Series ・ 10 parts

The Age of Idols: Dreams Reflected in Japan's Pop Icons

The word 'idol,' which we now use so casually, has a history of crossing oceans. In the 1960s, a single French film carried the word idole into Japan, and during the high-growth era a trio of young stars appeared like comets. Neither mere singers nor movie stars, a new kind of icon was being born. This is Episode 1.

Start from Part 1 →

01 The Birth of the Idol — The Day a Word Crossed the Sea The word 'idol,' which we now use so casually, has a history of crossing oceans. In the 1960s, a single French film carried the word idole into Japan, and during the high-growth era a trio of young stars appeared like comets. Neither mere singers nor movie stars, a new kind of icon was being born. This is Episode 1.
02 The Blossoming Middle-School Trio — The First Idols Television Mass-Produced In the early 1970s, as color television spread to every home, the living room itself became a device for producing stars. The audition program 'Sutaa Tanjo!' and the three who graduated from it — Masako Mori, Junko Sakurada, and Momoe Yamaguchi. This is the story of the honeymoon between television and idols, opened by the three same-aged girls called the Blossoming Middle-School Trio.
03 Seiko and Akina — The Day Two Divas Split a Nation In the 1980s, television produced a new idol almost every week. At the center stood Seiko Matsuda and Akina Nakamori. The two women competed with opposite charms, while Onyanko Club turned ordinary after-school high schoolers into singers. Idols were mass-produced, and became a social phenomenon.
04 The Winter Years — When Idols Were Called 'Uncool' In the early 1990s, the once-bustling idol stage rapidly fell silent. Music shows ended one after another, and the band boom and J-POP swept the charts. Into that era came Namie Amuro, who lived as herself without pandering. A new image of womanhood, different from the idol, captured young hearts.
05 The Underdogs' Revenge ― The Growth Story of Morning Musume Five girls who failed the audition were told to sell 50,000 CDs by hand in five days. Morning Musume, engineered by TV Tokyo's 'ASAYAN' and Tsunku, sold not a finished star but the very image of someone growing. This is a fact-based portrait of the national group that broke idol music's long winter.
06 The Idol You Can Go to Meet ― The Invention Called AKB48 In 2005, a dedicated theater was built in a room of a multi-tenant building in Akihabara. On opening day there were seven customers. AKB48, engineered by Yasushi Akimoto, erased the distance between idols and fans through a theater you could visit every day, handshake events, and a general election in which fans decided the rankings. This is a fact-based, neutral portrait of the invention of 'the idol you can go to meet'.
07 Light and Shadow of a Kingdom — Male Idols and Johnny's It rooted the style of the singing, dancing male idol in Japan and reigned over the entertainment world for half a century. As vast as its light was, there was a shadow that went long unspoken. We trace, only within the range of reported and acknowledged facts, how in 2023 the founder's sexual abuse came to be admitted by the agency itself.
08 Frenzy from the Underground — An Economy Born of a Single Cheki In the 2010s, idols multiplied explosively outside of television. Underground idols, local idols, live houses and cheki sessions — the relationship you could go and meet branched into ever-smaller scenes, and the buds of the oshikatsu economy grew. We trace the true face of the idol warring-states era, including the reality of labor behind the dream and the frenzy.
09 The Black Ships Sing and Dance — What K-POP Confronted Japan With From across the sea came idols polished to perfection. The trainee system, global strategy, and the ripples into the Japanese market. From BoA to Girls' Generation, BTS to BLACKPINK, this chapter traces the differences in idol culture between Japan and Korea and the global competition, neutrally and within what has been reported.
10 A Life with Someone to Cheer For — Where Do Idols Go from Here The phrase oshikatsu took root in daily life, social media turned everyone into a broadcaster, and new icons such as VTubers appeared. Economy and culture, self-production, gender and diversity. At the end of a sixty-year journey, this final chapter surveys the future of idol culture without rushing to easy answers.