The Winter Years — When Idols Were Called 'Uncool'

In the previous episode, we watched the golden age of the ’80s — when Seiko and Akina split the nation and Onyanko Club opened the door to mass production. But after the summit comes the downhill slope. As the 1990s arrived, the idols who had so enlivened the living room vanished from the screen as if the tide were going out. The very word ‘idol’ came to be spoken of as something old and somehow embarrassing — and a few years that would later be called the ‘idol winter’ were quietly about to begin.

The Stage Lights Went Out, One After Another

It was television that announced the start of winter. From the end of the 1980s into the early ’90s, popular music shows such as ‘The Best Ten’ ended their broadcasts one after another.

For idols, this was a fatal turn of events. For them, the music show was the greatest stage, delivering their faces and songs to the living room every single week. As those lights went out one by one, the very path by which a new idol could become known to the world grew narrower. Lose the place to be presented, and chances to be seen by people dwindle; and as chances dwindle, popularity cannot grow. The very foundation that supported the idol system began to crumble underfoot.

The mood of the world was changing too. The mass production of the ’80s had set ‘idol-ness’ into a mold, and people had gradually grown tired of it. The figure who sold cuteness came, at some point, to be spoken of alongside the words ‘old’ and ‘uncool.’ The icon that had been an object of longing suddenly began to look like an outdated symbol — winter, in this way, was arriving from the side of people’s hearts as well.

Of course, idols did not vanish entirely in this period. There were no few cases of popular figures of the time going on to long careers as actors or hosts. But the very banner of ‘idol’ lost its shine, and newcomers found it hard to spark a major boom — that kind of stagnation truly continued for several years. The more one knew the glittering ’80s, the more starkly that silence stood out.

‘Those Who Perform’ Were Wanted Over ‘Those Who Sing’

After idols withdrew, it was bands and artists who took the vacant throne. In the early 1990s, the lead role in the music scene changed completely.

Being-label artists like B’z, TUBE, and Maki Ohguro racked up explosive hits and filled the upper reaches of the charts. Around the same time, visual-kei bands such as X JAPAN, LUNA SEA, GLAY, and L’Arc-en-Ciel won overwhelming support from young people — women fans in particular. Clad in dazzling costumes, they nonetheless wrote their own songs, played them, and whipped audiences into a frenzy with fierce performances.

Here, what the era demanded clearly changed. Over the ‘idol’ who sang a given song cutely, people turned to the ‘artist’ who built their own world with their own hands. Singing ability, playing ability, and above all the capacity for self-production — authenticity, so-called ‘artistry,’ became the object of young people’s longing. It was right around this time that the new name ‘J-POP’ began to spread. Music shifted its center of gravity from the consumed icon to the work of the creator.

Namie Amuro — The New Girl Who Did Not Pander

In the very midst of winter, there was someone who gave off a third kind of brilliance — neither ‘idol’ nor ‘band.’ It was Namie Amuro.

In the mid-1990s, she rose all at once under the production of music producer Tetsuya Komuro. At the time, Komuro was handling TRF, globe, Tomomi Kahala, and others one after another, sweeping the charts with dance-beat-driven songs. At the center of this group, called the ‘Komuro Family,’ Namie Amuro wrapped herself in a miniskirt and long boots and danced fiercely as she sang — putting forth a new style that earlier idols had never had. She was not a being to be protected, but a single performer who sang and danced by her own power.

Her figure gave rise to a social phenomenon. Young women who copied her fashion were called ‘Amuraa,’ and in 1996 the term entered the top ten of the New Words and Buzzwords Awards. Long brown hair, thin eyebrows, tanned skin, thick-soled boots. The high school girls who admired her went on to shape a culture called ‘kogal.’

What was happening here was not merely a fashion. Namie Amuro was said to embody a ‘new image of the independent woman’ — one who, while keeping her cuteness and beauty, did not pander to men but lived tough and as herself. After the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, her figure aligned perfectly with the mood of an era in which more and more women were stepping out into society. Not an icon to be looked at and chosen, but a signpost toward a way of life one aspired to — young women projected such a new self onto Namie Amuro.

What Winter Was Nurturing

Looking back this way, the early 1990s were indeed a harsh winter for idols. But winter is by no means a season that gives birth to nothing.

Music shows vanished, bands and artists took the lead, and an independent image of womanhood like Namie Amuro’s won support — in these few years, what people sought from music and stars was rewritten at its root. ‘Being oneself’ over ‘given cuteness.’ The ‘real creator’ over the ‘finished icon.’ This new set of values, quietly nurtured through the winter, would soon present the next generation of idols with an unavoidable assignment: that mere cuteness would no longer make anyone turn their head.

So then, from the frozen ground, in what new form would idols sprout? The answer appeared in an unexpected shape. Not a finished icon, but a group that — by showing the very ‘process of growing,’ failing, agonizing, and gradually getting better before fans’ eyes — would capture people’s hearts once again. The end of winter was already near at hand.