Monthly Archives: September 2021

Staff at Hello Kittys Kawaii Paradise in Tokyo pose for a photo. Photo: STR/AFP (Getty Images)

Kawaii. You hear it in anime, you hear it on TV shows, and you hear it on the streets of Japan, where the word is spoken by young and old alike. With people around the world growing up on Japanese popular culture, the word has also entered the international zeitgeist. But what does kawaii actually mean?

In Japanese, the word literally means acceptable for affection or possible to love and has been translated as meaning cute, adorable, sweet, precious, pretty, endearing, darling, and even little. Its use varies in Japanese and can refer to babies, puppies, young people, clothing, and even senior citizens. In Japanese, one might refer to ones own grandma as kawaii, even if shes not decked out in pink bows and a frilly dress.

In comparison with the word utsukushiimeaning beautiful or lovelythe word kawaii is more playful. Things can be kimokawaii (creepy cute), busukawaii (ugly cute), or erokawaii (sexy cute). Kawaii is versatile and fun, while utsukushii has the burden of beauty. Its also entered the English language. The nuance might be slightly different, but the Collins English Dictionary defines it as the following:

adjective1. denoting a Japanese artistic and cultural style that emphasizes the quality of cuteness, using bright colours and characters with a childlike appearancenoun2. (in Japanese art and culture) the quality of being lovable or cute

If you translate kawaii into English, its cute, but kawaii is much more emotional than cute, Tokyo fashion mogul Sebastian Masuda, hailed as the Godfather of Kawaii, told me over a decade ago. The clothing designer has been a central player in the contemporary kawaii fashion movement with his Harajuku clothing shop 6% Doki Doki, which launched in 1995. But contemporary kawaii culture started long before.

During the 1970s, Japan underwent a kawaii boom that seems, at times, to have never stopped. While the word was certainly used prior, it was then that kawaii became commodified at a scale like never before. Students carried bags emblazoned with Snoopy, a character still referred to as kawaii in Japanese, while Sanrio released a small coin purse covered with the now iconic epitome of kawaii, Hello Kitty. While the feline characters design might have had a whiff of Dick Brunas Miffy, the coin purse was a hit. Cute stationary was also popular, and young women wrote in round characters because they were softer and more gentle than the typical ones. Simply put, they were just cuter.

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Kawaii culture wasnt only crystallizing at that time, but also becoming big business. The 1980s were more than happy to follow suit, ushering in a plethora of cutesy idols, both male and female. Young women even started speaking in childlike tones, and anime recycled that style of speaking to mass audiences. During the 1990s and 2000s, kawaii continued its climb, with fashion becoming louder and more colorful. Yet, in Japan, the words original usage remained. It referred not only to saccharine pop idols, but also to all sorts of things, from birds to cakes, and even to the Japanese royal family.

Donuts dont need cat ears and chocolate ribbons to be kawaii, but all that certainly does help. Photo: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP (Getty Images)

Over the past several decades, contemporary Japanese culture has spread globally through video games, anime, pop music and fashion. Japanese sensibilities, minus context, filter through, bringing new ideas and words. The non-Japanese-speaking worlds encounter with kawaii is through colorful, hyper-cute fashion or art, and not through babies, puppies, and adorable grannies. The pink-pastel, covered-in-bows kawaii becomes the first definition and the default meaning. All the other meanings and uses fall by the wayside, and the word often takes on concentrated nuances. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the word might have a more exact meaning in its borrowed state. Knowing the original usage, however, can offer perspective on the culture from which the word was imported.

Japanese, like English, has long embraced foreign words. In Japanese, foreign words have been added to the lexicon for well over a thousand years. In the 5th century, written language from China was first introduced to Japan via Korea. For hundreds of years, Portuguese, Dutch, English and German words, among others, have all worked their way into the Japanese language for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they express concepts that didnt previously exist in Japanese, and other times these loan words are just easier to say. The Japanese word shinryou kiroku (), for example, means medical record, but the much shorter, widely usedkarute from the German word karte is less of a mouthful.

Kimura U from Japan participated in the Tokyo Crazy Kawaii Paris Fair.Photo: FRED DUFOUR/AFP (Getty Images)

Other times, words might be imported to make the language more expressive. The Japanese word kakkoii is already often likened to the English word cool, but the language has also imported the English term. Having the choice to use either kakkoii or kuuru (cool) can let the speaker give different connotations. The way foreign words are incorporated into Japanese is endlessly fascinatingjust listen to Japanese music. I heard a neighborhood kid the other day here in Osaka repeatedly use the word dope ( or doopu), as in cool, in Japanese while speaking with his friends.

