning of the word remained the same. Kawaii is a derivation of a term whose principle meaning was 'shy' or 'embarrassed' and secondary meanings were 'pathetic', 'vulnerable', 'darling', 'loveable' and 'small'. In fact the modern sense of the word kawaii still has some nuances of pitiful whilst the term kawaisô derived directly from kawaii means pathetic, poor, and pitiable in a generally negative if not pleasing sense.

Cute Handwriting and Slang

The emergence of the modern term kawaii in the early 1970s coincides with the beginning of the cute handwriting craze and childish fashion. In 1974 large numbers of teenagers especially women began to write using a new style of childish characters. By 1978 the phenomenon had become nation-wide and in 1985 it was estimated that upwards of about 5 million young people were using the new script.

Previously Japanese writing had been written vertically using strokes that vary in thickness along their length. The new style was written laterally, preferably using a mechanical pencil to produce very fine even lines.(3) Using extremely stylised, rounded characters with English, katakana (4) and little cartoon pictures such as hearts, stars and faces inserted randomly into the text, the new style of handwriting was distinct and the characters difficult to read. In middle and high schools across the country the craze for writing in the new style caused discipline problems. In some schools the writing was banned entirely or tests which were completed using the new cute style would not be marked. The new style of handwriting was described by a variety of names such as marui ji (round writing), koneko ji (kitten writing), manga ji (comic writing) and burikko ji (fake-child writing). Through the 1980s magazines, comics, advertising, packaging and, word processor soft ware design (Macintosh) adapted the new style. Yamane Kazuma carried out two years of research into cute handwriting between 1984 and 1986 which he officially labelled, 'Anomalous Female Teenage Handwriting'. Arguing against the common view that cute handwriting was something young people had mimicked from the lettering in comics, Yamane furnishes evidence that in fact the craze for rounded lettering pre- dates its use in comics which relied on the later invention of photo composition methods in order to be able to use the round characters. Instead, he concludes that teenagers 'spontaneously' invented the new style. Results of Yamane's survey carried out in 1984-85 amongst middle and high school students showed that the older students were, the more likely it was that they would use the childish hand writing. 22.5 percent of 11 to 12 year old female pupils, 55.3 percent of 12 to 15 year old female middle school pupils, and 55.7 percent of 15 to 18 year old female high school pupils, used the cute writing style. Amongst young men 10 percent of 12 to 15 year old middle school, and 17.5 percent of 15 to 18 year old high school pupils used the cute style. The increasing incidence of cute handwriting amongst older students illustrates that cute handwriting was a style acquired with maturity and exposure to youth culture rather than the result of any adolescent writing disability. Yamane asked some of these young people why they used the round hand writing style and was unequivocally informed:

'It's got a kind of cute feel.' 'I think it's cute and it's my style.' 'I think these letters are the cutest.' 'Cute! They are hard to read but they are so cute I use them.'

(Yamane, 1986:132, my translation)

It is interesting that cute style did not start in the multi media which are frequently criticised for originating all the trends of youth culture if not exercising a virtual mind control over young people. Cute style began as an underground literary trend amongst young people who developed the habit of writing stylised childish letters to each other and to themselves.

Cute handwriting was arrived at partly through the romanization of Japanese text. The horizontal left to right format of cute handwriting and the liberal use of exclamation marks as well as English words such as 'love' and 'friend', suggest that these young people were rebelling against traditional Japanese culture and identifying with European culture which they obviously imagined to be more fun. By writing in the new cute style it was almost as though young people had invented a new language in which they were suddenly able to speak freely on their own terms for the first time. They were thus able to have an intimate relation with the text and express their feelings to their friends more easily. Through cute handwriting young people made the written Japanese language - considered to be the lynch pin of Japanese culture - their own.

The spread of cute style handwriting was one element of a broader shift in Japanese culture that took place between the mid 1960s and the mid 1970s in which vital popular culture sponsored and processed by the new fashion, retail, mass-media and advertising industries began to push traditional arts and crafts and strictly regulated literary and artistic culture to the margins of society.

At the same time that Japanese youth began to debase written Japanese infantile slang words began to spread across the nation typically coming into high-school vogue for only a few months before becoming obsolete again. In 1970 the Mainichi Shimbun carried an article describing how the common word kakkoii, meaning cool or good had sprouted a deformed infantile version of itself. The term kakkoii was deliberately mispronounced as katchoii, thus mimicking the speech of a toddler incapable of adult pronunciation. There are even a few examples of deliberately contrived childish speech such as Norippigo officially invented by pop-idol Sakai Noriko, alias Nori P, in 1985. Norippigo, now obsolete, consisted of changing the last syllable of common adjectives into a pi sound. Therefore kanashii (sad) could be changed into kanappi, and ureshii (happy) could be changed into ureppi. Meanwhile Nori P invented a few words of her own, such as mamosureppi (very happy). However infantile slang was not limited to the contrived over-use of puritanical kindergarten adjectives. 'Sex' became popularly referred to by the morbid term nyan nyan suru (to meow meow).

Cute handwriting is strongly associated with the fashion for using baby-talk, acting childish and wearing virginal childish clothes. Young people dressing themselves up as innocent babes in the woods in cute styles were known as burikko (fake-children) a term coined by teen starlet Yamada Kuniko in 1980. The noun spawned a verb, burikko suru (to fake-child-it), or more simply buri buri suru (to fake-it). Another 80s term invented to describe cute pop-idols and their fans is kawaiikochan which can be roughly translated as 'cutie-pie-kid'.

The Fancy Goods Industry

Cute culture started as youth culture amongst teenagers, especially young women. Cute culture was not founded by business. But in the disillusioned calm known as the shirake ('doldrums') after the last of the student riots in 1971, the consumer boom was just beginning and it did not take companies and market research agencies very long to discover and capitalise on cute style which had manifested itself in manga and young peoples handwriting.

In 1971 Sanrio - the Japanese equivalent of Hallmark Cards - experimented by printing cute designs on previously plain writing paper and In In 1971 stationary. Sanrio began to produce cute decorated stationary and fancy diaries for the dreamy school students hooked onto the cute handwriting craze. The success of this early prototype of fanshi guzzu (fancy goods) inspired by cute style in manga animation and young peoples handwriting encouraged Sanrio to expand production and its range of fancy goods proliferated. Sanrio established a firm monopoly in the fancy goods market and during 1990 sold 200 billion yen worth of goods (Shimamura, 1991a:60-62), whilst the fancy goods business as a whole reached an estimated turnover of 10 trillion yen in 1990. (Japan Times 5.1.1991) Typical fancy goods sold in cute, little shops were stationary, cuddly toys and gimmicks, toiletries, lunch boxes and cutlery, bags, towels and other personal paraphernalia.

