Chiisaki mono wa mina utsukushi (All small things are kawaii)―.
In Makura no soshi (The Pillow Book), SEI Shonagon wrote that all small things are kawaii. I think it is very important to note that in ancient Japanese, the word utsukushi had the meaning of kawaii rather than “beautiful”, which is a more likely translation for the word utsukushii in modern Japanese. This perhaps points to one of the origins of the Japanese sense of beauty. We tend to find beauty not in things that overwhelm us or make us tense, but in things that make our minds relax.

In the case of continental civilisations such as Europe and China, the standard of beauty is “how magnificent” or “how balanced and immaculate”, but the Japanese, living in a small island country, may well have developed a different sense of beauty.
Yet even in Japan, there seems to have been a cultural consensus (at least until the 20th Century) that the main culture is authoritative, and that kawaii things should be perceived as subcultures.

In the world of pottery, in which I am involved professionally, kawaii forms have been treated as minor. However, since about 20 years ago, the direction of the wind seems to have gradually changed, and I feel that there is an increase in the number of “full-blown” makers who take the concept of kawaii seriously.
For example, when I saw DOI Tomoko’s glass works for the first time, I was surprised by her unique style incorporating both craft and graphic techniques, as well as her extensive knowledge of chemistry to maximise those techniques and the amount of passion she puts into each piece.

The Squirrel Cup shown in the image is one of her most popular works, and it is a work that shows her strong will to seriously transform the concept of kawaii into a craft.
Incidentally, Tomoko’s work is also in the collection of a Dutch museum. It seems that “crafting kawaii” is now considered as one of the cultural trends of the 21st Century and is worthy of attention, even in Europe, the home of glass art.

The pre-modern culture of Japan, as an island nation, is sometimes regarded as an isolated civilisation, but in the 21st Century, with the free flow of goods and information, there can be no such thing as an isolated civilisation. The idea of “crafting kawaii” is probably inextricably linked to the “popularisation and globalisation of culture”. Perhaps the time has come for our sense of beauty, which for so long was regarded as our own, to gradually melt into the rest of the world.
The border between main culture and subculture too, seems to be slowly dissolving.