Likewise, English also has no shortage of loan words from loads of languages, including those from Japanese, such as bokeh, onigiri, emoji, kaizen, futon, tycoon and yes, kawaii. Languages are not static, and loan words continuously help them evolve and stay vibrant.

Thinking about the meaning of kawaii, Im reminded of how Masuda has long pushed for kawaii fashion to be an inclusive means of expression and a way to bring the world together. If I can help people recognize the kawaii spirit in others, acknowledge this inquisitiveness, then I think I can create better relationships and a better world, he previously told The Straits Times. Now, perhaps thats the true meaning of kawaii.

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The Meaning Of Kawaii - Kotaku

Landmark anniversaries of major events are a good excuse to look back and consider What Weve Learned in the intervening time. Doing so with September 11 is a dismal venture. The tragedy, which conclusively demonstrated that history had not in fact ended, ushered in a still-ongoing era of widespread paranoia; racism and Islamophobia; an ever-tightening security state; and endless invasions, raids, and other military interventions in West Asia and Africa. In the United States, we are often sternly reminded to never forget, as if that were even possible. In a harrowingly brief amount of time, starting on that Tuesday morning, the entire political and social structure of this country reoriented to revolve around this one episode. Over the 20 years since 9/11, the media has of course played a crucial role in this.

The documentary-industrial complex produces films to go along with any event as a matter of course, with the volume of titles generally corresponding to the perceived importance of each one. This is a system that aims to satisfy audiences desire to understand difficult subjects please bear in mind that this does not necessarily entail informing them well, and it of course has no obligation to produce movies that are, you know, good. Just keeping to the realm of War on Terror-related film, there have been a lot of bad Iraq War docs and a lot of bad Afghanistan invasion docs. But even accounting for the usual weight of worthwhile vs. sloppy work made on a given topic, the sheer number of spiritually vacuous and cynical films about 9/11 is intimidating.

A whole genre has sprung up around basic cable channels producing films dedicated to increasingly narrow aspects of the attacks. Want an excruciatingly detailed play-by-play of that morning? Try this doc, or this one, or this one. Want to learn about the behind-the-scenes politicking that went into the cleanup and rebuilding process after the attacks? Theres a doc for that. Want to know about the hotel at the World Trade Center that was destroyed? Theres a doc for that! The specificity can sometimes approach the absurd theres a movie about people who by chance missed being on just one of the planes used in the attack. Theres a movie about the ironworkers at Ground Zero. One of the recent 20th-anniversary films looks at the state of comedy in the wake of the attacks, of all things.

Each one of these forgettable, disposable titles feels lightweight enough on its own, but their cumulative effect has been potent, particularly since theyve been released over these last two decades as part of the wider media push for a morbid collective obsession with every aspect of the attacks. The gruesome September 11 Museum is also part of this trend. The Tribute in Light didnt start out that way, but thats what its become. The ceaseless mass destruction weve seen in Hollywood blockbusters is another manifestation of it. The pervasive message, explicit or not, is that Americans mustnt think critically that there was no context for that day beyond There are bad people out there who hate us for our freedoms, to see ourselves as under constant assault so as to justify a constant assault on our designated enemies (most of whom had nothing to do with the attack).

Against these mainstream narratives, the internet age has fostered a healthy ecosystem of oppositional films, just as its aided the rise of conspiratorial theorizing more broadly. The most famous work of the 9/11 Truther movement is of course Loose Change, a continually recut film alleging that the attacks were an elaborate false flag operation (the details shift somewhat from one version to the next). That video is a touchstone not just for trutherism but also for contemporary conspiracy theory culture. (And, oddly enough, for independent filmmaking; it was one of the first longform YouTube hits.) Another influential pillar in this genre is the Zeitgeist trilogy, in which alternative explanations for 9/11 loom large. This trend is worrisome, to be sure, but blaming DIY viral video makers for present problems around fake news is erroneous.

Culture is at best a copilot to societys directions, not a leader. The truly influential documentary work around 9/11 has always come straight from our institutions. The most widely seen films about that day were not made by any YouTube conspiracy alleger. Its the footage that played and continues to play on the news. Again and again. And again. And again. Forever. Far beyond the point of traumatizing for its audience. Having more than made sure wed never forget, this material went on to simply numb us. And then the government had a case to make that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but for some reason thats not often cited as an example of a damaging conspiracy theory. Perhaps thats because, rather than try to debunk it, the media was fully complicit in selling it.