The crucial ingredients of a fancy good are that it is small, pastel, round, soft, loveable, not traditional Japanese style but a foreign in particular European or American style, dreamy, frilly and fluffy. Most fancy goods are also decorated with cartoon characters. The essential anatomy of a cute cartoon character is small, soft, infantile, mammalian, round, without bodily appendages (arms), without bodily orifices (mouths), non-sexual, mute, insecure, helpless or bewildered. Sanrio invented a large cast of cute proprietary characters to endorse and give life to its fancy goods: Button Nose, Tiny Poem, Duckydoo, Little Twin Stars, Cheery Chums, Vanilla Bean and, most famous of all, Hello Kitty and Tuxedo Sam. Not only do these cute characters inhabit cute- shops, but they have also worked hard selling under license the goods and services of over ninety Japanese companies. A large number of these are financial institutions such as twenty three banks, including Mitsui, Sumitomo, Sanwa, and Mitsubishi; fourteen stock companies, including Yamaichi, Daiwa and Nomura; and seven insurance companies, including Nihon Seimei, Sumitomo Seimei and Yasuda Kasai.

Cute design was not limited to banking cards and stationary, however. For the privileged, whose passion for cute was stronger than their sense of traditional good-taste, there was the option of purchasing a 'short cake' house resembling a little cottage or fairyland abode in Hiroo or Seijô or a cute rounded apartment in Roppongi or Akasaka- Mitsuke. As the 1930s has been remembered for the brutal police implementation of thought-crime (shisôhan) laws, so the 1980s may be remembered as the decade which left behind police boxes designed as 'gingerbread houses' (okashi-no-ie).

Meanwhile Sanrio organised Sanrio festivals and athletics meetings, Hello Kitty Santa tours, a Strawberry Mate travelling caravan, Halloween and Valentine extravaganzas, and printed Ichigo Shimbun (The Strawberry News). Sanrio built cute shopping arcades such as the Sanrio Ginza Gallery, and Sanrio Fantagen -a cluster of 18 cute goods shops in Funabashi, Ichigo Hall in Den-en Chofu, Sanrio Theatre in Matsudo and Harmony Land in Kyushu and Puroland in Tama City, Tokyo.

Cartoon characters printed on to goods literally add character to their lifelessness and slogans etched on to the actual good or printed on the packaging put across more forcibly the same notion of light fun. Cute slogans were more often written in fractured English or pseudo-French than Japanese. A toilet bowl called petit etoile. A pink toaster in the shape of a cottage called My Sweet Bread Toaster. A can opener which tells its user this can-opener is not just a kitchen tool, treat it kindly and it will be our loyal friend. School note paper inscribed with the message, OK! You're in my team. Let's have fun together!. A set of plates saying Life is sweet like a poem when you are with kind friends.

The industrial, impure or masculine nature of some of the objects decorated in fancy style can produce incongruous images, such as the almost transvestite like character of baby pink road diggers or adult gambling machines called My Poochy and Fairies. But there has been no mischievous conspiracy of camp designers behind these articles. Despite appearances to the contrary there was no strong sense of kitsch attached to cute culture until the late 1990s. In some cases a mismatch between the goods function and its design had simply gone unnoticed, at other times it was a deliberate attempt to camouflage and mask the dirty image of the good or service in question. The typical household toilet, maybe unconnected to a sewage system and sometimes foul smelling often resembled a tiny grotto, festooned with puffy gingham curtains, quilted toilet brush covers and toilet roll dispensers, fluffy toilet seat covers, fancy cartoon slippers. Love hotels, which sell room space for sex are named after good, sweet girls like Anne of Green Gables and Laura of the Little House on the Prairie. Yakuza run pachinko gambling parlours are recognisable as the light buildings full of pink and blue neon with baskets of plastic flowers arranged on the pavement outside.

Cute style gives goods a warm and cheer- me-up atmosphere. After the production process had de-personalised the good cute design could re-personalise it. Consumption of lots of cute style goods with powerful emotion inducing properties could ironically disguise and compensate for the very alienation of individuals from other people in contemporary society. Cuteness loaned personality and a subjective presence to otherwise meaningless -and often literally useless- consumer goods and in this way made them much more attractive to potential buyers. The good could appear to have a character of its own because of its winsome UFO or mammalian shape, such as little round, weeping digitalized vacuum cleaners and rice cookers, or the 1980's mini caasu (little cars) designed to feel playful and cuddly.(6) Modern consumers might not be able to meet and develop relationships enough with people but the implication of cute goods design was that they could always attempt to develop them with cute objects.

Cute Clothes

Adverts and articles printed in An-an and Non-no (7) two of the leading women's fashion magazines suggest that the desire for a more than just youthful, but distinctly child-like, cutie-pie look began in the mid 1970s. In May 1975 An-an ran a special article introducing its readers to the novel new concept of cuteness:

'PLAY! Cuteness! Go for the young theme! On dates we only want feeling, but our clothes are like old ladies! It is the time you have to express who you really are. Whatever you say co-ordinating a very young theme is cute. Wear something like a French slip.....for accessories try a cute little bracelet. BUT! It will look much cuter if you don't use high quality exclusive materials. Cute looking plastic and veneer looks younger. For your feet try wearing colourful socks with summer sandals, it will exude a sporty cuteness! Hair is cutest styled straight with children's plastic hair pins fixed in the sides.'

Cute clothes are deliberately designed to make the wearer appear childlike and demure. Original cute clothes were simple white, pink and pastel shades for women and more sort of bright and rainbow coloured for men. The clothes were often fluffy and frilly with puffed sleeves and lots of ribbons, - a style known as 'fancy', or alternatively were cut slightly small or tight and came decorated with cartoon characters and slogans. In the first half of the 1980s the most fashionable design house in Tokyo was 'Pink House Ltd.' which produced adorable outfits for budding cuties. Pink House was so sought after that the Hakuhodo research institute began to refer to young people aspiring to the Pink House image as the 'Pink House movement.' (Hakuhodo, 1984:227) Women's underwear was also cute, the dominant taste being for puritanical white pants and vests, in addition to the infamous white tights, frilly ankle socks or knee length 'school-girl' socks. Then there was the understanding habit of manufacturers in placing great lengths of elastic in underwear so that women's pants often looked like a little girl's off but fortunately stretched to three or four times the size in service.

