© 2018 Journal of International and Advanced Japanese Studies
Vol. 10, February 2018, pp. 39-55
Master’s and Doctoral Programs in International and Advanced
Japanese Studies
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Tsukuba

ArticleSoftening Power:
Cuteness as Organizational Communication Strategy in Japan and the West
Iain MACPHERSON
MacEwan University, Faculty of Fine Arts and Communication, Assistant Professor

Teri Jane BRYANT
Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Associate Professor Emerita
This paper describes the use of cute communications (visual or verbal, and in various media) as anorganizational communication strategy prevalent in Japan and emerging in western countries. Insights areoffered for the use of such communications and for the understanding/critique thereof.
It is first established that cuteness in Japan–kawaii–is chiefly studied as a sociocultural or psychologicalphenomenon, with too little analysis of its near-omnipresent institutionalization and conveyance as
mass media. The following discussion clarifies one reason for this gap in research–the widespreadconflation of ʻorganizational communication’ with advertising/branding, notwithstanding the variety ofother messaging–public relations, employee communications, public service announcements, political
campaigns–conveyed through cuteness by Japanese institutions. It is then argued that what few
theorizations exist of organizational kawaii communications overemphasize their negative aspects or
potentials, attributing to them both too much iniquity and too much influence.
Outside of Japan studies, there is even less up-to-date scholarship on organizational cuteness, criticalor otherwise. And there are no such studies at all, whether focused on Japan or elsewhere, that integrateintercultural insights. In a preliminary contribution toward such knowledge, we discuss the understudied,longstanding, and increasing use of this strategy by western companies. Points of comparison andcontrast with Japanese kawaii are highlighted, in both its organizational and pop-cultural aspects, drawing
also on sociological studies of the west’s current cuteness craze. Guiding insights are offered and future
research directions specified, both for those seeking to advise western organizations in communicating
cutely, and for those concerned that such softening power will be abused.
Keywords: Cuteness, Kawaii, Character Branding, Strategic Organizational Communication

Introduction
Contemporary Japanese society teems with kawaii (ʻcute’) images and styling. This ebullient aesthetic
suffuses every form of mass media: manga (comics) and anime (cartoons) as well as high-minded ʻpop art’;fashion and all genres of entertainment, including erotica; advertising and public relations; industrial design
including robotics; instruction manuals and street signage, etc. Kawaii, in all its ubiquity, has been the subjectof much commentary in recent decades, both scholarly and journalistic, and by both Japanese and non-Japaneseobservers. Most such scrutiny has explored the subject as a psychological or cultural phenomenon, explaining
kawaii as an instinctive, universally human affect, or exploring it as a reflection of traditional or changing
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Volume 10 / February 2018societal norms, either worldwide or in regard to particular countries and/or cultures. In all such cases, analytic
focus has mostly been applied to cognitive processing, to consumer interpretations and self-expression, or to theaesthetics of artists and designers.
Less attention has been paid to producer intent in the sense of organizational strategic communication in
any of its varied manifestations: official rhetoric, visuals, or other sensory forms (i.e., jingles, anthems) aimed at
informing, persuading, and establishing good will – such as advertising/branding and design, public relations,employee communications, public service announcements, and diplomacy or propaganda. This dearth ofresearch exists despite the prevalence of kawaii in all types of organizational communications, from all types ofJapanese institutions – corporate, governmental, or otherwise. And there has been nearly no analysis drawing
comparisons and contrasts between Japanese and western organizational communication in this regard. Thisabsence of cross-cultural scholarship persists despite a recent increase in ʻcute communications’ among westerncompanies, often inspired by Japanese exemplars, and even though such ʻsoft power’ strategies have long been
more widespread among western organizations than is usually recognized.
This study seeks to fill that research gap in an exploratory, theory-building way. It does so by synthesizing
insights from scholarship on ʻcuteness culture’ in Japan and the west, on kawaii organizational communicationand design, on the psychology of cuteness, and on character branding. Advice is advanced for westernorganizational communicators regarding the strategic benefits and risks of ʻcute communications.’ Broader
insights are also offered to a general readership, for improved critical understanding of the cuteness zeitgeist
now ascending in western popular culture and mass media.
The following Section 1 begins this paper with a survey of commentary, by scholars as well as journalists, art
critics, and other pundits, on kawaii as an aspect of Japanese culture and aesthetics. The review concentrates on
a divide between more and less critical apprehensions of the phenomenon. A somewhat similar analytic divide
structures Section 2, our overview of the much sparser literature on kawaii organizational communications.
Here the distinction lies between critical appraisals and a more applied scholarship proffering principles ofkawaii design and communication strategy. This discussion segues into the following Section 3, where our
focus turns to western ʻcute communications.’ A literature survey spans psychological research, businessstudies on character branding, and sociological explorations of popular culture. This review establishes thatwestern organizations have a history of cuteness appeals that is under-recognized – most notably by thosefixated on kawaii’s putatively unique ʻJapanese-ness.’ Moreover, Section 3 sheds light on a present uptick inwestern organizational uptake of such communication strategies, especially by advertisers. Section 4 concludes
the paper by specifying future directions for research into cuteness as a rhetorical appeal aimed at westernconsumers and publics.
1. Kawaii Aesthetics and Culture
In everyday English parlance, where the term kawaii is increasingly adopted (Nittono, 2016), this Japanese
adjective is usually translated simply as ʻcute.’ Of English-language dictionaries Webster’s, Dictionary.com,
Cambridge, Oxford, and Collins, only the latter two offer definitions of kawaii, both emphasizing its Japanesecultural specificity:
Adjective: denoting a Japanese artistic and cultural style that emphasizes the quality of cuteness, using
bright colours and characters with a childlike appearance.
Noun: (in Japanese art and culture) the quality of being lovable or cute. (Kawaii [1], n.d.)
Adjective: (in the context of Japanese popular culture) cute.
