Minegishi Minami and the AKB48 scandal

Do we want to have a thread on this? It's kind of depressing. And yet I have a hard time leaving it alone.

For those who do not know about AKB48, they are one of Japan's mega pop-idol groups, with over 80 young women part of the group. To be a member of AKB48 means agreeing to aggressive image management. Since the group of people who buy the most pop-idol stuff are lonely catpiss men, there is a rule that no member of AKB48 can date. It ruins the fantasy of being a pure and innocent girl.

Minami has been a member since the group was founded. She was recently photographed leaving a male pop-singer's home in the morning. Normally this GRAVE OFFENSE AGAINST OTAKU SENSIBILITIES would have her fired.

Instead she was demoted to a sub-group. And then things got really awful.


She swears it was her idea to shave her head and post a teary apology to her fans on youtube. I think anyone who believes that is a sucker. And while this stunt is drawing negative attention, there are a lot of people posting about how they can never trust her again, or how she deserves this and worse for breaking the rule. It's certainly got attention, the video is already over 3 million hits.

Oh yeah, and the dude whose house she was exiting? No consequences, of course.

I get that part of my reaction is probably cultural dissonance and maybe cognitive bias on my part...

...but fuck, this is creepy.

My Japanse isn't very good, could you perhaps explain what's going on in that video?

But my immediate reaction is: 'Wut??' and 'Fuck!'

From AKB48 WrapUp:

So it's shameful for her to be seen with a boy but it's okay for the group members to "kiss" on a tv commercial? o.O

I should ask my Japanese fiancee on her thoughts on this (I don't think she follows these fluff music groups).

This makes me sad, purely in and of itself. Not to mention it's fucking terrifying.

AKB48's target demographic is male otaku, not the average person. Even as they become more popular and gained a larger audience, this part has not been changed. Their image must be sexually attractive, yet innocent, at the same time.

Or put in another way, they can be seductive towards "you", the audience, but not another real man behind the stage, but this rule applies to other female idols too.

...OK, I don't follow Japanese entertainment. Everything I knew about Japanese entertainment, I learnt from http://neojaponisme.com/

I've seen this video before but I never knew this was the same idol group. So there's an addition member, Aimi Eguchi, who's a virtual creation of six members' facial parts.

Akb 48 may have started as an otaku group but they're way bigger than that now.

Lesbians only exist for male entertainment, after all, I mean what girl would actually WANT to sleep with a another girl when you can have DICK instead, so it's not at all threatening to the male otaku's fantasy ahaha I can't take this shit *punches a wall*

Honestly though, Japanese culture at large seems to idolize that combination of innocence/sexual availability in girls - it's just more pronounced in the "easily-threatened, lonely male otaku demographic", I guess. Take away the "innocence" part and suddenly they aren't as desirable any more. Whereas over in the Western world (???) it seems like sexual experience is something that is admirable instead.

Well dang. I know a friend who's crazily into this group. This is kinda depressing to hear.... of course, it's less depressing than it is WHATTHEHECK.

What's wrong with the otaku... I remember some years ago a manga that was widely popular especially among the otaku becuse the protagonist was this cute little girl (can't remember the name though). But then in a chapter of the manga it is revealed that she had an ex-boyfriend and this put all the otaku into rage mode because she wasn't pure anymore >___>

Wut.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?!

God I hate AKB48. Hate them with a passion. As someone living in Japan I can assure everyone that unfortunately they are totally mainstream now. They're on at least 3/4 of all the commercials at night. Totally hypocritical that they can't have boyfriends. As some of the ex-AKB members have shown there's a very thin line between being a marginal talent and being a porn star.

Quite the double-standard for the guy, Alan Shirahama, involved in the scandal.

AKB48 is definitely in the mainstream, but the lonely male otaku are still the ones who buy at least 3 of everything (one to open, one to keep, one to sell) and their money talks louder than anything else.

Was it Anegasaki Nene from Love Plus by any chance? I remember something like this happening.

Found it: http://opphiucus.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/2ch-otaku-rage-over-nenes-portrayal-in-loveplus-manga/

No, I made some research and rememberd it was about Kannagi. It's amusing that if you try googling "Kannagi" the google suggests "Kannagi otaku rage"

I mentioned this story to my wife (who is Japanese), and at first she thought it was weird. But then she said, "Well, it's because they're everyone's idols." (Minna no aidoru dakara.) And that was about all she wanted to say about AKB48. On the one hand, I'm sure they're underpaid, overworked, and apparently coerced into not having a boyfriend. On the other hand, it can't really be a secret that that's the deal you're making to be a member of AKB48. At least it's not HKT48 (the low-rent Fukuoka version).

