Article in:
Journal of Asian Pacific Communication: Online-First Articles

A cure for woundless pain

Consumption of innocence in Japanese idol culture

| University of California at Santa Cruz

As a cultural construct, the idol is a consumer product created to “heal” in the age of exhaustion. Layering a “guardian” aspect onto Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze,” this paper contextualizes the commodification and consumption of innocence. This paper brings the documentary, Tokyo Idols (2017), and the animated film, Perfect Blue (1997), into a conversation to theorize how femininity is constructed and commodified in Japan’s pop idol industry. The idol culture consumes innocence only to create more trauma for women by stressing the arbitrary importance of innocence and sacrificing female agency in the process.

Keywords: idol, Tokyo Idols , Perfect Blue , guardian gaze, feminism
Article outline
  • Male fantasy and patriarchal subconscious
  • Innocent construct
  • The guardian gaze
  • Imposed trauma narrative and the mirror stage
  • Conclusion
  • Conflict of interest
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 08 October 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00072.she
References
Aoyagi, H.
(2005) Islands of Eight Million Smiles: Idol Performance and Symbolic Production in Contemporary Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bareket, O., Kahalobn, R., Shnabel, N., & Glick, P.
(2018) The Madonna-Whore Dichotomy: Men Who Perceive Women’s Nurturance and Sexuality as Mutually Exclusive Endorse Patriarchy and Show Lower Relationship Satisfaction. Sex Roles, 79(9), 519–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BBC World Asia
(2013, 02 01). ‘Sorry’ Japan starlet shaves head. BBC World Asia. https://​www​.bbc​.com​/news​/world​-asia​-21299324
Galbraith, P.
(2012) Idols: The Image of Desire in Japanese Consumer Capitalism. In P. W. Galbraith, & J. Karlin, Idols and Celebrities in Japanese Media Culture (p. 255). Tokyo, Japan: CPI Antony Rowe. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Galbraith, P. G., & Karlin, G. J.
(2020) AKB48. New York, USA; London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Galbraith, P. W., & Karlin, J. G.
(2012) Introduction: The Mirror of Idols and Celebrity. In P. W. Galbraith, & J. G. Karlin, Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture (pp. 1–34). New York: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Han, B.-C.
(2017) In The Swarm: Digital Prospects. (E. Butler, Trans.) Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Han, B.
(2017) Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. New York: Verso. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ide, W.
(2017) Tokyo Idols’: Sundance Review. Screen International, 1–3.Google Scholar
Koch, G.
(2016) Producing iyashi: Healing and labor in Tokyo’s sex industry. American Ethnologist, 43(4), 704–716. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kon, S.
(Director) (1997) Perfect Blue [FILM]. Madhouse.Google Scholar
(2000) Perfect Blue: Interview with Director Satoshi Kon. (M. Entertainment, Interviewer)Google Scholar
Lacan, J.
(1986) The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. In J. Lacan, Critical Theory Since 1965 (First Edition ed., pp. 734–738). Tallahassee: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
LaMarre, T.
(2006) Platonic Sex: Perversion and Shojo Anime. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1(1), 45–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lukács, G.
(2010) Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan. Durham: Duke University Press Books.Google Scholar
Michel, P. S.
(2019, September 16). SMAP: The pop idol media monopoly that dominated the Heisei Era. The Japan Times: Culture. https://​www​.japantimes​.co​.jp​/culture​/2019​/04​/07​/entertainment​-news​/smap​-pop​-idol​-media​-monopoly​-dominated​-heisei​-era/
Miyake, K.
(Director) (2017) Tokyo Idols [Documentary]. Netflix.Google Scholar
Mulvey, L.
(1975) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagano, H.
(2011) Collective Maturation: The Construction of Masculinity in Early Modern Villages. In S. Frühstück, & A. Walthall, Recreating Japanese Men (pp. 203–219). Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Napier, S.
(2006) “Excuse Me, Who Are You?”: Performance, the Gaze, and the Female in the Works of Kon Satoshi. In S. Brown, Cinema Anime (pp. 23–42). New York: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treat, J. W.
(2018) Japan is interesting: modern Japanese literary studies today. Japan Forum, 30(3), 421–440. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ueno, C.
(2010) Onna-girai: Nippon no Misojini. Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten.Google Scholar