There have been a few documentaries that have tried to work outside this paradigm. Rebirth (2011) is a simple but effective film which continually revisits a handful of people who either survived the attacks or lost loved ones that day over the course of 10 years, illuminating their healing process. This year, Spike Lee explored how New Yorkers were impacted both by 9/11 and more recently by the COVID-19 pandemic with NYC Epicenters 9/11-> 2021. Though its been marred by its own controversy around conspiracy theories, Lees eye for capturing street-level humanism remains unerring. That there are comparatively so few movies about people and so many which fixate on monumental images of pain or varying degrees of nationalism speaks to how thoroughly never forget has been twisted these past 20 years.

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20 Years After the September 11th Attacks, What Does Never Forget Mean? - Hyperallergic

The strength with which Salt-N-Pepa delivered messages on Blacks' Magic "gave a lonely Wyoming girl a blueprint for a confidence I didn't inherently possess," writes Julianne Escobedo Shepherd. Photo Illustration by Renee Klahr/NPR; Getty Images; Courtesy of Next Plateau Records hide caption

The strength with which Salt-N-Pepa delivered messages on Blacks' Magic "gave a lonely Wyoming girl a blueprint for a confidence I didn't inherently possess," writes Julianne Escobedo Shepherd.

NPR Music's Turning the Tables is a project envisioned to challenge sexist and exclusionary conversations about musical greatness. Up until now we have focused on overturning conventional, patriarchal best-of lists and histories of popular music. But this time, it's personal. For 2021, we're digging into our own relationships to the records we love, asking: How do we know as listeners when a piece of music is important to us? How do we break free of institutional pressures on our taste while still taking the lessons of history into account? What does it mean to make a truly personal canon? The essays in this series will excavate our unique relationships with the albums we love, from unimpeachable classics by major stars to subcultural gamechangers and personal revelations. Because the way that certain music comes to hold a central place in our lives isn't just a reflection of how we develop our taste, but how we come to our perspective on the world.

I don't remember the specific choreography I invented for "Expression," the first single off Salt-N-Pepa's third and nearly perfect album Blacks' Magic, but given the era '89, '90 I am certain it was big, full-bodied and probably involved the Running Man. There is no record of this, as I was a bedroom-confined tween imagining music videos on a stage of cream-colored carpet, my audience a doe-eyed Maltese Terrier my mom and I called Chip. But I know I was dancing to match the mic attack of Cheryl "Salt" James and Sandra "Pepa" Denton, who, along with their compatriot DJ Deidra "Spinderella" Roper, had blasted their way into the American consciousness a few years prior with the indelible and ubiquitous "Push It," gold doorknocker earrings and shiny spandex catsuits in tow. They were pop but they were hard, exemplifying the false equivalence between "femininity" and "softness," and putting down classic MC bluster over beats meant for the dancefloor. Or the tween bedroom floor. The patina of Blacks' Magic, and specifically the strength in which Salt-N-Pepa delivered their many messages on it, gave a lonely Mexican Wyoming girl a blueprint for a confidence I didn't inherently possess.

As a kid, I simply adored Salt-N-Pepa, superstars to the hilt: their self-certain voices, their jaunty dance moves, their bright leather bomber jackets. "Push It" was always on the radio, an ambient memory of an era that imprinted itself on my brain, but my favorite early track of theirs was the A-side, "Tramp." I first heard it in a dance class circa 1987 at the Masonic Temple in Cheyenne, in a building with a dusty burnished wood staircase which seemed glamorous enough that I believed I was being set up for a future as a child back-up dancer for Janet Jackson. (Because you are reading this, it seems fairly clear that I was not.) Contrary to my favorite album Control, though, "Tramp" and its bassline, sampled from Otis Redding and Carla Thomas but whittled way down, blew my 10-year-old brain wide open. It wasn't the first hip-hop track I ever heard that might have been Kurtis Blow's "Basketball" or something from the movie Breakin' but it's the first memory I have of the rush of hearing an avant-garde sound from what I assumed was space, mesmerizing and disorienting as I tried to perform jets and the Smurf across the floor. I wanted to hear what these women were saying, to understand the mystery of what the lyrics meant. Too young to truly comprehend a song about snaky male libido, I settled on hypnosis, fixated on their unison timbres and the unflinching chorus, a single word: TRRRAMP.

