Why Japanese idol music – and why here?

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Otakus and wotas don’t have to be male, and please note the name of the shop at upper left in this scene from Harajuku district of Tokyo.

The question is legitimate. What the heck is the attraction, and why here on Bloggerparty? This site is general interest: Health, finance, self-improvement, raising kids, exploring teen angst, an occasional music post, and just plain tomfoolery.

Well, there you have it. Japanese music, J-pop, idol music, whatever you want to call it, is all of those things combined. Its major purveyors are young people – boys and girls, mostly girls. Legions of the Japanese artistic and technical underground, known as “wotas” or “otakus,” are committed followers, almost cult status.

Idol music’s major market, then, is not dirty old men – despite what the outside media claim. Japanese idol music’s target audience is young women and girls which make up 70 percent of the market, industry experts’ research has revealed. Now this is just for the all-female companies like Hello Project and AKB48 (the all-male Johnnys are considered a major social addiction, even a menace, among combustible teen girls in Japan, but that’s another story for another day). The Japanese entertainment industry takes no chances – these are the facts, and this is where the product lines are aimed.

Ongaku Gatas, a spinoff of Morning Musume and other idol groups, performs during the Hello Project Winter 2008 Awards Show, Jan. 27, at Yokohama Arena.

Live concerts? Flip the ratio around. It’s mostly 70 percent male – the ever-increasing wota and otaku fan base, and mostly teens and guys in their 20s. Both “otaku” and “wota,’ roughly translated, mean “geek,” which in Japan has become a positive label. The geeks – otakus and wotas – basically run the country, the economy and the educational system. Don’t be fooled; the geeks have it together. Armed with Blackberries, bicycles, fast food and cigarettes, the geeks tap into Japan’s ultra-fast and remarkable cheap Internet system and, in between noodle and sushi stops of Akihabara and other hot spots, make the economic magic happen on the streets of Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and the rest of the nation of Japan.

From this demographic springs the world of video games, anime – and, of course, the universe of Japanese popular music, known as simply “J-pop.” Now there’s a loaded term – J-pop – and it is almost universally despised by many musicians from Japan. Toko Yasuda, a bass player for the touring trio Enon, was born in Japan but has spent most of her life in New York and Pennsylvania.

Japanese bassist Toko Yasuda, center, is flanked by Enon colleagues John Schmersa, left, and drummer Andy Robillard, April 12, in Visalia, Calif.

“When I think of J-pop, I think of the musak piped into sushi bars,” Yasuda, 34, said on a tour stop in California last week. “The term ‘J-pop’ is too general and has no meaning for me at all.”

The average Japanese commuter on the streets of Tokyo won’t even acknowledge that idol music exists, because it is perceived to be connected to the sultry Japanese world of “gravure models” and cheesy adult videos. Indeed, some J-pop performers, such as Ami Tokito, have crossed over from gravure, bathing-suit type photo-model work into pop music with mixed results. One day Tokito was posing half-naked for magazines and videos, and the next day she was singing – glasses and all – with The Possible, a group of six bright young teens with TNX, a new talent factory run by Tsunku, a legendary songwriter and producer whose Hello Project units of Morning Musume, Berryz Kobo, C-ute and others have blossomed from a five-girl band in 1997 to more than 60 active singers and growing at present. They now invade major arenas in Yokohama and Saitama each year and countless theaters and clubs in and around Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka.

Gravure models like Ami Tokito, here singing at Shibuya-O East with The Possible last summer, don’t help the creepy cult stigma carried by Japan’s idol-music industry.

Mainstream Japan, though, looks the other way and is embarrassed, it seems, by the whole thing. Consumer blog site ImprintTalk, for example, was happy to accept contributions on J-pop in its lineup – but when a story on J-pop’s idol-music universe, and a second piece focusing on °C-ute’s marvelous lede singer and member of Pony Canyon’s popular trio, Buono!, Airi Suzuki, was submitted, the blog site allowed that post to go online, but then said in so many words: “Thank you for music blog, but they [singers] must have clothes all on.” Uh … OK.

Yes, those bizarre costumes, something out of a 1960s time portal – are daringly cut, quite provocative, colorful, inspired by a combination American vaudeville and European Renaissance and everything in between. In reality, the outfits are glorified cheerleader and pom-pon style popularized in the United States and adopted from the jock culture of football and basketball. Rah, rah, rah, sis-boom-bah, and all that.

The otaku and wota forces, with all the high-tech firepower available to them (and there are girls in this group, though not many), simply have no use for traditional courtship and dating rituals. Getting dates in Japan is a pretty tough road; guys have to prove to their prospective girlfriends’ families that they have a “foundation” (i.e. jobs and money) for any kind of relationship, and girls get tired of waiting for “Mr. Right.”

As a result, the many legions of AKB48, Hello Project, Morning Musume, Berryz Kobo, C-ute and the other innumerable idol groups provide surrogate, high-tech, beautiful and charismatic girlfriends, just a keystroke away. No wonder the birth rate in Japan is down; it’s just too much of a hassle to have “normal” relationships and an actual family – and its accompanying headaches.

On the female side – and indeed there are girl otakus at all concerts – the constant marketing, even overcommercialization of Morning Musume-driven cosmetics, DVDs, CDs, fashion, handbags, and even full cosplay outfits (a growing trend is to dress just like a Hello Project group, emulate songs and dances, and even tour) is on the uptick.

That’s natural when one notes the spectator-sport style of the idol-music concerts. There’s really nothing like it on earth. Tiny girls in glittering trapeze-artist-like clothes singing to spine-tingling digital tracks, booming sound, explosive motion and color, on a massive scale with glowstick-wielding masses shouting and chanting through every song … Welcome to the world of Japanese idol music.

This is Radicalipton signing off – for now.