By the late eighties cute fashion had matured into a cheeky, androgynous, tomboy sweetness. Apart from the perennially popular tight, white, baby vest like T-shirts, nursery colours, cartoon characters and baby doll frills have mellowed out into woolly Noddy hats, dungarees and tight little sweaters. This change is well illustrated by the fashion magazine Cutie For Independent Girls (8), first published in spring 1986 and attracting a readership of 100,000 by October 1989. Obviously Cutie takes cuteness as its starting point but on top of the basic ingredient of childlikeness Cutie style is also chic, eccentric, androgynous and humorous. Cutie is published monthly by the odd ball media corporation Takarajimasha which was founded by a group of ex-revolutionary Waseda University students and is more well known for publishing the sub-culture oriented magazine Takarajima through the 1980s, and in Cutie the rebellious, individualistic, freedom seeking attitude embodied in acting childlike and pursuing cute fashion is very clear. The magazine and prints pages of photographs of readers which it calls 'kids' posing in clubs and streets trying to look bad and cute at the same time.

Cute Food

Young people took to purging themselves on cakes and sweets. Eating confectionery is not only a habit with childlike connotations but also symbolically stresses personal sweetness which in Japanese (amai), as in the English, refers interchangeably to both edibles and charming people. The association between sugary foods, especially between cake and children's culture is strong in Japan, as Edwards elaborates:

'Alcohol in general is considered one of the spicy foods which as a class are the province of adults, and which children are taught to avoid in favour of sweet ones. Cakes, as sweet foods, have a close association with children in Japan. Special cakes were made in pre-war times at the naming ceremony of a new born child' (Edwards, 1987:66)

The most popular and fashionable foods of the 1980s were soft, sweet and milky, including ice-cream, cakes, milk drinks and soft deserts. The yearly growth rate of the ice-cream market in the 1980's was 5 percent and by 1989 the sale of the high-class ice-cream in Japan accounted for $100 million per annum. Most of this ice-cream was sold in the fancy ice-cream parlours which arrived on the streets of Tokyo and Osaka in the early eighties at the beginning of the 'ice-cream boom' caused by the sudden increase in adult consumers:

'Until now ice-cream was always considered as 'something for the kids', however it has recently become fashionable and achieved a certain adult respectability...' (Focus Japan, 8.1986:4)

Ice-cream, puddings and cakes purchased at 'fancy patisseries' and café and cleverly invented baby food like cheezu mushi pan (squashy, cheeze flavored cake) popular throughout the 1980s, whilst other sweet foods such as creme caramel, tiramisu, nata de coco, tapioca pudding and panacotta attained briefer fad followings.

The ideal 'cute' food carried with it a marketing image, frequently something petite, frilly and Victorianesque; rustic and oldie worlde; or derived from fairy- tale images scavenged from the nursery. A good example is Rolly Doll, founded in 1985, which operates and franchises over sixty fresh-baked cookie shops across Japan and owes most of its 5 billion yen annual sales to nostalgia. Its founder explains:

'Drifting through sweet memories of childhood I recalled the special aroma of fresh baked cookies, emanating from Aunt Stella's farm kitchen in Pennsylvania's rustic Amish country. The concept was complete in a flash; the image, the taste, the aroma, the wholesome goodness of an earlier America where "kinder and gentler were the norm." (Focus Japan, 1990:8)'

Cute Idols

Matsuda Seiko was to cute what Sid Vicious was to punk. Between April 1980 and 1988 she became the reigning queen and prototype for a whole new industry of 'idol singers' that flourished in the 1980s.(9) Matsuda was flat chested and bow-legged and on TV she wore children's clothes, took faltering steps and blushed, cried, and giggled for the camera. Every one of her twenty three singles released between 1980 and 1988, became number one smash hits. (Imidas, 1991: 746) Matsuda gained her popularity being childish. She published several books for her fans, filled with large wobbly hand writing, small words and 'heart-warming' poems like the one below:

'Seiko always..... Wants to see a dream. What I'm thinking, I want to try and put in a poem. So my little heart, Can reach out to you a little.'

(Matsuda, 1982:147, my translation)

Following in Matsuda's footsteps most of the 1980s idols were released in time to become famous between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. The debut age of packaged pop-stars have in fact been getting progressively younger since 1974. This includes male sweety bands like Tanokin Trio aged 14 to 19 (debut 1980), SMAP aged 14 to 15 (debut 1988) and Hikaru Genji aged 14 to 16 (debut 1988), and female idols such as Kyon Kyon aged 14 (debut 1982), Nakayama Miho aged 15 (debut 1984) and WINK aged 14 (debut 1988).

Cute stars dominated the television and magazines as well as pop-music. Known by the collective term 'talents' their appearance as hosts, contributors or ornamentation in a great many television programs was an innovation that partly originated with Fuji Television's Yuyake Nyan Nyan (Sunset Kittens) program in 1985. Kato Koichi describes the original reasons for the program's popularity:

'They responded to the hosts questions, and played silly games, like a competition to see who could stay in an extremely hot bath the longest. Childish and frivolous as the show was, it nevertheless attracted far more viewers than programs featuring the performances of professionals and celebrities.' (Kato, 1987:89)

Sunset Kittens on air daily at five o'clock became such a popular program that it has since achieved the status of a TV classic. The program was hosted entirely by school girls and consisted of games, songs, sketches ridiculing adults and an ongoing competition amongst school girls who wanted to join the team of amateur hosts, otherwise known as the Onyanko Club (Kitten Club). Eventually the number of kittens expanded to fifty two and some of the most popular girls such as Kawai Nanoko and Kokusho Sayuri began to branch out into separate careers releasing hit singles and diffusing into other television programs over the following years. The practice of using cute childish stars with no specific talent such as singing or acting to increase the interest value of programs began to fade out by the 1990s though.

Instead in 1991 there was a national craze for the 100 year old twin sisters, Kin and Gin, who made frequent appearances in talk shows on television, had their faces printed on all kinds of fancy merchandise such as Kin and Gin-san hard boiled orange sweets, and even recorded a song on CD together. They were described by young and older people alike as both kawaii (cute) and kawaiso (pitiful). Kin and Gin were sweet, frail old ladies with girlish old fashioned ways of expressing themselves and like many very old people they were slightly out of touch. The case of Kin San and Gin San illustrates that although cute was principally about childishness, a sense of weakness and disability -that is a part of childishness- was a very important constituent of the cute aesthetic. In fact cute and pitiful were often the same thing.

Toddlers, baby animals, and frail old ladies are the natural models for cute and cute characters produced by the fancy goods industry were deliberately designed to be physically frail emulating weak members of society. Cute characters like Hello Kitty and Totoro have stubbly arms, no fingers, no mouths, huge heads, massive eyes -which can hide no private thoughts from the viewer-, nothing between their legs, pot bellies, swollen legs and pigeon feet- if they have feet at all. Cute things can't walk, can't talk, can't in fact do anything at all for themselves because they are physically handicapped. Harris discussing cuteness in America makes this point very clearly:

'Although the gaze we turn on the cute thing seems maternal and solicitous, it is in actuality a transformative gaze that will stop at nothing to appease its hunger for expressing pity and big heartedness, even at the expense of mutilating the object of its affections.' (Harris, 1993:134)

However cute fashion in Japan more than merely cuddling cute things, it was all about 'becoming' the cute object itself by acting infantile. Young Japanese, especially women, purchased cute accessories and filled their rooms, cars, desks at work, and hand bags with sweet paraphernalia as a way of surrounding themselves by cuteness to the point where they felt transformed and could enter this cute-only world themselves. Being cute meant behaving childlike which involved an acts of self-mutilation, posing with pigeon toes, pulling wide eyed innocent expressions, dieting, acting stupid, and essentially denying the existence of the wealth of insights, feelings, and humour that maturity brings with it. In cute culture young people became popular according to their apparent weakness, dependence and inability rather than their strengths and capabilities.

