Japanese idol
An idol is a type of entertainer marketed for image, attractiveness, and personality in Japanese popular culture. Idols are primarily singers with training in other performance skills such as acting, dancing, and modeling. Idols are commercialized through merchandise and endorsements by talent agencies. They dedicate significant time and resources to building relationships with fans through concerts and meetups.
Japan's idol industry first emerged in the 1960s and became prominent in the 1970s and 1980s due to television. During the 1980s, regarded as the "Golden Age of Idols", idols drew in commercial interest and began appearing in commercials and television dramas. As more niche markets began to appear in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it led to a significant growth in the industry known as the "Idol Warring Period." Today, over 10,000 teenage girls in Japan are idols, with over 3,000 groups active. Japan's idol industry has been used as a model for other popular idol industries, such as K-pop.
Sub-categories of idols include gravure idols, junior idols, net idols, idol voice actors, virtual idols, AV idols, alternative idols, underground idols, idols, local idols, bandols, and Japanese-South Korean idols.
Definition
Roles and training
An idol is an entertainer whose appeal centers not only on performance skills but also significantly on emotional accessibility and perceived personal growth. Idol careers in Japan typically begin at a young age, with many idols entering the industry through public auditions, local performance circuits, or training programs provided by talent agencies. Notably, fans often participate actively in the idols' development process, closely following their progress from novices to skilled performers.Rather than solely focusing on technical proficiency, idol culture emphasizes values such as sincerity, visible effort, and emotional connection between performers and fans. Emotional reciprocity and mutual validation form the core of fan-idol relationships, significantly influencing fan behaviors like attending events, purchasing merchandise, and active online interactions.
Idols undergo years of training in singing, dancing, or acting. This approach increases their opportunities for admiration and influence, strengthening their overall appeal. Additionally, idols often utilize blogs and social media to display personal and relatable aspects of their lives, fostering empathy and closeness with their audience.
In addition to performance skills like singing, dancing, and acting, idols engage in extensive character-building activities intended to foster discipline, self-expression, and resilience. These aspects of idol training are seen not only as entry points into entertainment careers but also as meaningful experiences of personal and communal growth within Japanese popular culture.
The idol industry's structure actively encourages fans to support new idols as earlier favorites mature, perpetuating a cycle of emotional engagement, personal development, and collective identity formation within idol fandom communities.
This style of recruiting and training was pioneered by Johnny Kitagawa, the founder of Johnny & Associates, and has since been used in other pop idol industries such as Korean idols in K-pop.
Anime News Network described the idol industry as highly demanding, with busy schedules that can limit time for personal life or family connections. Certain talent agencies have been criticized for withholding job assignments or notifying talents of work on short notice to discourage time off. Additionally, some agencies intentionally recruit individuals with limited experience and market them as relatable or "unfinished" figures, encouraging fans to support them as they grow. Idols are often not expected to meet the same performance standards as other professionals in their respective fields of entertainment, but they are appreciated by fans for qualities such as sincerity, effort, and emotional expression rather than for perfection.
Music from idol singers is generally categorized under J-pop, though talent agencies may label them under the sub-genre "idol pop" for further distinction. Many idol singers find success as groups rather than individually. Within each idol group, the members are sometimes given distinct roles. One example of a role is the center, who occupies the center position in the group's choreography and thus receives the most focus. Another example is the leader, usually relegated to the oldest or most experienced member in the group, who acts as an intermediary for the members and the staff.
Public image
Idols are often promoted based on their personality, charm, and relatability, with a strong emphasis in Japanese culture on emotional sincerity, perseverance, and visible growth. Some talent agencies set behavioral guidelines for their performers, such as discouraging smoking or public romantic relationships, as part of sustaining an image that symbolizes hope, personal growth, and the trust-based connection idols often share with their fans.Some idol groups have colors assigned to their members to distinguish them to the public, a practice that was drawn from the Super Sentai series.
Outfits
Idols generally perform in elaborate costumes for specific performances. Costumes are created for each song in their promotion cycle, as well as graduation events, and some groups have their own in-house costume designer. AKB48, in particular, has had over 1,102 costumes created for the group since 2017. The outfits worn by female idols are generally described as "cute", while outfits worn by male idols are described as "cool."Among many idol groups, school uniforms have been used as a standard costume. The integration of school uniforms in the idol industry originated from Onyanko Club, who debuted in 1985 with a concept based on school. Following their disbandment in 1987, other groups began adopting school uniforms as costumes, such as CoCo and Ribbon, two groups put together by Fuji TV's audition programs, followed by in 1992 and Morning Musume in the early 2000s. When AKB48 debuted in 2006, the group used a school concept and the members have performed in various stylized costumes based on school uniforms. Since then, other groups have used stylized school uniforms as costumes, such as AKB48's sister groups, Sakura Gakuin, and Sakurazaka46, with some modifications to suit the groups' image and choreography.