Mass noun: The quality of being cute, or items that are cute. (Kawaii [2], n.d.)40

Iain MACPHERSON & Teri Jane BRYANT, Softening Power

Official Japanese definitions offer more semantic detail. Nittono (2016) translates from the 2000 edition of
Nihon Kokugo Daijiten:kawai-i (adjective) (1) looks miserable and raises sympathy. pitiable. pathetic. piteous. (2) attractive. cannot
be neglected. cherished. beloved. (3) has a sweet nature. lovely. (a) (of faces and figures of young womenand children) adorable. attractive. (b) (like children) innocent. obedient. touching. (4) (of things and shapes)
attractively small. small and beautiful. (5) trivial. pitiful. (used with slight disdain). (p. 81).
However, as Nittono (2016) points out, these “somewhat contradictory meanings” reflect the word’s historic
connotative shifts as well as the subjectivity, context-dependency, and situation-specificity, with which Japanesepeople today use and understand kawaii. In everyday usage, it is applied to a voluminous range of imagery,fashion, and stylistics. For prime examples: saucer-eyed cartoon characters; hyper-saccharine pop music;
childlike or otherwise quirky clothing, accessories, and body language; very bright or pastel colours; soft or
frilly textures; circles or blobs; hyper-rococo faux-European motifs; rounded cursives; infants and toddlers;
small and/or chubby adults; and baby or tiny animals. As is the case with ʻcuteness’ in English – those seeking
to precisely define the word kawaii have found themselves grappling with its deeply contextual polysemy. Pop
media scholar Nobuyoshi Kurita has even called it a “magic term” that encompasses everything positive (ascited in Kageyama, 2006, p. 2).
Kawaii is primarily associable with girls and women (Nittono, 2016). However, many Japanese males of
all ages appreciate or adopt the aesthetic and attitude, without irony. It can semantically overlap with ʻcool’in a way that defies understanding for westerners. Its positivity frequently goes beyond ʻcute,’ to take on the
moral qualities of innocence and purity; however, kawaii can equally imply naughtiness and a lack of reserve.
Japanese subcultures, and even more popular media, often aesthetically combine kawaii with eroticism andgrotesquerie, in genres labelled by neologisms such as ero-kawaii, guro-kawaii and kimo-kawaii (ʻcreepy-cute’).
As well, in general usage, kawaii itself sometimes has negative connotations, typically involving inordinate, or
spurious, submissiveness and frailty (Madge, 1997; Nittono, 2016).
Moves to establish and explain the polyvalent pragmatics1 of kawaii sentiment are often prefaced withetymological and historical parsings. These typically note that the word’s antecedents, and its usage in Japaneseclassics like The Tale of Genji (ca. 1000 - 1020), mostly conveyed pitifulness – today the common adjective
kawaiso still means ʻpitiful’ – and that only in later centuries did its ʻcute/adorable’ associations emerge. These
positive overtones then came to the fore in the twentieth century, partly or frequently displacing the term’s
original pathos. Scholars debate the extent to which this was a pre- or postwar sociolinguistic development(Birkett, 2012).
Certainly, contemporary kawaii culture, both Japanese and global, is intrinsically tied to commodification,and so can largely be traced back to the economic boom-then-bubble of Japan’s recent decades. This kitschy
efflorescence reached full force in Japan during the 1970s, beneath the aegises of Hello Kitty – as charactercreator Sanrio both capitalized upon and cultivated market expansion from girls to women (McVeigh, 2000b)– and the nation’s real-life albeit heavily ʻmanufactured’ pop idols. By the mid-1980s kawaii permeatedevery nook of the Japanese archipelago, manifesting in “pink road diggers” and “police boxes in the form ofgingerbread houses” (Kinsella, 1995, as cited in Peek, 2009, p. 3). Since then kawaii culture and consumerism
has been explained and evaluated by a wide range of Japanese and foreign commentators. Scholars, artists
and art critics, journalists and politicians, have all championed or denounced kawaii alongside those aspects ofJapanese society they take it to reflect and influence.
Kawaii is exalted or excoriated for a range of reasons. As with pop culture anywhere, kawaii producers
1 The branch of linguistics studying actual communicative usage, as opposed to formal grammar and semantics.
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and consumers, when called upon to explain the worth of their goods and services, often wax tautological– kawaii is great because it’s kawaii! – and state or suggest that such truths cannot be put into words. The
Japanese government is promoting popular culture abroad for pragmatic purposes, in hopes of championing
an export industry and of wielding kawaii as ʻsoft power’ (Heng, 2014; Valaskivi, 2013). There are morelearned glorifications as well. The sensibility is often linked to ancient Japanese idealism, love of miniatures,and pantheism (think mascots as godlings) (Kageyama, 2006). Others perceive, in its blurring of aesthetic
boundaries – between childhood and adulthood, and between sentimentality and moral ambivalence – abinary-transcending mentality that makes Japan better-suited than the west to postmodernity. According
to anthropologist Anne Allison, this “polymorphous perversity” helps explain the global spread of kawaii
alongside other types or aspects of Japan’s popular culture (Allison, 2003, 2006).
However, kawaii’s ʻperverse’ blurring of boundaries between innocence and maturity is also the sourceof much concern over an infantilization of Japanese society. Takashi Murakami, perhaps Japan’s mostinternationally-famous contemporary artist, combines anime-inspired kawaii with surrealism, eroticism, andgrotesquerie. His ʻSuperflat’ manifestos wryly proclaim the unwillingness or inability of modern Japaneseartists to recognize defining distinctions in western artistic tradition: ʻhigh’ and ʻlow’ culture, fine art andcommercialism, adult and children’s entertainment, good and evil, depth and surface. In Murakami’s professedview, this ʻflatness’ stems from the trauma of psychic emasculation that atomic bombing wreaked upon Japan(Ivy, 2006).
