Ex-Gravure Idol Uncovers the ‘Dating Club’ in Japanese show biz world

There are two classic taboo rumors about the Japanese entertainment industry. The first is that organized crime runs the artist management business. There is a lot of evidence to back this up — convicted tax-evading jimusho bosses claiming the need for “underground financing” in the courtroom, bullets fired into management company windows, a well-known historical precedent for entertainment being a yakuza racket, Misora Hibari’s manager being a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, etc., etc. But if you are a television network or publishing company dependent upon the very same entertainment companies to provide celebrities to attract viewers and readers, you are not exactly going to start blabbing about anything sinister. The entertainment companies are not dumb either, working at all costs to preserve the “wholesome” image. Who would think that the mob runs an industry where smoking a cigarette at age 19 can end your career as an idol?

The other persistent rumor is that model agencies — especially for gravia idols — prostitute their employees off on the side. A lot of the lower-ranking and newer idols must pay for their own dancing and singing lessons and are allegedly introduced to possible “buyers” by management company employees to secure an extra source of income. There are also apparently hostess clubs directly managed by the modeling agencies where up-and-coming talent can meet television executives and other powerful figures. In the past, there has been a lot of “Marxy, you are paranoid and crazy” in regards to my belief in this gossip. (And not just on this blog. My friend was pounding me on this just yesterday evening.)

Kohinata Minako Komukai Minako’s recent confession to these practices, however, is a huge leap forward for anyone wanting to pull back the curtain. I seriously doubt the story will get any legs — any talk of prostituting idols is still a massive taboo in the media, and almost no one has any stake in making the cheery idol business look seedy. Idols are the public face of many respectable businesses and government bureaus, so exposing the dark side of the industry is not just a hit for the management companies, but a hit for the entire Japanese national tatemae.

Many people often think, who cares where the money comes from? These revelations, however, show exactly why organized crime probably should not be free to hold the reigns to the pop cultural industries. They have too much temptation to milk as much money from their employees in any way possible, with basically no chance at legal recourse from their labor. And when the guys who run artist management companies and the guys who run brothels are in the same “fraternal organization,” crossover seems like an obvious occurrence.

For some reason last night, I became convinced that photographer Araki Nobuyoshi and Dragonball Z’s Master Roshi (aka 亀仙人) looked exactly the same. On closer inspection, I am crazy.

I watching was the video podcast of (uncompromisingly-liberal) PBS program Bill Moyers’ Journal, and in a segment called “Changing Times” about the Obama victory in the context of the civil rights struggle, Moyers told the story of Johnnie Marie Ross — an African-American woman who attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral and voted for Obama.

The visuals cut to a picture of an article about Ross from the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the main photograph, the current Ross is wearing a (possibly fake, possibly real) BAPE camouflage hoodie. Talk about progress for Japanese street fashion!

日本のWikipedia編集回数ランキング、アニメ・漫画が上位独占

I didn’t think I would be the first one to link to this article. (Update: Defeated by Danny Choo, who probably made $100 on his site while I type this sentence. Maybe I should have added a picture of impossibly-chested cartoon women…)

Basically, somebody compared the most-edited pages within the Wikipedia English, Wikipedia French, and Wikipedia Japan sites, and haha, the top five for Japan were all anime/manga related. Number one in the U.S. was George W. Bush — a politically controversial figure. Number three in France was Algeria — I heard France had a slightly-controversial colony there. (Update: M-Bone pointed out that I am an idiot and forgot that Algerians use French.) Japan’s only real historical topic comes at #14 — World War II. Despite the heavy internal debate on that war within Japan, everyone using the net is much more interested in fixing minutiae about cartoons.

It would be easy to show this ranking as proof that Japanese minds are more obsessed with pop culture than national issues, politics, or ideology, but my guess is that this mainly reflects the still low cultural penetration of the internet in Japan. I know that stats rarely bear out this statement of mine — broadband usage is through the roof! etc. etc. — but I don’t think your average Joe in Japan (城氏？) is as dependent upon internet resources for daily information retrieval as in the U.S., for example. I can’t put my finger on it, but something in Japan still feels like the U.S. internet circa 1998, when it was only good for looking up the master timeline to the Macross series and guitar chords to They Might Be Giants songs.

Let’s make an index: the number of Wikipedia pages in a language divided by the numbers of speakers of said language times 100. Japanese ranks very low (.38) — way below Dutch (1.6) and Polish (1.2). Those who do use Wikipedia in Japan are early adopters, much more likely to be nerds. It’s the John Locke vs. John Locke syndrome. But at least other countries have internal domestic policies in constant debate to challenge the nerd quotient.

Another interesting bit: number eight in Japan is the “complete list of adult video stars.” I guess people are constantly adding names. Certainly suggests that the reference site is used by a lot of men — who have a lot of time to dedicate to editing porn trivia.

Just launched: IL.com 4.0. A million thanks and praises to Paul Sather and Jeremy Lanig!

In our last mega-battle over a certain Japanese magazine’s gleeful front-cover commercialization of a 14 year-old girl’s sexuality, I got mega-schooled at the very end by an anonymous commenter who dropped some names of other exploited low-teen girls back in the ’80s, who through a naive google image search, led to some of the most frightening images possibly lurking on the internet today. Okay, so this “let’s lust after real-life elementary school girls, everyone” thing is not new to post-war Japan. I concede that point.

But I do not retract my hate of Weekly Playboy, and this month’s cover story reminds me why they are so very, very terrible. While the rest of the world celebrates the nobler parts of the human community in the wake of Barrack Obama’s election, assholes at Playboy frame everything this way:

Obama vs. The Assassins: The Sniper Battle Has Begun!

