AKB48

Patrick W. Galbraith, Jason G. Karlin

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781501341120
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Since its formation as a girl group in 2005, AKB48 has become a phenomenal success and institution in Japan. Having originally recruited fans with photocopied fliers and daily performances in the Akihabara area of Tokyo, AKB48 now saturates Japan. Its members--nearly 800 of them, including five sister groups and four so-called "rival groups" across Japan, as well as six sister groups in other Asian cities--appear in print, broadcast, online, and social media; in advertisements and on products; at home and on the train; on- and off-screen. AKB48's multi-platform omnipresence is characteristic of "idols, " whose intimate relationship to fans and appeals to them for support have made the group dominant on the Oricon Yearly Singles Chart in the 2010s; they hold several records, including most consecutive million-selling singles sold in Japan. A unique business model relentlessly monetizes fans' affections through meet-and-greet events and elections, which maximize CD sales, and their saturated presence in the media. At a time when affect is more important than ever in economic, political, and social theory, this book explores the intersection of idols and affect in contemporary Japan and beyond.

1 The Birth and Evolution of Idols in Japan

The year 1971 is often remembered as “the first year of the idol era” (aidoru gannen) (Kimura 2007: 260). That year, during the annual Red and White Song Battle (Kōhaku uta gassen), Japan’s most watched television program, Minami Saori was introduced as a “teen idol” (tiin no aidoru). Not only did Minami sing hit songs such as “Seventeen” (Jūnanasai, 1971), but she also appeared frequently in the media; wherever she went, fans followed. For example, when Minami was featured on the cover of a weekly comics magazine, it marked not only cross-media promotion but also a convergence of readers, which increased sales (Okada 2008: 92). This points to a strategy called “media mix” (media mikkusu), which was established in Japan in the 1960s. It was not until the 1970s, however, that idols came to the fore of what Marc Steinberg calls Japan’s “media-commodity system” (Steinberg 2012: 43). Importantly, this system generates desire for idols, who proliferate across media forms and become part of the everyday world. Simultaneously, the idol in the media mix is “a technology of attraction and diffusion” and “a technology of connection” (Steinberg 2012: 45).¹ Put somewhat differently, idols encourage intertextual and intimate media engagement across platforms, contexts, and venues (Galbraith and Karlin 2012).²

Also in 1971, idols came to be mass-produced on the television show Birth of a Star! (Sutā tanjō). A talent show where contestants performed for producers and a chance at the big time, Birth of a Star! suggested that anyone could be an idol. So it was that, in 1972, a thirteen-year-old Yamaguchi Momoe applied by postcard to be on the show. Although she finished second, Yamaguchi still debuted as a professional idol. Despite early struggles, Yamaguchi went on to a legendary career: she released thirty-two singles, including three number-one hits, and twenty-one albums; starred in fifteen feature films and several television dramas; and appeared on Red and White Song Battle for seven straight years. Indeed, such was Yamaguchi’s popularity that her appearance in an advertising campaign for Pretz markedly increased sales of the snack food.

Following the rise of Yamaguchi, an entire industry sprang up to produce, promote, and profit from idols. By 1975, it was estimated that some seven hundred new idols had debuted in Japan (Okiyama 2007: 260) and people spoke of an “idol boom” (Aoyagi 2000: 316). The most successful of these new idols and emblematic of the boom was Pink Lady, a duo that appeared on Birth of a Star! in 1976 and went on to release nine number-one hits, five of which were consecutive million-selling singles; one single, “Chameleon Army” (Kamereon āmii, 1978), was on top of the charts for an astonishing sixty-three weeks. Pink Lady also became commercial pitchwomen for various products, ranging from children’s books to ramen noodles, and practically everything they endorsed enjoyed a dramatic increase in sales.³ The idol era was in full swing.