Less equivocal and abstract denunciations of kawaii abound throughout political and popular discourse,delivered by Japanese and foreigners. Such condemnation spans the ideological spectrum, from right toleft. Cultural purists rue the displacement of Japan’s traditionally refined, subtle aesthetics by everything
opposite in kawaii. Conservatives and progressives alike damn its purported suspension of adulthood, if fordifferent reasons. Both decry the political apathy – the lack of patriotism or reformist spirit – that most kawaii
consumerism reflects and encourages. Both heap scorn on its hedonistic consumerism. And as happens with
pornography in the west, social conservatives make strange bedfellows with those feminists (mostly foreign, in
this case) who condemn the borderline or blatant pedophilia of much ʻLolita’ manga and anime (Ashcraft, 2010;
Lah, 2010). Japan’s political pundits on the right target the protracted unwillingness of kawaii-besotted Japanesewomen to get on with the duties of motherhood (and of videogame-obsessed males to forge careers).
Of course, many left-wing critics deplore kawaii’s propagation of submissive femininity. In such regards,
though, some feminists and social theorists offer a measured or partial defence of kawaii culture: “I cannot denythat the presentation of young women as kawaii can reinforce an image of women as subservient although... I also wish to stress that the aesthetic has a nonconforming or escapist aspect to it” (Madge, 1997, p. 157;
see also Kinsella, 1995). This thrust of such arguments runs thus: Especially in a society like Japan’s, where
opportunities for politicized consciousness and agitation are simply more circumscribed than in the west –where ʻthe nail that sticks out gets hammered down’ – there is a subversive edge to the decades-long escape thatso many women make into kawaii whimsy. The same is said of the solipsism that transforms so many Japanese
men into hikikomori shut-ins or ʻgrass-eating,’ metrosexual slackers. These millennial movements are not
revolutions advocating progressive agendas. Nevertheless, they are real rejections of Japan’s traditional social
order, and in toto they are transforming the nation, most starkly through low birth rates.
That feminist debate is intra-ideological, between parties who are both opposed to Japanese social
conservatism. This has a rough parallel in ʻcritical’ social theory as applied in and to western countries such

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as those in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.2 On one hand ʻcultural studies’ scholars find,in the styles and stances of youth subculture, symbolic dissent – legitimate however partial – against thehegemony of mainstream conservative ideology. In contrast, neo-Marxist scholars of ʻpolitical economy,’ with
their materialist focus on class structures, find popular culture and its disaffected poses to be escapist at best,
if not a disseminator of reactionary attitudes – hedonic individualism, consumerism, and sexism. In turn,defending their scholarly interest in popular media products (and their love of them), cultural studies devotees
accuse the political economists of dour and reductive economic determinism (Babe, 2010).
2. Kawaii as ʻSoft Powerʼ Strategic Organizational Communication
No less than in other walks of life, the kawaii aesthetic pervades Japanese organizational communication.
This is most commonly or obviously the case with corporate branding, such as mascots marketing a company
or character goods produced by it, or the kawaii attributes of actor spokespeople, advertising jingles, and logo
font, along with other design elements. However, the kawaii aesthetic is strategically applied by all manner ofother Japanese institutions: political, educational, religious, and even military (Frühstück, 2009). It is directedby these institutions at all their stakeholder audiences, both external and internal, from employees to voters andbroader publics both in Japan and abroad. The strategic intent of such communications may be to persuade
stakeholders to adopt a specific behaviour, such as buying, voting, or recycling; to inculcate a more generally
favourable impression; or even to improve information intake (Nittono, Fukushima, Yano & Moriya, 2012).
Many of this paper’s explanations and arguments about kawaii apply to all such manifestations. Therefore
the authors refer generally to organizational communication (strategy) as a term including external or internaland verbal or (especially) visual messaging; advertising for all manner of goods and services; public relations,employee communication, and foreign relations; public service announcements; instruction manuals, andproduct or even architectural design. (In the 1990s, a college redesigned its campus to look like Disneyland, after
which applications increased threefold (Madge, 1997)).
In all such cases, standard kawaii elements – girlish women, squeaky voices, hyper-happy pop muzak,
rounded cursives, and especially big-eyed cartoon characters – are key elements of strategic messaging aimed
at influencing and/or informing audiences. The basic objectives here are obvious: Organizations want toendear themselves to stakeholders; to make their message content simpler and engaging; and in the case ofimpersonal or authority-wielding institutions, to soften their image. Most research into kawaii organizational
communication, or at least touching on it, is ʻsiloed’ into disciplinary subfields of management studies andpolitical science, with scarce attempts to advance general insights about organizational communication more
broadly speaking. There are a number of studies focused on kawaii advertising for Japanese and international
markets (e.g., Allison, 2006; Otmazgin, 2014; Steinberg, 2012). Probably more academic and journalistic attention
has fixated on Japanese government communication strategy, especially the omnipresent deployment ofmascots – by electoral campaigners (e.g., Aoki, 2013; Torres, 2012); by police and military forces (e.g., Frühstück,2009); by local authorities and industries, aiming to sustain and brand their communities and regions (e.g.,
Birkett, 2012; Ripley and Henry, 2014); and most recently, with official efforts to promote “Cool Japan” abroad,both in hopes of boosting cultural business sectors and of brandishing diplomatic ʻsoft power’ (e.g., Borggreen,
2 The authors use ʻwestern’ or ʻthe west’ as a cultural umbrella term to encapsulate ethnically Caucasian-majority,
comparatively wealthy, liberal-democratic countries and regions, and we follow common practice in attributing
attitudinal, behavioural, and institutional similarities to the mainstream populations of these places. However, we
also recognize that substantive differences in all such regards distinguish each ʻwestern’ country/region from theothers, and we recognize the methodological hazard inherent in making any cultural generalization. This caveat
informs our decision to not capitalize the word west, on grounds that doing so too strongly suggests monolithic
cultural uniformity.

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Volume 10 / February 20182011; McGray, 2002; Yano, 2009).
There is has not been much theory-building work on kawaii aspects of Japanese organizational
communication strategy in its general sense: messaging meant to inform, persuade, and perpetuate goodwill
with all types of stakeholders for all types of purpose. The scholarship that has broadly conceptualized this
aspect of Japanese organizational communication can be divided into theoretical and functional interests.
On the one hand, ʻcritical’ scholars mostly frame managerial kawaii as a manipulative, smiley-faced maskfor domination and deception on the part of authorities and businesses. A more ʻapplied’ vein of study,
usually written by Japanese designers and engineers, formulates principles and processes for making kawaii
communications more effective, especially in visual modes and vis-à-vis high technology such as computerinterfaces and robotics.
The ideological critiques of the first camp routinely reference, as a principal influence, anthropologist
Brian McVeigh’s insights into the institutional interests behind the design and dissemination of kawaii
communications, products, and styles (e.g., 1996, 2000a, 2000b). He explains how “[c]uteness communicates
power relations ... effectively combining weakness, submissiveness and humility with influence, dominationand control” (1996, p, 291). McVeigh invokes Michel Foucault’s points about power – that it must often function
invisibly, and that it often “induces pleasure” in subjects (Foucault, 1978, p. 36). These cardinal insights are
related to psychoanalyst Takeo Doi’s (1971/1973) diagnosis of Japanese social relations as comprised of motherchild-like mutual dependencies. McVeigh warns:
We should be aware of how centres of authority (state agencies, educators, large companies, etc.) attempt
to associate themselves with smiling babies, innocent children, talking animals, pretty colours ... funnycreatures and akarui (cheerful things). If those in positions of power can convince those below them thatthey are in fact not intimidating, the task of persuading, influencing and controlling them becomes easier.
(2000a, p. 150)
The extent to which one shares McVeigh’s concerns will depend on how suspiciously one apprehends ʻcentresof authority,’ both in general and in Japan. It will also depend on one’s beliefs regarding the power of mass
media to mould public opinion, for better or worse. When weighing this issue, it is worth considering someevident limits of kawaii’s capacity to disarm people’s critical and rational faculties.
For one example, immediately after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, powerplant operator Tepco
stopped using kawaii communications, most notably its housewife cartoon-mascot Denko-chan. Since then,“Tepco’s post-3.11 TV ads have been limited to solemn apologies silently displayed across the screen, before
disappearing altogether” (Sekiguchi, 2012, para. 8). One must conjecture about any reasons for this sudden
shift in communication strategy, beyond cashed-strapped Tepco’s stated cost-cutting motives – “part of ourstreamlining” (as cited in Sekiguchi, 2012, para. 9). However, it is no great stretch to surmise that this decisionpartly stemmed from recognition that kawaii communications would not defuse so grave a crisis, and could
instead give offense.
Beyond Tepco’s ʻfiring’ of Denko-chan, a broader cuteness cull seems to be imminent, targeting Japan’s
800-plus prefectural and municipal mascots, called yuru-kyara (ʻrelaxed characters’). These creatures
mushroomed during the last decade, in cartoons and costumes, largely in response to the increased local
autonomy that has come with political decentralization (Birkett, 2012, as cited in Walters, 2014, para. 1). The
ʻstrategic communication’ purposes of yuru-kyara are manifold, beyond putting an adorably benevolent faceon administration and commerce. Often based on local folklore or industry, these figures assist in marketing
domestic tourism, the most successful becoming national icons worth millions of dollars to their sponsoring
institutions. Rural domains also utilize yuru-kyara in attempts to shore up civic pride – “imagined community”(Walters, 2014, para. 2, citing Birkett, 2012) – in the face of ongoing population shrinkage. However, their44

Iain MACPHERSON & Teri Jane BRYANT, Softening Powerheyday might be closing – or at least, their masters might need to produce more proof of their efficacy. In June
2014, Japan’s finance ministry ordered local governments to reduce their taxpayer-supported use of yuru-kyara,citing a dismissive internal report: “A majority of them were created for vague ʻpublic relations purposes’ andsome of them were created just ʻbecause others have introduced mascots’” (as cited in “Japan Cracks Down,”
para. 4).
Broadly speaking, though, the national Japanese government has exploited cute-character branding
as eagerly as has any toy or accessory company – but with an overall achievement record that remains
mixed or indeterminate. New media technologies have helped secure some successes. Not only in Japanbut generally, anthropomorphic spokes-avatars are proving especially efficacious for enlivening digitallyinteractive communications (Vranica, 2012). And with the recent lifting of Japanese restrictions against online
campaigning, much was made of successful multimedia mascot handling during the 2012 general elections, by
the now ruling LDP (e.g., Aoki, 2013) and Japan’s Communist Party (e.g., Blair, 2013), across videogame-app andsocial-media platforms.
Yet in the case of foreign relations, appraisals of Japan’s mascot-mediated communication, at least among thecommentariat, have ranged between scepticism and scorn (Borggreen, 2011) – with many caveats and criticisms
hypothesizing flaws from a communication-strategy standpoint. Much of this assessment engages the overall
ʻCool Japan’ initiative. Dating from the mid-2000s, this is the overarching campaign through which Japan seeks
to promote abroad all facets of its culture – traditional, popular, and even subcultural – as a twofold plank formarketing and diplomacy. Doubters forward many arguments (see, e.g., Valaskivi, 2013). The chief amongst
them is this: However much ʻcool’ has proven amenable to commodification, it is not subject to guidance bygovernments, especially avowed social conservatives (e.g., Chiang, 2014; Valaskivi, 2013).3 Others opine that
cute, comics, and cartoons are synonymous with ʻcool’ for only specific segments of western youth. Therefore,
Japan’s branded characters, manga, and anime, will never have the near-universal appeal of, say, Hollywood
movie stars (e.g., Reynolds, 2009). From a communication standpoint, such critiques amount to the charge that
ʻCool Japan’ lacks a requisite air of authenticity.
Kawaii plays a key tenor in ʻCool Japan,’ and a succession of mascot champions are trundled forth in its
name. During 2008, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) officially dubbed Japan’s most famous cartoon
cats, Hello Kitty and Doraemon, ambassadors of tourism and anime; and in 2013 the latter character wasnamed chief envoy for Japan’s (successful) bid to host the 2020 Olympics (Chavez, 2013). English-language
commentators reacted with bemusement and mild condescension to these news items. Teasings about crosscultural tone-deafness shaded into sharper objections with the 2009 MOFA appointment of three human, young
female fashion idols as “cute ambassadors,” representing different kawaii street-culture styles. This trio included
one then 19-year-old, Shizuka Fujioka, costumed in a miniskirted school uniform. Offended western observers
perceived her as embodying official sanction for the infantilization of Japanese women, if not for the illustrated
pedophilia in much ero-kawaii manga and anime.
