My film professor mentioned that the cuteness of Japan arised as a result of World War II, that after the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, Japan became a child of America when American forces occupied Japan. As such, Japan has this child-parent relationship with America (which is still present today), where Japan looks to America for ‘approval’, and so a ‘kawaii’(cute) culture grew out of the Japanese people, resulting in manga, anime and toys like Hello Kitty. Professor Spigland also mentioned that there’s a whole book on this, titled something like ‘After Hiroshima’ which talks about the culture in post-war Japan. I’m curious if ‘cuteness’ was ever present in Japanese society before the war, and if it wasn’t, then his point might very well be true, because if you look at Korean or Chinese culture, that ‘cuteness aspect’ isn’t present, even when all three cultures stemmed from the same root.

“The title of T. Murakami’s symposium, held at Yale was called “Little Boy” -derived from the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The talk examined ideas from TM’s superflat theory e.g. 2-D origins of Japanese pop art coming from the aftermath of LittleBoy and high-low art having no distinctions in Japan, but it also suggests that Japanese pop art didn’t come from the West. ”

—comment left on Murakami’s Youtube video