Chaos, Kawaii, and Cultural Memory

The gallery arts of Masami Teraoka or Takashi Murakami and the popular media of manga or Sanrio Corporation's Hello Kitty are celebrated for their ethos of inventive play, innovation, and novelty, and their immediate significance within their own worlds. Their sense of "newness" and provocations of discomfort or "kawaii" cuteness as aesthetic sensibility or social phenomenon fuel their popularity. But these frameworks have developed within a broader fabric of conventional practices. Each draws heavily on fertile precedent in earlier cultural stock. Each builds on practices, sensibilities and aesthetic tropes in ways that fuel reinvention while maintaining pictorial traditions and cultural sensibilities. In one sense, this phenomenon has practical implications for understanding learning and professional practice in these fields and for generating insights into the creative process in the visual arts. In another, it serves to sustain something of a "cultural memory" of significant values for making sense of aesthetic worlds and experiences. This paper explores the ways this interface between past and present informs the maintenance of persistent themes and appreciations in contemporary Japanese engagements in the visual arts.