By Blacks' Magic, though, I was old enough to get it, and so it blew open my brain in a different way. The tracks hit a zeitgeist moment that not only examined the intersections of Black women's pride ("Negro Wit' an Ego," "Blacks' Magic") and predicted the sexual agency that women would increasingly demand throughout the 1990s ("Do You Want Me"), but also helped demystify the terror that was the AIDS crisis ("Let's Talk About Sex"/"Let's Talk About AIDS"). At that young age, too, the album embedded a keen sense of sexism long before I knew there was a term for it, through simple, biting lines that got me thinking about how women, especially Black women, had to prove themselves doubly: "I'm not the man, but I wear the britches" ("You Showed Me"), "Spinderella / She's not a fella but she's a pro ("Doper Than Dope"), and on "Negro Wit An Ego," a full stanza on being pulled over by the cops for driving while Black:

Behind the wheel of this car, it must be narcoticsHow else could she have got it?A brown-skinned female with two problems to correctWrong color, wrong sex

I played the cassette over and over in my bedroom, choreographing my little dances to the whole of it while absorbing its message by osmosis.

Even the creation of Blacks' Magic was an instructional blueprint for striking out on one's own path without a male appendage: By that point, Salt, Pepa and Spinderella had grown weary of producer Hurby "Luv Bug" Azor's thumb on their careers (they would later accuse him of bilking their royalties), and the ebullient "Expression" was the first song that Salt ever wrote and produced for the group. Her writing bookends the album: If "Expression" is a bold statement painting Salt-N-Pepa's inclusive, open approach to individuality, then outro "Independent" states plain their desire to break free, not just from Luv Bug but from the stereotypes put upon Black women in the waning years of the 20th century. "Independent" is largely a statement of financial self-reliance in the context of romantic relationships, but it's also hard not to read some frustration with Luv Bug in biting bars such as this one, from Salt, who had dated him:

Ya had to cross me, and now you lost meGet off me softy, I'm the boss, see?You can't disguise the lies in your eyes, you're not a heartbreakerYou're a fraud, and I'm bored, you're a fake fakerIt's too late to debate with the moneymakerAfter while, crackhead, see ya later, gator

They were a group of superstars at the precipice of full control over their futures and simultaneously, though likely not by coincidence, making their best work yet. "Expression" remains one of their most impactful tracks to me, if only for the presence of Pepa's iconic bar, which remains a kind of lifelong mantra, rolling like the cassette I had on loop: "Yes, I'm blessed, and I know who I am / I express myself on every jam / I'm not a man, but I'm in command / Hot damn, I got an all-girl band." It was a plainly spoken mission statement that wove itself through the album, in part as a retort to the harder male rappers at the time who sought to disrespect them because they were too pop, a sentiment that also comes through in the hard "Doper Than Dope," where Salt-N-Pepa owned exactly what they were. I don't quite remember how it hit me in the moment, but in later years revisiting the album, I lasered onto that bar like my life depended on it, repeating it in my mind every time a man at work tried, or tries, to undermine or harass me. I still repeat it when I need to amass the courage to speak up or fire back: Yes, I'm blessed. And I know who I am. I express myself on every jam. I'm not a man but I'm in command. Hot damn, I got an all-girl band.

Blacks' Magic became Salt-N-Pepa's second platinum album, and in retrospect, it's remarkable that so much of its character is rooted in pushing back against all sides, considering how successful the group was at the time. But the way the trio bucked their naysayers came from a deep sense of self-respect and reflected the essence of hip-hop itself: resilience in adversity.

When I say now that Salt-N-Pepa taught me the building blocks of what I would eventually recognize as feminism, I don't mean to exaggerate or deploy hyperbole for the sake of an argument. Throughout their careers, the three members have been scions of agency both in hip-hop and across the music industry, their demeanor of strong, streetwise women eventually permeating U.S. culture decades before the current, glorious explosion of famous women rappers. Leading a pack that included Queen Latifah, MC Lyte and Yo-Yo, Salt-N-Pepa cut through the bluster of the male artists of their era, peeling back the motivations of running game on a woman and expressly noting that no one had time for all that. Most mesmerizing, they comported themselves with a bold sense of self-respect, owning their sexuality but with an uncompromising stance. Later, I came to realize that Blacks' Magic shaped my own sense of individuality and self-sufficiency that being a "weird" kid in a conservative state like Wyoming could be a point of pride, and that one day I could and would move to the city that fostered Salt-N-Pepa's perspectives but also that those characteristics are better in numbers, particularly when your creative endeavor is shared in communion with your best girlfriends. Blacks' Magic's confidence and communality strikes me now as the way I relate to feminism, with an emphasis not on the individual but for the benefit of the whole the way Salt and Pepa traded bars equally, shouted out Spinderella at every opportunity and generally presented as a crew bonded by trust and belief in one another. Growing up in a Mexican-American family with three generations of matriarchs who weren't educated about feminism as an American social movement but inherently practiced its tenets on a regular basis, to me this was Blacks' Magic's most formative reinforcement: that it's stronger in numbers, works best as a collective and means you always stand up for your girls.

