#13: You Can't Shake Hands With a Closed Fist
The News, This Week in Japanese History & Much More
Welcome back, Dear Readers! Do you like music? Of course you like music. Everyone likes music. Good: this week we’re weaving in a lot of music content for you. Let’s get into it!
THE QUIZ
Question: what’s this guy up to?
Answer at the foot of the mail.
THE HEADLINES
1. $1 = ¥157
🥺
2. 1000 Music Fans Sleep on Station Floor
3. Dogecoin-Inspiring Shiba Inu Passes Away
[RIP Kabosu, who died painlessly in the arms of her owner]
THE READ
Last week The Kyote compiled a list of the 32 Best Writers on Japan in 2024. Here’s an excerpt:
Kjeld Duits of Old Photos of Japan
Not content with contributing to the culture by collecting and sharing wonderful historical photographs that would otherwise be lost forever, Kjeld Duits accompanies them with insanely detailed write ups filling in the gaps of Japanese history.
[Check out the full list here]
THE VIDEO
The Kyote is occasionally asked by bootstrapping Silicon Valley types how they can launch their brand in Japan on a zero dollar marketing budget.
Unfortunately, successful Western companies like KFC, McDonald’s, Disney, Starbucks et al broke into the market: by handing tens of millions of dollars to large Japanese marketing conglomerates, giving them creative carte blanche, then praying.
(You want to rename Ronald McDonald to Donald McDonald? Fine!)
The newest challenger is online design site Canva, whose new commercial (produced by agency UltraSuperNew) stars Japan’s most famous man, Takeshi Kitano, phoning in his usual gangster shtick for what must have been an unbelievable fee.
(Most Western companies eventually conclude: for the Japanese market, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.)
THE HISTORY
One strange event from this week in Japanese history:
You Can't Shake Hands With a Closed Fist
Messages on the fans read “wink (at me)” and “look over here”. Designed to catch the eye of his favorite idol singer during a concert. Original image: photo-ac.com
Ten years ago this week, a man stabbed two members of the mega-successful girl group AKB48 at a “handshake” (meet-and-greet) event.
They survived, as did a staff member who intervened and was injured too.
* * *
In the West, girl/boy bands are designed mainly to extract money from teenagers.
In Japan, idol bands are designed mainly to extract money from middle-aged men.
Now, we’re aware there are significant numbers of young women who idolize (ahem) idol groups — the cute fashion, the music, the dance moves (the basis for the whole Tik-Tok dance phenomenon).
Also the grind. That’s part of the appeal.
Saying the life of an idol is hard would be a gross understatement. It absolutely sucks. There are no such thing as “working conditions”. Human rights? None. The renumeration makes N*SYNC’s $10k bonus for selling 15m copies of their debut album look generous.
(If you were ever curious how much of The Kyote is AI-generated, the single time we used ChatGPT in the last 3 months was to ask: How bad was N*SYNC’s first contract?)
Idols work 18/7, minimum. Idols are on an unrelenting conveyer of rehearsals / public appearances / meetings / recording sessions. Any idol still capable of telling the truth (after management brainwashing) will admit that they spend any day off they manage to get asleep in bed.
In return for this brutal, ill-paying lifestyle, the benefits: relentless public scrutiny plus total disqualification from showing any public emotion that might be perceived — by the “fans” — as ingratitude.
(The fans, here, means middle aged men with the disposable income to maintain the economics of the whole endeavor. This means (yes, in 2024) buying vast numbers of CDs, more than one person would ever need, in order to support their favorite band — also concert tickets, novelty items like fans, keyrings, light-up batons to wave at concerts, etc. etc.)
“Ingratitude” to these old dudes might manifest as, say, having a romantic relationship (usually outright banned by management). You may have seen footage of another AKB48 member named Minami Minegishi, who shaved her head in penance for staying overnight at a man’s residence in 2013, a year before the stabbing incident (she tearfully apologized on video to her fans for her “thoughtless behavior”).
(We’ve discussed in a previous edition the deadly consequences of management controlling their idols’ love lives before here.)
* * *
The guy who stabbed the AKB48 members wasn’t a fan (he claimed, indignantly). He just regarded these girls as legitimate targets of his incel-like rage: they were successful; people like him were supposed to love them; they were rich (showing he had zero grasp of the economics).