Cute Ideas

During a survey amongst 18 to 30 year old men and women carried out in Tokyo in 1992 I asked respondents to write down freely what cute meant to them. The question asked was 'In what kinds of situations might you use the word kawaii ?' and the replies were dominated by themes related to childhood. Respondents said they used kawaii when they felt people were childlike:

"Children and adults are innocently frolicking about."
"When you have treated your companions a little contemptuously as though you thought they were little fools."
"I use it as a complimentary word when people are childlike."
"When peoples faces are perpetually childlike."
"People who experience things in a childish way."
"When my friends seem precocious and their clothes and gestures childish."
"People that in places are as pure as children."

These childlike people were often childlike because of their apparent innocence:

"Loveable idiots."
"Cute is people so lacking in experience that they can't communicate."
"When I see a clear girlish innocence in someone."
"Tiny innocent things."
"Babies, children and people younger than me with an expression of innocent obedience."

Beyond mere innocence some respondents felt that kawaii to referred to people in a state of naive unity with their world:

"When children and friends are happy and quite indifferent to their lack of common sense."
"People who fit into their surroundings and lose sight of themselves."

Cuteness was also a very unconscious thing as is reflected both in the degree of unawareness respondents displayed in their answers and in a few outright admissions that kawaii was about not thinking at all:

"The word just pops out unconsciously."
"When people are acting without thinking at all."

Kawaii was also considered to be a natural thing:

"When I feel natural."
"When a friend is genuinely and naturally lovely."

Secondly respondents used kawaii when they felt that warm emotional contact between individuals had been expressed:

"The effort people expend for other people is cute."
"When I see something that is dear to me."
"When people make contact with someone else."
"When my feelings are softened and made culpable."
"When I see an incredibly sympathetic face."
"When without any connection to profit the mood of your heart is expressed."

These sociable, sincere emotions tended to come from inside individuals where it was normally hidden:

"It is about the internal part of you seen when you make a chance gesture or move that is disarming." "The greatness inside someone oozes out."
"When things warm the spirit." "When from the bottom of my heart I am able to think that something is sincerely cute."
"When it is hard to say "I love you"." "When people show their real selves without any affection."

The fashionability of cute was apparent in the answers of respondents who associated cute predominantly with fashion items and attractive people or mentioned the peer pressure they felt to use the word cute:

"Attractive faces."
"Things to my taste. When I see and touch things."
"When I see the kind of little things and clothes I like."
"When I realise my friends want me to say 'cute'."

Cute was also strongly associated with animals, or more precisely pets, which needless to say were very popular during the 1980's.

"When animals and children play for my attention (amaeru)."
"When I see the gestures of the animals I look after."

Some respondents directly described as cute an individuals weakness and inability to deal with everyday life:

"When I look and I feel that someone is trying as hard as they can and grappling with something."
"When someone's situation overwhelms them more than my situation overwhelms me."
"When someone is happy and then suddenly their smile drops, or when someone is relieved."

It is quite apparent from these statements that for its fans cute sentiments were all about the recovery of a childlike emotional and mental state. This childlike state was considered to be innocent, natural and unconscious. And this childlike state was one in which people expressed genuine warm feelings and love for one another. But most of the time this expressive emotional state was hidden trapped inside each individual and something that was not often visible to other people. For its fans cute people and things seemed to be in a state of happy, naive, and natural unconscious unity with life and other people.

The idea underlying cute was that young people that had passed through childhood and entered adult life had been forced to cover up their real selves and hide their emotions under a layer of artifice. But the original childlike, innocence of each individual rather than disappearing forever was still present in some naive individuals and could be glimpsed at occasionally in the gestures, expressions and attitudes of almost any kind of person.(10) Cute childlike behaviour was considered genuine and pure which implies that the experiences and social relations acquired after maturation were considered to be a false, shallow, external layer.11 The logic of this assumption is quite coherent although ironically it is cute that is in fact extremely artificial and stylised. Cute is the particular style derived of adults (and children) pretending to be 'childlike'. (11) Furthermore the 'childlikeness' aspired to is not so much real childish behaviour which must include subservience, temper tantrums, bed-wetting and frustration, so much as the idolised childlikeness described in the neo-romantic tradition.

Respondents tended to think of cuteness manifested in the minutiae of friends gestures and behaviour as profoundly natural. At the same time as they imagined cute to be natural they did not tend to view it as a historically defined style. Young people fond of cute things and acting like burikko (fake children) did not consider themselves to be engaging in a current fashion at all. This apparently unconscious involvement was very distinctive of cute fashion. I say 'apparently' because one of the ideals of the cute fashion, as we know, is precisely to be uncontrived and genuine, so that any real cutie was obliged to cover up the traces of their conscious effort to look sweet.

Childhood Romance, Adulthood and Individualism

We have established that cute style was all about acting childish in an effort to partake of some of the childhood's legendary simplicity, happiness, and emotional warmth. Underpinning cute style are the neo-romantic notions of childhood as an entirely separate and because of this unmaligned pure sphere of human life. In fact the general belief that childhood is 'another world', in some ways an ideal world has the dominant perception of childhood throughout the developed world for most of the twentieth century. Early European criticism of the spiritual poverty of modern society which developed in response to industrialisation and urbanisation lead to a romantic re-evaluation of pre-industrial society. For the first time past and more primitive lives in rural communities and in childhood were described as a period of innocence, simplicity and spiritual unity which had been ruptured and destroyed by the corrupting and alienating forces of modern social relations and cities.

Urban nostalgia for this wholesome country life did not result in a cute aesthetic until this sentiment was captured by Disney animation and delivered to a mass audience. Disney made his first animations in the interwar years, producing Steam Boat Willy in 1928 and The Opry House in 1929. As with Charlie Chaplin, Disney animations were adored in Japan as much as if not more than in America until they were banned for the period of the war. After the war in 1950 Disney comics and animation, this time full length productions such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, flooded into the country. Going to visit the cinema to see Disney films on specially designated days became a part of primary school education (See Ono, 1983). Disney had a big influence both on Japanese animation and comics and in introducing the modern cute aesthetic into Japan.