Known as the “golden age of idols” (aidoru no ōgon jidai), the 1980s were dominated by these transmedia and cross-genre performers, but none could surpass Matsuda Seiko, who debuted in 1980 and went on to have twenty-four consecutive number-one hits. As Yamaguchi Momoe had done with Pretz, Matsuda appeared and sang in a series of commercials for Pocky, which effectively raised the profile of the product, her songs, and herself. More than anyone before, Matsuda and her producers mastered the idol image, or the idol as image, which Matsuda—“Seiko-chan” to fans—performed and producers sold. In this way, Matsuda became an “image commodity” (Lukács 2010a: 24, 47) connecting companies, programs, products, and audiences. The circulation of the idol brought together producers and advertisers, content and commodities, audiences and consumers.

While idols declined in popularity at the end of the 1980s and into the early 1990s—the “idol ice age” (aidoru hyōgaki) or “winter period of idols” (aidoru no fuyu no jidai), often attributed to discontent with their artificiality (de Launey 1995: 209; Aoyagi 2000: 318; Ōtsuka 2004: 148)—things heated up again relatively quickly. Rocked by a devastating economic recession and difficulty transitioning to new paradigms, the 1990s has come to be known in Japan as “the lost decade” (ushinawareta jūnen).⁴ Amid stagnation and anxiety, the achievements of the Japanese music and media industries were bright spots. “J-pop”—a term originating from the J-WAVE radio station in Tokyo, where it was used to refer to Japanese music that was played alongside the foreign music to which the station was dedicated—became attractive to young Japanese. The sound was not only “global” but also a global Japanese sound, which allowed fans to indulge in what Mōri Yoshitaka calls “the illusion of a globalized self” (Mōri 2009: 479). On the swell of J-pop, singers such as Utada Hikaru—whose music incorporated her impeccable English, her taste for American R&B, and world-class production techniques—enjoyed huge success. By the end of the 1990s, Utada’s album First Love (1999) had sold 8.53 million copies in Japan (Mōri 2009: 476).

Even as J-pop rose, foreign music declined. In 1998, only ten albums of music by Western artists made the chart for the top hundred albums, and none were in the top ten (Mōri 2009: 476–77).⁵ Writing at the time, Guy de Launey noted that musicians originating and operating outside of Japan had less of a presence in the Japanese market (de Launey 1995: 204). By his estimation, this had less to do with taste than marketing strategies that promoted Japanese musicians i n Japan (de Launey 1995: 211–22). Among the factors that de Launey identified as contributing to the striking market dominance of Japanese music in the 1990s are television and tie-ups (de Launey 1995: 211–12, 218–19), which suggests the advantage of the media mix and its imperative to appear across media platforms and genres of performance.

What de Launey identified is the logic of idols, who in fact reached new heights of prominence in Japan in the late 1990s. Even as CD sales peaked in 1998 and began a steady decline, the male idol group SMAP enjoyed incredible success due to television appearances, tie-ups, and near-constant media exposure. One member in particular, Kimura Takuya, was a national heartthrob that appeared in a series of so-called trendy dramas (torendi dorama). Explaining the phenomenon of Kimura (“Kimutaku” to fans), Gabriella Lukács argues that transmedia and cross-genre deployment of idols establishes ties between media institutions and reinforces viewer commitments (Lukács 2010a: 31). Due to multiple and simultaneous appearances, idols become dense carriers of information and are read intertextually. Fans know and care more about their idols, which leads to a viewing experience that is “intimate” (Lukács 2010a: 30). The trendy drama adds to this by focusing not on story per se but rather on lifestyles, or the intertextual lives of idols and the characters they play, with tight production schedules resonating with the latest trends (Lukács 2010a: 40–44). All of this “makes participation in domestic media culture more pleasurable” (Lukács 2010a: 30). By placing idols at the heart of programming, Japanese broadcasters “succeeded not only in reviving a general interest in domestic televisual culture, but also in keeping transnational media out of the domestic market” (Lukács 2010a: 30). Japanese idol media thus dominated the domestic market. Trendy dramas such as Beautiful Life (Byūtifuru raifu, 2000), which stars Kimura Takuya, reached 41.3 percent of households in Japan (Lukács 2010b : 186).⁶ In the 1990s, Fuji TV and TBS, the two major broadcasters associated with trendy dramas, produced more than 550 of them; a single three-month season could have seventeen or more airing at once (Lukács 2010a: 44). On the other hand, production of Japanese content in Japan for Japanese audiences made little room for foreign offerings; in the 1990s, Japanese broadcasters imported only 3 percent of their content (Lukács 2010a: 33).