The victims, Rina Kawaei and Anna Iriyama, sustained wounds to their hands and arms. They were released from hospital into a swamp of properly-tipped off paparazzi, and explained they were now “fine”. They weren’t fine — but what else were they going to do, show actual human emotions?
So why did the guy go for these particular members of AKB48’s extended roster? At the meet-and-greet, fans are funneled down lines to meet and shake hands with their particular favorite; Kawaei and Iriyama were amongst the least popular, ergo no one in line, hence a free run-up for the guy’s knife-work.
Here’s the thing: to keep interest in the group at a constant simmer, “elections” are held, to select the most popular current members, i.e. a way to extract more money from fans wishing to show their devotion — and both Kawaei and Iriyama suddenly saw their popularity jump in the elections after they were injured.
(@caity summer from plastic fantasma also dug up a report on a mildly sexy photoshoot Iriyama (18) did, still wearing her arm brace.)
The stabber was eventually sentenced to 6 years in prison; Kawaei was severely PTSD’d, and the next March announced her departure ("graduation") from the group giving her “psychological inability” to attend fan “handshake” events anymore as the reason — and no wonder.
* * *
As usual with cultural phenomenon, it’s the artists who better describe the truth, rather than the news media.
Rin Usami, a 21 year old college student, became the literary sensation of 2021 by selling 600,000 copies of her novel 推し、燃ゆ (Eng: Idol, Burning). Blurb from the Canongate Books English version:
High-school student Akari has only one passion in her life: her oshi, her idol. His name is Masaki Ueno, best known as one-fifth of Japanese pop group Maza Maza. Akari's dedication consumes her days completely - until her oshi disgraces himself and Akari's world goes into a tailspin.
But our sneaky recommendation is the untranslated short story 神様男 (literally God Man) by Natsuo Kirino (author of crime novel OUT — available in English — itself very nearly a masterpiece.)
God Man tells the story of a young female singer, a member of fictional group Maybe★Doll, who have been selected to appear at a concert named Idol Explosion!, their potential big break into the music industry.
The tale follows the idol’s mother, suffering from an unbridgeable generation gap, uncomprehending and overwhelmed by the entire experience, especially the strange middle aged men who fill the venue — but the real kicker is the narrator: the younger sister of the idol. Her internal monologue is a relentless torrent of criticism of her older sibling, including her stiff dance moves, duff interactions with fans, even down to a second-by-second editorial on her facial expressions.
Tough crowd, in other words — which is as neat a survey of the idol industry as could ever exist.
[More on the AKB48 stabbing here]
THE LINKS
Good stuff on Japan you should read:
Matt Alt’s “The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the translators”, on AI replacing human translators in the manga industry.
Kate Ellwood with data on how students in different countries ranked their knowledge of 16 maths concepts, 3 of which were fake. America vs Japan, who do you think are bigger bullshitters?
Patrick St. Michel’s latest Make Believe Mailer covers everything you’d ever want to know about the week in Japanese music. First line: “The three artists wearing baboon masks on stage have the crowd bobbing.”
THE ANSWER
Question: what’s this guy up to?
Answer: he’s an idol fan who has bought up multiple CDs to make sure he secures a ticket to a handshake event
(See feature article You Can’t Shake Hands With a Closed Fist above — fans will buy multiple copies of physical releases, especially if there’s a chance to secure a “golden ticket” to a handshake event with their favorite idol.)
That’s it:
Until next week,
The Kyote
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The Kyote is published in Kyoto, Japan every Sunday at 19:00 JST
Thanks again for the shout-out, Daniel!
I really enjoyed this installment, as I'm sure you expected I would! I've read Idol, Burning in translation, but I'm coincidentally right in the middle of a Kirino phase, so you bet I dropped everything I was doing to go and throw that short story collection into my Amazon cart.
It's interesting to think about what an idol's "why" might be. I bought an idol-themed edition of a feminist magazine called エトセトラ that came out a couple years ago (the first and only idol-adjacent publication to contain an interview with Judith Butler, I imagine), and small sample size aside, their survey of current and former idols included answers as varied as "because I liked performing" and "because I wanted to wear cute clothes." Some of them obviously wanted attention and praise. I think young women are uniquely primed for consumption both in and out of the spotlight, and it manifests in odd microcosms like that photoshoot — still expected to perform desirability even while visibly injured, maybe all the more attractive to the viewer for being in that state.