日本のアイドル　（Japanese Idols）No.1

25th February – 如月

Idols – sing and dance as a job and they are relatively famous than ordinary people as they work on the stage. Japanese idol has contributed huge economic growth in Japan and those people give dreams to fans.

From 1970s, Japan has created the style of idols now. At that time idols were called stars, and those were succeeded as solo or double. As the time passes, there are variety kinds of idols born in Japan. In 2000’s, number of idols have consisted of group and gained a lot support from fans.

From 2000’s, with the huge popularity for girls idol group モーニング娘。(Morning Musume), the idol debut age become younger around teenagers. It is obvious that Japanese prefer the idols with cute face rather than beautiful by seeing the most popular idols in Japan. Many idols are with younger baby face, small and skinny.

There are many idols who are not so famous but active in the particular regions – called 地方アイドル (Chihou aidoru).

Also it must be mentioned that the idols only known by few fans are called 地下アイドル (Chika aidoru), Chika means underground, they hardly get attentions from medias, but there are many fans who are crazy about those as 地下アイドル are easier to meet than the famous ones.

The fans who have the passion to support idols are called ヲタク (Otaku), and those people flow the Japanese economic well! The main mentality of the Otaku are probably like parents to the idols – want to bring up the idols from not famous (imperfect) to famous (perfect) like bringing up the child. That is why they want to support the idols.

In the older time than now, the idols were the people above the cloud – cannot see them in the real life, only be seen on TV. However, nowadays there are many idols that people can see them in person – the idol companies provide the events that fans can see them not only in the concerts but also shaking hand events.

The producer Mr. Yasushi Akimoto created the famous idol groups in Japan a while ago called AKB48. This group was was very innovative and Mr. Akimoto brought huge success in selling those idols. He made the shaking hand events and put its ticket inside their CD. Fans can go to the event with this ticket and shake hands about 10 seconds with favorite idols – and they can join the queue as long as they have the new tickets – so many fans buy heaps CDs to meet the favorite idols many times. This created a huge success on CD sales but also became a problem of discarding thousands of CDs after the events.

Mr. Akimoto also launched an annual event called AKB総選挙 (AKB sou senkyo) = idol election. This event will choose the no.1 top favorite idols from the fan votes. To join this vote, again fans need to buy CDs. To make the favorite idol the top of the group and be able to show up on coming CD jacket, fans need to support the idols. In this way, Mr. Akimoto built up the most successful business in idol industry.

Due to the increased number of idols, each of them are trying hard to gain attentions. Nowadays, the idol who can sing and dance is not going to be seen on TV anymore – they need to have their personal character, some strong points which cannot be compared to other idols.

Also major idol groups have a definite rule which cannot be broken – No romantic affair. If idols break this rule, they might get punished by the company, perhaps they have to quit the groups. Or even the fans who have been supporting them will leave this idol and support the other idols. Therefore, idol jobs are not an easy work.