Skip to main content

Cuteness in Japanese Design: Investigating Perceptions of Kawaii Among American College Students

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances in Affective and Pleasurable Design (AHFE 2018)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 774))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Japanese products and pop culture, such as Hello Kitty, Pokemon, J-pop, and Anime, have gained global popularity, including in the United States. As a result, Japanese Kawaii (cute) design has also spread. It is not clear, however, how American perceptions of Kawaii compare to Japanese perceptions. In previous work by the third and fourth authors, Japanese college students rated 225 images with respect to Kawaii and other characteristics. This work compared perceptions between male and female Japanese college students. In the current paper, we report on a cross-cultural study of perceptions of Kawaii between Japanese students and American students. The study uses data we collected from American students who rated most of the images from the prior study that involved Japanese students.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Yomota, I.: Kawaii Ron. The Theory of Kawaii Tokyo, Chikuma Shobō (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Marcus, A., Kurosu, M., Ma, X., Hashizume, A.: Cuteness Engineering Designing Adorable Products and Services. Springer, Cham (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Berque, D., Chiba, H.: Evaluating the use of LINE software to support interaction during an American Travel Course in Japan. In: Rau, P.L. (ed.) Cross-Cultural Design CCD 2017. LNCS, vol. 10281, pp. 614–623. Springer, Cham (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Hashizume, A., Kurosu, M.: The gender difference of impression evaluation of visual images among young people. In: Kurosu, M. (ed.) HCI 2017, Part II. LNCS 10272, pp. 664–677. Springer, Cham (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Laohakangvalvit, T., Achalakul, T., Ohkura, M.: A proposal of model of Kawaii feeling for spoon designs. In: Kurosu, M. (ed.) HCI 2017. Part I, LNCS 10271, pp. 687–699. Springer, Cham (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Ohkura, M.: “Kawaii” Engineering: Asakura Publishing Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan (2017)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hiroko Chiba .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Berque, D., Chiba, H., Hashizume, A., Kurosu, M., Showalter, S. (2019). Cuteness in Japanese Design: Investigating Perceptions of Kawaii Among American College Students. In: Fukuda, S. (eds) Advances in Affective and Pleasurable Design. AHFE 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 774. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94944-4_43

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics