5 East Asian Journal of Popular Culture Volume 2 Number 1 © 2016 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/eapc.2.1.5_2 EAPC 2 (1) pp. 5–13 Intellect Limited 2016 SPECIAL EDITION EDITORIAL JOSHUA PAUL DALE Tokyo Gakugei University Cute studies: An emerging field WHAT IS ‘CUTE’? Cuteness is a phenomenon widely experienced yet little understood. It is first of all a physical, affective response – a feeling we may refer to as the ‘Aww’ factor – to the set of visual and behavioural attributes outlined below. When this response is manipulated for artistic or commercial purposes, it becomes an aesthetic category. This aesthetic first appeared in European and North American popular culture in the nineteenth-century, but had an earlier expression in Edo-era Japan (1603–1869), when kawaii images often appeared in paintings and prints (Museum of Fuchu City 2013). Kawaii flourished in the 1970s and dominated Japanese popular culture by the 1980s (Kinsella 1996: 220), when it began to spread around East Asia beginning with Taiwan (Chuang 2005: 21). Now cuteness is a rising trend in global popular culture, and much of it is flowing in, around and from East Asia. Yet little critical attention has been paid to this trend as a broad cultural phenomenon: a lack that the articles in this ‘Cute Studies’ issue address. In parts of the East Asian region, cuteness enjoys a growing public presence far in excess of other areas of the world. 1 Its global rise has been more gradual and incremental, yet far-seeing scholars have already declared cuteness to be a dominant aesthetic of the digital culture (Wittkower 2009) and consumer culture (Ngai 2012) of the current century. KEYWORDS cute cute studies cuteness cuteness studies kawaii cute aesthetics 1a edi.indd 5 1a edi.indd 5 14/05/16 11:23 AM 14/05/16 11:23 AM