Bloomberg correspondent William Pesek called the leggy-schoolgirl persona “creepy” (2009, para. 3),
and anthropologist Laura Miller even compared the globetrotting of all three kawaii emissaries to “global
exploitation and sex trafficking of young women” (Miller, 2011, p. 20). Of course, the ʻchattering classes’
can themselves prove tone deaf. Time will tell how populations en masse respond to Japan’s nascent kawaii
outreach. Or time might tell, given the difficulties of measuring attitudinal shifts at any mass scale, much lessinternational ones (Valaskivi, 2013). For one complication among many, it will be a very fine-tuned survey thatcan parse between any global goodwill engendered by Japan’s diplomatic darlings, versus grassroots fandom
inspired by self-anointed kawaii crusaders among western pop iconicity such as Avril Lavigne (Franich, 2014)
and Gwen Stefani (Ahn, 2005), or even by lesser-known social-media ʻinfluencers.’
3 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently declared ankle-length kimonos to best represent Japanese ʻcool’ (Booth, 2014).
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If the plain and the plausible limits to kawaii’s ʻsoft power’ provide some counterweight to critical concerns
about organizational propaganda, so should its positive potentials. To the extent that kawaii communications
do work to nudge Japanese citizenry toward beneficial ends – for example, signs showing big-eyed, babylike
cartoon characters causing drivers to slow down – such cuteness appeals should be widely applied andapplauded. Indeed, they might even be proving increasingly applicable and appropriate in the west. Such an
evolution is urged, in a recent New York Times editorial (2014, July 19), by geriatrician Louise Aronson. Given
the U.S.’s greying demographics, she argues, Americans have no choice but to hope their elderly prove as
susceptible as Japanese seniors to the charms and (seeming) solicitude of sweetly-designed robot caregivers.
She suspects that they will do so, but repines: “Even within the medical community, this idea that machines
could help fulfill more than just physical needs meets largely with skepticism, and occasionally with outrage”(para. 8).
Unsurprisingly, there is a good deal of investigation by psychologists, designers, and engineers into whatmakes kawaii work – all of it premised on the belief that such mass communications are typically benign if
not beneficial for organizational or societal interests, at least when effective. One example is the kansei schoolof industrial-design thought, formed in the 1970s. Its international network of technologists (e.g., Hotogi &Hagiwara, 2014; Saeed, 2012) have pushed boundaries in imbuing all manner of hardware devices and softwareinterfaces with a range of affective properties, such as kawaii or calming. Kansei-inspired mood-modifying
machines run a gamut from robots and hairdryers to anthropomorphized ATMs.
There are just as many studies done on the user/audience-reception end of kawaii effects. For one
example, Nittono, Fukushima, Yano and Moriya (2012) reported that not only did subjects viewing cuteimages subsequently become more careful at tasks – which previous studies had shown – but their focus andcompletion speed also improved. The authors found no appreciable gender differences in this response. They
were careful to note that their participants were Japanese university students, so that these findings weren’t
generalizable to employees or to non-Japanese, both of whom they suggested might not be so receptive tokawaii.
This paper garnered wide circulation in the English-language business press (e.g., Bender, 2012; Koh, 2012;
Steadman, 2012). However, most writers hyped the research as though it suggested that “browsing LOLcats”(Bender, 2012, para. 1) could improve job performance. As well, very few commentators addressed the questionof cultural differences. (Steadman, 2012, was an exception.) This lazy thinking bespeaks a conceptual lacuna
that is no less pronounced in scholarship. When it comes to kawaii, cute, or whatever the basic affect is called inother languages, there remains a paucity of empirical analysis and theory-building concerning cross-culturalcontrasts, similarities, or convergences. And there is no such research found by the authors which brings thisissue to bear on organizational communication strategy, broadly speaking.
3. Cute Communications in the West – Past and Present Practice and Research
Kawaii’s rough English-language parallel is cute. English dictionaries define the word as describing a specific
type of attractiveness – “endearing” in Oxford Living Dictionary’s terms (Cute [3], n.d.), and “especially in achildish, youthful, or delicate way,” according to Merriam-Webster (Cute [2], n.d.). Much less semantic variety is
attributed to cute(ness) than is the case with Nihon Kokugo Daijiten’s previously quoted definitional detailing of
kawaii (as cited in Nittono, 2016). However, dictionaries note that cuteness can refer, in North American informal
usage, to adult sex appeal. And as with kawaii’s original connotation of pitiful pathos (Birkett, 2012), cute hasless ʻendearing’ etymological roots. It originally stemmed, in the early eighteenth century, from the root acute asa personal descriptor meaning “clever; shrewd” (Cute [1], n.d; Cute [3], n.d.). This meaning has echoes in current
North American informal usage, where cute can label someone as “clever or cunning, especially in a self-seeking
or superficial way” (Cute [3], n.d.). Some dictionaries also emphasize that the word can today informally denote46

Iain MACPHERSON & Teri Jane BRYANT, Softening Powera failure of communication strategy: “straining for effect; artificial” (Cute [1], n.d.). All such polysemic variances
should be borne in mind during the following discussion, though for the purposes of this paper, cute(ness)
and kawaii both refer in general terms to their most commonly understood meaning: ʻendearing’ childlike
attractiveness.
Much of contemporary, applied Japanese kawaii-effects research branches out from a western traditionof study into the psychology of cute appeals, traceable at least back to Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz’s
1940s Kindenschema findings (e.g., 1943). He and following ʻcute-ologists’(?)4 explore a basic human responseto physical features found in babies – roundness, fragility and clumsiness, big heads and eyes, short limbs,
etc. – but also in similarly aligned adults, animals, cartoons, and even machines or other objects. Such cutenessoften signals or suggests a range of personality traits, such as vulnerability, playfulness, affection, curiosity,
innocence, and naiveté (or ignorance and inferiority). In Lorenz’s terms, perceived cuteness “releases” protective
and adoring reactions in people. Many analyses find that the effect is comparatively heightened in women,
whether from socialized or biological instincts, but this all remains a matter of mixed results and debate(Nittono, Fukushima, Yano, & Moriya, 2012; Nittono, 2016; Sherman, Haidt, & Coan, 2009). Current research isalso uncovering a range of other cuteness aspects and affects, from ʻwhimsy’ arousing self-indulgence (Nenkov& Scott, 2014), to ʻsincerity’ inspiring stakeholder trust and brand loyalty (Folse, Garretson, Netemayer, &Burton, 2012).
