Word: kawaii
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...faded T shirts and cubbyholes stuffed with dark denim jeans remind one of little more than a misplaced garage sale? Here's a clue: amid the jumble of voices filling the shop as the girls paw excitedly through the clothes, one word can be heard again and again: kawaii...
...Kawaii, an adjective usually mistranslated as simply "cute," has become much more than a word. It is a state of mind for Japanese teens, a modifier that means cool, bitchin', groovy, killer and I-love-it all rolled into one, then squared. For a clothing label trying to crack Asia's burgeoning teen fashion industry, business these days boils down to the quest for kawaii. Asian teenagers tend to wear today what Japanese teens wore a few minutes ago. And unlike the fashion industrial complex in the West, in which top designers and magazine editors dictate what's hot, Japan...
...image, however distorted, apparently has wide appeal. Kazuhiro Nakajima, a spokesman for Yamato Mannequin, says his company began manufacturing black mannequins and arranged them in dancing poses after a study found that the design expressed "new sexiness, kawaii ((cuteness)) and fresh energy." Yamato made 100 of the figures before the Foreign Ministry called the firm's attention to a critical article about the mannequins in the Washington Post. The company stopped production. Sanrio Co., the manufacturer of a well-selling line of toys and gift items, followed suit. Its products included large-eyed dolls called Sambo and Hannah, and towels...
...shuffling around the lines for the world's only Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour. A girl in a warm-up jacket that reads IT IS ARGUED THAT DOUBLE SUICIDE IS THE SUBLIME CULMINATION OF LOVE placidly sips melon juice. Nothing disturbs the clean blue air except high tinkling cries of "Kawaii!" (Isn't it cute!) "Look," coos an extravagantly chic young mother to her three-year-old son, dapper in black leather pants, while his leather-jacketed father records the scene on videotape. "Look over there at Mickey...