A complete inability to have normal human relationships?

The no-boyfriend clause is actually part of the contracts that they sign to join the group so it's not like that's a secret, but I question how much they understand what they are getting into when most of these girls are in middle-school when they first join.

I'm sure it would be impossible to really understand what you're getting into at any age, let alone middle school. But that's a problem with child entertainers around the world, and giving them the support they need seems to be at the top of very few people's priority lists (the parents and/or a very benevolent manager if they're lucky). But yeah, the no boyfriend thing does kick it up a notch.

I read this news story last night coindentially and brought it up in #planetcrap today. I've always thought everything about this group is odd and creepy, but this story took the cake. They've reached new levels of slut shaming. I've thought for a long time that viewing Japanese culture through the lens of "foreignness" has made me re-evaluate a lot of western culture that I take for granted. This obviously harkens back to Britney Spears' famous run-ins in tabloids (and makes me think of South Park's comparison of this behavior to the Shirley Jackson story "The Lottery").

One thing I would note about AKB48 that doesn't come through in the English translations of this story is that the ranking a member of AKB48 has has a creepy school girl title such as "research student". The english stories seem to only refer to the young women being "senior" "junior" members.

Also, Angie is right about how mainstream AKB48 is. I don't really seek out their music, but I watch a lot of Japanese TV and read a lot of Japanese websites and it is as hard to escape them as it would be hearing about anything that is going on with the Kardashians in America. They host multiple TV shows, make many public appearances, they are a huge money maker.

I'm a bit confused about all these different subgroups. Are they region groups so they don't have to travel around Japan?

AKB48 has a base of operations (I think in Akihabara?) where some members perform in live shows every day in their home theater. I've not looked in HKT48, but I'm guessing their home theater is in Fukuoka or something.

Are you talking about Kenkyuusei or something else? There's nothing creepy school girl about kenkyuusei. It just means trainee. That was my title when I did an internship in Japan.

Yeah, after the ridiculous success of AKB48 (AKB comes from AkiHaBara, which I think is where they perform), other regional sister groups started popping up. NMB48 (Namba) in Osaka, HKT48 (Hakata) in Fukuoka, and SKE48 (Sakae) in Nagoya. According to Wikipedia there are even sister groups in Jakarta and Taiwan now. AKB is still the main one. One of the girls got transferred from AKB to HKT and complained about the low quality of their costumes and everything else.

Little did you know.

Sure, its still part of their infantilizing school girl motif. I'm taking it as part of the whole

What's the significance of the number 48?

I always thought it was the original number of members (it's not), but apparently it's just taken from the name of the management company, office48.

WTF is with the stereotypical Ming the Merciless arched eyebrows on this guy?



Which Final Fantasy game is he from?


So the poor girl got shamed by the Japanese (and now international) media and her career is essentially dead and this punk says nothing to defend her. Really goddamn honourable.

So I was talking to my husband and he brought up a pretty interesting point. With that many girls, there's bound to be some that play for the other team, so are they allowed to have girlfriends?

I'm assuming if they do, they're really good at hiding their relationship.

In Asia, generally, the older crowd thinks that Homosexuality is a "Disease" brought from the Western World. Most forms of intimacy are shown to be "friendly" and "purely platonic". I'm sure Lesbians could get away with a lot without making some of their audience bat an eye.

There's tones like this is KPOP, where many people don't want their idols dating, and there are some particularly bad companies that propose a dating ban. But it's never this serious. For example, I'm pretty sure many fans should realize that their precious "oppas" such as TOP and GDragon has had sex before. Idols do sometimes confess to dating. But all in all, while a scandal for the western world involves "indecent acts", scandals for the eastern world seems to involve anything romantic or even as harmless as dating.

Honestly that's a bad example. Of course no one really cares if men have had sex before, it's expected, even in asian cultures.

True, that is a rather bad example.

Hey, has any of the AKB48 members gotten married yet? I assume this group has been present for a very long time. Some of the members may be reaching 30 or over such age by now.

Wikipedia says the group has only been around since 2005.

I am suddenly sad I found a manga inspired by the idea of this group that got translated to English. (Unless it didn't get translated and I'm mixing it up with something else.)

In light of this event, I'm suddenly not interested in giving it a glance.

About eight years then? That's a long time for an idol group.
I checked their page, and it said that the girls range from 14 to 20s. Do they retire the older group members?

They won't be young forever, and I imagine some of those girls have people they'd like to spend the rest of their life with.