Why Japan Is So Obsessed With Being "Childlike"? | OBSESSIONS

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:07]Japan, a nation of contradictions. In a society known for its rigid social manners and clockwork efficiency, [music] many people here just want to be cute.

[00:00:16]I'm Jason Godfrey and I'm fascinated by obsessions from around the globe.

[00:00:20][music] This week, I'm here in Tokyo to unearth the secrets of Japan's cute culture.

[00:00:25]Kawaii.

[00:00:28]>> [music] [music] >> Everywhere I turn is a vivid reminder of how cute has come to define Japan. From toys to real people, I'm bombarded by [music] kawaii images.

[00:00:51]Kawaii has become an essential part of Japan's national identity.

[00:00:55]Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Astro Boy, these are all fictional characters who've been given official ambassador status here in Japan. But I'm going to go meet Misako Aoki, one kawaii ambassador that's 100% flesh and blood.

[00:01:10]Misako Aoki may look like a doll, but this part-time model is so popular that she's been made a kawaii taishi, or cute ambassador, by the Japanese government.

[00:01:20]Her job is to spread the word of kawaii culture around the world, [music] Lolita style.

[00:01:26]Lolita fashion is a strange hybrid of Victorian dressing and Japanese sensibilities, and no one embodies this doll-like cuteness better than Misako.

[00:01:49]Misako fell in love with the elegance of Lolita fashion during her first photo shoot in 2001, and since then, it's transformed her life.

[00:01:57]>> [music] >> Although she's really a nurse by profession, she prefers living her life as a Lolita.

[00:02:04]Ah, so you're you're sort of trying to emulate emulate a doll, almost. Is that Is that correct?

[00:02:37]Being [music] a Lolita encompasses what one would call quaint behavior, which is kind of cute, but contrived.

[00:02:43]I want to know how to act Lolita, [music] because I'm I'm looking at you and I know you have a very specific you're you're sitting with your hands in your in your lap, and and even when you ate [music] your cake, you're eating very small pieces. Teach me how to act Lolita, >> [music] >> cuz my cake is gone.

[00:02:58]I ate it hours ago.

[00:03:09]>> [music] >> Tell me the truth, are you starving?

[00:03:12]Are you starving? Cuz you eat so slow and drink so slowly. Do you Do you get any Do you go home and just be like like trigger and eat everything?

[00:03:25]And you tell me if I'm doing a good job as a Lolita.

[00:03:32]>> [music] [laughter] >> Hey.

[00:03:36]Kawaii.

[00:03:39]Double kawaii.

[00:03:42]So now comes the hard part, how to walk like a bonafide kawaii girl. High heels not included.

[00:03:50]Did you notice you What? What?

[00:03:54]And this is Lolita.

[00:03:59]Yeah.

[00:04:00]I'm walking like Keyser Söze.

[00:04:06]Another way of looking cute Misako shows me is to make a sticker photo, or purikura. Yep, with sparkly graphics, tools to remove your blemishes, [music] and enlarge your eyes, looking kawaii is as easy as 1 2 3.

[00:04:19]You ready? Yes. Yes.

[00:04:25]Okay, sure. Yeah.

[00:04:29]Wait, how do I mean it?

[00:04:34]>> [music] >> Misako!

[00:04:42]I can't get her to not be cute. I can't stop her. She's like a armada of cuteness.

[00:04:49]Well, Misako is super cute. You know, everything she does is calculated to be cute. When she touches her mouth, when she touches her eyes, when she laughs.

[00:04:59]But to live like that, it's got to take great commitment. I mean, she didn't want to talk about her real job, which is nursing. She must see a lot of difficult aspects, you know, things about life and death. Maybe that's why she chooses Lolita style. Maybe Lolita style is some sort of escape for her.

[00:05:15]From what I've researched, kawaii culture is a pretty recent development in modern Japan.

[00:05:21]But sociologist Tomoyuki Sugiyama tells me that it actually dates way back to the Edo period of the 17th century.

[00:05:31]>> [music] >> Sugiyama tells me that in rebuilding their country after World War II, the Japanese turned to their imagination [music] to creating manga. And from this comic culture came a wave of characters that became the bedrock of [music] modern kawaii.

