Japan Passes Peak Idol
Originally ran on MTV Iggy in early February 2015.
Late last year, MTV Iggy, a site devoted to highlighting music and trends from around the world, stopped publishing new content. Shortly after, Viacom wiped out all traces of the site from the Internet. No archive of the site — or any of the work contributed to it — remains. I spent about two and half years writing for Iggy, and decided I wanted to put some of my favorite pieces from the site somewhere online. I saved them all, and I’m not currently working directly for Viacom in any capacity, so over the next few days I thought I’d post them to Medium, along with a follow-up on the story at the bottom.
Thanks to my editors at Iggy, Beverly Bryan and Isabela Raygoza, for all their support and fantastic editing.
At the end of January, Japanese media reported a rumor that a supergroup of sorts called Japan48 would perform at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. This outfit would supposedly feature members of the pop group AKB48, an outfit currently boasting 140 members and considered the most popular act in the country over the last few years, along with performers from various sister groups located across Japan. Considering that Yasushi Akimoto, the man behind the AKB empire, had been named the producer for the opening ceremony program, it seemed realistic.
The reaction was fast and fierce. Popular personality Matsuko Deluxe told a TV program that the idea of Japan48 was “embarrassing.” Thousands more sided with her on message boards and social media sites, calling AKB48 “the shame of Japan” and in general being mortified at the prospect of them representing the country on the international stage.
Yasushi denied the rumors, but the response to Japan48 highlighted a schism taking place in the Japanese music landscape. For the last five years, Japan has experienced an “idol boom,” spurred by the success of AKB48 and resulting in dozens of new groups composed of young women singing upbeat pop while dancing. In recent months, however, sales have lagged and general interest in such groups has dropped, while a new wave of bands have claimed cultural relevance. Japan’s infatuation with idol groups has started to fade.
Japanese idols have been a constant in the nation’s pop culture landscape since the 1970s, set apart from other performers by how omnipresent they are — these young women don’t just sing and dance, they appear in whatever media platform they can wriggle into. Founded in 2005, AKB48 took the idol concept to the extreme. They originally featured 48 members…more than any group before them…and were “idols you could meet,” whether at special handshake events or at their own theater in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. The biggie-sized outfit gained momentum, and broke through in 2009. Since, their singles and albums have regularly topped the Oricon Music Charts, which only counts physical copies sold.
AKB’s ascendance ushered in a new age of idols, with labels launching groups to try to cash in. To stand out, the folks behind these projects zeroed in on niches and building idols around them. The best…and most commercially successful…of this mold is Babymetal, who merged heavy metal with cutesy pop.
AKB48’s newest full-length album, released in late January, topped Oricon once again, moving over 700,000 units. That number would be incredible for most pop acts anywhere, but for AKB it indicated a drop. Their 2014 CD debuted with over 960,000 sold…itself seen as a decrease, as AKB used to expect to move more than a million first week. A 200,000 plunge in one year is cause for concern.
Yet even the 700,000-plus figure misleads. AKB48’s shrewdest business move since starting has been juicing sales by finding ways to get diehard fans to buy multiple copies of the same product. CDs often come packaged with tickets to meet-and-greets, while others feature a ballot for the group’s annual election. A large chunk of AKB’s latest sales were special “theater editions,” available from websites and locations managed by the group…and the main source for people buying in bulk. Their huge numbers come from exploiting a dedicated fandom (to be fair, most idols…and, in recent years, bands and singers…follow the same model).
Oricon counts those theater editions, but SoundScan Japan doesn’t — they only track copies sold at major retailers. And those numbers tell a much different story — AKB’s latest sold just over 100,000, a strong showing in the 2015 J-pop world, but far from the best sales in the country. Digital sales, meanwhile, have been even less impressive, pushed out of the daily top 50 at popular online retailer Recochoku rather quickly compared to other releases from the same week.
AKB48 remain the benchmark for girl groups in Japan, however. A handful of others have carved out large followings, including Momoiro Clover Z and Dempagumi.inc . And Babymetal, who turned a niche-catering idea into one capable of supporting a world tour. Yet as ideas such as “heavy metal idols” get used up, labels have had to dig deeper into sub culture…today there exist steampunk idols, “chubby” idols and occult-centric idols. The more obscure the theme gets, the less likely regular listeners are to turn in. Building a more intimate community is fine, but it also signals the “idol boom” is receding commercially.
Sales, though, aren’t everything — which is bad for idols, who always had chart rankings to point at, even if they were grossly inflated. There has always been unease from average listeners about AKB48 and idol culture, but both have weathered scandals.
Yet news on AKB has turned negative as of late. Last year, a 24-year-old man injured two members and a staff worker with a knife at an AKB fan event (he was sentenced to five years in prison this week). Coverage of the event lead to many souring on the idea of “idols you can meet.” More and more people spoke out about the group in less than positive terms — beloved singer Sheena Ringo criticized the group repeatedly in 2014, while artist Masaya Nakahara called AKB48 “child pornography.” Online petitions to get Akimoto removed from the Olympic Committee garnered thousands of signatures, while even Nintendo fans freaked out when AKB appeared in a commercial.
The past month has shown other idols facing the same backlash. When “independent” idol outfit Kamen Joshi topped the Oricon charts in January, Japanese TV initially made fluff pieces about the mask-clad group. Yet soon, online articles were focusing on the group’s shady management and the ridiculousness of how they hit the top spot (they released 12 different versions of the same song). Recently, a 12-year-old girl in the idol group 3B Junior went into a coma after inhaling helium for a television program. Recent reports indicate she currently is paralyzed in half her body.
As the spotlight on idols starts to dim, a new wave of acts are moving up, primarily aimed at teenagers. The biggest at the moment is the band Sekai No Owari, a wonky quartet whose songs feature ample guitar, accordion and Auto-tune. It’s a unique sound that younger listeners have embraced as their own…and helped propel the group to huge physical and digital sales. Similarly, boy bands like Sandaime J Soul Brothers are easily outpacing AKB48 in SoundScan sales. The most interesting development might be the group E-Girls, who on paper sound like traditional idols — the group currently consists of 20 women. Yet, whereas most idols are aimed at older men, they are marketed to actual girls, and dance with precision rather than clumsy cuteness.
Traditional idol groups, meanwhile, are slowly moving away from mainstream attention. Yet they shouldn’t worry too much, as these things are always cyclical — idols became uncool at the start of the ’90s, but Morning Musume changed that by the end of the decade. And just when it looked like idol groups were done for after them, AKB48 arrived. Akimoto should hope a new idol boom gets underway by 2020…or else he’ll be ripped apart come the start of the opening ceremony.
What happened next: Well, everything mentioned above kept on rolling. A lot of the trends mentioned sprouting up in the above piece only became even more obvious, and my year-end article for The Japan Times built on this one. Something maybe not stressed as much as it should have been is that idols aren’t going anywhere — it’s just the entire style has become a niche itself.
The SoundScan chart, however, no longer releases data to the public, which makes decoding the J-pop landscape much harder…especially when you consider how the country now has well-marketed streaming services now, not to mention the thousands of younger consumers just getting music from YouTube.
Funny enough, over the last month things have somehow gotten a bit bleaker for the idol scene. More and more idol members are “graduating” - leaving - their groups, while entire groups have been folding at a higher rate. Just this past weekend, my favorite of these units Especia (they are the city pop/hip-hop/vaporwave/acid jazz idol group) announced three of their five members were leaving, basically ending the group (though the last two members will carry on).
