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Article published In:
Reconsidering Language and Gender in Contemporary Japan and among the Japanese Diaspora amid the #MeToo Movement
Edited by Kikuko Omori and Hiroshi Ota
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 33:1] 2023
► pp. 87–102

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: 8 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00072.she
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