However whereas Disney cute was based more on a sentimental journey back into an idealised rural society populated with happy little animals and rural characters taken from folk stories Japanese cute fashion became more concerned with a sentimental journey back into an idealised childhood. As Disney romanticised nature in relation to industrial society, so Japanese cuteness romanticised childhood in relation to adulthood. By idolising their childhood's and remnant childishness young Japanese people implicitly damned their individual futures as adults in society. Condemning adulthood was an individualised and limited way of condemning society generally.

In the survey I conducted in 1992 I also asked respondents to describe the way they felt about adulthood and childhood. In relation to adulthood the question I asked was: 'When you think of adulthood what images come to mind?' Although some respondents, gave positive appraisals of adulthood, describing it as a period of 'freedom' and 'potential', the great majority of respondents, who we must remember are not teenagers but young people already well embarked in their adult lives, described adulthood as a bleak period of life:

"The harshness of having to make do everyday and make a living, the harshness of supporting a family."
"Controlled society, hard work to help society, responsibility and effort."
"It is a hard society where you take responsibility for all your actions, working hours are long and free time is lacking, fun, gentleness and naturalness are hard to give and let out."
"A dirty world of power."
"The degree of freedom on the spiritual side is lower than that of a child, responsibility to big organisations become very large, dreams disappear as the necessity to conform comes nearer."
"Strictness day in and day out, you can't stop working."
"Life is lonely."

The negativity of the answers given is startling. Their assessments of Japanese society were very dark and their impressions of an adult life in that society were equally depressing. Adulthood was directly understood to mean society and visa versa. Adulthood was not viewed as a source of freedom and independence, it was viewed as quite the opposite, as a period of restrictions and hard work. The most common impression of adulthood was that it involved responsibility (sekinin), typically a huge responsibility. This responsibility was not an abstract individual responsibility but a specific responsibility to society, to their families, and to large organisations to work hard and conform to expectations. After social responsibility respondents cited a general lack of free time and tight social regulations as the unhappy characteristics of adulthood. Mid 1970s to mid 1980s was period notable for its lack of political and social imagination in japan and in relation to this widespread understanding that adulthood is a period of restriction and overwhelming obligations, childhood -one of the oldest and most immediate sites of imagined freedom- become extremely popular. Cute fashion idolises childhood because it is seen as a place of individual freedom unattainable in society.

There is no strong pattern of thought which links adulthood with individual emancipation in Japan. Maturity which in the West has been linked to the authority and rights of the individual, still tends to be thought of according to the Confucian model in modern Japan. That is maturity is commonly thought of as the ability to cooperate well in a group, accept compromises, fulfil obligations to parents, employers etc., and carry out social responsibilities. This underlying ideology is another reason why rebellion from society in Japanese youth culture has developed into a rebellion from adulthood as well. For the same reason intellectuals, ascetics and artistic outsiders from Japanese society have long carried the stigma of infantilism and some possibly even played up to the image of being childlike eccentrics.

Cute fashion was, therefore, a kind of rebellion or refusal to cooperate with established social values and realities. It was a demure, indolent little rebellion rather than a conscious, aggressive and sexually provocative rebellion of the sort that has been typical of Western youth cultures. Rather than acting sexually provocative to emphasise their maturity and independence Japanese youth acted pre-sexual and vulnerable in order emphasise their immaturity and inability to carry out social responsibilities. Either way the result was the same, teachers in the West were as infuriated by cocky pupils acting tough, as Japanese teachers were infuriated with uncooperative pupils writing cute and acting infantile.

Cute Ladies

Young women were the main generators of and actors in cute culture. From the consumption of cute goods and services and the wearing of cute clothes, to the faking of childish behaviour and innocent looks, young women were far more actively involved in cute culture than men. This is not to say that cuteness was not popular amongst young men, on the contrary it was very popular, but young men were largely relegated to the passive, wistful, audiences of the performance of cute culture put on by women. Towards the late 1980s more and more young men did in fact join the ranks of cute young women themselves and cute style became more androgynous and more asexually infantile. The gender related nature of youth culture is not new. Nearly all originally Western youth cultures in the post-war period such as mods, rockers, new romantics, techno, punk and hip hop, have been dominated by young men with young women playing a more passive side-kick role. The much greater original involvement of men than women in other youth cultures to date has attracted little specific notice, perhaps for the simple and valid reason that the greater active involvement of young men had seemed to be normal or natural, given the general structure of modern societies. Consequently the creation of cute youth culture around young women has attracted a lot of notice. While old fashioned mums in England grumble that they can no longer distinguish between girls and lads because the girls all dress like boys these days, Japanese social commentators have bemoaned the domination of modern culture by young women and the increasingly cute, little girlish appearances of young men.

The position of the young unmarried woman in contemporary Japanese society represents freedom more than that of the young man. Young women, by virtue of the strength of their oppression and exclusion from most of the labour market and active roles in society, have come to represent in the media the freest, most un-hampered elements of society. Young women pushed outside mainstream Japanese society are associated with an exotic and longed for world of individual fulfilment, decadence, consumption and play. Young men do not represent freedom in the same way, and in their role as subservient company employees neither do they embody any of the characteristics of the powerful, antagonistic, macho individualism of the male in Western societies and their youth cultures. For many young men cute fashion represents freedom and an escape from the pressure of social expectations and regulations. Typically these young men both wear cute fashions and emulate cute behaviour themselves and, fetishize young women- either real girl friends or syrupy sweet little girl heroines depicted in lolita complex comic books for adolescent boys. Adolescent women (shôjo) provide the elusive model for cute culture. Shôjo, the leaders of cute, have been transformed into an abstract concept and a 'sign' for consumption in the Japanese mass-media and modern intellectual discourse, (For a detailed and interesting discussion about this point see Whittier Treat, 1993).

For their part young women had, even more than young men, reasons to desire to remain free, unmarried and young. Whilst a woman was still a shÙjo (adolescent girl) outside the labour market, outside of the family she could enjoy the vacuous freedom of an outsider of society with no distinct obligations or role to play. But when she grew up and got married the social role of a young woman is possibly more oppressive than that of young company men. In the role of an unmarried woman she was pushed to the margins of society but still able to work as an OL (office lady) on a temporary contract in company offices, spend her money on herself and her friends and socialise in urban centres. Maturity and marriage threatened to separate her from these privileges and very likely shunt her off to a small apartment in remote and unattractive suburbs with only her devotion to her children and their school books to occupy her. Whilst the 'moratorium mentality' and lack of desire to grow up and take on adult social roles and responsibilities was a feeling spread right through Japanese society in the 1980s, for women, the urge to prolong youth and its appearances took on the form of a profound struggle. These young women both savoured their brief years of freedom as unattached urban socialites through decadent consumption and expressed their fears of losing their freedom and youth through the cute aesthetic. Shimamura notes that as young women get older and particularly in the period immediately prior to marriage their fascination with and immersion in cute culture becomes still more acute.