[00:06:06]>> [music] >> Kawaii actually means childlike, and Japanese schoolgirls started [music] a trend with childlike, or cute, handwriting during the 1970s.

[00:06:25]Instead of embroiling themselves in teenage angst, many of Japan's youth turned to kawaii culture to express themselves.

[00:06:32]And this soon became a part of everyday life.

[00:06:36]It seems like the girls are very focused on being kawaii, whereas the girls in other countries tend to focus more on being sexy. Why that difference?

[00:07:16]Do you think I as a foreigner could be kawaii?

[00:07:20]Not okay, you're you are, you know, face.

[00:07:24]It's kind of kawaii. Yeah? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Especially your eyes.

[00:07:28]>> My eyes are kawaii?

[00:07:29]>> Yeah. You think my eyes are beautiful?

[00:07:32]Yeah, I think so. Do you want to go to dinner? No.

[00:07:35]>> [laughter] >> As a friend, it's okay. Yeah, as a friend.

[00:07:44]Even though I'm kind of overwhelmed by all the cuteness that Japan has to offer, there's one icon I just can't get away from, Hello Kitty.

[00:07:54]A pop culture legend generating a cool $5 billion a year, [music] Hello Kitty is the kawaii icon that's captured the hearts and wallets [music] of devoted followers all around the world.

[00:08:07]If Hello Kitty is the goddess of kawaii, then [music] Sanrio Puroland is a shrine at which all of Hello Kitty's worshipers must pay homage.

[00:08:15]Do I have to pay homage?

[00:08:17]She doesn't have a mouth. I don't know what she's saying.

[00:08:20]Sanrio Puroland is like a country of its own, attracting more than a million visitors a year.

[00:08:26]I'm going to get the full-fledged Hello Kitty experience and fulfill all my deepest kawaii desires. Like musicals, going shopping, visiting Hello Kitty's house.

[00:08:36]It's a tough job.

[00:08:38]But someone's got to do it.

[00:08:41]It's lunchtime and I'm starving, but there's still more cute to come.

[00:08:46]What?

[00:08:48]I can't believe this is edible, but guess what? [music] Oh, it is.

[00:08:54]I'm so [music] hungry, this is going down the hatch right now.

[00:08:57]Hello Kitty is delicious.

[00:08:59]Kawaii.

[00:09:00]Kawaii. Aw.

[00:09:03]But what is it about this cat with no mouth that's inspired [music] such extreme devotion from fans, not just in Japan, but around the world? The woman behind the cat and Sanrio's chief designer, Ms. Yuko Yamaguchi, has all the answers I need.

[00:09:53]>> [music] >> I also >> Talk about a kawaii kitty craze. Since taking over as Sanrio's Hello [music] Kitty designer in 1980, Yuko has witnessed the birth of no fewer than 50,000 Hello Kitty products in all shapes, [music] forms, and sizes.

[00:10:20]>> [music] >> Can you teach me how to draw Hello Kitty?

[00:10:27]Hi. Hi. Hi.

[00:10:36]I'm going to draw Hello Kitty.

[00:10:58]>> [laughter] >> Yamaguchi-san told me that normally people create Hello Kitty in their own image, and this is her Hello Kitty, and it's cute as a button. It's got big eyes, it's got flowers and a bow, and of course, this is my Hello Kitty, and it's kind of disheveled and dumpy, and he's wearing a tie and blue collar looking. I don't know what that says about my self-image.

[00:11:23]>> [music] >> Just like Hello Kitty and all her friends, Japan's true big creatures are sneakily taking over the land.

[00:11:28]>> [music] >> It's almost like an alien invasion, but a lot cuter.

[00:11:33]What really intrigues [music] me is that these little fellows can be linked back to yokai, or Japanese monsters. Not something you would [music] ordinarily find cute.

[00:11:42]Matt Alt is an expert on the kawaii obsession, having co-written Hello [music] Please, a guide to Japan's super kawaii characters, and Yokai Attack, the Japanese [music] monster survival guide.

[00:11:53]If anyone can tell me about kawaii's role in monster [music] history, it's Matt.

[00:11:57]What is this stuff here that you were talking about? This is Well, this is what we're looking at right here are pictures of yokai, and these are creatures from Japanese folklore.

