Why Does Japanese Culture Have Such a Pathological Fondness for Girls? Why Do Japanese Women Always Emphasize Cuteness?

In an age without a world, spreading meaningless love.

Published with Shizai Gouzi’s permission. You can also follow the author on Zhihu under the same name, 实在狗子.

In answer to “Why does Japanese culture have such a pathological fondness for girls?”

First, we need to be clear about one thing: in Japan, the word shōjo, or “girl,” is not as straightforward as it looks. We cannot simply equate it with “a young girl.” The word represents a projection of fantasy, and the figure of the shōjo in Japan is often associated with innocence, virginity, purity, and romance. Eiji Ōtsuka defines shōjo as a body whose use is forbidden. It is precisely this prohibition that gives shōjo their aura of allure. One particularly good example illustrates that aura: after the outbreak of Japan’s war of aggression against China, the celebrated theatrical troupe originally called the Takarazuka Shōjo Revue was renamed the Takarazuka Revue, the name it retains today. In wartime, shōjo, with its associations of romance and fantasy, was deemed “inappropriate.”

Hiromi Murase stresses that shōjo is a word that places the girl firmly in the position of an “object.” Girls do not call themselves shōjo.¹ The word can be understood as an object to which they assimilate themselves: through it, girls “objectify” themselves.

Sumiko Yokokawa argues that the difference between shōjo and onna no ko is that shōjo is more a term of the male gaze, used to “objectify” girls’ bodies. Akiko Sugawa-Shimada says that the social expectations placed on girls in different eras are possible only through shōjo as a representation. In other words, shōjo is an other not only to men but also to girls themselves: it is a container for fantasy. Girls must identify with the contents of this container and conform to them.

So the answer to why Japanese people are obsessed with shōjo has to be put this way: only an object of obsession can be called shōjo. It is not that being shōjo makes someone an object of obsession; on the contrary, only someone who is an object of obsession can be called shōjo.

We have now established the close connection between shōjo and society. In Tsukurareta “Shōjo” [The Making of “Shōjo”]—a book whose title gives the game away—Shūko Watanabe traces the origins of shōjo in Japan in a Foucauldian fashion. She defines shōjo as people whose position emerged with the institutionalization of girls’ secondary education: their bodies are capable of reproduction, but they are still at school, in a period of “reproductive standby.”

Girls’ schools in modern Japan educated their students to become “good wives, wise mothers,” treating purity as a virtue. When these schools were first established, romantic relationships were strictly forbidden. This made shōjo objects of desire. Tayama Katai, an important writer of modern Japan, depicted middle-aged men’s desire for girls in his short story “The Girl Watcher” (Shōjobyō, literally “girl sickness”). (Put bluntly, it’s a story about a perv—.)² These schools cultivated girls’ maternal qualities and encouraged them to wear makeup, so that even after losing their shōjo status they could retain their position as objects of male desire. This emphasis on maternal qualities can still be seen in anime today. In Sailor Moon,³ the girls’ ultimate aim is not to defeat their enemies but to “purify” them, providing a form of maternal “healing.”

This can also explain why there are now more and more people in Japan obsessed with **.² Once JK—joshi kōsei, female high-school students—are no longer forbidden to have sex, their allure diminishes because their purity is lost. Desire can then only turn toward younger, more “pure” girls (**). This is really more a shift in where prohibition operates than simply a change in aesthetic taste. Likewise, we can see why shōjo in Japan today are getting younger and younger. Although some programs still call high-school girls shōjo, the term feels incongruous: once high-school girls lose the protection of prohibition, they also lose that part of their aura of allure. Shōjo is the container that gives this aura a name.

In answer to “Why do Japanese women always emphasize cuteness?”

First, we need to establish one thing: when a Japanese girl calls something kawaii, or “cute,” she is not merely saying that something she sees is cute. She is also presenting herself—the person who recognizes this cuteness—as cute. By using the word “cute,” she enters a “community of the cute.”

