Sunday 14 May 2006

Pic of the day: Success! The war is over, cuteness and flowers won. Right?

Promised Land of cute

For millions of young people in America and increasingly Europe, Japan is the "promised land" of cuteness. Everything in Japan is "kawaii" (cute) and "genki" (energetic, exuberantly healthy). Japanese comics ("manga") and cartoons ("anime") show us a world more colorful and vibrant, more emotional and intense, more fun and innocent than our own. Is this really the nation that was reviled for destroying our car industry with cheap mass products, the economic superpower feared for its army of salarymen working around the clock?

Yes and no. Japan is indeed a nation saturated with cuteness. Preferctures (counties, districts) have their own cute mascots, as have megacorporations. Public servants may greet you in an office decorated with cute accessories. Public service announcements are accompanied by cute drawings. The war is over and cuteness won... or so it may seem.

Yet at the same time, Japanese teenagers still commit suicide after failing their grades at school. A Japanese boy or girl does as much homework in a day as their American pen pal does in a week. The salarymen are still working all evening. Women are still seriously under-represented at universities, whereas in for instance Norway two out of three university students are women. And parents still have a decisive influence on choice of marriage partner, to the point of sometimes arranging the whole thing. (Although the bride and groom now have to give their consent.) Not quite the fun, carefree place you might have expected, eh?

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A key to what really happened may lie in an event that took place simultaneously with the breakthrough of cuteness in entertainment, fashion and advertising: The epidemic of cute handwriting.

Traditionally, Japanese is written in Kanji, a variant of Chinese characters. Each kanji sign represents a word or concept, although many words are created by combining two signs, as are most names. There are also two phonetic scripts, Katakana and Hiragana. Traditionally adults write in kanji, vertically (from the top down), using brush (or lately pen) strokes that vary in thickness in a way that makes the finished character easier to read. In contrast, the new "cute" handwriting uses simpler, rounder characters with thin lines all the way. It includes katakana, English words and symbols like hearts or stars. And most tellingly, it is written from left to right, like western languages. The total impression is one of Japanese looking vaguely like a European language, but without giving up its identity completely.

I have commented in the past on how the hair colors and styles of anime characters are incompatible with Japanese genetics. The big round eyes are hardly Japanese either. Yet they have Japanese names and follow largely Japanese customs (combined with some western ones, particularly holidays). Once again, this duality of Japanese and Atlantic heritage.

Now let's put the puzzle pieces together. The Japanese youth culture is a dream of a different Japan than the one in which they live... a dream about a Japan that is more like Europe or the USA, where everything is more colorful, varied, relaxed and fun, where young people are free to do what they will and follow their hearts. Their promised land is... here.

I hope the irony is not lost on you. While western boys and girls look to Japan for inspiration, watch Japanese movies and use random Japanese words, their counterparts in Japan do the same with us. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. And the promised land is always... elsewhere. Beyond the rainbow.

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For further reading I cautiously recommend this article by Sharon Kinsella. Apart from the horrible screen colors, it also suffers from the problem that its conclusion (cute is irresponsible) does not explain the overwhelming impact it has had on society. Also it implies that cuteness is a fad that is waning, whereas it has later become one of the country's major exports both locally in Asia and in Europe and the Americas. Still, it is a great summary of the History of Cute in Japan. Recommended... although you may want to copy it to a text processor to avoid the uncute colors.