[00:12:06]There's so many different kinds. Some are dangerous, some are scary, they just like to scare people, but they don't hurt them, and some of them are actually helpful. Japan has a really strong character culture, right? They're very good at making all sorts of different characters, from anime characters, and video game characters, and fairy tale characters like this. Why are Japanese so good at that? I personally feel there's kind of a three-part formula.

[00:12:27]Number one, they have this really long storytelling tradition, okay? There's like a book, Genji Monogatari, The Tale of Genji. It's considered the world's first novel, was written like a thousand years ago. The second thing is they have this belief in animism, okay? Animism is the belief that spirits can inhabit any kind of object. And number three is Japan has this really strong craftsmanship ethic. You can see this in the way that temples and shrines are built and things like that.

[00:12:54]Now, if you synthesize storytelling and this kind of concept that anything can have a spirit in it, and this craftsmanship together, you get the kind of building blocks for character culture.

[00:13:05]The descendants of Japan's traditional monsters are the cute character mascots you see everywhere today.

[00:13:11]Matt tells me that there's nothing in Japan that can't manifest itself in some kawaii form or other.

[00:13:18]Cute is not necessarily [music] associated with girls or babies or anything like that. Like you would never imagine the American [music] military having like a super cute character as their mascot, right? But in Japan, they do have a cute character as their mascot. His name is Prince Pickles, and here's his girlfriend.

[00:13:35]>> Oh, he's got a girlfriend? Miss Parsley.

[00:13:37]The Japanese military isn't supposed [music] to be the main focus of Japanese culture. So, they're kind of playing a great role on the sidelines, just like Parsley and Pickles do on their >> [laughter] >> Or at least so this is what I've been told.

[00:13:50]So, here we are out in the street, and look at what we have.

[00:13:54]And this is kind of a problem, you know, people throwing out their garbage randomly on the street, [music] and look, we use cute characters to kind of shame offenders into changing their ways. If you just had this, and it just said, "Don't throw garbage away," people would just start ignoring it. But because [music] there's cute characters here on the sign, it kind of pulls your attention, it pulls your eyes toward it.

[00:14:13]You see what I'm saying? This is the police mascot. This is the police This is the police mascot. How ironic that the police would rip off their mascot from the old Flintstones cartoons. This actually [music] is put up here because this house is one of those places where a kid can go if they're if, you know, [music] they have some they feel like they're being followed or having some kind of problem, they can they know that when they see the sign, they can ring the doorbell here.

[00:14:31]>> [music] >> You know, it's just just walking down the street, some random suburb in in Japan, and everywhere [music] there there's these kawaii characters. Hey, guess what? New character! New character! Look at this. Look at this.

[00:14:44]This Mr. [music] Key is reminding you to lock up your house when you leave, because sometimes there are break-ins.

[00:14:51]So, they use Mr. Key here to kind of get it through their minds, right? To kind of once again pull your attention to it. Some people do feel that kawaii is a form of escapism. They think [music] that it's kind of infantilization, right? They think that it's kind of a regression. I personally don't believe that. You see this prize everywhere, everywhere. And I think maybe Japanese culture is a little bit more open about it than others, perhaps.

[00:15:15]Big eyes, got cuddly body. It really hearkens back to babies, [music] you know? And the reason babies look the way they do is to kind of stimulate a response in adults [music] to take care of them.

[00:15:25]And kawaii characters do kind of the same thing in everyday life.

[00:15:29]Now, if just looking at cute character mascots isn't enough for you, you can actually [music] become a cute character mascot.

[00:15:38]And that's exactly what I'm going to do here at the Choco Group, >> [music] >> a school that trains people to be character mascots.

[00:15:44]My instructor is Miss Ohira Choco. She used to be a professional mascot on a popular children's TV show, so she's really got the hang of all this.

[00:15:53]Oh my god.

[00:15:55]Oh, Jesus. If you want to be cute, you got to practice.

[00:16:20]>> [music] >> Getting under the skin of these cute character mascots is hard work. My head's too big.

[00:16:28]Oh, there we go.

[00:16:30]But I think I'm getting the hang of it.

[00:16:33]Have you ever knocked over a child?

[00:16:35]I'm pretty sure I would knock over a kid if I had to I feel like if there were children all around me, I would just like step on them, like not see them, just like bump Yeah, by accident, you know?