Cute Consumption

Young people entered cute culture through consumption of cute goods with cute appearances and emotional qualities. The increasingly large disposable incomes of youth and young women in particular throughout the 1980s and the inventiveness of Japanese businesses in providing goods to make them part with their money had the greatest determining influence on the highly commercial nature of cute culture. Cute did however seem to be accessible exclusively through consumption. This was both because it encouraged hedonism and sensual pleasure necessitating consumption, and because even during their youth and bachelor days it was very difficult for Japanese to be cute full time. Cute culture along with other youth cultures could only be enjoyed during brief moments of private time such as at home between working and sleeping, or in the car, and in tiny private places such as inside handbags, presents and pencil cases. There was not only no space for cute to ever become part of a 'lifestyle', but the fantastical nature of cute culture itself contained so few references to real life and society that there was in any case little way of understanding it in terms of everyday life. Cute culture had to be entered and left in a matter of minutes or moments which lent it to construction by ephemeral products and places of consumption of goods and leisure services.

And childlikeness was an expensive youth culture. There is no upper limit to the cost of childish clothes and accessories because perfect childlikeness is a particularly unattainable ideal that becomes less and less attainable with time. The demanding ideal of cute fashion generated an built in orientation towards the consumption of goods which could transform a young person look and feel something like a child.

Unlike even those ironically well marketed Western origin youth cultures such as punk, and grunge cute culture did not condemn materialism and the display of wealth. Many contemporary Western youth cultures have been distinctly opposed to, amongst other things, modern consumer culture, encouraging a tendency for hip youth to condemn materialism, appear to or actually buy little, dress down, and find cheap, second hand goods with which to adorn themselves. To the contrary personal consumption is portrayed as something rather anti-social and immoral in mainstream Japanese society and cute youth culture went against the grain of older social values by sanctioning consumption.

Anti-cute Ideas

Their were anti-cute elements. Anti-cute people can be divided into two social categories; young people who considered cute to be too weak and stupid, and conservative intellectuals in the academia and civil service who were appalled by the spread of a new female- lead youth culture which did not accord to traditional cannons of good taste let alone good morals.

Punks, rockers and young people attracted to the 'indies' scene felt their own fashion was more politically progressive, intelligent and sophisticated. These types of independent young people would have been likely to read magazines like Takarajima Japan's main sub-culture magazine which frequently criticised the commercial pop- idol industry, whilst promoting YMO, Japanese indie bands, 'New Age Fashion', and encouraged the import of UK punk music and fashion and challenging pop- stars like David Bowie, The Jam, and Siouxie and the Banshees. Many of these young people who in the 1990s are in there late twenties and early thirties entered katakana and multi media professions as producers, editors, free writers, and designers etc. and took their disdain for cute and other common cultures with them.

Amongst intellectuals criticism of cute style blended with the general moral attack on youth and especially young women's behaviour and social values which has been sustained through the 1970s and 1980s. Ironically this is also the period when Japanese youth have been most politically passive and untroublesome for the establishment in post-war history. But in fact it is this extremely passive behaviour with which intellectuals began to take offence. Rather than reflecting on 1968 and being grateful for the enormous inactivity of Japanese youth moral academics complained that this passivity was part of an attempt on the part of youth to shrink away from their active duties and obligations in society, at work, in the public space, in the home. More than just being not actively critical of society intellectuals demanded that youth show their commitment to the social order by an eager, positively motivated, moral engagement with their traditional social roles as company man and housewife. Cute fashion was perceived correctly as one more example of social disaffection and malaise amongst youth. Rather than attempting to grow up and take on social obligations that adulthood brings with it youth were quite obviously attempting to avoid all these oppressive demands made on them by aspiring not to grow up at all and immersing themselves in cute culture.

Cute 'boys' and 'girls' were portrayed spending horrendous amounts of money on music, clothes and cute 'things' in Harajuku and Aoyama, on meeting their friends at trendy restaurants and bars, and going on frequent holidays skiing or abroad. And this they surely did where possible -but it wasn't cute youth in particular that consumed but the goods under consumption that were particularly cute. Retailers, advertisers and manufacturers scrambling over each other to invent new goods, services and gimmicks to sell on the expanding domestic consumer market appropriated the cute style.

Conservative critics felt that allowing this consumption to continue out of control could only encourage the idea that life was about the pleasure of the individual and not about gaining moral satisfaction through fulfilling social obligations and responsibilities. Individualistic consumption and the cute values of sensual abandon and play which provided an apology for consumption, were accused of undermining Japanese tradition:

'Play can only be truly satisfying when a sense of balance reveals the substance of tradition. True play by drastically diminishing one's own stature in relation to tradition, expands one's world. Puerile play by exaggerating ones position in relation to tradition, constricts one's world. I bear no ill will towards commercial civilisation. Like it or not, I am very much it's beneficiary. This does not mean, however, that I feel the least inclination to glorify it in anyway. The maturity of culture requires a certain degree of serenity and moderation, but commercial civilisation spreads noise and excess in the name of vigorous differentiation. As little as I know about foreign lands I am well aware that the "Japan problem" brought on by our commercial civilisation has grown to serious proportions. As Ishikawa Yoshimi has pointed out, the basic Japan problem is not the trade surplus but implicit and explicit disdain for the Japanese way of life itself' (Nishibe, 1986:41-42)

Nishibe directly equates play with consumption and makes it quite clear that the concept of play (asobi) in the contemporary Japanese context was no more than a cute way of saying 'doing what you want'.

But the play motif ran right through the core of advertising, retailing, and the multi media in the 1980s. For these industries which had to appeal to the private, often solo consumer to purchase their goods the idea of play became a useful aphorism for individual fulfilment through consumption. Incidentally, the patronising implication of the equation of individual free time and consumption with play, made both amongst the Japanese intelligentsia and in the mass media, was that Japanese youth were insignificant people even to themselves who's private activities amounted to little more than child's play.

