The fluffy replicas prove extremely popular, especially at the country’s prestigious Japan Cup race meeting. “At the Tokyo Racecourse on the Japan Cup day, they sold about 1,350 figures and the total ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. In the late 1970s, British inventor James Dyson painstakingly refined his design for a new, improved vacuum cleaner.

McDonald's recently announced a new collaboration with one of the country's newest anime mascots. Instead of Hello Kitty or Pompompurin, the Japanese branch of America's favorite fast-food chain is ...

In a land of Sanrio and perfect plushies, meet the monsters who are stealing the spotlight with their “so ugly it’s cute” ...

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 ...

With digital overload and constant stress dominating life, soft colours and whimsical objects work like visual therapy. That’s what Kawaii interiors aims to do. When GS Shruti (@shrustudies), a ...

Alongside "photobomb", one of the new words added to the Collins English dictionary this week was "kawaii". Yet unlike photobomb, selfie or onesie, you're unlikely to know what kawaii means unless you ...

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 ...