[00:17:07]>> [music] >> Ready for action.

[00:17:13]Well, this is it. Time to get out there and see if I can cut it as a kawaii character mascot out in the field.

[00:17:23]Is this a fan?

[00:17:24]Would you like to be a humorous mascot?

[00:17:29]Greetings, citizen.

[00:17:30]>> [music] >> I am Kawaii-tron 4000.

[00:17:33]Would you like to be a humorous mascot?

[00:17:36]Mhm.

[00:17:37]At Choco Group, we can train you to be a humorous mascot.

[00:17:40]>> Uh-huh. Would you like information, citizen? Yes, please.

[00:17:45]You can see we [music] have very generous group discounts.

[00:17:48]>> I see. Can I have that back? Yes.

[00:17:51]Kawaii-tron 4000 [music] only has one information sheet.

[00:17:54]>> see.

[00:17:55]Thank you, citizen.

[00:18:00]Of course, being a mascot isn't just all talk and no action.

[00:18:06]And sometimes, the action comes when you least expect it.

[00:18:18]I'm free.

[00:18:19]It is hard work being cute.

[00:18:22]Ah, aside from the fact that I think my nose is too big, it got stuck in the helmet. Helmet out of my mask. I don't know how these guys do it, man.

[00:18:32]Are they sweating? Or is it just me? I'm sweating like a pig.

[00:18:36]>> [music] >> Over the years, a dark side of the kawaii phenomenon has emerged in Japan, where cute and kawaii looking girls are treated as sexual objects.

[00:18:49]Fueled partly by demand for ero kawaii, or erotic kawaii, this has become especially prominent in the trend called enjo kosai, whereby females, often schoolgirls, are compensated with money or luxury gifts in exchange for going on dates with older men.

[00:19:06]When did you become an enjo kosai?

[00:19:13]Is that very young for someone to become enjo kosai?

[00:19:24]Were you recruited into the job?

[00:19:26]>> [music] [music] >> So, that's why you do the job, just for the money?

[00:19:41]>> [music] >> How much money do you get from your job per Is it per day?

[00:19:51]And it's only And it's only dinner? You You never have to do anything else? Just for dinner?

[00:20:06]Do you think kawaii or being cute means something different to girls than it than it does to to men?

[00:20:28]Females are considered [music] the main driving force behind Japan's kawaii culture, but guys have picked up on it, too.

[00:20:35]This is visual men style, and this is when guys dress more on the effeminate tip. And this is auto men, and this is when guys [music] full-on cross-dress.

[00:20:47]Now, the distinction between this and this is blurry, even for Japanese people.

[00:20:53]And it's blurry for me, also.

[00:20:56]Auto men are guys who have transformed themselves into pretty girls and take kawaii to the extreme.

[00:21:03]But for comedian Yacoun Sakurazuka and his visual men band, becoming kawaii is all in a day's work.

[00:21:27]Yacoun shot to fame with his comedy act as a delinquent school girl and is now set to make waves with the world's first-ever cross-dressing kawaii band.

[00:21:58]>> [screaming] [music] >> What would you do to help me look more kawaii?

[00:22:28]>> [groaning] >> Kind of save it.

[00:22:31]I have to shave my eyebrows.

[00:22:35]>> [music] >> You can do plastic surgery on my jaw.

[00:22:44]Good. And then I'll be kawaii.

[00:22:46]>> [music] >> Do you see yourself being a an auto man 10 or 20 years from now?

[00:22:52]>> [music] >> Why would you quit if you have a wife and kid?

[00:23:07]>> [music] >> And just when I think I've had more than my fill of cuteness, I realize that for the Japanese, there really is no such thing as too much kawaii.

[00:23:17]>> [music] >> The spirit of kawaii truly goes beyond products and fads. It's the way many Japanese see the world and themselves.

[00:23:25]And it's so much a part of their identity that it will remain that way for a long time to come.

[00:23:32]Why do people love kawaii? [music] What do you think?

[00:23:38]Dig deep, man.

[00:23:39]Come on, give me something. It's so hard to work with you.

[00:23:42]Cut.

[00:23:43]Ah.

[00:23:44]Like this?

[00:23:52]Yeah.

[00:23:54]>> [music] >> Ready to rock.