Since Lorenz’s seminal experiments in the 1940s, western ʻcuteness studies’ has continued uninterrupted,
often independently of the newer kawaii vein of inquiry, though in some obscurity compared to its Japanfocused counterpart. Recently renewed interest and work in this transatlantic tradition, within a variety of
disciplines, has doubtless been spurred by the au courant fascination with Japanese cases and contexts.
However, cuteness in all its cultural and national flavours is increasingly drawing attention. Indeed, much ofsuch research adds to knowledge without making (or needing) any reference to kawaii. In one recent example, aU.S. study with American participants, Nenkov and Scott (2014) establish the important distinction that muchcuteness has little if anything to do with Kindenschema – it needn’t remind people of babies.
The authors find that cuteness can instead present and prime a “whimsical” sensibility that triggers
ʻfun’ feelings rather than care, thereby inclining respondents to careless self-indulgence (and perhaps evenaggression). Such a finding fruitfully expands the scholarly conception of cute beyond strictly neotenic5 or
kawaii parameters. This helps to delineate an emerging, ʻindigenously’ western, variant of cute: one typicallymore Jetsons than Sailor Moon, stylistically speaking, and more ironic or ʻadult’ in sentiment. Recognizing
the risk of generalization with such terms as ʻwestern,’ it should be noted here that sardonic distance fromsentimental appeals such as cuteness is often said to distinguish Anglophone cultures more so than Latin
ones, with Northern European societies perhaps occupying a middle ground. In such regards, famed crosscultural theorist Geert Hofstede’s son and collaborator Gert Jan Hofstede links cultural differences in humour,
including cuteness and kitsch, to his father’s broader masculine/feminine spectrum, which respectively
situates Anglophone and Latin regions at either extreme, the former oriented more so towards pragmatism
and scepticism, whereas the latter more readily or openly embrace sentimentality and emotionality in general(Hofstede, 2009).
Theoretic discoveries and refinements regarding ʻwestern cuteness’ will likely also feed into applied
communications. Unlike scholars and journalists, advertisers and other communications practitioners neverreally forgot the ʻsoftening power’ of cute in western culture, and they are now turning it to ever more, andmore effective, uses (Vranica, 2012). Just as western cuteness studies sometimes draws from kawaii scholarship,

4 The subfield is sometimes called neoteny, though this term is usually reserved for the condition in which adults
retain juvenile physical or psychological characteristics.

5 “Neoteny: the retention of juvenile features in the adult animal” (Oxford Living Dictionaries, n.d.)
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but also exists as an older, independent strain, the same applies to the oft-related subfield of ʻspokes-character’
branding.
However, there has been nearly no intercultural cross-fertilization of character-branding knowledge acrossregions. Such myopic ethnocentrism is a shortcoming in marketing research generally. Usually, western-focusedstudies state or suggest universality to their findings – whether from inattention to other markets, or inordinate
belief in the westernizing ʻconvergence’ of globalization (deMooij, 2004; Limon, Kahle, & Orth, 2009). On theother hand, all types of kawaii studies tend to over-emphasize the uniqueness of this aesthetic, in a form ofʻbizarre Japan’ Orientalism (or self-orientalizing nihonjinron, in the case of Japanese writers). The truth is thatmostly nonhuman mascots proliferate everywhere in the world – if even more so in Asia, or more obviously.
These anthropomorphic agents probably constitute the main mode of organizational cute communications,though other conveyances abound: “brand name, logo and symbol, slogan, packag[ing] and the like” (Huang,
Hu, & Wu, 2013, p. 40).
Western companies were pioneers in mascot communications, which has a history stretching back to thelate 1800s, when printing technology freed up the medium, and the rise of big business created a need tosimulate personal connections between proprietors and their publics. Many of today’s most iconic personified
trademarks, such as Tony the Tiger and the Michelin Man, range between fifty and a hundred years in age ormore (Callcott & Lee, 1995). And western corporations have not been the only organizations to thereby soften
up their stakeholders. Disney’s critters very effectively emitted a range of U.S. wartime communications, frompropaganda to military training videos. Their efficacy in this respect was largely attributable to the fact that
it wasn’t until the 1960s that western societies developed today’s perception of comics and cartoons as strictly
juvenile fare (Raiti, 2007).
However, to some degree, this western distinction between ʻadult’ and ʻchildren’s’ media has been a matter of
popular and scholarly misperception. Over the postwar decades, adult westerners in many nations did becomecomparatively inured to cuteness, or indisposed to acknowledge its softening power. And today the aesthetic
features less in western organizational communications, especially outside of branding, than is the case inJapan, where manga and anime mediate all types of institutional content. However, although eclipsed in thisregard by their Japanese counterparts, western companies never stopped advertising to adults with a plenitude
of cutesy appeals. These affective tactics have continued – widely though in some abatement, and largely
unstudied – alongside more distinctively western brand traits such as ʻrugged,’ ʻedgy,’ or ʻsexy’ (cf. Aaker,
Benet-Martinez, & Garolera, 2001). The extent to which Japan monopolizes the mode is somewhat overstated,
explicitly or through implication, by nearly all commentary on kawaii organizational communication.