Even as CD sales and ratings deteriorated, fans, who were motivated by their idols, could be counted on to tune in and make purchases. For this reason, idols became an increasingly important part of Japanese music and media markets at a time when they were facing the challenges of global competition and media convergence (Galbraith and Karlin 2016: 6–7). In a provocative turn of phrase, Lukács draws attention to how fans organize into “affective alliances” (Lukács 2010a: 54) around their idols.⁷ To build on Lukács, affective alliances are not only between fans and idols, and between fans brought together by idols, but also between media producers, programs, and products brought together by idols in the Japanese domestic media market. As broadcasters and advertisers became increasingly dependent on them to attract viewers and buyers, SMAP and other male idols from the same production company leveraged “compounded star power” (Marx 2012: 43) to dominate Japanese television for decades.

Again, the affective dimensions of this are crucial. Like comparable acts such as the Backstreet Boys, SMAP consisted of five members with different styles and personalities that appealed to different fans.⁸ In addition to standing for new forms of masculinity (Darling-Wolf 2004), the near-constant exposure of, and contact between, the members of SMAP fed into fan practices of reading into their “characters” and “relationships” (Karlin 2012; Nagaike 2012; Glasspool 2012). All of this can also be said of female idol groups with multiple members, which date back to media darlings such as Pink Lady and the Candies (Ōta 2011: 60–80; Okajima and Okada 2011: 50–61; Kitagawa 2013: 31–36). Beyond group members, intensive exposure across platforms and genres of performance lead to audiences knowing and caring more about idols, or intertextual and intimate engagement with their characters and stories, which can reinforce investments in idols and affective alliances with, against, and around them. In the late 1980s, for example, as tabloids and talk shows buzzed about her scandalous character and rumored relationship with Kondō Masahiko, viewers were compelled to side with or against Matsuda Seiko or her rival Nakamori Akina.

A separate but related development concerning affect is contact and communication with idols. Obviously, despite her cultivated image, not even Matsuda Seiko was ever just an image, as some critics might seem to suggest (Kijima 2012: 151–53). One need only review recordings of her appearances on television shows to confirm that members of the studio audience were responding wildly to her physical presence. This is even truer of concerts, which in Japanese industry and fan vernacular are referred to as “lives” (raibu), seeming to draw attention to the fact that things are occurring in “real time,” a shared present. Indeed, the chants, dances, and so on among fans at idol concerts are a performance onto themselves. When fans number in the thousands, as at one of Matsuda’s concerts, these performances become what Christine R. Yano refers to as “a spectacle of intimacy” (Yano 2004: 54). As with the idols that Yano examines, Matsuda wrote messages to her fans that appealed with saccharine self-performance and pleas for continued support (Aoyagi 2005: 185–93), which contributed to the explosive responses that she received at concerts. Be it SMAP or Matsuda Seiko, these rituals of relatively unmediated contact with fans are absolutely essential to affective allian ces involving idols, which were intensified by the predecessors of AKB48 in the 1980s and 1990s.

2 The Democratization of Idols

During the golden age of idols in the mid-1980s and the idol revival in the late 1990s, the affective dimension of idols expanded with two female groups and the promise of greater audience participation. The first was Onyanko Club (aka “Pussycat Club”), which redefined the relationship between idols and fans. Onyanko Club was composed of fifty members selected from “ordinary schoolgirls” who appeared on Fuji Television’s late show All Night Fuji: High-School Girl Special (Ōru naito Fuji: Joshi kōsei supesharu) in 1985. Given their own television show, Sunset Meow Meow (Yūyake nyan nyan), the members ...