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Kawaii in the Semiotic Landscape

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Kawaii in the Semiotic Landscape Sociolinguistic ISSN: 1750-8649 (print) Studies ISSN: 1750-8657 (online) Article Kawaii in the semiotic landscape Mie Hiramoto and Lionel Wee Abstract The Japanese word kawaii means ‘cute’, ‘lovable’ or ‘adorable’ and is used to express the quality of cuteness or kawaii aesthetics in the general context of Japanese culture. This concept has become prominent in many aspects of Japanese modern culture, including clothing, personal appearance, food, toys, behaviour and mannerisms. While entities culturally characterized as kawaii are considered adorable and delicate, they also tend to appeal to people’s deep inward affections in a visceral manner. Scholarly discussions of kawaii have tended to focus on specific entities like commodified objects or school children, and these target entities are treated as relatively isolable units that happen to be imbued with kawaii attributes. Concomitantly, this also means that the question of how kawaii entities or other features associated with kawaii aesthetics might be integrated into the broader sociocultural environment has tended to remain relatively underexplored. Drawing attention to kawaii as a key component of Japanese material culture, this paper investigates selected kawaii data taken from banal civic signs in Tokyo’s semiotic landscapes. We then analyse the role of kawaii in matters traditionally not associated with kawaii through the lens of affection and viscerality. KEYWORDS: KAWAII, LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE, SEMIOTICS, EMOTIONS AND AFFECT, JAPANESE. Affiliation National University of Singapore, Singapore email: [email protected]; [email protected] SOLS VOL 13.1 2019 15–35 https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.36212 © 2019, EQUINOX PUBLISHING 16 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES 1 Introduction The Japanese adjective kawaii variously describes attributes such as ‘cute’, ‘adorable’ and ‘lovable’, and it is typically used to describe animated characters, infants, animals and natural objects – things that can be construed as small, delicate and immature (Kinsella, 1995:220; Burdelski and Mitsuhashi, 2010:66). Discussions of kawaii culture have typically focused on its influence on Japanese aesthetics (Bremner, 2002; Kincaid, 2014), its commodification (Kinsella, 1995; Allison, 2006) and its role in childhood socialization into gendered identities (Burdelski and Mitsuhashi, 2010), drawing attention to kawaii as a key component of Japanese material culture. Manifestations of kawaii are observable in fashion items, stationary, cartoon characters and communicative practices, including gesture, posture, a writing style that emphasizes rounded symbols, emojis and voice qualities. Entities culturally characterized as kawaii are perceived as being adorable, lovable and delicate, and tend to foster fondness or affection (Burdelski and Mitsuhashi, 2010:66, 78; Starr, 2015). Scholarly discussions of kawaii have tended to focus on specific entities, such as commodified objects or school children. These target entities are thus treated as relatively isolable units that happen to be imbued with kawaii attributes. Con- comitantly, the question of how kawaii entities or other features associated with kawaii aesthetics might be integrated into the broader sociocultural environment has tended to remain underexplored. The study of kawaii in the semiotic landscape therefore has the potential to enrich our understanding of kawaii culture as well as the ways in which affect may be semioticized as part of the lived environment. Our aim in this paper is to extend the discussion of kawaii to the study of semiotic landscapes (Shohamy and Gorter, 2008; Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010).1 The paper has three parts. In the first, we review the meanings typically associated with kawaii to show that, when recontextualized in relation to specific situations, there are changes to the meanings that need to be accounted for. In this regard, we situate the various meanings as part of the indexical field (Eckert, 2008) of kawaii. In the second part, we describe three examples of kawaii in the semiotic landscape: a public reminder to residents of Tokyo about a tax payment deadline, a bus stop sign and a tourist information poster. We then highlight some of the changes to the meanings of kawaii when it is used as part of an attempt to style the wider urban environment. The third part concludes the paper by highlighting some of its theoretical implications for the study of affect in the semiotic land- scape. Combining Ahmed’s (2004a, 2004b) arguments for an affective economy of signs with Wee’s (2016) notion of an affective regime, we demonstrate that, together, these constitute a framework ideally suited to the analysis of kawaii and, more broadly, how