Among English-speaking countries, an increase in cute advertising, and belated scholarly attention to thistradition, took place in the 1990s. Baby-boomer nostalgia was a factor here (Callcott & Lee, 1995), and the newcuteness was often couched sexily or ironically, in ʻretro’ or absurdist fashions. As an added influence, it isalso at this time that kawaii overtook North America and Europe, spearheaded, in particular, by Sanrio as thecompany capitalized on the same blurring of childhood and adult markets that it pioneered in Japan (McVeigh,2000b). Many U.S. technology firms rival any Japanese institution in cute communications; their intention isplainly to persuade stakeholders – customers but also the public more broadly, if not government regulators
as well – that they’re hastening a ʻwarm and fuzzy’ future. Aside from Telus’s adorable animals, Apple’s apple,
or Android’s R2D2-esque mascot – round, awkward, babylike – consider the strenuous output of silly company
names: Google, Twitter, Bing, Yelp, Hulu, etc. Tellingly, the first prototype of Google’s driverless car looked “likea cross between a Volkswagen Beetle and a Disneyland ride” (Garber, 2014, para. 4).
During the 2000s another escalation of cute communications ensued, though lay business writers have takennote of the trend before any published organizational-communication scholarship. The increasing centralityof visual communications leads management consultant Dan Pink to predict as “inevitable” (cited in Clark,
2008, ques. 2) that western organizations will more widely adopt Japan’s use of cartoon and comic mediums for48

Iain MACPHERSON & Teri Jane BRYANT, Softening Powerpersuasive and informative communications. Maclean’s senior culture writer Anne Kingston (2014) notes that
Generation Y has become old enough for nostalgia marketing, so that cartoon advertisement and art, recallingthe halcyon 1980s and 1990s, is undergoing now-cyclical resurgence. Wall Street Journal’s advertising editor,
Suzanne Vranica (2012), attributes today’s trend in mascot messaging to the communicative affordances andconstraints of social media. The platform’s normative informality means ʻsoft sells’ become imperative, while
its interactivity animates avatars with compelling ʻvirtual personality’ as they engage in cheerful dialogue withloyal or angry fans.
There are organizational risks as well as benefits to implementing comics, cartoons, mascots, and othercute communications. The idiosyncrasies of digital and social-media communications are one major strategic
factor. A traditional benefit of fictional trade mascots, especially ones created for the sponsor organization,lies in the control over their image that strategists can maintain. Contrariwise, human spokespeople, especially
famous ones, have a tendency to engage in brand-tarnishing real-life behaviour (Callcott & Lee, 1995). Thisequation has been altered with double-edged consequence by new media, owing to its audience-participatory
capacities. Popular corporate cartoon characters often become the basis for fan art, a genre that increasingly
serves for companies as ʻuser-generated’ viral marketing, or is even crowdsourced for product design purposes(Brustein, 2014; Marrs, 2014). However, fan-rendered mascots can take on lives of their own veering sharply
from organizational interests. A search-engine scan of images for “Erin from E-surance,” with the ʻsafe settings’
off, will reveal one reason why this company retired its sexy-cute, secret-agent spokes-cartoon (Edwards, 2010).
In E-surance ads, Erin has been replaced with human nerds and old ladies – also cute, but less likely fodder for
fan-art sexual fantasies.
A more fundamental challenge in strategizing cute communications lies in hitting just the right emotive
pitch for the moving target of contemporary audiences. Perhaps especially at work, westerners remain lesspredisposed than Asians to cute appeals, or at least more loath to admit their charms (the persistently viralnear-ubiquity of ʻcat videos’ notwithstanding). Outside of certain fandoms, the kawaii aesthetic cannot simply
be transplanted wholesale, much less for the full catalogue of organizational communications: PR, internal
communications, manuals, nation branding, etc. (notwithstanding Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’scharacter-emblazoned socks; Corsillo, 2017). However, despite recent business-press interest in kawaii research(e.g., Bender, 2012), there remains nearly no organizational cuteness scholarship conducted in light of current,
non-Asian and cross-cultural contexts. This is clearly a gap in knowledge that needs filling, both from theperspective of organizational communicators and that of their stakeholder audiences, external or internal.
Though organizational-communication research has yet to engage the subject, many cultural cognoscenti
have augured an imminent ʻage of cute’ in the west, or argued that this effervescence has already establisheditself as one of “the dominant aesthetics of the twenty-first century” (McIntyre, 2015, p. 423; see also Kretowicz,
2014; and Wittkower, 2009). Its emerging or ensconced ubiquity is pointed to by a panoply of markers: thenormalization of pink colours in menswear (Baker, 2012); kawaii simultaneously establishing mainstream andunderground cachet (Kretowick, 2014); a ʻbrony’ fan culture of men from all walks of life who adore the ʻMy
Little Pony’ cartoon (Wigler, 2014); the cupcake craze (Emery, 2014); children’s movies with in-jokes for parents(McKay, 2011); adults who read children’s books (Graham, 2014); the fact that an emoji-only social site has beenlaunched (Kingston, 2014); an ever-expanding number of cute little cars (Patton, 2008); and perhaps above all,the internet’s infinitude of kittens, lolcats, and babies.
Just as many reasons are proposed for this pop-cultural paradigm shift. Wittkower (2009) ascribes a
central role to technology, especially internet communications. In terms of communication and interpretation
strategies, producers and consumers alike infuse the tech sector’s organizational messages and machines withcuteness, as a gambit to allay anxiety over socio-technological change. Another factor involves the increased
prevalence and prestige of amateur media production. This DIY ethos accords more with cuteness, in all its
shameless imperfections, than with the beauty of professional design. Other media characteristics – the visual
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nature of much communication; the rapidity of information flow; the ʻpull-oriented’ autonomy and anonymity
of consumer choice – orient our age toward a “desublimation” of taste and thought, channeled via simple
aesthetics and immediate affects: sexual, horrific, slapstick, and cute.
Others point to broader societal shifts. Perhaps above all, there is the increasing economic centrality ofwomen and girls, and their growing role as consumers, producers, and circulators of new media (Luce, 2014).
What McVeigh (2000b) pointed out of Hello Kitty’s reign in Japan now holds true for kitsch in the west: it
appeals to females as ʻcute’ when they are girls, as ʻcool’ when they are adolescent, and then as ʻcamp’ to women.
As for men, most western metrosexuals don’t embrace cuteness per se, but they are modeling a masculinity thatis consanguine with cuteness in its ʻpost-machismo’ (Ibsen, 2013).
