Japanese Idol Culture & Moral Badness
J-pop idol girl groups are financially sustained by their adult male fanbase. What's the deal.
By my first spring in Japan, I was already used to “otaku” spaces. As a sociology geek I really loved going to (and performing in) idol shows, maid cafes, and all places odd. It was my unofficial non-scientific field research. Outside of professional J-pop idol, housewife, Hollywood actress, and science fiction writer – I’ve always wanted to be a cultural anthropologist the most. I could never seem to understand people and the way they worked.
So nothing really shocked me at this point. I did sex work in Tokyo and I did idol shows by now so I was sure that I saw it all – that was until I did a fashion show. Walking down a small runway in Harajuku seems like the most innocuous compared to grimy one-coin idol shows in Akihabara. You’d think.
The fashion show was for the indie Harajuku brand ACDC Rag. Their clothes fit right in with Harajuku’s colorful reputation. The boutique hosts monthly free fashion shows to promote its adult and children’s line. Like myself, the girls who sported oversized graphic t-shirts and plaid frilly tutus were mostly Western young women who had an interest in Japanese subculture fashion. The child models for the children’s line were about a dozen or so elementary-aged girls ranging from six to ten years old. Backstage I saw them play paddy cake with one another, argue, and ask for juice snacks from the few women handlers that accompanied them.
As the time came for the fashion show, a few of the models peeked outside the backstage area. “Wow! Look at those nerds!” We scoffed in amazement at one another. One by one dozen of adult men trickled into the small store venue and took a seat. Each carried large expensive cameras with an extended professional lens.
Harajuku is a district in Tokyo very popular with teen girls and well known for its alternative funky fashion. There were no young girls in the audience.
As we all walked into the show, very few men took interest in the non-children modeling in the show. Incidentally, one did take a picture of me, most of the interest concentrated on the young children walking. The men occasionally shrieked the name of a young girl in the show, who I assume was each of their favorites. As a long time fan of Japanese idol culture, I knew that “junior” idols were a thing, but was always under the impression that it was an incredibly niche subset of idol fans in Japan. While young girls under the age of thirteen don’t make up a majority of Japan’s idol industry, teenaged girls do. The niche of girls under thirteen is not as niche as Western fans may believe, however.
It’s bizarre to witness in person – a complete reverse of boy band culture where girl children fan out over young adult men.
I had become of Japan’s idol pop groups when I was a little girl myself. The singers were all cute preteen girls and I liked to try and copy their dances. Like many young, Western fans of idol groups it was easy to brush off the large adult male fanbase as a mere cultural difference.
Japan’s idol industry has gotten a shit ton of flack internationally, due to the strict rules imposed on the starletts. Western fans often detract from this criticism by drawing a comparison to America’s Toddler in Tiara style beauty pageants. This comparison isn’t all wrong, dramas like Euphoria pornify American formative years and we all can’t turn away. The difference is, American child pageants don’t have a brazen fandom of thirty year old men and boyfriends pretend to watch Euphoria for the plot. As a former sex worker, I can assure you many Western men have sexual interests that you may consider quite questionable.
So this isn’t, in my humble opinion, a Japanese thing. Rather I believe the brazenness around this…happens in societies where women don’t have much social power. Many J-pop Idol fans, quite literally, worship female adolescence. In fact, a group I worked alongside with was named - Qumali Depart. The name was taken from the “Kumari” Nepalese Buddhist tradition of worshipping young pubescent girls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumari_(goddess). There’s another group, Babymetal, which has gotten quite popular outside of Japan in the past decade – even if you’re not a J-pop fan there’s a good chance you know about Babymetal. What many don’t know is that that group was actually a sub-group of a larger project called Sakura Gakuin (Cherry Blossom Academy). The concept of the project is that when members reach adolescence, they are swapped out for younger girls. It’s time for idol fans to stop pretending this isn’t a thing when it quite obviously is.
To be fair, idols tend to be controversial, even in Japan. There’s been plenty of outcry against thhe industry and in my anecdotal experiences, most cosmopolitan types in Tokyo consider the industry to be archaic. The Tokyo olympics was poised to headline AKB48, extremely famous controversial idol group that was huge in the 2010s. The group’s members range mostly from mid teens to mid 20s, but they’re known for their signature school uniforms and lip syncing. This decision was met with so much scrutiny, much by Japanese women, that it was scrapped.
I’ve been an idol fan since 2005 and as I’m settling into my adulthood I struggle with the morality of my own fandom as well. Overall, I accept that many who uphold the J-pop idol industry do so out of parasocial relationships with young girls. Many also do so because they enjoy music with cute singing styles and softer vocals. Nowadays plenty of idol singers are well into adulthood and the genre thrives without the worship of girl children.
Japanese work culture is incredibly brutal. The biggest issue I have with the Japanese idol industry are the conditions that they often put young girls in and the neckbeard fans who bankroll the industry not caring enough to advocate for change. Children shouldn’t be used for any form of significant financial labor. Whether it be to promote Youtube channels, fashion lines or pop groups.