Cuties were also denigrated for being infantile. For a style which labels its self as infantile it is hardly a critique to say that it is infantile. However Fujioka, PR director for Dentsu. Inc., certainly came up with an original reason why cute might be literally 'stupid' when he described cuteness as the epitome of thought without reason:

'Cuteness can not be developed by reason and cannot be evaluated without being seenä Thus it is really not in the least surprising that for grasshoppers (Ed- modern youth, spend thrifts), making what one would want oneself means responding not to any practical demand but to the subjective, intuitive demand for cuteness.' (Fujioka, 1986:35-6)

Fujioka was using post-modernist theory to make his point but most critics were not so relativistic and generous. The general opinion of cute was that it was 'juvenile, effeminate and tasteless' (Japan Times Weekly, 5.1.1991b). In this equation the feminine, the tasteless, the infantile and the popular were used as virtually interchangeable concepts giving a good idea of the kind of narrow prejudices of the critics. Yamane, in particular, took it for granted that infantile means feminine:

'What can we conclude about this complete infantilisation of Japan?- The answer is straightforward. The girl has jumped up. The girl is boisterous.' (Yamane, 1990:11, my translation)

Nakano Osamu, a leading intellectual and expert on youth echoes Yamane's sentiments:

'With the action of one selfish nod of their head in response to a question, a response originally typical of children, young people display their infantilism. At times female university students babble to themselves and from their attitude and demeanour to their facial expression they act just exactly as though they were children.' (Nakano, 1985:62)

Nakano gives the strong impression that he feels the problem of ingratiating 'selfish' cute fashion could be solved if only women were banned from universities altogether. Women are blamed for feminizing society. But the so called feminine behaviour described by critics is not actually traditional feminine behaviour at all but a new kind of petulant refusal to be traditional subservient females observed in modern young women following cute fashion. Cute behaviour was perceived as 'selfish' not just because of its seeming refusal to co-operate with social expectations, - in this case respectful and polite behaviour in the presence of superiors like Nakano, - but because it was strongly related with indulgence and individualistic consumption.

Young women in particular have born the brunt of criticism of consumer culture throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Cuties have been scapegoated. Their recent and highly conspicuous participation in decadent consumption activities and the older association of personal consumption involving interest in fashion and emotional abandon with femininity has helped critics of modern culture to point the finger at women. Over worked salary men have been encouraged to see the source of their misery as the new generation of stroppy decadent young women who selfishly do what ever they wish and make unreasonable demands on men. There is a general consensus that, today, men are hard done by and humiliated by manipulative, choosy, cute young women. In fact in the first half of the 1980s young women worked more than at any time previously in the post war period. However the greater involvement of young unmarried women in the labour force has also been interpreted as another act of wilful selfishness on the part of women, who were accused as deliberately vying with men for good jobs and simultaneously denying them marriage partners.

There is an interesting though incidental similarity between both the particular forms of black culture and the ways in which black Americans have been discussed in academic and media discourse in the USA and the particular form of feminine cute culture and the ways in which women have been discussed in academic and media discourse in Japan. In the 1980s a strand of black American culture responded to the mainstream stereotyping of blacks as vain, emotionally unstable, immature, violent, criminal, etc., by adopting the stereotype of the 'nigger' and raising it into a positive stereotype. They proudly described themselves as 'niggers' (Ice T, NWA etc.), and flaunted their potential for criminality, violence, and sexual prowess in their fashion, in hip hop and in rap music. In Japan a barrage of sexist stereotyping and insults, frequently propagated under the guise of media or academic social analysis about the new position of women in Japanese society, began flowing in the mid 1970s and continued throughout the 1980s, producing, by now, a mountain of books on 'women'. Aspects of cute culture engaged in by young women appear to respond to this criticism by defensively strengthening a 'girls only' culture and identity.

Women debased as infantile and irresponsible began to fetishize and flaunt their shôjo personality still more, almost as a means of taunting and ridiculing male condemnation and making clear there stubborn refusal to stop playing, go home and, accept less from life. Popular examples, true or false, of young women's triumphal manipulation of men using their cute appearances as a bait abounded in late 1980s Japan. Apparently the cutest and most innocent looking of young women were keeping several dates on the boil at once in order to service their materialistic needs. Between the girls each date would have a separate function and name ashi- kun (Mr Legs) awarded to the man who could provide a free late night taxi service, and meshi-kun (Mr Food) for the man who provided free meals out on the town.

Cute Against Society

Cute fashion as we have seen idolises childhood. The aims of playfulness, individual emotional expression, and naivetÈ incorporated in childlikeness are not consistent with traditional social values. The people who persisted in play and 'refuse to grow up' are what Okonogi Keigo would call moratorium people:

'Present day society embraces an increasing number of people who have no sense of belonging to any party or organisation but instead are oriented towards non affiliation, escape from controlled society, and youth culture. I have called them the moratorium people.' (Okonogi,1978:17)

The concept of 'moratorium people invented by Okonogi in 1979 became very widespread and influential, to the point that students and individuals on the periphery of Japanese society happily identified themselves as moratoriamu. But in fact the contemporary association of social disaffection or social rebellion with childishness began during the students movement at the end of the 1960s. One of the reasons for this was the adoption of children's culture as an alternative to mainstream 'adults' culture by students who refused to accept the values taught by the universities any longer. Rather than reading the classics and doing as they were told students started to read children's and adolescent comics instead and fairly well took the comic (manga) medium for their own. The common motto of the day was 'never trust anyone over thirty' and students showed their loathing by spending hours with their noses in comics which became considered somewhat risqué and underground. 'Adult' came to have the additional meaning of conservative whilst 'childlike' and play came to have the additional meanings of progressive and open minded. This explains the logic behind Doi Takeo's thinking when in 1971 he neatly described internationalism and social equality as infantilism:

'In practise, the present tendency to shelve all distinctions- of adult and child, male and female, cultured and uncultured, East and West- in favour of a universal form of childish amae can only be called a regression for mankind.' 13 (Doi, 1981: 65)

Okonogi Keigo's vision of moratorium people who evaded responsibilities and social duties and adulthood is an extension of Doi Takeo's theory of childishness. Nakano goes on to bitterly recall that cute behaviour is a direct expression of the moratorium mentality:

'They deliberately affect a pitiful cuteness. Growth, maturity and becoming an adult are not positive values: they want to remain children forever. This subjective childishness is related to the prolongation of the moratorium period, which is made evident by the striking infantilism of young people after they have entered university.' (Nakano, 1985:63, my translation)

Cute style is anti-social; it idolises the pre-social. By the pre-social world otherwise known as childhood cute fashion blithely ignores or outright contradicts values central to the organisation of Japanese society and the maintenance of the work ethic. By acting childish Japanese youth tried to avoid the conservative's moral demand that they exercise self-discipline (enryo) and responsibility (sekinin) and tolerate (gaman) severe conditions (kuro, kudo) whilst working hard (doryoku) in order to repay their obligation (giri, on) to society. Rather than working hard cuties seem to just wanted to play and ignore the rest of society completely. The overwhelming desire of young Japanese wrapped up in nostalgic cute culture were to escape from the restrictions governing their lives. Ultimately, for Cuties, as for Sid Vicious, there was NO FUTURE; in fact, there was not even a present.

NOTES

(1) Sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak, and inexperienced are translations of amai, airashii, mujaki, junsui, kantan, shojiki, yasashii, kizutsukeyasui, kawaiso, and mijuku respectively.

