Japan’s kawaii culture is more than cute—it’s a global movement reshaping fashion, branding, and emotional connection.

“I don’t think it’s to appear to be healthy, it’s purely a style statement,” Tokyo-based French fashion designer Julien David said of activewear’s rise in the country. “The biggest shift in Kawaii is ...

Pink globalisation, the spread of cute goods from Japan to other parts of the industrial world, has been a stronghold of consumption in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, particularly with Hello ...

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Represented by cultural icons from Sanrio's Hello Kitty to Hasbro's My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the Japanese concept of ‘kawaii‘, or cuteness, has become a part of global culture. As a 2017 ...

Cute—"Kawaii" in local parlance—wears many guises in Japan. There's old-school kawaii, embodied by the helpless, mouthless gaze of Hello Kitty. There's the newer guy-cute, manifest by masses of young ...