Abstract
Chinese and Japanese culture have long been influencing each other. With the popularity of Japanese animation, comics, and game industry, Japanese kawaii culture has swept across China, especially among young Chinese people. In this chapter, we will introduce a study we conducted between Chinese and Japanese people to learn about their perceptions of kawaii designs in artifacts . This study investigates what features make an artifact kawaii , how gender and age affect kawaii perception of artifacts , and whether Chinese people perceive kawaii in artifacts in the same manner as Japanese people do. An experiment which involved both elderly and young participants from Beijing and Tokyo was conducted. Three types of artifacts were presented to the participants, and their attitudes toward different designs were recorded in the form of a questionnaire . The results indicate that culture , gender, and age can affect kawaii perception . Chinese participants and elderly Japanese participants associated kawaii closely with practical aspects. The results also show that a simple combination of kawaii elements does not necessarily contribute to the kawaii design of an artifact. Kawaii is an integrated concept and cannot be simply defined by a series of discrete elements or features.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Toyoshima, N. (2015). Kawaii fashion in Thailand: The consumption of cuteness from Japan. Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies (Waseda University), 24, 191–210.
Rahman, J. A., Fudzee, F. M., Kijima, A., & Furuya, S. (2013). Re-cognition of Kawaii trend in catch-up and spread structure. Bulletin of Japanese Society for the Science of Design, 60(3), 3_21–3_28.
Lee, M.-T. (2004). Absorbing ‘Japan’: Transnational media, cross-cultural consumption, and identity practice in contemporary Taiwan. Ph.D. dissertation, King’s College/Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
Chuang, Y. C. (2011). Kawaii in Taiwan politics. IJAPS, 7(3).
Glover, J., Fennessy, L., & Varadarajan, S. (2015). Apprehending Kawaii for industrial design theory. In Proceedings of IASDR2015, 789–804.
Yano, C. R. (2013). Pink globalization: Hello Kitty’s trek across the Pacific. Duke University Press.
Buckingham, D., Sefton-Green, J., Allison, A., Iwabuchi, K., & Tobin, J. (2004). Pikachu’s global adventure: The rise and fall of Pokémon. Duke University Press.
Cooper-Chen, A. (2011). Japan’s illustrated storytelling: A thematic analysis of globalized Anime and Manga. Keio Communication Review, 33, 85–98.
jpn199miaoyangfinalblog. (2014). Japanese pop culture in China. Retrieved from http://jpn199miaoyangfinalblog.tumblr.com/.
Ohkura, M., & Aoto, T. (2007). Systematic study for “Kawaii” products. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research 2007.
Ohkura, M., Goto, S., & Aoto, T. (2009). Systematic study for’Kawaii’products: Study on Kawaii colors using virtual objects. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 633–637.
Ohkura, M., Konuma, A., Murai, S., & Aoto, T. (2008). Systematic study for “kawaii” products (the second report)-commpmrison of “kawaii” colors and shapes. In Proceedings of SICE Annual 2008, 481–484.
Palmer, S. E., & Schloss, K. B. (2010). An ecological valence theory of human color preference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(19), 8877–8882.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Qie, N., Rau, PL.P., Ohkura, M., Tung, CW. (2019). Kawaii Perception of Artifacts Between Chinese and Japanese Cultures. In: Ohkura, M. (eds) Kawaii Engineering. Springer Series on Cultural Computing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7964-2_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7964-2_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7963-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7964-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)