affect is materially calibrated in the semiotic landscape. KAWAII IN THE SEMIOTIC LANDSCAPE 17 2 The indexical field of Kawaii As already noted, kawaii describes an attribute of the entity (‘cute’, ‘adorable’ and even ‘vulnerable’) while also evoking a particular interactive stance towards that entity. In other words, because the kawaii entity is considered adorable and/or vulnerable, it must be cared for or treated gently. In an interesting series of experiments, Nittono, Fukushima, Yano and Moriya (2012) showed actual behavioural correlates to kawaii: [T]he tenderness elicited by cute images is more than just a positive affective feeling state. It can make people more physically tender in their motor behavior … (Introduction, para. 3) [P]erceiving cuteness not only improves fine motor skills but also increases perceptual carefulness … (General discussion, para. 2) Kawaii things not only make us happier, but also affect our behavior … viewing cute things improves subsequent performance in tasks that require behavioral carefulness, possibly by narrowing the breadth of attentional focus. This effect is not specific to tasks related to caregiving or social interaction. (General discussion, para. 4) The various meanings of kawaii constitute an indexical field in that the lexical item is conceptually associated with ‘a constellation of ideologically linked meanings, any region of which can be invoked in context’ (Eckert, 2012:94). For example, the indexical field of /t/ release (where not normally expected; a manner of pronunciation in American English) can include meanings such as ‘being a school teacher’, ‘being British’, ‘being formal’, ‘being emphatic’, ‘being exasperated’, ‘being educated’, ‘being elegant’ and ‘being a gay diva’ (Eckert, 2008:469). Some of these are relatively stable attributes (‘educated’, ‘articulate’), while others are stances that can change quickly and easily (‘exasperated’, ‘emphatic’). Likewise, the indexical field of kawaii includes attributes that are fairly prototypical (‘cute’, ‘adorable’) and others that are less so (‘vulnerable’), as well as interactive stances with motor behavior implications (being protective towards the kawaii entity or simply being more careful in how one interacts with it). The combination of attributes and interactive stances highlights the affective nature of kawaii. Affect refers to ‘any evaluative (positive or negative) orientation toward an object’ (Robinson, Smith-Lovin and Wisecup, 2006:181, 183). Because kawaii entities do not merely bear attributes but evoke, in readers/viewers, attitudes and interactional stances that are supposed to be protective or gentle in nature, it is clear that the default cultural expectation in the case of kawaii is one of positive affect. 18 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES An indexical field is of course not fixed; meanings that constitute such fields evolve dynamically as speakers use and interpret language in various ways. For example, the nationwide phenomenon of local governments branding themselves with yuru-kyara ‘loose/wobbly character’ mascots shows how the indexical field of kawaii is strategically enacted by political bodies (Occhi, 2012; Suzuki and Kurata, 2017). Yuru-kyara (short for ‘yurui characters’) are created by regional municipal offices to represent their regions as kawaii ambassadors and promote tourism and local products. Nationally popular ones include Kumamon, the black bear of Kumamoto prefecture; Hikonyan, the samurai cat of Hikone city; and Mikyan, the mandarin orange dog of Ehime prefecture. Local government PR materials and regional commercial goods feature the mascots, much as Sanrio Corporation’s signature products do. Furthermore, these characters have social media outlets under their names, which regularly release promotional information regarding the region they represent, thus creating ‘friendships’ with their followers, recalling the ‘synthetic sisterhood’ reported by Talbot (1995). Consider another example of the use of kawaii outside of Japan and in the political domain. In Taiwan’s mayoral and presidential elections between 1998 and 2004, as observed by Chuang (2011), a kawaii-inspired doll known as the ‘A- Bian Doll’ represented the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidate, Chen Shui-Bian, apparently providing him a huge electoral advantage: The A-Bian Doll III … a 14 inch cotton-stuffed doll priced at NTD120 (about GBP2), was a hit commodity for the DPP in 2004 … The doll has a small body, an over-sized head, doe eyes, a child-like smile and a rosy-cheeked, chubby face. (p. 5) Chuang quotes the manager of Bian-Mao Company, who explains that the design team deliberately drew upon kawaii aesthetics to design the doll: The design team even went to Japan to study their successful commodities. According to studies of Taiwanese toy and fashion markets, and based on my business experience, Japanese
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