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is a Xicana writer and editor and the former editor-in-chief of Jezebel. She is currently writing a book about hypermasculinity and the American West.

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Records That Changed Our Lives: Julianne Escobedo Shepherd On Salt-N-Pepa - NPR

From its very creation in 1917 when Louis Cartier made the distinct aesthetic choice of a rectangular shape, as opposed to the round watches of his generation Cartiers Tank watch has been an avant-garde piece, as it continues to be today with the newly-launched Tank Must.

Timeless, sure of itself and of the purity of its design, the Cartier Tank watch captures the zeitgeist of its time. Now, more than a century later, it has been reinvented with the Tank Must. Tank and Must, the fusion of two of the maisons icons: on one hand, Tank, essential and dandy, and on the other, Must, a name immortalised at Cartier in the 1970s that revisits the classic conventions of luxury.

I dont wear a Tank watch to tell the time. Actually, I never even wind it. I wear a Tank because it is the watch to wear!

The Must watches are part of the Maisons heritage and legend. They have withstood the test of time thanks to their instantly recognisable style, but also their excellent craftsmanship, which Cartier applies to all its creations right down to the smallest detail, says Pierre Rainero, Director of Image, Style and Heritage at Cartier.

Taking direct inspiration from the Tank Louis Cartier, the design of the Tank Must has been developed while staying faithful to the historic model. Rounded brancards, revisited dial proportions finesse is the guiding force behind this new design. Tank Must is a watch that dares to return to great classicism down to the smallest detail, with a precious pearled cabochon winding crown and the return of a traditional ardillon buckle on the leather strap version. Cartiers Design Studio has reworked the design of the new iteration with monochrome versions and an original version based on a new photovoltaic movement.

This watchmaking classic oozes sophistication on every level, from its steel strap with curved links, entirely redesigned and interchangeable, to the latest high-efficiency quartz movement.

Since the very beginning, Cartiers watchmaking ambition has been to constantly strive to improve, relying on technical progress as well as the maisons response and commitments to the environment and biodiversity. Pioneering since the invention of the first timepiece worn on the wrist with the Santos watch (1904), or the one with the folding buckle (1910), Cartier Watchmaking has always been committed to anticipating its clients needs. Whether its the QuickSwitch patent (2018), which allows straps to be interchanged at home, or the latest photovoltaic dial found on the Tank Must watch, a modern alternative with a quartz movement with no need to change the batteries, the approach is the same: improve the lives, and satisfaction, of Cartiers clients.

The challenge lies in applying a new technique to the watchs aesthetic and shape every time, finding a confluence between modernity and watchmaking tradition, a challenge and commitment crystallised by the Cartier Manufacture at La Chaux-de-Fonds. More than simply a production site, the Manufacture is a research hub, a creative and innovative laboratory that has succeeded in applying the photovoltaic principle to the Tank watchs dial, without altering its aesthetic.

It took two years for the development team to integrate the new SolarBeat movement, with a lifespan of over 16 years, into the Tank Must, the first watch to benefit from this technology.

This pioneering watch also introduces a bracelet produced in an innovative material that guarantees a high level of both quality and comfort. It is composed of around 40 percent plant matter, produced using waste from apples grown for the food industry in Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

The production procedure represents a step forward in preserving the environment by reducing our carbon footprint (six times less), saving water (up to 10 litres) and energy (up to seven megajoules, or approximately 80 smartphone charges) compared to the manufacture of a calfskin strap.

Loyal to its reputation as an avant-garde timepiece, the Tank watch hasnt quite finished telling us what it has to say. Its creativity is limitless. Once again with the Tank Must, Cartier dares to make its timepieces evolve with the times while looking towards the future.

To celebrate the launch of these new Cartier Tank interpretations in 2021, the maison is offering a complementary maintenance and repair service to any owner of this watch, regardless of the year it was created. All these creations are eligible for the Cartier Care programme, which provides access to exclusive services including, under certain conditions, extending their international guarantee for up to eight years. Furthermore, a personalisation service is available subject to technical feasibility.

For more information, visit Cartier or or the Line official account @CartierTH

This story first appeared in the September 2021 issue of Prestige Thailand.

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Tank Must: When the Iconic Cartier Tank Gets a Revamp - Prestige Online