In 2017, Nihon Tarento Meikan noted that stylized school uniforms being used as costumes gained popularity through AKB48 due to their unique designs, the short skirts, and the neatness of the uniform. The uniforms found popularity with men, as they represent their "eternal longing" and nostalgia for high school, while only gaining popularity with women in the 2010s through anime.
Graduation
Idols who retire to pursue other career paths are typically given a farewell event known as "graduations". Female idols typically change careers at age 25 and male idols at ages 30–45. Prior to the 1980s, the terms "retirement" and "disbandment" were used.The term "graduation" originated from the idol group Onyanko Club, as the group's concept drew similarities to an after-school club, and the fact that Onyanko Club member 's final solo single before retirement was released around school graduations in Japan. "Graduation" saw usage again when Tsunku, who produced the group Morning Musume, used the term as a euphemism regarding Yuko Nakazawa's departure from the group in April 2001. Nakazawa's departure had gained widespread media attention at the time, with articles using the term "graduation" equally to those using "retirement." In addition, Nakazawa's departure was celebrated at the final show of Morning Musume's spring concert tour, her final performance as a member of the group. Since then, graduations became closely associated with farewell concerts, which are announced and planned in advance.
Graduations are seen as an "amicable" ending of idol activities, as they have a positive nuance of celebrating an idol's career. An idol having a graduation ceremony is seen more favorably than terminating a contract or voluntarily withdrawing, as the latter two terms are seen as "abrupt" and "covering up a secret." Contract terminations and voluntary withdrawals are negatively connoted with scandals or health concerns. Former Denpagumi.inc member Moga Mogami described the difference between graduations and withdrawals in that idols who graduate tend to leave because they have clear future goals, while idols who withdraw did not leave entirely by their own choice.
Sub-category markets
The diversity of Japan's idol industry has created several sub-category markets, each with a specific concept appealing to certain audiences.- AV idols: AV idols generally refer to pornographic actresses and models, with the industry first emerging in the 1980s.
- : Bandols are idol groups that play instruments and perform as bands. The term first emerged in the 2000s as a shortening of the phrase, "a new genre of neither bands nor idols", which was used to describe the marketing concept of the band Zone.
- Gravure idols: Gravure idols are models who pose in provocative swimsuit and lingerie photographs in magazines and photo books marketed towards men, similar to pin-up models. In the 1970s, Agnes Lum, who rose to fame in Japan, is considered the first gravure idol despite the term not existing at the time. Other notable swimsuit models were,, and Fumie Hosokawa. After Akiko Hinagata became a rising star in 1995, the term "gravure idol" was coined to describe her. In the 2000s, there was a significant growth in the gravure idol industry, with many women of different body types modeling. This led to sub-category markets in the gravure idol industry to describe their aesthetic and body types, which included "healing", "lolicon, "intelligent", "big breasts", and "sexy swimsuit". The gravure idol industry faced a decline in 2010 due to the popularity of AKB48, as some of their members also did gravure modeling; as a result, the demand for newer talents was reduced.
- Idol Voice acting in Japan: Since the 1970s, several voice actors of anime and video games also held successful singing careers in addition to voice acting. Early examples of voice actors who had an idol-like presence were Mobile Suit Gundam voice actors Toshio Furukawa and Toru Furuya in the 1970s, who gained a sizeable female following after forming their band, Slapstick. In the 1980s, idol singer Noriko Hidaka eventually became a voice actress after gaining recognition for playing lead in Touch. Beginning in the 1990s, several voice actors held successful concurrent singing careers alongside of voice acting, such as Hekiru Shiina, Mariko Kouda, and Megumi Hayashibara. As the anime industry began producing more late-night series in the 2000s, the term "idol voice actor" was popularized when more voice actors with a cultivated fan following began appearing on television. While previous examples involved voice actors who incidentally drew in fans through their singing careers or former idol singers who turned to voice acting, Yui Horie, Yukari Tamura, and Nana Mizuki were intentionally produced and marketed as idol voice actors by their record labels. Around the time when the Idol Warring Period was occurring during the mid-to-late 2000s, there was a significant boom in idols voice acting in anime, with Oricon naming Aya Hirano and Koharu Kusumi as examples, as both of them were established actresses and singers in mainstream Japanese entertainment before entering voice acting. Hirano, in particular, was strongly marketed as an idol at the height of her voice acting career, from the late 2000s to the early 2010s. While character song tie-ins were already common in the film industry by then, some voice actors also began making crossover television, stage, and concert appearances as their characters as well, leading them to be closely associated with one another.
- Japanese-Korean idols: While Japan and South Korea agencies have created collaborative idol groups in the past, with Route 0 in 2002, during the third Korean wave in the mid-to-late 2010s, the term saw usage again to refer to collaborative idol groups promoting primarily in Japan, but with music, styling, marketing, and presentation produced in the K-pop industry. The earliest example is Iz*One in 2018, followed by JO1 in 2019 and NiziU in 2020.