Super classy, guys. Framing what would be the tragic murder of the U.S.’s brand new hope-inspiring African-American president as a sensational action movie plot.

Weekly Playboy is published by a mainstream publisher, but, it’s fair to say, does not represent the views of “mainstream Japanese.” That being said, Playboy does represent a certain “taste culture” that exists in Japan: let’s call it the “Asshole Faction.” Of course, they are jingoist anti-Asians, but I want to also point out that these 30 year-old angry dudes love child pornography, prostitution, and any other forms of institutionalized, social class-exploiting misogynistic services like adult video and hostess clubs. Maybe it’s only my imagination that there are still people out there who equate Japan’s enormous “sex business” with a progressive morality that transcends prudish “Christian” ethics, but if you are one of these people, deal with the fact that no one loves the Japanese sex business more than the Asshole Faction. It gives them something to do when not anticipating the assassination of the American president.

McDonalds closed their Omotesando location a few weeks back and replaced it with a big sign reading TOP SECRET and a silly foreigner in ill-fitting black suit and bad sunglasses. (He was the bodyguard.)

Today, two mysterious new restaurants opened in Shibuya and Omotesando called Quarter Pounder offering only two options: a Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal set and a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal set.

‘Tis McDonalds behind the scheme, of course. Perchance they wanted a more interesting way to bring the iconic American hamburger variety to Japan instead of just throwing it on the menu next to the MacFlurry. My guess is that long lines will form, sucking the energy from H&M and Krispy Kreme. So much excitement for the most ubiquitous fast food chain already dominant in Japan! Viral marketing will probably work this time around, and judging from the Néojaponisme-esque limited color palette of black and red, probably did not even cost so much to do.

Listening to Shiina Ringo’s Shouso Strip at the moment, which isn’t even my favorite Shiina Ringo album, and it so clearly destroys anything that has come out of the Japanese pop music scene in the last six years. This album should sound dated and terrible — that’s how pop culture works — but the total stagnation of J-Pop makes it sound like some kind of futuristic gift sent back in time from an altrusitic advanced civilization. “Gibusu” is like ideal utopian socialist fantasy of a J-Rock ballad.

Buffalo Daughter’s “LI303VE” also stands up. (I am writing about both artists for a magazine.)

Many deride necrophilic obsession with the past, but what do you do when the past so clearly and objectively kicks the present’s teeth in on a daily basis? The collapse of this pop culture thing has made us all Classics majors and historians.

I have a video installation in Scion’s show at Art Basel Miami this year. If you are in the Sunshine State and looking for free booze and fine fine art, this is your place in early December. (Today’s Usugrow painting is tomorrow’s Dali!) Friday, 12/05 at the Raleigh Hotel Penthouse from 7PM-10PM. I’ll be there- hit me up!

Spotted in Hamamatsucho station:

For more on “Engrich,” look here.

Technically, 「衝突」 can be “clash” but I am not sure this is such a great translation — functionally speaking. In terms of coolness? Check-plus-plus.

I was just looking over my senior thesis about A Bathing Ape, and in one part, I mention that Nigo was on the cover of three street fashion magazines — Boon, Asayan, and Thrill — in August 2000. During the summer of 2000 when I did the core of my research, all the fashion elites I interviewed said “Ape is dead,” but I felt that these magazine covers questioned the validity of that statement.

Anyway, I was shocked to realize that none of these titles still exist. Boon changed to B. earlier this year and then ceased publication for good. Asayan was the street fashion magazine of the Ura-Harajuku movement, so I can see why it drifted into obscurity sometime in the early 21st century. I don’t even remember what Thrill was about.

Not that this observation really means anything, but I tend to forget how different the media landscape was just eight years ago. I often note that A Bathing Ape almost never appears in mainstream fashion menswear magazines, but maybe that’s because all the pro-Ura-Hara ones went under.

Wow. Chin Music Press’ excellent book Art Space Tokyo received an absurd and highly questionable review in the latest issue of Metropolis. Riddled with racial/cultural stereotypes of Japanese and dismissive of the opinion of foreigners involving themselves in Tokyo’s fine art world, it upholds Metropolis’ reputation for stellar journalism. Read it here.

AST editor Ashley Rawlings retorts at length in this infinitely more worthwhile blog post on the excellent AST website. Ashley politely pulls his punches aimed at reviewer C.B. Liddell while eloquently pointing out the numerous stereotypes and gross assumptions made in Liddell’s article.

I’m biased, as I wrote one of the dismissed essays in the damn book, but Liddell’s review strikes me as the work of a college freshman’s stab at homework for Journalism 101. Some striking concepts within:

Popular=Good
Tokyo=Ugly
Japanese =Inherently artistic

Apparently, foreigners are inherently less artistic, and if one is to paraphrase some of Liddell’s earlier work, less cute as well.

The whole review is trite and suffers from a myopic view of culture at large, not to mention a very short-sighted perspective on contemporary art in Japan.

Oh, and there are grammatical errors throughout.

A bit preemptive, but what the hell… Néojaponisme’s exhibition Meeting Modernity will be in Portland from January 8 through February 1st in the new year. The opening will be on January 8 from 6–9PM. I’ll be in attendance (as will Ma and Pa Lynam!), so come on down.

Give it to Uniqlo for being one of the few Japanese retailers seeing growth and one of the few big companies continuing to trickle-down money to innovative foreign artists.

http://ut.uniqlo.com/ztt

Uniqlo’s UT T-shirt line has revived graphics from the iconic ’80s label Zang Tumb Tuum (ZTT) Records. Now you can finally get a Frankie Goes to Hollywood shirt that doesn’t say RELAX.

A quote from Sunahara Yoshinori at the bottom!

Mumbleboy, that suave and dashing genius, has a new art show up in Portland at Black Wagon, the best kid’s store in town!