The Internets have been buzzing with news that the word kawaii had been officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary, which is an indication of how accepted Japan’s culture of making everything as cute as possible has become in the West. When you ask a Japanese person why there’s such an evolved appreciation for cuteness here they’ll just shrug — I’ve learned there are certain topics the Japanese themselves never think deeply about, and this is one. While the modern rise of kawaii consumer culture started in the 1970s, as Japan amassed enough excess income to waste on ridiculously cute products like that Hello Kitty figure who ‘wears’ your glasses for you at night, the word itself if quite old, appearing (in an archaic form, kawayushi) in the Tale of Genji from the 12th century. The term kawaii joins other anime-related terms already defined by Oxford, including otaku (added in 2004) and hikikomori (NEET, shut-in, added in 2010). I wonder what the next addition will be?
Kawaii is now officially English.
