The Black Ships Sing and Dance — What K-POP Confronted Japan With

Last time, we watched idols become ever more familiar and varied at underground live houses and local, regional scenes. The distance of a single instant photo or a few seconds of a handshake was breeding a new kind of fervor. Yet while Japanese idols were immersed in that closeness, across the sea a very different kind of idol was being raised, polished in an entirely different direction. Groups drilled to the bone in pursuit of perfection in singing, dancing, and visuals — that is K-POP.

It was received almost as a ‘black ship’ that appeared one day, all at once, in the Japanese market. To a Japanese sense of idols that had cherished cuteness and approachability, K-POP, which pushed refinement and polish to the fore, brought a fresh astonishment along with no small measure of bewilderment. In this chapter, we trace the mechanics of how K-POP idols are raised, their global strategy, and their ripple into Japan, within the bounds of what has been reported.

The Trainee System as a Blueprint

At the source of K-POP’s strength, people often point to a mechanism known as the ‘trainee system.’ Agencies select raw gems through auditions, then over several years before debut, intensively train them in singing, dancing, language, and expression before finally sending them out into the world fully prepared — a systematic philosophy of cultivation.

The one said to have created its prototype was SM Entertainment, founded in 1989, and its founder, Lee Soo-man. According to reports and the company’s own history, Lee is said to have recast idol-making not as haphazard chance but as a reproducible ‘design.’ In time the company came to call its idea of assembling culture as a technique ‘Culture Technology,’ and is said to have built up methods aimed at overseas markets, together with a localization strategy of marketing to suit the language and tastes of each place.

That said, this system has often been pointed out to carry shadow as well as light. Long trainee periods, harsh competition, the great number of those who end without ever debuting, problems surrounding the nature of contracts — these have been reported, and voices questioning its severity are far from few. The high level of polish is also two sides of the same coin with such harshness — a view received that way has existed both within Korea and among those looking on from outside.

What is intriguing is that this blueprint was by no means Korea’s alone. As we have traced over this series, Japan too long had its own ways of discovering raw gems through audition programs, polishing them, and sending them into the world. Precisely for that reason, many Japanese creators who saw K-POP’s system of cultivation are said to have received it not as ‘something wholly alien,’ but as ‘the very thing we ourselves had been doing, pushed to its limit through a different kind of thoroughness.’ The difference may have lain less in the idea itself than in how far it was designed and how far perfection was demanded — in the degree of that thoroughness.

The Wave That Crossed the Sea

Korean idols began to reach the Japanese market in earnest only after entering the 2000s. The one regarded as the forerunner is BoA, who made her Japanese debut in her teens, sang in Japanese, and was active on Japanese music programs. She is recalled as having come to be widely accepted not so much as a foreign idol, but as one of Japan’s own singers.

TVXQ and others then spread their popularity, and around 2010 girl groups such as Girls’ Generation and Kara landed in Japan one after another. Their tightly synchronized dancing, refined performance, and commanding stage presence had a texture different from the Japanese idols of the time. In reporting, the wave of this period is often framed as having lifted what is called the second Korean Wave boom from the side of music.

This wave was, for Japan’s idol industry, also the arrival of a worthy rival. Spoken of with the same word, ‘idol,’ yet differing in how they were presented and how they were trained, these existences stood side by side in the same market. Fans enjoyed both, and creators could not help being conscious of each other’s strengths. Competition was at times a stimulus, at times a threat.

Onto the World Stage

Through the 2010s, K-POP’s aim spread beyond Japan and Asia to the world itself. Video-sharing services and social media delivered footage across the barrier of language, and phenomena such as overseas fans adding subtitles and spreading clips are pointed to as a tailwind.

The symbol of this is said to be the rise of BTS. According to reporting, in 2020 their song ‘Dynamite’ was reported to be the first by a Korean group to top the Hot 100, the US Billboard main chart. It was widely reported as the moment an Asian group reached the summit of the United States, long regarded as the center of the world’s music. BLACKPINK, too, drew popularity on a global scale and is said to have been rated by overseas media as an artist of great influence. What had once tended to be seen as distant Asian music came to resound at the center of the world.

What supported this success was not polished performance alone. Through social media and video, fans spontaneously spread footage, added subtitles, and talked it over — that very intensity is pointed to as a force carrying the works across borders. Rather than creators delivering one-sidedly, fans spread it together. This structure of drawing in the supporting side resonated, oddly enough, somewhere with the idea of the ‘participatory idol’ that Japan’s handshake events and general elections had nurtured, as we saw in earlier chapters. Different in style though they were, on the single point of having made the power of fans their ally, the idol cultures of East and West stood on the same ground.

K-POP, which conquered the world with a finished form. Japanese idols, who have watched over bare faces and growth. Two different styles stood side by side in the same era and became mirrors reflecting each other. Yet the change now underway cannot be told by that contrast alone. Social media gave each individual the power to broadcast, and the very relationship between idols and fans is being quietly, but deeply, remade. Right now, the relationship between idols and fans is entering a new era.