Kawaii In 'The Tale Of Genji'

To understand how the world kawaii come to be, one must go back to 794-1185 AD. In a work called “The Tale of Genji” the word kawayushi first appeared. In that time, that word meant ‘pity’ and a the word utsukushi meant ‘cute’. Over time, the two words morphed into something new. Kawayushi turned into kawayui and meant ‘cute’ where as utsukushi turned into utsukushii and meant ‘beautiful.’ In the 1960’s-1970’s the ‘yu’ sound was dropped from kawayui and turned into an extra i sound forming kawaii. At the time that this new word was formed, Japanese school girls began to commonly use mechanical pencils. Styles of writing such as koneko ji (kitten writing) became popular as school girls began adding animals and symbols into their sentences (Cheok).