J-Pop Write-Up

I recently finished an amazing monograph by Prof. Hiroshi Aoyagi called, “Islands of Eight Million Smiles: Idol Performance and Symbolic Production in Contemporary Japan,” and it got me thinking about how the events of the 60s through 80s (yes, those archaic times before the internet and cell phones) have informed the present. Musically, the Japan of today is more diverse than ever, but remnants of the “culture of cute,” (Aoyagi, 2005) from J-Pop’s formative years, still linger. There is something whole-heartedly nostalgic about the music of those bubbly, vivacious 80s idols. Its a system of attraction so compelling that despite being musically dated, we can still relate to their charisma and seeming innocence. Let’s take a look at one of the top idol songs of the 80s, “Tender Rain” and the idol that carried this tune to success, Takai Mamiko.

Japan in the 80s could have been described as a decadent place. It was the height of the bubble economy, and Japan was at its peak in terms of productivity and economic power after WWII. Having secured its position in a number of international industries (motor vehicles, electronics), people had good jobs, a large expendable income and girl groups, price pointed at the convenient “I guess I’ll buy this thing” level, often had exactly the right formula to attract droves of people itching to burn pocket-money. Mamiko Takai got her start in the wildly successful 80s idol group, Onyanko Club (think: Morning Musume + 80s). This exposure proved successful enough for Takai to begin a solo career. After releasing a few singles in the latter half of the decade, she unexpectedly retired from the stage, marrying her producer, Yasushi Akimoto. Takai isn’t known as the most successful idol of the 80s (a one, Seiko, comes to mind), but her image is famliar to anyone interested in idol culture. She embodies the cute and youthful image of an idol singer: the girl next door, the high-school crush, the confident best friend. These real life fantasies came to life in idols like Takai Mamiko, and therein lies the appeal. Certainly these ideals live on today in idol groups from all around the world, particularly Southeast Asia. It’s interesting to compare the idols of that time and today in Japan and America, and consider the methods of attraction they employ/ed.

Though I wasn’t cognizant enough to experience it first hand (well, I guess I was just a baby then), the arguably greatest American girl idol of the 80s was Madonna. Madonna brought us a new type of female idol; one who used her sexuality as a tool for attraction. 80s Madonna seemed to relish in the controversy surrounding her music videos and live performance, breaking the traditional model of idol singer in America in her wake. She was arguably the first to bring female sexuality to our television screens (this coinciding with the birth and explosion of MTV), and, coming from such a young woman, surprised us all the more. Somehow this all felt deliciously transgressive, even empowering. This was the age of women abandoning the chains of domesticity, entering the workplace, competing against men, wearing sports bras and blazers. Not gonna lie, I’ve gotta rep my fellow Detroiter-turned-New-Yorker for becoming the representative of this movement and taking the reactionary backlash that followed (see: Nine to Five)

But, wait a tic… Madonna doesn’t sound similar to Takai Mamiko at all!

That’s right, Jimmy! Many of the factors that led to Madonna’s success in America simply wouldn’t have been popular enough to garner massive support in Japan. Madonna seems pretty out of place in the conservative atmosphere of Japanese popular music in the 80s. Check out this interview to see what I mean. Perhaps Madonna seemed exotic to 80s Japan, but Japanese consumer tastes by and large preferred “Japanese” Japanese idols. This fact has spurred a kind of ideological “idol battle” between the U.S. and Japan over the past thirty years. This struggle seems to strike at the core of our cultural sentiment. We love pop groups. We hate pop groups. We love individual artists. We hate individual artists. These spontaneous negotiations highlight our rarely static opinions and tastes about ourselves and the sub-cultures we identity with through the music we listen to. The idea that there were few, if any, “American” (by this I mean, “American-style,” or borrowing in musical idiom or image from successful Anglo-American musical acts) Japanese idols, whereas today there is a proliferation of International borrowings occurring in Japan, and to a lesser extent, the West, reminds us that the stances we take toward musical ideas and boundaries are very much subject to change.

This is definitely not something to overlook. So, please keep stopping by for more of my inane rambling on this topic, and a wee blog post (spot of post, anyone?) examining two modern idols, so we can see how this concept has evolved over the years. Until then!! ♪┏(・o･)┛♪