THIS COULD BE THE START OF SOMETHIN' WEIRD

Hey, I love cute as much as the next guy. Well, maybe not THAT guy, he's registered, but you know what I mean. Cute has its place. Mainly in little kids, teddy bears, baby animals, tiny birdies and - in a tempered way - rational young men and women of higher school age. Cute is fine and good as long as it doesn't become manic, or malignant, or require exorcism. This seems as though it might be all three.

Internationally speaking, things could hardly get any weirder right now, but Japan is going to give it a try, in the ancient Japanese tradition of East-meets-Westness. There's no danger of things getting any shallower.

I doubt if there's a country in the world that hasn't had an ambassadorial embarrassment now and then - to say nothing of electoral disaster - but I don't recall any country actually risking so much on the face of it, other than when Japan tried Doraemon as its anime ambassador at about this time last year, or when a couple months later Hello Kitty gave it a treacly try, efforts that cutely vortexed into ambassadorial black holes from which no later information escaped, a blessing of sorts.

But now, in a continuing advance into whichever cultural depression we're entering at the moment, the Land of the [insert desired verb here] Sun is sending out as its envoys of cuteness three young women who patently do not wish to be other than obsessively formuletically derivativo-permutations of notness regarding whoever they actually are, or might once have been going to be... this gets confusing... Is, like, really cute Japan going, like, anywhere cute?

"We want people abroad to know these kinds of people exist in Japan and to feel close to them."

Damn. I'm beginning to feel cute again. I thought I was over that.

--Some thoughts on the shifting perception
of female beauty in Japanese art
(w/thanks to Delwyn)

AMBASSADORIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Recently, Japan as an anciently cultured nation has been taking firm steps forward onto the world stage, having named Doraemon its anime ambassador; now they've gone even further, and are teetering above the orchestra pit.

The monoexpressive Hello Kitty, who got her start on a plastic coin purse back in 1974 and brought the blissfully Hello-Kittyless world to a screeching halt, will soon be named the nation's newest Tourism Ambassador, presumably so as to demonstrate to all the world whatever it is about Japan that is cutely monotonous.

As a result (in case you want to head for the wilderness a bit early), HK will be even more ubiquitous than the everywhere we once knew, though why beholding this emotionless countenance would inspire anyone to visit Japan is beyond my Kitty-weakened powers of understanding (HK has a kryptonite-like effect on certain areas of perception).

But there is a plus here: unlike the other noisemakers representing Japan (Ishihara et al.), HK is mouthless. An ambassador who can't say a single word has gotta be a plus.

Wonder if a life-sized Hello Kitty with biometric scanner nose will scan tourists' faces and take their full set of fingerprints at the airport...