Recessionary trends are also diagnosed. Today’s trend towards valuing small possessions – from dwellingsand cars to pets (“Twenty Trends,” n.d., item 5) – can perforce set the stage for an aesthetic of cuteness. When
Generation Y isn’t living in petite apartments, they are often nesting with their parents for longer than theirprecursors did. Some postulate that this delayed independence fosters a “child/adult liminality” (McIntyre,2015, p. 425) that helps account for protracted receptivity to juvenilia such as Harry Potter fiction. Moresympathetically, many such critics also posit that the cuteness aesthetic, in its basal or absolute superficiality,
represents a rejection of adult reality rooted in Millennial hopelessness: “That’s the revealing duality ofthis 21st century incarnation of ʻcute’ – it identifies the emptiness in excess that is as true as it is ultimately
terrifying” (Kretowicz, 2014, para. 12).
A ʻcuteness backlash’ stirs in some western media (e.g., Windolf, 2009), along similar ideological fault lines
to those arrayed against Japanese kawaii: Conservatives shudder or snort at the immaturity of it all, while
progressives bemoan ʻcute culture’s’ consumerist and escapist retreat from political engagement (e.g., McIntyre,2015). Yet the current enthusiasm for kitsch and schmaltz has its defenders, of differing political stripes. They
herald the sensibility as a bellwether for hopeful societal shifts – toward a revitalized idealism; away from thebitterness and prurience of so much mass media, and even from the western tradition of ʻbinary thinking’ thaterects rigid aesthetic, moral and cultural boundaries between people (e.g., Allison, 2006; Napier, 2007; Pratt,2014).
Management guru and Ted Talks star Dan Pink predicts as “inevitable” (cited in Clark, 2008, ques. 2) theJapan-inspired embrace by western organizations of cartoon and comic communications for persuasion andinformation-transmission. If Pink proves prophetic, strategic communicators from political campaigners toadvertisers will have to weigh all the considerations just discussed: cultural globalization; the affordances andconstraints of social media and other new multimedia; a persistent irony in the western (especially Anglo)
adoption of cuteness; the nascent norms and anxieties of Millennials; a risk of pop-cultural backlash against
cuteness overplayed or poorly executed. Audience analysis both quantitative and qualitative will be key, andorganizations will need to sense and follow emergent societal tendencies rather than seeking to transplant
kawaii tout court. To the extent they are successful in such regards, it is to be hoped they reflect and render real
the most hopeful aspects, latencies, and possibilities of kawaii-slash-cuteness as a new lingua franca – one thatsoftens our natures without softening our resolve.
4. Conclusion – Future Directions
This paper has theorized kawaii and cuteness as a mode of organizational communication strategy, offeringa conceptualization or reconceptualization of these concept-phenomena for both practitioners and those seeking
to understand or critique such mass media. In Sections 1 and 2, kawaii was discussed as a broad culturaldescriptor, focusing afterward upon ideological hostilities to the sensibility, both right-conservative and leftprogressive, and both Japanese and western. A defense of the aesthetic was offered, partly on grounds of its
limited influence upon actual behaviour, and partly on grounds that this influence has positive organizational50

Iain MACPHERSON & Teri Jane BRYANT, Softening Powerand societal impacts, such as improved attention to tasks or to road signs. Coverage of Japanese design andbehavioural research into kawaii effects segued into Section 3’s overview of related or cognate non-Japanesestudies, from Lorenz’s 1940s Kindenschema findings to character-branding management scholarship. Thesepaper sections and literature reviews supported Section 3’s subsequent argument that western organizations
have successfully strategized ʻcute communications’ for longer, and continue to do so more widely, than iscommonly recognized. Section 3 concluded by addressing arguments that cuteness, in many ways influenced bykawaii, is a burgeoning pop-cultural sensibility in the west, if not a profounder societal paradigm shift, to whichorganizational communicators and their commentators must attend.
The fascinating questions and thorny issues involving kawaii or cuteness and surrounding socioculturalcontexts demand more comparative cross-national study. Globalization’s entwinements ensure that only such
expansion of scope will prepare researchers to pinpoint the universals truly in play, rather than formulating
generalizations based solely on purported peculiarities of Japan or the Millennials. And this enterprise requires
research that is more empirically grounded, qualitatively and quantitatively, than the speculation mostly on
offer, however important the best of such theory-honing work has been. It is true that psychological and design
research has made decades of headway in the science of cuteness – but with little if any outside insight fromsociological or intercultural knowledge. For the most part this work experiments upon western or Japanese
subjects in contextual isolation, a limitation some researchers highlight (e.g., Nittono, Fukushima, Yano, &Moriya, 2012). Such analytic gaps are even more pronounced in organizational-communication research, which
has not begun to concentrate on the softening power of cute communications in any regional milieu, much lessthrough intercultural lenses. This paper has sought to establish the need for such a focus, given the increasing
cutesiness of corporate communications.
The questions to be answered are many, both for scholars imparting advice to organizational communicators,
and for those more interested in examining this softening power from the standpoint of organizational
audiences, internal or external. Clearly the subject is understudied, but exactly how widespread are cutecommunications already? What types of western stakeholders are present or potential targets, and with what
institutional genres beyond advertisement: public relations, internal communications, instruction or safety
manuals, retail or workspace layout, product design, foreign affairs? Will ambient cuteness make us moreproductive, more pliant, more attentive, more altruistic? To date, the only empirical research incorporating suchaudience and format specifics has involved Japanese subjects, and these are mostly female university students.
How cute can communicators get with workers and with men, of different ages and nationalities? For eachaudience and client demographic, what is the right tactical admixture of sentiment, nostalgia, irony, and sex
in cute communication strategy? And of course, for thinkers of a critical bent, there will be a countervailingdirective: to devise and disseminate resistant strategies of interpretation, and counter-messaging, athwart
attempts by authorities and businesses to seem adorable though they are not.
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Yano, C. (2009). Wink on pink: Interpreting Japanese cute as it grabs the global headlines. The Journal of AsianStudies, 68(3), 681-688. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021911809990015
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