- Johnny's: Male idols contracted to Johnny & Associates are nicknamed "Johnny's idols" by the media and include groups such as SMAP and Arashi, who have led strong careers both individually and as a group. Since the company was founded in 1962 by Johnny Kitagawa, who is credited for pioneering the idol trainee system and popularizing the performance aspect of modern idols, the company has held a monopoly over the male idol industry in Japan, with Kitagawa pressuring the media to reduce coverage on male idols from other companies until his death in 2019. Johnny's idols also rarely get negative press such as scandals due to Kitagawa's influence on the media.
- Junior idols: Junior idols are singers and gravure models who generally are 15 years old and younger. Junior models first grew in popularity in 1995, when child magazine models became popular for their youthfulness and innocence, beginning with the elementary school girls featured in the covers of the magazine Panja. In addition, in 1997, the magazine Nicola was launched, featuring elementary and middle school girls as their core demographic. At the center of the phenomenon's popularity were Sayaka Yoshino and Yuka Nomura, child actresses and models who became popular in Japanese media. In the following years, it led to what the media named the "Chidol Boom", with the term "chidol" coined by journalist Akio Nakamori in the magazine Weekly Spa! in 1999. In the 2000s, "chidol" saw fewer usage, and it was eventually replaced by the term "junior idol" to legitimize them as part of the idol industry as well as removing the focus on their age. While the industry is still considered legal in Japan, it has been criticized for sexual exploitation of minors. Many junior idol distributors closed after possession of child pornography was outlawed in Japan in 2014.
- : Also written as gotōji aidoru and chihō aidoru or shortened as "locodol", local idols primarily promote in rural areas in their specific communities, where accessibility to celebrities is limited. The emergence of local idols was traced back to the early 2000s with Perfume and Negicco. The "Idol Warring Period" in the 2010s led to an increase in the number of local idols, with the 2013 television drama Amachan inspiring an accelerated growth. Journalist Mamoru Onoda estimates there are approximately 2,000 local idols active as of 2021. Most of the local idol groups are independently managed, relying on popularity through word-of-mouth. Several local idol groups who have crossed into mainstream media in the 2010s are Rev. from DVL and Dorothy Little Happy, the former after a photo of then-member Kanna Hashimoto went viral on the Internet.
- Net idols: Net idols are Internet celebrities who emerged with the accessibility of the Internet in the 1990s, using self-made websites and blogs to discuss their daily lives. Net idols currently conduct the majority of their activities through video streaming websites and social media beginning in the 2000s. Around March 2007, dance covers became popular on video-sharing websites such as Niconico, which in turn led people into performing choreographed dances from anime series and idol groups. Notable creators of dance covers, known as odorite, who later debuted as idols include from Danceroid and Dempagumi.inc, Beckii Cruel, and Keekihime.
- Virtual idols: Virtual idols are digital avatars representing a fictional character or persona. The first fictional idol gaining mainstream crossover was Lynn Minmay from Macross in the 1980s. In 1997, Kyoko Date was created as the first virtual idol. In 2007, Crypton Future Media released Hatsune Miku as its latest addition to the Vocaloid software, who subsequently saw positive reception from amateur songwriters, with her character and music based on user-generated content. Virtual online streamer Kizuna AI, who first appeared in 2016, led to a boom of Virtual YouTubers who similarly conduct their activities through a digital avatar on YouTube and other streaming websites.
- : Underground idols are independently managed idols who perform at small venues. They are also known as live idols or indies idols. Underground idols first emerged in the 1990s when idol groups with large numbers of members began appearing after the popularity of Onyanko Club. Tama Himeno and Kamen Joshi member Tomoka Igari, both underground idols, describe them as being different from mainstream idols in that underground idols are active through live performances rather than through exposure from mass media or CD releases through major record labels, thus making them more accessible to fans in comparison to mainstream idols. An example Igari used to describe close relationships that underground idols have with their fans is that underground idols will hold handshake events and take instant camera photos with fans after every live performance.
- * : idols are type of underground idol based in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, drawing influences from its culture. Music from idols are generally sold as self-published CDs at Comiket or promoted through Niconico. is a dedicated venue where they perform. While idols are niche, Haruko Momoi and Dempagumi.inc are cited as an examples of an idols crossing over to mainstream media. Dempagumi.inc's music producer, Maiko Fukushima, describes the music from idols as distinct from anime songs, with most composers being "amateurs" and its organic music culture facing a state of the Galapagos syndrome, as they had no direct creative input from J-pop or other music genres. However, Fukushima noted that songs from R-18 games were also key components of music. In 2007, Vocaloid greatly influenced the growth of music and idol culture. AKB48, one of Japan's most recognized idol groups nationwide, originated from Akihabara, but it is not considered an group.
- * Alternative idols': Alternative idols, also known as alt-idols or anti-idols, is a term coined by English-speaking communities to describe idol singers who have an image concept and music different from what is considered mainstream, such as having darker images and alternative rock. The alternative idol scene was pioneered by Bis and Seiko Oomori and made popular by Bis' successor Bish.