Thank you Adam Tschorn! xxxx
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With summer in full swing, the beach is beckoning, the hammock is hovering and the lawn chair looks like the long-lost lap of luxury. If downtime means picking up a good book, we've compiled a list of some recent fashion-focused books and breezy reads to help you kick back in style.
"Kawaii! Japan's Culture of Cute" by Manami Okazaki and Geoff Johnson (Prestel, April 2013, $24.95)
By Adam Tschorn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
This photo-driven, soft-cover book does two things. First, it tries to trace the Japanese pop-culture preoccupation with all things cute (the word "kawaii"," the book says, roughly translates as "cute") back to its roots, a primordial petri dish that includes influences from Japan's Taisho era, post World War II manga, and1970s-era schoolgirls from which the likes of Hello Kitty, Sailor Moon, Gloomy Bear and their brightly colored compatriots would eventually emerge.
From there, the book takes a rainbow-hued, saccharine-sweet fun run through myriad modern manifestations of kawaii in the categories of foodstuffs, fashion, handicrafts and the visual arts.
The book's short Q-and-A pieces with manga artists of old (Eico Hanamura, whose career dates to 1959, and Macoto Takahashi, who began in 1957) and new (Simone Legno of Tokidoki) help put the movement in context. But it's the latter pages that manage to convey the sheer joy of endless childhood – the fever dream swirl of SpongeBob Squarepants bento boxes, smiling Elmo rice balls, maid cafes, smiling kitten manicures and Harajuku fashion.