(2) The questions asked were: 'To what extent do you like or dislike cute looking people?' and 'To what extent do you like or dislike cute behaviour and attitudes?'. To answer respondents ticked one of the following boxes listed 1 to 5: 1 love/like a lot, 2 like, 3 neither like nor dislike, 4 dislike, 5 dislike strongly/hate. The survey was given to a random selection of 110 people of which 89 answers were returned.

(3) In the same years that the new handwriting cult spread, the mechanical pencil industry made record profits producing strong, thin leads and a plethora of cute mechanical pencils for young writers to choose from. Between 1969 and 1979 sales of mechanical pencils doubled and between 1979 and 1981 trebled again.

(4) There are two syllabaries in the Japanese language. Hiragana is the alphabet used most frequently for all normal purposes, and katakana is a special alphabet used originally for Buddhist texts and then for military purposes and foreign words, but now also used to give emphasis to particular words and also in advertising.

(5) Yamane's research involved examining visitors books in tourist temples and love hotels where young people left signatures and personal messages and a questionnaire survey in which 3021 school students nation-wide participated. (See Yamane, 1986.)

(6) Nissan is a big producer of the so called mini car with models such as the snail shaped S-Cargo, Figaro, PAO and the extremely popular, indefinitely sold out, bubble shaped BE-1 launched in 1987 complete with extra horns and whistles. The most successful mini car of all, the Mazda Eunos is also one of the most lucrative designs of car ever created. Shigenori Fukuda, chief designer of the Eunos consciously set out to create a 'small, softly curved, comfortable car that would be a kind of friend like a puppy.'(quoted by Otsuka Sachiko in Mazda's public relations magazine, Joyful Life, 1989).

(7) An-an and Non-no have been two of the most consistently popular and widely read young women's fashion magazines since 1970 and 1971 respectively when they were launched. Non-no circulates 1, 500,000 copies a week, targeted at young women between 17 and 23 years of age. An-an circulates 650,000 copies per 15 days targeted at slightly more sophisticated 18 to 25 year old women.

(8) One editor of Cutie For Independent Girls told me that the original plan had been to call the magazine plain Cutie, however since there were five other magazines whose titles and copyrights were a variation on the word 'cute' in publication at that time the words For Independent Girls were added in small print. The title is not therefore intended to carry any meaning.

(9) By 1988 Matsuda Seiko was married with a child and had adjusted to a more adult, sexy image and at this point the media began to witch hunt Matsuda, describing her a as a 'bad' wife and 'cruel' mother . One or all of these events caused a decline in her popularity and the end of most of her career.

(10) Sayuri Koshino, a PR representative for Sanrio describes exactly this mentality: 'I believe we are all born with actual physical organs of cute, tiny and valentine shaped, pulsing away in our cerebella. But I also believe that many of us having developed harsh and realistic life attitudes have repressed our cute impulses.' (quoted in Logan, 1983: 12)

(11) In a perceptive book written by a photographer on the abuse and misrepresentation of children in modern society the author, Patricia Holland, describes how children are often forced to behave 'childlike' according to adult expectations: 'Children -especially girl children- must learn to present themselves as an image. They must learn a special sort of exhibitionism and reproduce in themselves the charming qualities adults long to see. They may recognise the pleasure that childhood provides for adults but they must not reveal that knowledge, observing adult behaviour only secretly. Open refusal to cooperate invites punishment and a forced return to childishness in tears and humiliation.' (Holland, 1992: 16)

REFERENCES

George Boas 1966 The Cult of Childhood Netherlands, Leiden: E.J.Brill

Edwards, W 1987 'The Commercialised Wedding as Ritual' Journal of Japanese Studies No. 13

Takeo Doi 1973 The Anatomy of Dependence Tokyo: Kodansha International

Fujioka Wakao 1986 'The Rise of the Micromasses' Japan Echo Vol XIII:1:31-38

Hahuhodo Institute of Life and Living 1984 Young Adults in Japan; New Attitudes Creating New Lifestyles (Research Report) Tokyo: Hakukodo Co.

Harris, D 1993 'Cuteness' in Epstein, J.(ed.) The Best American Essays New York: Ticknor and Fields.

Patricia Holland 1992 What is a Child? Popular images of Chilodhood London: Virago Press

Ijiri Kazuo 1990 'The Breakdown of the Japanese Work Ethic' Japan Echo 1990 XVII:4:35-40

Kato, K 1987 'Prime Time For School Girl Amateurs' Japan Quaterly, 1-3.1987.

Kurihara Akira 1981 Yasashisa no Yukue:Gendai Seinenron (The Way of Gentleness: Approaches to Contemporary Youth) Chikuma Shobô: Tokyo.

_______________ 1989 Yasashisa no Sonzai Shomei: Wakamono to Seido no Interface (The testimony of Gentleness: Youth and Organizational Interface) ShinyÙsha: Tokyo

Logan, F 1983 'Tokyo Cute' Tokyo Journal 4.1983:10-17.

Matsuda Seiko 1982 Yume ni Awaetara (If We Could Meet in a Dream). Tokyo: Wanibooks

Nakano Osamu 1985 Marude Alien (Almost Alien) Tokyo: Yubikaku.

Nakano Osamu 1988 'A Sociological Analysis of the New Breed' Japan Echo Vol XV:12-16

Nishibe Susumu 1986 'A Denunciation of Mass Society and its Apologists' Japan Echo Vol XIII:1:39-43

Okonogi Keigo 1978 'The Age of the Moratorium People' Japan Echo Vol V:1:17-39

_____________ 1981 Moratorium Ningen no Jidai (The Age of the Moratorium People) Chuokôronsha: Tokyo

Ono, K 1983 'Disney and the Japanese' Look Japan 10.7:6-12

Otsuka Eiji 1989 'The Teenagers Cute Emperor' Japan Echo Vol XVI:1:65-68

Shimamura Maria 1991a Fanshii no Kenkyu: Kawaii ga Hito Mono Kane wo Shihai Suru (Fancy Research: How Cute controls people, objects and money) Tokyo: Nesco

_______________ (5.1.1991b) Japan Times Weekly cover

John Treat 1993 'Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home: Shôjo Culture and the Nostalgic Subject' Journal of Japanese Studies 19:2.

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_____________ 1991 Gyaru no Kôzô (The Structure of a Girl) Tokyo: Sekaibunkasha

DATA

Youth and life-style magazines: Takarajima, An-an, JJ, Non-no, Cam cam, Cutie for Independent Girls, Popeye, Heibon, CREA, SPA!

Specialist Journals: Japan Echo, Look Japan, Focus Japan, Takarajima 30

Interviews with: Shimamura Mari, Yamane Kazuma, Okonogi Keigo, Cutie For Independent Girls and Takarajima Chief editors and editorial staff