Takahiro Ōtsuki has offered a sharp criticism of the word, denouncing it as an incantation that brings Japanese women’s thinking to a halt. He points out that this community called “cute” is a “community of feeling,” capable of extending ties among communities of women and reinforcing gender norms.

Sharon Kinsella, a scholar of Japan, argues that “cute” is not merely an adjective: it has political power capable of controlling women’s consumption and everyday conduct.

The word “cute” produces the following power relation between speaker and listener: speakers place themselves above the people they describe as cute. Of course, this is also extremely ambiguous. When one woman calls another woman cute, for instance, she might mean either of the following:

1. I’m above you, so I can judge you to be “cute.” If I genuinely thought you were much more beautiful than I am, I’d use a stronger word.

2. I really do think you’re beautiful. There are better words for it, but I say “cute” so often that it’s the only one I can think of.

We should return to the word’s function as an incantation. Saying “cute” can signal that you and the other person share a set of “values,” creating a “sense of fellowship” and thus helping to bring the so-called kawaii community into being. Yet overuse and the word’s own ambiguity have left its meaning somewhat unclear. When everyone calls everyone “cute,” what is cute—special—about “cute”? (This will become clear two paragraphs from now.)

If we set aside the power relations generated by “cute,” what does kawaii mean in Japanese as an aesthetic sensibility? Reiko Koga distills its definition to this: an aesthetic sensibility drawn to immaturity. This is usually a matter of so-called girlish taste, but it has now spread to all Japanese women, across every age group. It can keep all Japanese women unconsciously in a state of being “shōjo,” thereby reinforcing gender norms. In other words, when all women use the vocabulary of shōjo to describe all women, Japanese women unwittingly confine themselves to the category of shōjo, with its attributes of immaturity and needing protection.

At this point, of course, someone may ask: isn’t this a word women like to use everywhere, or at least in the vast majority of places around the world? But we must remember that in Japan, the force of the word “cute” is extraordinary. As the cultural anthropologist Brian J. McVeigh points out, cuteness is not unique to Japan, but the word has an exceptional power there, unmatched elsewhere in the world: “cute” represents the “everyday,” “standard” aesthetic.

This observation is crucial. We can dispense with “aesthetic” altogether: kawaii is the standard itself, everyday life itself. In Europe and North America, words such as cute, pretty, and adorable are also often used negatively, as sarcasm. In Japan, however, kawaii carries almost no negative meaning. (Of the several dozen people surveyed by Sugawa-Shimada, not one used kawaii in a negative sense.)

Looking at cultural history helps us understand the relationship between cuteness and consumption. Kawaii properly emerged as a culture in the 1970s. One major event, of course, was the arrival of Hello Kitty. The design on a candy wrapper became more important than the candy itself: this is, of course, what Baudrillard calls the “consumption of signs.” The same period also saw the emergence of so-called “round writing,” a cute style of handwriting used by high-school girls. Kawaii culture thus grew and flourished alongside kawaii commodities, including cultural products.

Finally, I would like to end this answer with the Japanese comparative-culture scholar Inuhiko Yomota’s description of cuteness. It can be understood as an ingratiating manner displayed as part of a strategy of dependence on others. It can also mean (simply) looking at or pointing to something and exclaiming, “Cute!” This is an act of confirmation: a ritual performed to ensure one’s membership in the kawaii community.

Let me say it again: in Japan, cuteness is etiquette; it is the standard; it is everyday life.

Editor’s Notes

1. Kaguya’s “How cute” in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War is an excellent illustration of the “power relation between speaker and listener.” When Kaguya says “How cute”—in Shirogane’s imagination—doesn’t she quite naturally put herself in a symbolic position of power above Shirogane, the person being judged cute? (Love is war!)

2. Actually, I—Roof Girl⁴—think the “shōjo” in the second answer is equivalent to the “aristocratic lady” of medieval literature, or the qingguanren of Chinese literature. By definition, a qingguanren is a courtesan who offers artistic performances, not sexual services: she is difficult to approach, forbidden. But doesn’t that make wandering heroes and men of letters all the more eager to pursue her? What actually occupies the container is secondary here. The dialectic of desire at work is not really so difficult to grasp.