After all, if there’s anything Americans know about Japan, it’s that as a country, they are absolutely obsessed with cute things. The Japanese have a name for the obsession: Kawaii.

"Gross" characters are proliferating in a country known for kawaii, and now even local governments' mascots are trying to out-weird one another. Long considered the global capital of cute, Japan ...

Pink globalisation, the spread of cute goods from Japan to other parts of the industrial world, has been a stronghold of consumption in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, particularly with Hello ...