A machine readable dictionary for precise and subtle kansei meaning

A case study of kawaii (cutism) in Japanese and Chinese

Abstract

An ontology formalization provides an effective way to describe precise and subtle meaning of words in an explicit manner. Kawaii (cutism) is one of the words that require careful analysis because of its omnipresent appearance in modern Japanese life. We employed a comparative analysis of Japanese and Chinese kawaii to determine the universal and idiosyncratic components of the word meaning.