Japan's kawaii culture in Britain

Date: 2011 February 21 16:21

Posted by Joe

The Mainichi Daily News have an interesting article about Japan's kawaii culture taking hold in Britain.

It seems that cute is everywhere in the UK now.

"Over the last 10 years, the country's youngsters have started to embrace the whole spectrum of kawaii -- from the extremes of costume play down to the purchasing of accessories adorned with cute anime and manga characters."

The article gets commentary from Helen McCarthy the British-based expert on Japanese popular culture, anime, manga, book author (we really need to write up some sort of introduction to Helen as she's done a lot of stuff). Helen reports that over the last 10 years with the growth of the internet the kawaii culture has become more visible.

'"Kawaii has made inroads, but is not embedded yet," she said, adding that its influence can be seen in TV shows and subway posters'

"We (Britain) are still quite a masculine and patriarchal culture and we have never embraced the cute, soft side like France and Japan. We are not ready to go full-on cute yet and whether we ever will be is a mute point."