Cute isn t a country, but it now has three ambassadors. Dressed in a plaid miniskirt, a polka-dot shirt and a pink Victorian dress, three young women named Japan s ambassadors of cute made their debut at the Japanese Foreign Ministry this month and are about to embark on a mission to spread Japan s smorgasbord of fashion culture to the world. They will lecture on Japanese fashion at international events, including an anime and fashion expo in Bangkok this month and a cultural convention in Paris in July. To reinforce their cuteness, two pink hearts float next to the girls official titles on government releases. Japan is trying to raise its international profile by promoting pop culture forms that have crossed over to young people in Europe, Asia and the United States. Japan s anime cartoons, famous for their big-eyed, often childlike characters, and manga comic books - which have helped spur the boom in graphic novels - have become hugely popular overseas, along with Japanese-produced video games. Last May, the Hello Kitty cartoon character became Japan s tourism ambassador and a cartoon cat, Doraemon, was named the anime ambassador a few months before that. All represent an effort by the Foreign Ministry to advertise Japanese culture in a positive manner. It decided to add on ambassadors of cute because the concept of cuteness is at the core of much of this country s most popular youth fads and resonates with young people elsewhere. The new cuteness posts were created after Takamasa Sakurai, an unofficial adviser to the ministry, traveled to European cities where he saw young women wearing Japanese fashions, including the Lolita style - which mimics the fashion of a Victorian-era doll - and variations on Japanese school uniforms. I was surprised to meet young ladies in Barcelona wearing school uniforms, Sakurai said at a news conference Thursday. They told me that wearing school uniforms expresses the freedom of Japan. For most Japanese girls, wearing school uniforms is mandatory, but many have made an art out of expressing their individuality by modifying their look while remaining within school codes. Designers take that farther, and create sometimes outlandish outfits based on a basic uniform motif. For ambassador Shizuka Fujioka, a 19-year-old clothing coordinator for a school-uniform store, the ugliness of her high school s uniform spurred her to market new designs to be worn by girls and women as a fashion statement, not as a school requirement. As long as you have this feeling and this urge to wear cute uniforms, then you can wear them, she said, wearing a floppy pink bow tie under her jacket. Ambassador Misako Aoki, a model wearing an elaborate pink dress, glittering pink shoes and a pink bow in her dyed-red hair to represent the Lolita fashion, said girls should feel comfortable wearing cute clothing from childhood to when you grow up as a grandmother. Age doesn t matter, she said.
