Idols%20and%20Celebrity%20in%20Japanese%20Media%20Culture

Introduction: The Mirror of Idols and Celebrity 15
diligence that propelled Japan’s postwar economic “miracle” reached a
critical juncture during the 1970s (Yoshimi 2009). Tokyo became one of
the most capital-saturated urban centers in the world, and an unprecedented
amount was invested in advertising, packaging, design, and
image production. During the 1980s, the rise of the bubble economy
marked the excesses of the consumer-capitalist regime, embodied in the
idol. As John Whittier Treat (1993, 361) explains: “Magazines, radio,
above all television: in whatever direction one turns, the barely (and
thus ambiguously) pubescent woman is there both to promote products
and purchase them, to excite the consumer and herself be thrilled
by the flurry of goods and services that circulate like toys around her.”
Of course, the idol phenomenon includes not only female idols, but also
male idols, expanding the potential of Treat’s critique.
Asada Akira (1989, 275), one of the most popular Japanese cultural
critics of the 1980s, describes Japanese capitalism as “infantile.” As he
sees it, there is no transcendental value system or vertical system of control
(external or internalized). Explaining Asada’s now well-known position,
Tomiko Yoda (2000) points out that, once everyone is embraced by
and enfolded into a horizontal system of control, all that remains is relative
competition and play with signs and symbols to establish categories
and boundaries. The frantic pace of consumption and dense networks of
information created around brands are indicative of this, as is the play
of surfaces engaged in, with, and through idols.
While it is clear that Asada was being intentionally provocative (if not
parodic) in his discussion of infantile capitalism, the infantilization of
the consumer is itself not a new concept. Theodor W. Adorno (1991)
argues that the “culture industry” shapes a passive and dependent
consuming public. Standardized content contributes to a “regressive”
audience that is “arrested at the infantile stage” (Ibid., 41–47). The culture
industry approach has been roundly criticized for its dismissal of
audience agency (see Chapters 5, 6, and 8 in this volume for examples
of unexpected responses to and appropriations of idols), but to ignore
it is to risk overlooking the processes that shape the production of mass
culture.
In Japan, people interact with idols as soon as they are old enough
to turn on the TV, and these interactions are ongoing. Further, audience
demographics are collapsed together, with boys and men, and
men and women, consuming the same idols. This, too, contributes to
a sort of “infantile capitalism,” whereby the consumptive pleasures one
experiences as a child continue on through adult life. Further, these
idols are in their cuteness—the aesthetic of kawaii (Treat 1993; Kinsella